Brendan DuBois: Dead of Night

I stared at the screen.

Good old television. Able instantly to bring you news and information, no matter how dark and depressing, in a manner of seconds.

Good old television.

I stared at the screen some more.

And remembered.

A day like any other in the Star newsroom, on the fifth floor in our building on Yonge Street, this past spring. I was working on a bright little feature story about the latest in ethnic restaurants to pop up in the Theater District—something called Thai/Korean fusion—when I heard one of the senior news editors at the other end of the room just shout out, ‘Jesus Christ! Will you look at that! Jesus fucking Christ!’

At that corner of the newsroom three television sets were suspended from the ceiling, showing CNN, MSNBC and our home-grown CBC, and right now, on this beautiful morning, they were all showing the same thing: an enormous plume of smoke rising above an urban landscape, a harbor in the foreground, little boats maneuvering away in a panic. I dropped my notebook and joined the scrum of my fellow journalists, gathered underneath the television screens, looking up, all of us now quiet, all of our mouths hanging open, like worshipers at some obscure rural church, suddenly seeing a sign of the Apocalypse appear before them, causing us to be silent, causing us to stand there, quietly trembling in terror.

The plume of smoke rose and rose and rose, obscuring the burning buildings, more and more of them now collapsing in their own pillars of smoke and flame, my thoughts going to all those office workers—what must it be like, stuck in your cubicles and offices, and the floors and ceilings all collapsing around you? Smoke was now blanking almost everything out, and the picture was jittery, the same picture coming in from all three networks, from some sort of helicopter-borne camera, and my eyes couldn’t focus on the newscrawl at the bottom of the screen, and some voice, a tired male voice, said, ‘It’s Lower Manhattan. Again.’

A frantic female’s voice in the crowd asked: ‘But… but… where? Which building?’

The same tired voice: ‘The whole southern end of Manhattan, that’s what. They came back, even before the 9/11 memorial and that Liberty Tower building were finished… First report over the wires has radiation monitors off the scale. A suitcase nuke, it looks like. The bastards. They finally came back. They finally came back.’

A great intake of breath, like all of us had been punched in the gut at once, and then the phones were ringing, there were shouts, and we all started scrambling back to our desks, and I knew then that I’d never write that Thai/Korean fusion story, would probably never write another silly little feature story like that ever again, and as I got to my desk there was another shout, and I and the others turned round and the picture on the screen was suddenly sideways, like the helicopter was flying on its side, out of control, and just as our shocked minds were trying to process that odd little image all three television screens went blank.

And then the lights and the power went out.

As the rest of the attack against our unfortunate neighbor to the south continued, all during that very long first day.

I unzipped my sleeping bag and got out. I was awake and felt hot and smothered. I needed some fresh air and I went to the motel-room door, carefully undid its three locks, and then opened it, just a bit. I had left the chain on and only wanted to breathe in the cool night air, but I smelled something else, the smell of tobacco. Somebody was out there, smoking, and that could only be one of two persons in our group. So I undid the chain, tossed on my coat, and stepped outside, onto the cold pavement.

Karen was there, on the paved sidewalk in front of the rooms, her face illuminated by the glow from her cigarette. She said, ‘Jesus, Samuel, scare the shit out of me, why don’t you?’

‘Sorry. Needed a bit of fresh air. You OK?’

‘Sure,’ she said. ‘Needed a nicotine fix and my… well, let’s say I was told to take it outside.’

‘Oh.’

She smirked. ‘Don’t look so shocked, all right?’

‘It’s a deal. I won’t.’

Karen took another puff. ‘How do you like our little group, Samuel?’

I shrugged, hands in my coat pocket. ‘Group seems fine. Just wish that… well, I don’t know.’

‘Wish what?’

‘Wish we were doing more than just driving around, poking and prodding. We’re not talking to people, we’re not really investigating. Just following leads, here and there, leads sent to us from Geneva or Albany. Not sure what kind of progress we’re making.’

Karen tapped some ash on the ground. ‘Not much, but some days it can’t be helped.’

‘Why’s that?’

‘Don’t forget, the people here and in the other refugee zones in my fair little country don’t particularly want the UN around, asking questions and doing our job. The natives obviously wish we’d go away, and even the refugees don’t want us supposedly working on their behalf, because most of them think we’re just aggravating the situation. So when both sides don’t want to talk to you, it’s tough.’

‘I know… it’s just, well, frustrating.’

I saw a bit of her smile in the glow of her cigarette. ‘Your first assignment. How sweet. Glad to see we haven’t beaten out your idealism yet, but give us time.’

I smiled in return. ‘Thanks. I hope it takes a long time.’

‘Probably not. But even then, I thought most newspaper types were cynical. Guess you’re the exception, eh?’ ‘Maybe so,’ I said. ‘Look. Can I ask you a question?’

‘Sure.’

‘Why the UN?’

‘Hmm?’

‘Well,’ I said, ‘I thought most Americans didn’t particularly like the UN. And those who wanted to do relief work, they went elsewhere. Like Oxfam, CARE, WorldVision, that sort of thing.’

‘Maybe I’m just the exception, then,’ Karen said.

I said nothing and she laughed and said, ‘Blame it on my grandparents.’

‘Your grandparents?’

‘Yeah. They were in San Francisco, back in ‘45, when the UN was first really set up. They had minor roles in publicizing it but from what I remember them telling me it was still like being present at the creation of something grand, something wonderful. After tens of millions of people dead during the Second World War, cities obliterated, so much suffering and disease, the UN was just full of possibilities. And I guess they warped my little mind when I grew up, made me think that maybe the world could still use an organization like the UN, as battered and as bowed as she is. So there you go. Satisfied?’

‘Suppose so.’

So we stood there for a moment, the wind picking up just a bit. Recalling what I had been thinking just a few minutes earlier, I said, ‘Karen?’

‘Yes?’

‘Last spring… during the attacks… were you in California?’

‘Mmm,’ she said, taking a drag. ‘That I was. And lucky to be there, too. I was supposed to fly out to Miami that afternoon for a conference on Caribbean development. I think my flight might have caught the south end of the Kentucky strike… but I had the flu and stayed home and missed my flight. Lucky me.’

‘Yeah, lucky.’

She eyed me and said, ‘You were in Toronto?’

‘At the newspaper. I was writing a restaurant story when we got the word about the Manhattan strike. And a couple of minutes later…well, us and about fifty percent of Canada lost power when the other strikes happened—took a while for us to bounce back. But we did manage to get a paper out that day, and the rest of the days. There were some back-up generators that weren’t affected, and pretty soon the rest of the country was able to get reconnected. Lots of power coming out of Hydro-Quebec; they were able to divert a lot of it in-country.’