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Finding
Out
At 9:45 on September 11th,
a co-worker led me to a window overlooking what lies south of
the Madison Square Garden and Penn Station area, the World Trade
Center. It’s a
little over a mile away, but on the 27th floor, a
little over a mile looks pretty close.
I looked across at the two gaping, burning,
black-smoke-engulfed holes, one for each tower.
And a long trail of black smoke drifted away from the
structures.
I couldn’t comprehend it.
At first, I thought there was just a fire.
But why one in each building?
Then I thought there had been some kind of explosion that
emitted from one and hit the other.
Then someone mentioned an airplane.
Two airplanes.
And somewhere, the two pieces clicked.
“Two airplanes,” I asked in shock.
One airplane is a horrible accident, but not two.
I walked back to my desk and someone behind me whispered
something about not being able to work today.
Someone else responded with, “A plane just hit the
Pentagon.”
The Pentagon?
My boss showed up to work and offered
her Manhattan apartment to those of us standing there in a
panic. We started
gathering “things,” all unsure of exactly what was happening
in the world. I sat
at my desk and checked the New York Times web site. Service
was very slow. Many
people would be checking to see what had happened, I guessed.
The headline read that two airliners had crashed into the
World Trade Center. Another
headline said a plane had crashed “near the Pentagon.”
Near is better than into, I thought, and I clicked on the
article. More
people behind me reacted to what was going on in shocked
whispers. On the
screen, I watched the little blue bar slowly inch its way up.
Someone said something about Madison Square Garden using
the words “get out” and “target.”
Target? Finally,
the screen changed. What
I saw was the log-on screen, asking for my ID and password
before I could read the article.
I entered it, cursing at the New York Times as I did, and
began making phone calls.
I called home to my mother.
The line was dead. I
called my girlfriend. Again,
the line was dead. I
called my friend and co-critic, Christian, and again, the line
was dead. Two
planes hit the World Trade Center, one hit the Pentagon, and I
was still sitting in New York City.
I set the phone on the hook and started gathering my
things: paperwork from the office to work on from home, since I
didn’t know when I’d be back, and a copy of the novel I’ve
been working on and letting people from work read.
I packed it in my bag and began unplugging connections
from my laptop. The
screen changed and I finally got to the article.
One sentence. Something
to the effect of “at 9:50, a plane apparently crashed near the
Pentagon.” All
the news…
I shut down the laptop, packed it up,
and headed for the elevators.
Before I left I stopped to look at the burning buildings
one more time. The
last time. More
smoke now trailed up into the sky.
Two women behind me walked in to watch.
I turned and left. My
co-worker Pam and I waited for our boss to come.
Someone walked by and said, “You better get out of
here. I wouldn’t
want to be at the Garden.”
Someone else said, “It’s not the Garden that’s the
problem. It’s
Penn Station.” Penn
Station? Somewhere
down the hall, possibly from an office cube, I heard more
whispers, and the word “target.”
Pam and I decided to leave then and
meet our boss Eberly at street level.
Instead, Eberly and her husband Wayne met us in the
elevator.
Getting
Nowhere
The street was eerie.
People were quiet, cars were sparse, and the wind blew
strangely. The
color of Manhattan had faded to a washed 8-pack of crayons.
I was trying to call home on Pam’s cell phone, but it,
too, was dead. Perhaps
the antenna on the towers had been damaged when the planes hit.
I looked down Fifth Avenue as we crossed; a light brown
cloud of smoke engulfed the southern end of Manhattan.
Down every street I crossed I could only see about 15
blocks south before the enormous cloud.
Wasn’t the fire in the towers above?
I looked up, and there were no towers above.
Someone nearby said something about number one being
“down.” I
handed the useless cell phone back to Pam.
By the time we got to the lobby of my boss’ apartment
on Third and Thirty-fifth Street, another stranger told us that
number two was “down.”
We got to her apartment, not-so-safely on
the fifteenth floor, and sat, almost afraid to turn on the
television. After a
few minutes, someone did, but it was connected to another
system, so they fiddled with the different buttons, knobs, and
remotes until Wayne came over and turned the right knobs.
The image came on. It
was the base of the twin towers, surrounded by smoke and flames.
The base? No,
the base was the Twin Towers.
The Towers were indeed down, and for the moment, I was
staying there, a view of the Empire State Building out the
window to my right.
Target?
Trains were shut down, the news said.
I needed to get home, a train ride of about an hour and a
half north, but Pam and I had agreed that a train would not be
the safest place to be. Now,
I had no choice. There
was no escaping Manhattan.
The news showed footage of the plane crashing into the
second tower. I
winced, shocked, and I listened to the sirens outside, and again
looked at The Empire State Building.
Someone on the news said something about
another plane going down in Pennsylvania.
Near Camp David. The
third plane had actually hit the Pentagon, according to the
flames on the screen, regardless of the web-site words earlier.
The news showed the first building fall, crumbling to the
ground. Someone
near me made a Godzilla reference.
I had been thinking about Independence Day since I
had stepped outside. The
news said planes had been grounded, but there were three more in
the air, and they didn’t know where they were.
They reported the Washington Library on fire, and a plane
circling Dulles airport. I
looked to the Empire State Building again, as someone behind me
whispered the words I had heard before that morning, and have
heard since, no longer in shocked whispers.
Next on
Now we walk the halls.
We type. We
work. We assign, we
are assigned. We
pass those in the office who we had thought we may be spending
last moments with, and we nod and politely say hi.
The skyline is down, 5,000 people or more are dead, and
people talk of unity and war.
Polar opposites in one statement.
The planes hit the towers again and again on the screen.
The President talks War.
Others say it’s not really war.
Debates on prime time about the semantics of war.
The dig goes on, no survivors.
People rejoice at the ability of New Yorkers to come
together, while the mayor talks of body parts.
60,000 body bags. For
5,000 presumed dead, and their respective parts.
They say Arabs are responsible, so anger goes to Arabs.
They’re Americans, we unite, except for them.
The President speaks more, and I wait for words in
defense of Arab Americans.
All I hear is offense.
And offensive. We
are at war. With
whom? We don’t
know. Business as
usual.
Targets?
Things made more sense in the streets of
Manhattan at the end of the world.
Copyright
2001 Michael Flanagan, all rights reserved.
Michael
Flanagan |
