The chain link fence could connect my life in diagonal 2" by 2" squares. I could insert little pictures of happy and memorable times in each square and make a solid mosaic. Solid, opaque. I could close off one side but not both and I could not look away from the fence. Both sides of it. And I would never forget.
I remember when they installed a chain link fence all the way around my school yard when I was nine or so. We spent our recesses and lunch time sitting on the asphalt or in the outfield for four days with our knees tucked up under our chins. There was nothing more interesting than watching those men dig holes and fill them with concrete. Wet concrete is wonderful to a young boy in it solid, oozing bigness. Cement mixers are even better. When they were done, they roped off the whole perimeter and disappeared. There were gleaming rows of new grey posts sticking up out of the ground like a legion of soldiers all standing at perfect attention. The next week a fence appeared one morning like magic and four gates which swung on giant hinges.
They told us it was because one of the first grade girls had been bitten in the face by a stray dog on the school ground. When she finally came back to school we all wanted to see her face. We guys thought the stitches and red lines looked great - like a chain link fence on her face. We weren't trying to be cruel, we were just too young to appreciate what such a disfigurement might mean to a girl. I don't remember seeing her after that year. I think her father was transferred to another town and they moved in the summer. I suppose the plastic surgeons long ago removed all traces of those scars.
A couple of years after that our "city slicker" neighbor put a chain link fence around his garden to keep the deer out. "It cost an arm and a leg to put up that eight-foot beauty," he said proudly, "but it'll be worth it! Good thing I'm not still in the city or I couldn't have put one up high enough." He hadn't yet learned that deer jump ten feet and more . . . and we didn't tell him. We figured he'd find out in time.
That was also the year the chain link behind home plate became an important part of my life. I'd hang on that fence for hours watching the high school team practice and determined that I'd be a jock when I got older. I joined a little league team to be on the right side of that fence and Dad spent hours catching for me as I learned to keep the ball in the catchers mitt instead of smacking it into the fence.
I remember the chain link fences at the zoo when we went there on field trips . . . keeping animals in and people out of pens. And the height of the fence at the gate. "EXIT ONLY" it read in giant capital letters about 12 feet off the ground. The genteel arch over the revolving pronged gate was supposed to soften the fact that there were three strands of double-pronged barbed wire stretched tightly above the chain link. Once out the gate, you could gaze back at where you'd been, but you couldn't return. For some reason it always reminded me of the Berlin Wall. No matter how you looked at a chain link fence, you were always at the front . . . never at the back. You could be on the wrong side of the fence, but you were still in front.
I remember the chain link at African Safari which encircled the compound and a few of the separate habitats . . . though not many. But this was definitely no zoo. The only time in my life when I wanted a physical chain link fence was when an indignant lion tore the radio antenna and rear-view mirror off my Bronco and ruined the paint job. I had tried to maneuver carefully through his lethargic pride, all of whom were basking in the middle of the only road and refusing to move. I was thankful we didn't have a soft-top and I've never gone back. "Not enough chain link," I told my wife.
The chain link is a strong wire mesh which protects us from danger and keeps the bad guys at bay. I remember visiting Washington D.C. and was a little appalled to find the White House surrounded by chain link. Then I chastised myself for being so naive.
All around me there were chain link fences to keep us and all our "stuff" safe and secure. They circle all our prisons with barbed wire on top. Fences surround our mini-storage units. I always laugh at the chain-link around the junk yards as if we need to protect . . . junk. I suppose it's to keep dogs out and kids from being hurt in there.
When I became a medic, I carefully constructed my own kind of chain link around my heart. I couldn't get involved emotionally or I'd burn out. And chain link is kind of open - it lets you breath while it keeps you safe. I was a good medic, too. I think it was that chain link. I could be there for my patients. I could walk away from a child who had been killed. Nothing could get through that strong, safe mesh.
With lots of encouragement from my department and my family, I decided to become a paramedic. It was hard, but I'd finally made it to my internship. In New York City. A far cry from my little rural Oregon town. This was known as being "in the trenches." It gave a fledgling paramedic a year's worth of on-the-job training in a month.
When the call came in as an unknown explosion at the airport, it was just another call in an otherwise endless night. As we approached the emergency gate in the chain link, the fence itself disappeared in the lights of the emergency vehicles already on scene. We pulled into the staging area and bailed out to get details in person. The airwaves were so jammed we still didn't know what had happened. Onlookers said that a Boeing jet had taxied out on the tarmac and was waiting for the green light for take off when it exploded with 547 people on board. So far triage had located only eight victims who were still alive. They were not ready to call them survivors, though. Most rescuers were involved in locating bodies and body parts. The plane itself had almost completely disintegrated. This was a mass casualty incident on a scale we had never trained for and this was no training. This was real.
I headed toward the gate and the wreckage of the jet to start working wherever they needed me. I flipped my two-way radio over to working frequency so I could hear my own battalion chief if he called. It was then that I first actually became aware of the chain linK fence. Something was wrong there. Our little country airport didn't have a perimeter fence of any kind. Major airports all have chain link to keep crazy people and drunks from driving out on the runways or trying to commit suicide and to keep terrorists from gaining access to the planes or the airport. But something was wrong here. I strained my eyes to focus on the chain link in the ever-moving rescue lights. Realization came slowly as I fought to deny the truth, remembering the protection of other fences. I could not avert my eyes from that fence. I would see it forever on the backs of my eyelids in the night and every time I blinked. It was instantly and permanently etched in my brain.
Some of the people had been blown from the plane with such force that they had been blown THROUGH the chain link fence. In 2" by 2" diagonal squares. From one side to the other.
My heart burst through its chain link shield and pounded in my head as I doubled over and retched in the grass in front of the chain link fence.
