Ground Zero–a Writer’s Trek Into The Heart of Darkness on 9/11

“Holy shit,” he said.

I nodded. We had to talk over blasts of fire hoses and windy, rattling grunts from a nearby generator. I tried to stomp out a small fire that started by my foot. Even fire was on fire down here.

“It’s like one of every 500 people in Manhattan died today,” he said. “That’s one way of figuring it.”

I spoke into my tape recorder, remembering a description of hell. “Neither shall their fire be quenched …”

“Is that from the Bible?”

“I think so.”

We sat there and watched fire eating through the roof of the building. We talked about George Bush and going to war and how everything was different now.

“Man, I helped build these things,” he said, changing tones. “Real steady work.”

I got up and peered around a bit. The now familiar site of the pointed waffle husk of Tower One was sticking out of the ground no more than a few hundred yards away. In the shadowy light, it was the most menacing thing I’d ever seen. I stared at it until I couldn’t look anymore. “The crown of hell,” I said into the tape recorder.

The man squinted, listening. “You ever smell burning steel before?” he asked.

As I made my way out, many more were on their way in. Red Cross. Salvation Army. Hummers full of Special Forces troops in fatigues, their guns poking out of the windows. More teams of fireman, some resting on the ground, breathing oxygen.

On a shoulder of the Westside highway, a platoon of volunteers stood in a circle around their leader, an old general type. The men had been waiting all day, since the first tower fell. Tension was high. Occasionally a truck would come by, someone would hop out and ask for engineers, specialists. Most of them were construction, day laborers with their own equipment. Some of them wore ties, had run downtown from their offices when they heard the second plane hit. They’d all been directed to a long line of volunteers waiting on North Greene Street. They had been waiting for the opportunity all day. They were eager to get in there and do something. Help someone. Fights had even broken out when people had cut in line.

Finally they were here. They were needed. The old soldier continued the briefing. “You will be scared,” he said. Smoke and dust rose behind him. He instructed the recruits how to use scraps of cellophane to stop up a sucking chest wound. “Most importantly,” he said, “if a body should wake and ask what happened, you must say you do not know. You do not know what happened. You don’t.”