That Horrible Day

A tribute to the memory of those who died, sung by Alan Jackson.

Even here, far out on the prairie in Texas, the utter horror of what was happening stunned the senses like a brick between the eyes. I was off work that day, sleeping late, when my partner woke me. "Something terrible has happened in New York, we've been attacked . . . " he said, or words to that effect. I bounded out of bed and into the computer room; we had no cable or satellite TV, so the only news we could get came in fitful, jerky images over our dial-up connection. The connection seemed slower than ever, as we jumped from one from news site to another, trying to piece together exactly what was happening. He'd been alerted by a call from his mother who said that someone on TV was saying 50,000 people were dead. In the first couple of hours, trying to squeeze the facts out of that little 15-inch monitor, it seemed all too possible.

Who? Why? What else was coming? A bulletin on the radio: all air traffic was grounded across the country, but six more planes were still unaccounted for. God only knew where they might be heading. At last, I thought, I know how people must have felt when the news of Pearl Harbor broke across an unsuspecting land. Only this attack was not on some remote island in the faraway ocean: it was New York and Washington, for God's sake. Unbelievable.

Unbelievable. The word kept echoing through my head all that long afternoon as I watched the news at the house of my partner's parents. The planes hitting the towers, clips endlessly repeated; sickening, stomach-turning stuff, but none of us could look away. The vast, sky-filling clouds of smoke and ash, the towers falling, the crowds of people walking, walking. The grim reporters, shocked and fearful like everyone else but struggling to keep a professional face on. The somber updates, new facts, new rumors, new images from someone's Kodak or videocam.

Unbelieveable was the only word that fit; the proof glaring at us from the TV screen, yet the mind recoiled, unable or unwilling to go along with the very, very bad joke. This can't be happening. It doesn't seem real. It's like a horror movie. We said these things out loud to one another, but the incredible, impossible reality stupefied us all: a bitter, numbing liquor.

Hours later, the nightmare still rolling across the screen in living color, someone thought of gasoline and shortages. I had a hundred-mile round-trip commute to drive the next day, so I knew I'd better go fill up while there was still gas to be had in our tiny town. No one knew if there would be any gasoline at all tomorrow, or what it might cost. Lots of others had the same thought; for probably the first time in that little whistlestop town, there were long lines at every gas station, drivers waiting patiently but determinedly to get what they could while they could. The line was slightly shorter at the premium pump, so I took my place there.

Later, my partner's father chided me for paying $1.87 a gallon to fill my tank, a very high price at the time; I reposted, better to pay that today than five dollars a gallon tomorrow. No one knew what would happen next; and I well recall that the sense of impending danger, imminent attack persisted in my mind for about the next six weeks before it slowly faded away. Not that I thought anyone, even a crazed terrorist, would bother with our remote village; but what about all the other big cities in the country?

Dallas was a two-hour drive away; the President was from Texas; who knew what twisted reasoning might make Big D the next target? And with what weapon? For weeks afterwards, driving across the bucolic Texas landscape to and from work, whenever my rearview mirror faced in the direction of the Metroplex, I would glance up at it, half-expecting, wondering, Would I see the mushroom cloud from this distance?

Then too, there was the feeling of utter helplessness; from so very far away, nothing at all to do of any practical, immediate help. Our hamlet was too small even to have a blood donation place, though great crowds of people lined up for hours in the Metroplex to give blood. All I could do was phone in a donation to the Red Cross; a hundred bucks, quite a little chunk for me at that time, finances being tight, but I did what I could. Had we been attacked by a particular country, as in WWII, I think Texans would have joined the colors en masse. But now in this strange, new time, the century barely begun, who was there to fight? An invisible, unknowable enemy, striking from nowhere at all.

To be sure, I saw a few bellicose displays, like the stern-faced young men driving a husky pickup with R E V E N G E spelled out across the front bumper. And, less warlike, overnight every other car on the highway sported an American flag in the window. Mine was no exception; I printed a small copy on my computer and taped it to the back windshield. Our local newspaper devoted the entire back page to a full-color print of Old Glory, which my partner and I dutifully cut out and pasted on the glass of our front door, like many another family. But with no enemy to fight, rage soon petered out and congealed into self-interest. Young men born long after Vietnam confessed their fear of being drafted and sent far away from home, their lives interrupted, perhaps lost; I heard of no one volunteering to join the armed services from our town.

Time has allayed the fears and wrapped the horrors of that day in the tissue paper of memory, blurred but not forgotten. Peace to all who mourn the ones they loved, lost without warning, without a chance, without a goodbye. When I got home at the end of that long day of horror, from the front porch I looked up in awe at one of the most breathtaking sunsets I have ever seen: rows on rows of lacy clouds filling the western sky, their serried ranks a Magnificat in brilliant pink and gold.

How strange, I thought: clouds of death and destruction in the east, yet in the west, glory; a benediction.

No American can but wish that everyone who participated in those monstrous attacks should be brought to justice and suffer the fullest penalty of the law. Some have, some have not. Whatever else Bush has or has not done, it must be said to his lasting credit that he did a superb job as the nation's Chief Mourner and comforter in those first dark hours and days, going from site to site, talking to the crowds and the individuals, hugging them, weeping with them, consoling them. That much, he did excellently.

But where is Osama? Seven years later, a period of time longer than the United States was engaged in World War I and World War II combined, why does no one seem to have any idea of where he is? With all our vast resources, technology, military might, and wealth, why has he not been brought to justice?

Why do neither our elected representatives, nor the press, nor the presidential candidates ever seem to ask this question? Did I miss a memo or bulletin somewhere? Or is there just something very, very wrong with this picture?

Why, after all these years, have we still not caught up with the man whom our President said was responsible for the crime of 9/11--the man who admitted, boasted about his guilt at least once on tape, as I recall--a crime not just against this country, but against all humanity?

Why is he still at large?

Why indeed?