story11333.xml

story11333.xml

born-digital

story

yes

no

2005-03-12

There are some things you can never understand unless you were there. September 11th was that kind of thing for me. Shortly after 9-11 me and two other people went down to New York to work with the Red Cross. I?m not one to really do things like that. Usually I let huge challenges like that pass me by and then later wish I had done something rather than sit back and feel helpless. I thought going there would empower me. Make me feel like I had done something for my country and in some small way honor those who died by trying to help clean up their city.

On the second day I was there I was asked to go work at Ground Zero at a place that had been set up to fed, support, and offer a place of rest for rescue workers. I wanted to say no. I was so afraid to be in that place that had so much death and destruction. But I went. I wanted to be strong and go wherever they needed me. We all piled on a bus. We has red badges with our names and pictures and in big bold writing ?Ground Zero-Full Access.? Everyone was full of nervous energy. Only one person on the bus had been to Ground Zero before. He told us that he couldn?t impart to us what it was like. ?You?ll know when you get there,? he said. We inched through traffic. We were curious. We were about to see in the flesh a site that had been made mythical to us through hundreds of hours of television coverage. We were almost there when we heard cheering. We looked out of the windows of the bus and saw about fifty people yelling and clapping and holding up large signs that said ?Thank You? and ?You are Heroes? and ?New York Loves You!!? Wow, we thought, people are here just to say thank you to nameless faces for what we were doing. It was overwhelming. Myself and others cried a little bit.

We went through a check point guarded by men with machine guns. We started to see ash covering everything. The bus got silent. This was getting real. Then the smell came. It happened slowly. Like maybe at first it was just some fumes from the bus. But then a smoky smell was added to it. Then to the mix came a smell that I couldn?t identify. I began to breath a little deeper. The smell was horrible, but I really wanted to know what it was. Then it hit me. I suddenly knew what the smell was. I didn?t want to admit to myself what it was but I knew. It was the smell of burnt flesh. You wouldn?t think that you would know what that smelled like. But when it hit your nose and traveled to your brain?you knew. It was unmistakable. It was a smell that in one degree or the other was all over the city. You just had to get close enough to the source of it to really get a handle on what it was. Or maybe you just had to get close enough that you had no choice but to acknowledge what it was. It is a smell that would be with me long after I left New York. For weeks I would smell it every time I woke up. Even now when I think about it I can smell it like I am still standing there.

When we walked up to where we got our first real view of ground zero we all stopped. Even our armed guard stopped moving to give us a moment to take it in. One thing that I don?t think people really realize is just how enormous it was. It was bigger than words. On TV it looked almost small. Compartmentalized. Like it all fell in a neat pile. No. It was so big that?I don?t know?it was just so so big. So much.

I was asked a bit after being there to walk around the rubble with a fire fighter to deliver water to the workers. And although the time I would spend with this man would change my life I don?t think we ever told the other our names. But we were brothers. United in a common mission to clean up this?mess. This disaster. As we were walking along we talked about his wife and his kids and of a friend he had lost in the collapse of the second tower. As we were walking there was commotion in front of us and he began to run to it. He yelled to me to follow close behind. You have to understand that the rubble and the area around it were very unstable. He new the lay of it better than me. It really just wasn?t safe for me to be without him. But as we neared the group and saw what was going on I stopped in my tracks. I saw a body?half a body really. It was a person, but only from the waist up. It was so badly burned you couldn?t determine its color or gender. It had no hair. The smell was more than I could handle. A firefighter to my right began to vomit. Someone behind me began to sob. Others began to work the body onto a tarp. My comrade turned and told me that they didn?t need us here. I was so relived to get away. We pretended we didn?t see it. I handed a bottle of water to the man who was throwing up.

We continued on our trek to hydrate the workers. He began to tell me that he thought I was amazing for being there. He said that he couldn?t imagine coming so far from home to do what I was doing and that he was really grateful. I told him that he was being silly. That was the word I used to this huge fireman with the thick accent of a native New Yorker. Silly. I told him that what I was doing didn?t compare to what he was having to do. He said ?It?s just my job.? What he was going through shouldn?t have to be anyone?s job.

