United We Stand (11 page)

We were also noticing more evidence of what had happened. The streets were filled with scrap paper, blowing and swirling and accumulating in little pockets where the wind could deposit it but not blow it away. Some of the buildings had smashed and broken windows, and down one street there was a bunch of cars with their roofs caved in and windshields smashed. It was too far away for it have happened right there, so I figured that they’d been towed. They were probably starting to move the cars that had been crushed away from the site.

The smell was also becoming worse and the air seemed thicker. We were moving downwind, and the fumes were being carried toward us. The burning garbage smell was becoming something worse than that … stronger, more putrid and heavy, like burning sewage.

We crossed over Courtlandt. It was, of course, barricaded too, but I looked beyond the barricade. There, in the distance, I caught my first glimpse of the outline of the remains of the towers. Twisted, blackened metal poked out of a pile of debris, while smoke rose up into the already hazy air. I stopped and my heart seemed to skip a beat, sending a chill down my entire body. That was all that remained.

“That’s … that’s it,” James said.

“That’s it.” It was hard to believe. We weren’t seeing it through the lens of a TV camera. Here it was, big and ugly and smelly, and the smoke wasn’t just in my face or my eyes, it was in my nose and in the pores of my skin.

We walked forward, eyes fixed on the wreckage, toward the barricade and the two policemen who were manning it. Both of them were wearing surgical masks. I wondered if that would block out the smell somehow. We stepped aside as a city van came up from behind us. The two officers pulled the barricade aside to let it enter. James quickly walked toward the opening.

“Hang on a second!” James called out. “We need to get through!”

He caught me off guard, but I quickly fell in beside him as he walked toward the barrier. He’d impressed me.

Unfortunately, the two police officers didn’t feel the same way. One of them swung the barrier back into place and the second stood there, arms folded across his chest, blocking our way.

“We need to get through,” James said again.

“This gate is for authorized personnel only,” the officer said.

“We are authorized. This is the gate we were
told
to come to. This is Courtlandt, isn’t it?”

I had to hand it to James. He sounded not just confident but a little bit cocky—like, the
nerve
of them to interfere with us!

“And just who told you to come to this gate?” the second officer asked. Again, he didn’t seem as impressed as I was.

“A police officer. I didn’t get his name, but I do know he had three stripes on his sleeve … which is three more than either of you two.”

One of the officers pulled down his mask. “Look, kid, we can’t just let people wander into the site.”

“Nobody here is doing any wandering. We’re here to help.”

“Just how old are you two boys?”

“We’re both eighteen,” James said.

Okay, that was a bit of a stretch. Maybe we could have got away with seventeen, but eighteen … ?

“Vehicle,” the second officer said again.

We all turned around as a big black car came toward the barrier. One officer brushed us off to the sidewalk and the second went up to the driver’s window, which glided down. I couldn’t hear what they were talking about.

The back door of the car opened up and a man climbed out. He was wearing a white hard hat with a suit and tie, the tie hanging loosely around his neck. He looked exhausted. He also looked kind of familiar. He shook hands with the officer and they exchanged a few words, and then the man pointed at us and they said a few things more. What were they talking about, and what would any of it have to do with us?

As the man walked toward us, the second officer actually saluted him! Whoever he was, he was important. He shook the officer’s hand.

“How’s it going, son?” he asked the officer.

“As good as can be expected, sir.”

Sir—he had to be somebody high up in the police force. That was why he wasn’t wearing a uniform.

“Hello, boys,” he said then, and we both mumbled back a greeting.

This was not good. We’d got somebody important involved with us. This couldn’t possibly end well.

“The officer says you want to get into the site,” he said.

“Yeah,” James said.

“Yes, sir.” I thought being formal wouldn’t hurt. Besides, if the two guys with the guns were calling him that, who was I to disagree?

“You must understand our need to keep the area restricted. For safety and organizational reasons, we can’t let just anybody—”

“We’re not just anybody,” James said, abruptly. “We
need
to get in.”

