9/11

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In their Catholic high school, John one day sat down for lunch next to a quiet kid who needed a big friend, and the quiet kid grew up to be a teacher and never forgot what it meant to have that new friend—he told people about his friend John, the big-hearted, big-spirited kid who grew up to be a pilot and a farmer, who shared his farmland with Asian refugees who had resettled in the gritty precincts of the city next door and who wanted to grow vegetables as they did in their homelands, places where John had flown cargo planes during the war there—John the preservationist, who protected open space in Dracut, the town whose original Indian name Agumtoocook means “A Place in the Woods”—John, who took his Boeing 767 up on September 11, 2001, into a sky that pilots call “severe clear,” who guided American Airlines Flight 11 out of Boston’s Logan Airport, where so many of us have flown away with faith in technology, management, and civilized behavior, John, who took his passengers and crew up into a blue sky on a day when he had as usual driven in early from Marsh Hill in Dracut to captain his plane across country, that day like any other in the late summer, not officially Fall even though schools were in session, that day like no other by the end of the surprise attack, by the end of the paper rain and ash-cloud, by the end of the twisted steel and burnt ground, by the end of John’s life—on that day from which we have not recovered the bounce that had always made people elsewhere admire our sure belief that we’d figure out a problem and invent the next dazzle—a day that moved John’s neighbors and even people who had never met him to drive slowly up the winding hill road that leads to his farm, where they heaped flowers, hand-made signs, candles, and sympathy cards in front of the wide white gate leading to the farm—and past the white gate up the driveway rose a giant crane holding up an American flag that looked as big as the flag that covers the left field wall at Fenway Park on opening day—and past the crane and flag stood the farmhouse of John’s family, his wife and daughters, who needed him to come back so he would sit next to them at the table in the house one more time, just as he had done all those years ago when the good guy sat next to the shy kid who needed a friend.

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—Paul Marion (c) 2011