Then we heard a yell and saw all these guys running. We followed. There was a firefighter covered by a beam. I helped them get it off of him. There was blood everywhere. We got the beam off and I stepped back to let them all ?do their job.? When my buddy came back over to me there was blood on his face. It wasn?t his. I wiped it off with a towel.

Then I began to cry. I was very ashamed of this. I was there to be strong. I was there to lend support. But I couldn?t help it. We walked over to the side, away from all the workers, and he wrapped his arms around me and we cried together. It made me feel much less weak. I saw that this whole thing was really just more than anyone could bare.

We finished giving out the water and made our way back to the Red Cross center. On the way back he gave me a beanie baby that his daughter had given him. He told me he wanted me to remember him. And to remember this. And to pray for him. We hugged again and then he walked away. We would never forget each other. I knew that this small amount of time that we had shared together would be forever burned into our brains.

I went inside and started making some peanut butter and jelly sandwiches. Then my legs just went out from under me and I was on the floor before I knew what was going on. They took me to the Red Cross break room. I felt emptier than I ever had before or ever felt since. Suddenly in the doorway was my fireman and a friend of his. His friend gave me a rosary. My guy patted my back and told me he knew I would be fine. Then he ventured out back onto the ash covered ground.

I told them I had to go home. I couldn?t take being there. I got on the subway. That?s when I blacked out. I was in shock. I remember suddenly coming back into my body somewhat and the doors to the subway opened. I just got out. I didn?t know where I was and I wasn?t concerned about it. I walked aimlessly for a very long time. I tried to ask people where I was but I couldn?t talk. My mouth would move but no sound would come out. They would stare at me and talk to me but I wasn?t even hearing anything. I didn?t know what was going on but I wasn?t worried. I was as lost on the inside as I was on that street, so in my utter self abandonment, it didn?t matter where I was.

A cab stopped. The cabbie got out and asked me if I knew where I was going. I shook my head. He slowly walked me to his cab and started to drive. He told me I was in a bad part of town. ?You could have gotten shot,? he said. He asked me my name and I had no idea what it was. He asked me where I was staying and the best I could do was say ?At my friend?s. Its by a bar with a purple awning.? He drove me around for over and hour while I came enough into my senses for him to figure out where he needed to get me. When we got in front of the building he stopped in the middle of the road got out and took my keys from me. He unlocked the front door of the building and walked me to the apartment. He pointed at the door and asked me if anyone was there. I said yes. He handed me the keys, knocked on the door, said ?Thank you and God Bless,? and disappeared down the hall.

When one of the people I was with opened the door, the look in her eyes scared me. She looked at me like she had no idea who I was. When I looked in the mirror I knew why. 1) I was covered in ash from head to toe except for a circle on my face where my face mask had been. And 2) My eyes were empty. There was no twinkle. No life. It scared me.

I took a bath which I sat in until the water was freezing. When I stood up and the water ran off of me it still left behind a film of ash. So I had to take a shower. I looked in the mirror and my eyes looked a little better. But the smell was filling the room. It was in my cloths. So I threw the shirt, jeans, socks, and underwear out of the window. I wanted them away from me. I wanted to lose that smell.

I never thought I would see my firefighter again. Until tonight when I was watching a show on TV about the Red Cross?s work with September 11th. Suddenly there was a picture on the screen of me and my fireman walking by the rubble with our boxes of water. In the picture we were looking each other in the eyes and smiling. It was taken from behind. It froze me to see it.

Suddenly it all came back to me. The look of it, his voice, and more than anything the smell. And I cried. Harder than I have in awhile. And I prayed for him, just like he asked. And I prayed to God that I would never be confronted with that picture again. Its still too fresh. It will still be that way in fifty years. That picture held a million memories I never wanted. And worst of all, it was permeated in that smell.