The man looked at James and then at me. His look was long, and instead of the anger I’d expected him to show James for cutting him off he looked thoughtful and sad. Everybody looked sad today. He also did look
incredibly
familiar. I must have seen his picture in the papers before or something.

“It sounds like it is important. Tell me, why do you need to get there?”

“It’s my father,” James blurted out.

“Your father was in one of the towers?” he asked.

“He was there,” James said. “He’s with Ladder Company Fourteen.”

“Your father’s a firefighter.” He sounded concerned, and there was something about his voice—he even sounded familiar.

James just nodded. I could tell he was on the verge of bursting into tears again. I think the man could tell, too. He put an arm around James’s shoulders.

“And you haven’t heard from him?” the man asked.

James shook his head.

“You know we’re doing everything we can.”

“I know,” James said, his voice wavering. “I just want to go down and help … I need to be able to help.”

The man turned to the officers. “These boys are eighteen?”

The two officers exchanged a skeptical glance. “That’s what they’re telling us, sir.”

Were they buying it? Because if they asked for ID it would be game over.

“Then they’re allowed in on my authority, okay?” the man in the suit said.

“Of course, sir!”

“No problem, sir.”

“Good. Send them over to St. Paul’s. Radio over and tell them to make sure they have masks and gloves.”

“Will do … Right away.”

“What’s your name, son?”

“James Bennett.”

He shook James’s hand. “And your father?”

“Samuel … Sam.”

“And you, son, what’s your name?” he asked me.

“Will Fuller.”

He reached out and shook my hand, and I winced slightly. He looked confused and then took my hand
and looked at it. That’s when he noticed the stitched-up gash on my other hand.

“How did you get those cuts, son?”

“I got them yesterday.”

“Not
when
, son.
How
.”

“Here,” I said softly. “I was here.”

“Here?”

“In the South Tower.”

He looked surprised, shocked, and concerned.

“I was here with my father.”

“And your father … ?” He let the sentence trail off, but I knew what he was asking.

“He’s at home now. We got out before the collapse. Just before. I got all cut up when it fell.”

“That’s … that’s a miracle. It’s stories like that that help me get through the day.” Then he turned back to James. “My thoughts and prayers will be with you and your family.”

He spun around and headed back for the car before we could say anything in response. He jumped in, and one of the officers quickly pulled the barricade out of the way. The car glided by. We waved, but because of the tinted windows we couldn’t see if he waved back.

“St. Paul’s is one block in and two blocks north,” the officer told us.

“Thanks.”

“Oh, and by the way, if you’re not really eighteen, I don’t want to know about it. Eighteen will get you into the site, so stick with that story.”

“Yeah,” the second officer agreed. “If you’d told us in the beginning why you needed to be here we might have let you in. Firefighters and police, we might fight among ourselves, but we’re still all family … especially now.”

“Thanks.”

We walked past the barrier, but then I thought of something, so I stopped and spun around.

“That man, the one in the car, who is he?” I asked.

The two officers looked at each other and burst into laughter. That was about the last thing I’d expected. I didn’t know what was so funny about that question but now I certainly felt stupid for asking it.

“You don’t know who that is?” one of them asked in amazement.

I shook my head.

“Me neither,” James said. I appreciated his sharing my stupidity and admitting it out loud, even if it wasn’t true.

“That was the mayor.”

“Mayor Giuliani?” I gasped. Of course it was—that was why he looked so familiar.

“We’ve only got one mayor,” the officer said.

“And thank God we’ve got the one we’ve got,” the second offered. “He’s been everywhere since this happened. The man has been a tower of strength.”

The second nodded his head in agreement. “So, if anybody bothers you, you just tell them that the mayor—that
Rudy
—said you should be here, that you have to be here.”

“We’ll tell them,” I said.

