It was about nine o’clock in the evening and the phone rang. The kitchen phone hung off the wall just to your left as you walked in from the dining room. I walked over, closed my eyes and picked up the receiver.
The day had started as normal, making breakfast, making a couple of lunches, dropping off my children at school and returning home from the morning routine in time to catch a train to work. After dropping the kids off, I drove home, parked the car and walked to the train. A rather nice, pleasant, routine every morning.
This morning at just after 8:15AM or so as I walked across a familiar street I began to slow, almost involuntarily, as sense of dread swept through me. A horrible feeling. Without realizing it, I stood in the middle of the street, asking myself, “Is this what it feels like to lose a child?” I felt ill, swaying; having to collect myself. No cars came and I slowly restarted my walk, arriving at the train in time for work.
The day is a blur, though I remember the most minute details, a coworker flippantly asking me, “Did you lose anyone?”, sitting at a bar, opened early in response to our knocking on the windows while pointing at the blank TV, watching events unfold, speaking with my mother throughout the day; her voice overly optimistic and a bit too chipper, organizing hundreds of friends and colleagues, via emails, to call my father’s beeper with the message, “are you OK. what is your location” in an effort eventually picked up by the Daily News and leveraged on CNN, getting a hold of my brother on the phone and telling him I love him, hugging my daughter, crying in front of my children for the first time and answering the phone at about nine o’clock that evening.
The voice struggled to remain composed. “This is Jerry Method, at the Incident Command Center. I’m looking for Beasley Kinkade.”
“This is Beasley. Have you heard from my dad?” Jerry choked. “No. No, we haven’t heard from him. We’re looking for him now. We have a standard procedure in the event of an incident and, he, uh left instructions that we should call you and let you know he’s been out of contact for 12 hours. He hasn’t checked in.” Jerry began to cry.
“Did everyone else check in, Jerry?”
“Yes, everyone but your dad. I’m sorry. He’s such a good man. We’ll find him. We’re doing everything we can, Beasley. We have hundreds of guys looking for him. Hundreds. He’ll show up, you know your dad.”
“Thank you, Jerry. I get it. I gotta go.” I started to cry and then stopped, grabbing my mouth and squeezing hard. I put down the receiver and opened my eyes thinking this was the last thing my father was ever going to ask for; “Deflect the blow, ready to fall on your mother, my wife of 40 years. Let her hear it from you. ”
I closed my eyes and dialed my mom.
