Police appeared, and asked us to move into the main part of the terminal. All the diverted flights had landed, and they were shutting down the airport. As we walked out through the security gates, we were confronted by half a dozen video crews. The Eugene media, desperately trying to find a local angle, was clustering around the passengers. I tried to look as un-interviewable as possible and walked over to the bar where people had already gathered around the TVs. The Wall St guy sat down at a table and continued typing on his pager. I felt oddly protective of him, and hoped the media people didn’t find him. They were interviewing people at the back of the pack clustered around the TV. One of the reporters was asking “Collapsed? What do you mean?” People stared at him. “I haven’t seen any news, I don’t know what’s happening,” he clarified. Passengers started explaining to him. He stood, open-mouthed, the microphone forgotten in his hand. Behind him a radio guy was holding his microphone up towards the loudspeakers in the ceiling, trying to catch the announcements that the airport was closed. Our luggage would be coming off the planes.
I couldn’t take it anymore: I wanted to get out, to get away. I walked down to the rental car counters. Strangely, there were only a couple of people in line. National said their cars had all been rented, but Avis said they had some still available. Beside me, a guy was asking what kind of cars they had because he didn’t want to be “stuck in some subcompact all the way up to Seattle.” I rolled my eyes. I simply asked for a car, and didn’t even discuss it, not even the rate. All I wanted to know was if I could return it in Seattle. When I left the guy was still insisting he didn’t want a subcompact.
I went and got my bag. I had last seen it in New York while checking in for the direct flight to Seattle that I didn’t get on. Amazingly, despite missing a flight, taking another flight from a different gate, and missing a connection in San Francisco, my bag had arrived in Eugene with me. As I carried it back past the rental car desks the folks at Avis were taking down their Cars Available sign. A guy was asking them if there was any chance they could find him a car. I stopped and said I was going to Seattle. He was going back to San Francisco. I wished him luck.
I asked the guy in the rental lot for directions to a mall, and he told me there was one right on my way. I pulled in and immediately saw what I was looking for: an AT&T store. I went in and bought an in-car recharger for my cell phone. Next door was a Barnes and Noble with a Starbucks. I bought a large Frappicino, with extra shots, and a sandwich. It took less than 15 minutes, and I had exactly everything I needed. This is what I love about America: Give me convenience or give me death. The people working in the mall seemed strangely normal, undisturbed. I wondered if they’d even heard the news. I felt pregnant with evil information. Beware the stranger, for he bears grim portents. Lack of sleep, undigested horror, the incongruity of small town Oregon: it was all starting to pile up. I wondered if I had had some insane nightmare, or was still in one. I turned on the radio and confirmed the truth: it was an insane nightmare, and we were all still in it, together.
Driving north the hot late-summer Oregon sunshine seemed weirdly at odds with the dark news coming out of the radio. I couldn’t help but listen though there were times when it seemed particularly hard to bear. Then I found myself singing the words to Amazing Grace as a lone bagpipe played it on the radio, and I had to pull over. It was impossible to see the road.
Looking for some respite, I tried other stations. I found the local rock station just as it began playing U2’s Sunday, Bloody Sunday.
“I can’t believe the news today
I just want to close my eyes and make it go away…”
Suddenly I remembered the last time I had heard this played in circumstances like these. Over ten years ago, waking on a groggy early summer weekend, I had turned on the radio just in time to hear the DJ say, “We don’t do dedications, but I’m doing one anyway. This is for all the brothers and sisters in Tianamen.” And he played that song. Hearing it again was strangely comforting. I remembered worrying about my friend Flea, who had quit Microsoft to teach English in China, and who had gotten swept up in the events. We didn’t hear from her for days. She had emerged unharmed, but suddenly I was consumed with worry about her cousin Russ. He had moved from Seattle to NY last year. I was pretty certain he had no reason to be anywhere near the World Trade Center, and he was one of the NYC people on the list I had run over mentally in the moments after the initial shock had worn off. I had tried to call him earlier, but the circuits were busy. Now, despite the pleas on the radio to keep the phone lines clear, I tried again. To my surprise I got his voicemail and left a message. [Later he sent out email saying he was ok.]
I wasn’t the least bit sleepy, but suddenly I was very, very tired. I didn’t want to deal with Portland, with Seattle, with five hours of driving and nothing but bad news on the radio. I called Brendan and Eva in The Dalles. Not exactly on my route, but only a couple of hours away.
Being there, with kids to take to preschool and drop off with friends and all the usual errands that occupy a family household, brought a measure of sanity back into my world. We couldn’t turn the news on because we didn’t want the kids to see it, and because I hadn’t seen them in months we had plenty to talk about other than current events. It was exactly the kind of vacation I needed.
But the kids went to bed, and we watched the news. Then Brendan and Eva turned in, and it was just me. Sitting alone in the dark in the horror. I crawled to bed.
I woke again at 5:30, and knew I wouldn’t be able to get back to sleep. I don’t know if I was still on Iceland time, or New York time, or just held awake by the horror, but sleep was no longer an option. I got up and watched the day’s first light catch the top of Mt Adams. In the cool of the Oregon dawn it was hard to believe that anything ugly, anything horrible, could be happening anywhere. And then I went back inside and turned on the TV.
A little after noon, I got in the car again. I was headed to Seattle, but not home. Home was gone now. Home was a place in a country and in a time where the Twin Towers still stood. I couldn't return to the place I'd left. I was driving in a new world, into a new future. This trip started out seeming like it would never end. And now it never will.
Driving north again, everywhere I looked there were American flags. In windows, on signs, in yards. And on flagpoles, at half mast. I stopped for gas at an AM-PM in some Podunk truck stop in rural southern Washington. As I was puzzling over the pump (the credit card reader was at a central location on the island, rather than at each pump), a local guy leaned out of his window to help. Driving a ratty, rusted pickup held together as much by duct tape and bumper stickers as welds, dressed in jeans of a color indeterminate beyond “dirt,” and sporting weird tufts of facial hair and teeth unfamiliar with modern dental science, he was the kind of guy who would normally inspire you to keep your distance. He asked where I was headed.
“Seattle”
He nodded. “You be careful, now,” he said. And drove off. The American flag in his rear window no longer screamed “redneck.” Instead, on this day and in this time, it looked, just a little, like a prayer.
Next: Requiem