“And boys, our thoughts are with you as well.” Both officers took off their hats and saluted us. That was as unexpected as the laughter. For a moment I froze, not sure how to feel about it, until James grabbed me by the arm and pulled me through the gate—there was no way he was letting this chance slip by.

With each step forward we were moving closer to Ground Zero. We were walking straight toward it— the wreckage, the few parts that remained standing, looming larger and larger overtop of us. I should have been glad for James: he was getting to where he needed to go. Instead, I felt that same sense of dread that I’d felt in the train tunnel coming into Grand Central Station. My whole body was tingling and my legs felt a little wobbly, and I was finding it harder and harder to take a deep breath. Was the air that much smokier here?

Worse, I couldn’t seem to stop my mind from
rushing back to yesterday. It just felt wrong to be moving in this direction. My instincts told me that I shouldn’t be walking
toward
the towers, I should be running away, and doing it as quickly as I could.

“This is all unbelievable,” James said. “But I guess it must look familiar to you.”

“No, none of it,” I admitted. “You know, except for what I saw on TV.”

“But you were here.”

“When the tower collapsed we were caught in a cloud of white dust. I couldn’t see three inches in front of my face. And even when it cleared I wasn’t looking back. I was focusing on moving forward and getting the hell away from here.”

“You know, you don’t look so good,” James said.

“What?”

“You don’t look so good … You’re all white.”

I really wasn’t feeling all that great. My whole body felt hot and I was shaking and struggling to draw in a breath. It was like my chest was tight and my lungs couldn’t open up.

“You should sit down,” James said.

I didn’t argue or fight as he helped me slump down onto the doorstep of a small store.

“Drink some more water.” He took the bottle from my hand, unscrewed the top, and gave it back to me. My hand was shaking as I took a sip. I deliberately slowed down my breathing.

James sat down beside me. I liked that better than having him hovering over me.

“You didn’t sleep much last night, did you?” he asked.

“Probably about as much as you. It’s the air here … I can’t breathe too well.”

“We need to get masks like the cops had,” James said. “You were saying about all the stuff, that cloud that you were in yesterday. That must be why you’re coughing so much, why you’re having trouble breathing.”

“Yeah, that’s it, that’s got to be it.”

“Do you want to stay here while I get us both masks?”

“No!” I practically yelled. I grabbed him by the arm as he tried to get to his feet. The last thing in the world I wanted was to be alone. “I’m better. I’m fine.”

Slowly, unsure, I got to my feet. I wasn’t nearly as shaky. I was probably a little bit better.

James got up as well. “You really don’t want to be here, do you?”

I didn’t want to lie to James, even if I could have got away with it. We’d been friends so long we knew each other inside and out.

“If it were me, having gone through it, what happened to you, I sure as hell wouldn’t want to be here.”

“But you would have come with me anyway, right?” I asked.

“I’d have tried. I just don’t know if I’d have the guts. I think I’d be scared.”

“No, I’m not scared,” I said, defending myself.

“I just feel … I don’t know … sort of uneasy.”

“I can’t imagine what it was like,” he said.

“No kidding—I was
there
, and
I’m
having trouble imagining it,” I said. “I’ve been trying to figure out how to explain it to people … how to put it into words, and I think maybe now that I’m here, standing in its shadow, I know.”

“Well?”

“This is going to sound stupid.”

“Like this will be the first time you sound stupid?”

My mouth dropped open, and then James smiled and laughed, and for a split second none of this seemed real and we were somewhere else—somewhere normal.

“Go on,” he said.

“This whole thing is like a movie … like one of those cheap, screamer/slasher/monster movies,” I said.

“Okay, you’re right … that does sound stupid. So, explain.”

“I’ll try. You know those movies where there’s this awful monster or killer or something like that, and until it kills the first time nobody sees it coming? There’s a bunch of kids and they’re at a party, or at the beach or camping. Just having fun.”

“And the killer strikes out of the blue,” James said.

“Exactly. And then, once people see it, they some -how manage to escape.”

“But not really,” James said. “They just
think
they’ve escaped.”