I stepped to my open office window that faces south toward the carnage at the World Trade Center and sniffed. The prevailing winds from the war zone downtown had reached us. It smelled of concrete dust, burning plastic, paper, rubber, cardboard, whatever goes into New York skyscrapers when they go up then blow up.

Earlier in the afternoon, armed with a virtually useless but decorative NYPD press pass and my son's NYPolice scanner and NYPolice towing badge, I climbed into the minivan I garage in the city to haul groceries and street furniture. My son, Josh, who had worked all night the night before driving the injured in a seatless school bus to the various downtown hospitals, climbed in along side. We headed south on an almost totally empty Broadway. The silence was beyond eerie. Thousand upon thousands of people, turned out of their offices and enjoying the crystal air of early fall day, shuffled slowly south to see how far below the DMZ of 14th street they could get. Television wasn't good enough. They had to see this for themselves. Every table at every open outdoor cafe was packed. Others waited in line on the street speaking quietly on cell phones. New Yorkers are now all related to each other. The busy-person snarl between strangers has been replaced by a touch of the shoulder, a soft inquiry or two.

One can only see the carnage on TV but the story told around St. Vincent's hospital was the result. Hundreds of people stood in an orderly if irregular line. Each clutched some sort of picture of a loved and missing person. Some were framed, some folded and crumbled, some still caught in wallets and lockets. One woman held a line drawing. It was all she had to help someone else recognize her brother who phoned Tuesday morning and then disappeared. They were waiting, hoping against hope that the bone tired nurses at the door of the lobby would tell them, "Sure, we have that person here. Come right in." It wasn't happening for any of them. They slowly turned away with tears in their eyes.

As we move across the nearly empty city streets, there were New York State Troopers on every corner. No one can remember ever seeing State Troopers in the city. We see ambulances from Bohemia, New York, York, Pennsylvania, Bridgeport, Connecticut.

People have set up tables on the street in Greenwich Village. They are making free sandwiches. No one seems to need or want sandwiches. But, everyone has to do something.

My friend Lisa says she will call me later. She is crying. She has been crying off and on since Monday morning. By 9 last night, the TV said 20,000 people were in the rubble. 20,000? By 9:30 p.m. Rudy Guiliani, our Mayor, our rock and our salvation, was quietly asking the federal government to come up with 6000 body bags. New York doesn't stock that many body bags. New York has never needed anywhere near that many. The Fire Department priest whose job it is to pray for the dead is dead. Our elite Police Department bomb squad - a true band of brothers - is dead.

I watch Peter Jennings get snippy about Attorney General John Ashcroft "apparently he has something more to say." No one seems to have told him producers have set up a one on one interview with Ashcroft. Jennings apologizes but not before he has made an idiot of himself.

At l0 o'clock, Josh calls to say he is "standing in front of the hole" at ground zero and will be going in shortly. He has been asked to help search for bodies. He's phoning to say we won't see him until sometime today. This does not ease the heart. Two more buildings are creaking and ready to collapse. Late, they report there are asbestos particles in the smoke.

I finally shut things down. I am afraid to turn off the phone as I usually do. The last thing I hear is that Al Gore is "stranded in Austria" and Bill Clinton is "under protective guard in a resort in Australia." For the first time in a long, long day there is some good news.

Lucianne.

Originally published 9-13-01 @5:31AM EDT

Friday, September 14, 2001

Rescue.......Recover......Revenge — written in dust — for now.

NEW YORKERS ARE A RELATIVELY impatient lot. Each of us has our own agenda. Our general reaction to changes in our environment is "What's in it for me?" and if it looks like something worth having, "Can I get it yesterday?" Around the World Trade Center where the dust is thick and heavy enough to hold graffiti for more than an hour, someone has written "War"and "God Help Us" and of course, untypeable obscenities as comments on the changes that took place on Black Tuesday. But we are a goal oriented group as well. On the wall at the epicenter someone has scrawled this suggestion on how to proceed. Rescue, Recover, Revenge. This shows our grim love of priorities. Save lives, recover the dead and then support a fire storm from hell to rain down on those who have to savagely tried to destroy us. We are still in the first two phases and very busy.

In order to understand the quiet ferocity under which we are currently living you have to know that New Yorkers are junkies about their city. Mainliners and stoners so hooked on the excitement, the people, the chance to change one's life that this great city promises and delivers, that they die a little when they have to be away from it for too long. New York is their White Lady. Their drug of choice and they cannot, will not live without it. This is why our Mayor cries when he talks of dead fire fighters. They die for this city and for us.

Today I got an E mail from a non-New Yorker whom I love a lot. A good and abiding friend who is not from here but from some bosky southern glen that drips moss and musk, where men say ma'am, still wear hats and tip them and ladies still use fans and talcum powder. He said this has all been too much, too horrible, too scary. He and his lovely southern wife and Bottecelliesque child want to leave - go anywhere where he can make a living - just go - get out of hell on earth where buildings blow up in the shimmering morning sun and snot-nosed teen-age cretins beat up innocent Arab American grocers on Atlantic Avenue.

Last night, he writes, he and his wife stopped in for a bite to eat at a local cafe. There was a firemen at a table. My friend's toddler recognized a hero and offered him his "sippie" cup. The most valuable thing the baby owned.

I wrote my friend that even though he was not a native New Yorker he shouldn't leave, that a child with that kind of judgment deserved to be raised here. Bring up a different kind of kid. One who doesn't cut and run when the going gets dusty and bloody and scary.

LAST NIGHT my older son Josh spent the night in the "hole" at the World Trade Center. They gave him a respirator, an iridescent flash vest, a hardhat that a falling steel beam would crack like a robin's egg, water and as many sandwiches as he had time to scarf down. Because he is a street level working New Yorker, he had the right shoes. This is a town where having proper foot gear can mean everything.

When the crew boss decided Josh was about to collapse with fatigue they told him to go lie down on one of the cots set up in the American Express building (later evacuated. It too, was about the go down.) On his way to a cot he noticed that other workers never made it to the building with the cots. They just sank down on the rubble and slept. Sometimes they fell down in puddles and slept. It didn't matter. When your bones weep, sleep is sleep.

The nightly news showed Clinton on the street here in New York. He was in front of Curry in the Hurry on Lexington Avenue miles from the scene or carnage. He had his arms around a comely, crying brunette holding a picture of a missing loved one. He was feeling her .....pain. Doing something for himself, not New York. Sorry, that may be crass but my loathing for his man requires medication. What, dear God, is he doing here in the first place?

Josh returned from his labors around 2 this afternoon. He had walked most of the way from downtown. He reported that as he dragged his dust covered body passed the loaded cafes, people applauded. A bartender was hanging out a flag in the Village. Josh had strength enough to remind him to fly it at half staff. He got home, showered, changed his crusted shirt and at 5 p.m. he went back downtown.

It is morning now and Josh has not returned from the "hole" where the biggest job is sorting body parts. Matching a leg to another leg, a hand to an arm. If he finds something he gives it to a medic who takes it to be logged. He and thousands are working like this hour on end. They are too old to own and offer a "sippie" cup. Their heart and spine is all they have to give. These are New Yorkers. They don't quit (Fuggetaboutit), they are tough (Wanna make somethin' of it?) and unforgiving (You gonna pay for that, man)

Rescue, recover....that's for now. Revenge?

Hey, bin Laden! Yo momma!

Originally published 9-14-01

-----------------------------------------------------------------------

Published 10 September 2006 @ 5pm pdt
© 2006 Amy Sheehan - Editor in Chief - Lucianne.com
Lucianne.com