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 'm
an agnostic when it comes to discussions of paranormal phenomena,
so I don't necessarily ascribe such an explanation to why I awakened
at just before six yesterday morning, Pacific time. I'm more accustomed
to going to bed than to rising at that hour, but something I cannot
explain jolted me from my dreams and told me to turn on the news.
The picture was of the World Trade Center's north tower, billowing
smoke, and belching flames into the Manhattan morning. I hadn't
yet learned what had caused the fire, or even gained my senses,
when an airliner streaked into the picture and exploded against
the burning building's companion structure. It's a little late in
the season to bring out a movie like this, I thought, for I suspected
I was watching a trailer for some late-summer action flick. But
the special effects, it seemed, were indeed convincing. Of course
I soon learned that it was no movie, and that the airliner I had
seen crashing into the south tower had been preceded minutes earlier
by one that crashed into the north. How can this possibly be? I
wondered.
But I shouldn't
have wondered. The word "senseless" will no doubt be tossed
about like so much confetti in the reporting that will follow. It's
one of those words that has worked its way into the vocabulary of
such events, like "closure." I've learned much about people
in my twenty-some years as a cop, but these three may be the most
important:
Nothing is
ever "senseless."
There is no
such thing as "closure."
Evil must be
opposed.
Evil does indeed
walk the world, my friends, and that's all one need know to make
sense out of what will so often be described as senseless. But evil,
in its everyday habits, casts only faint ripples on the placid pond
of American life, ripples that are often barely noticed, if at all.
A city's concern for a murder often extends no farther than the
crime-scene tape. But today, seemingly, the whole country is a crime
scene, and when the final toll is known there will be few homes
in America left untouched by this most despicable, most evil of
crimes.
As I write
this the fate of scores of New York firefighters and police officers
remains unknown. They simply did their duty, running headlong into
hell on earth even as all other sane people were running the other
way. While absorbing the barrage of those horrific images yesterday
and last night, I tried to recall the many times I have been called
upon to knock on some door and deliver the news that a husband or
wife, father or mother, son or daughter, would not be coming home,
that they had been killed in a robbery or a drive-by or any of the
other mundane criminal acts which scarcely ripple the pond, and
to which most of us in the larger cities have become so inured.
In the coming days thousands of people will be opening their doors
to such a visit, but until then they will sit and wait and offer
themselves perfectly logical explanations as to why their loved
one has not called or been heard from. And then the knock will come,
and before the visitor speaks a word they will know the truth. For
them there will never, ever be closure.
(*Jack
Dunphy is the author's nom de cyber. The opinions expressed are
his own and almost certainly do not reflect those of the LAPD management
.)
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