Fault Lines
I’ve got a friend who never believes that any crisis in the wider world will make its way to us. A few weeks ago, we talked about the Coronavirus, and he assured me that it would have no impact on our lives. This friend isn’t some rich white Republican. He came up rough in Slidell, Louisiana and Baton Rouge. He scrabbles to make a living day in and day out. I think when it comes down to it, he just isn’t able to worry about these issues until they’re in his face. I’m writing about him now not to point out what a fool he is, or how he’s Part of the Problem, but to point out how these thought processes pop up in my own mind, and in the minds of others.
I make up dark stories for a living, and as a fan of such things, I’ve watched a lot of movies about outbreaks, pandemics, and apocalypses of all kinds. I’m academically aware that we’re in the midst of a mass extinction. I struggle with depression, and I’m horrified by the heaps and heaps of nothing we’re doing about Climate Change. The reason I’m able to get out of bed every morning isn’t because I’m holding on to some shiny optimism about how we’re going to turn things around and save ourselves at the last minute—I’m old enough to know that while things aren’t always what they seem, that nineteen times out of twenty, they very much are—I just can’t escape the feeling that as far as the future of the human race, we’re not going to get off so easy as to wipe ourselves out.
Quakes and cracks run through our society. They have for generations now, and they are getting worse. When I think of the conservatives I know, it seems to me that they are motivated by fear—a rear and sensible fear that they respond to by trying to preserve harmful and predatory systems because those are what functioned in the past, and if they can be made to function in the present, the future, then all is not yet lost. The fall and fragmenting of our cultures and communities isn’t something I’m looking forward to. That process promises to be awful, and many, many people will surely die in the process. Where my optimism comes in is that I believe the death of our society could lead to something better. Maybe after all the anguish and terror, something new will emerge. I believe that if we were to control the change, it could be something better.
Yesterday seemed to mark a difficult-to-define turning point in the pandemic. All week, schools shut down and events have been canceled. Megan Burns and Bill Lavender canceled New Orleans Poetry Fest, the Blerdfest organizers canceled that convention, and my co-producers and I canceled this month’s Dogfish—knowing full well that there’s no guarantee we’ll resume next month. I’m lucky enough that my primary job is one that I do from home, and at the moment it doesn’t seem like I’ll be among the droves and droves of people who will lose money and resources they can’t afford to miss while this pandemic plays out. So far, my chief personal worry is for the especially vulnerable people in my life—my elderly parents, friends, and loved ones. In the past I’ve been very fortunate. In times of crisis, people I care for have often been spared. Of course, that’s no guarantee that I won’t lose anyone this time around.
As I look at the news and the reports of cancellations, I am reminded of September 11, 2001. I was home staying at my parents’ house, on break from The Evergreen State College. That morning, I was sleeping in my parents’ bedroom for some reason, and my father called on the land line and said, “We’re under attack. Turn on the news.” I flipped on CNN just in time to see the second plane hit its tower. My older brother, H. T. had been working in the Pentagon for weeks. When the plane hit there, it took out the section to which he’d most recently been assigned. Once I saw that, I knew that my brother was dead.
Local communication was spotty, at best, all day. My father was in DC until night, one of my brothers was working at the White House, and I was at home alone all day, unable even to contact my roommates and friends back in Washington State. I’ve never written about this. I’ve never even tried.
My brother Brandon was working at the White House at the time. He told me later that the plane that went into the Pentagon passed over the White House twice. Because the hijackers had no ground support, they couldn’t see the White House from the cockpit. The Pentagon was much easier to find, so they arrowed into it instead. Brandon told me about sprinting down Pennsylvania Avenue at top speed, propelled by sheer terror, adrenaline spiking his blood so heavily that he couldn’t feel the protests of his bad knees.
Later that evening, my father called the house to tell me that my brother had crossed the bridge into DC on foot and found him at his office. H. T. was alive, and they were coming home. I honestly didn’t believe it until I saw him at the foot of the stairs. The hallways light fell dramatically on his shoulders. I remember the way his fade shaded perfectly into his scalp. His eyes always look a little wet. His gaze was downcast when he stepped into the house, falling on the linoleum tiling in the foyer. Then he looked up at me. The memory overwhelms me.
As I sit thousands of miles away from him, distant from my other brothers, from all my blood family, as we wait to see what the Coronavirus will do to our communities, to our bodies, I find myself returning to that day. I don’t know when I’ll see my people again, but I think of my dead brother returned to life. Of the way he looked at me and how something invisible moved between us. I felt like I would shake apart.
But I didn’t.