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survivors.

After rehearsals, he and I would sit around and drink and he would talk. He needed to get what he saw off his chest. The alcohol loosened his tongue and I played his sounding board. Harry was a small, wiry guy, maybe 5'6". He and "Butch", a Rin-Tin-Tin-like German shepherd, were sent in under the collapsed buildings through the subway station to look for bodies.

"You can't imagine the blackness down there," he said. "The only light is the one in your hand and if you turn it out, nothing. It's like being totally blind. The only thing you can hear is the dog panting. You can't even hear him walking. They've got special shoes for his feet so he won't hurt himself on the jagged metal or broken glass. Just that pant', pant', pant'. Some times the dog stops like he was supposed to when he comes across a body. Only there isn't a body there. Just a clump of concrete. I thought the dog was goofy at first, that something down there was disorienting him until I realized that those clumps of concrete were all that was left of the people.

"When the Towers collapsed and each floor began to fall and hit the floor beneath it, they weighed so much that each floor pulverized the floor beneath it. But it just wasn't pulverizing the floor; it was pulverizing everything that was on that floor. The human bodies weren't just being crushed; they were being atomized. Then all that fluid, the viscera and the blood mixed with the powdered concrete and reformed into a lump. That's what the dog and me are finding. Lumps of dirt that had once been human."

You don't see grown men cry very often. But if anyone had a reason, Harry did. Each night after rehearsal, he would drink, talk and cry. Then the next morning, he would go back underground and continue marking the lumps of dirt that his dog pointed to.

It took months before DNA testing identified the re-congealed glob of dust and dirt that was Ethan. The funeral was a quiet, somber affair. It was old news by then. US troops were in Afghanistan and one mother's loss was itself lost in the backwater of the unfolding international drama.

Now, when someone asks me about 9/11, my mind immediately takes me back to that sidewalk where we cheered the firemen heading south and I see the blood color of the borscht against the white metallic table top, and I can hear the Doppler effect of the fading siren and I wonder where will I be when the next attack occurs?

Learn more about this author, Eric Ruark.
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