Walkabout – cont’d
The noise slowly transformed from confusion to pure terror. Screams filled in the spaces between the sounds of sirens. Air that seconds before had been peppered with ash was now filled with debris. Paper rained from the sky along with dust and ash. The sun, that burned brightly moments before was now dark and foreboding. The sky was black. She thought of turning around, but remembered her thoughts about why she wanted the compass for Brandon. She knew that the only way to go was forward. Whatever monsters were visiting this morning, she would know who they were. In order to ease the pain reflected in these faces, she had to see the source of it.
She walked on, noticing for the first time that she seemed to be the only one still headed downtown. The people who weren’t heading in the other direction had stopped and were all looking up, others were sitting on the sidewalks holding their faces and sobbing. Slowly the scene was settling into her frame of reference and she was realizing that pages of paper were blowing right out of the side of the buildings, and from the conversations she was hearing the diesel smell wasn’t from city buses, but from burning jet fuel, from the jetliners that had crashed into the towers. One more block and she saw the source of smoke and watched the flames licking up the sides of the buildings too far above the ground, and she stopped dead in her tracks, not thinking, not feeling, just awash in the ocean of bewilderment surrounding her. From the others around her she could hear some saying this was just too much for them to take but she was just feeling it all, the sights, the sounds, the smells.
Standing still in time, slowly realizing she had a decision to make. Forward or back – later she would come to know that moment was a tipping point, a place she stood between life and death.
In the moments she stood looking up watching the twin towers burning, she wondered at why there were two eagles soaring in the sky beneath the flames, and the way their wings would wave as if grabbing onto the air disappearing into the wisps of smoke, then dipping below the false horizon of the buildings obscuring her view of the street below the towers.
She felt someone shake her arm, and she whirled around, startled at the intrusion, she saw a firefighter, wide eyed, compelling her to turn around and leave – now! She asked him what was happening, and all he told her was that he knew they were clearing the area of all ‘civilians’ and she should head back the way she had come, toward the towers was no place to go, it wasn’t safe, and it was getting worse by the minute.
Just then a man passed by, and the fireman took their hands put them together and told them to go. She told the fireman to be careful, that her prayers were with him, then turned and with the stranger, her new friend – and headed uptown. Later all she would remember of the firefighter was his compelling blue eyes, and the number 7 on his helmet. She didn’t know his name, or even if he made it through the day.
Part 11
grandfathersky 