Ghosts of 9/11

Jenna Lester knew that the subway was no place for a nice girl on a Friday at two in the morning, but it was the cheapest and easiest way for her to get uptown. She had just spent the evening with some friends at a wild party and had decided to bail out on the festivities. It was getting a little too crazy for her tastes. She liked letting her hair down every once in awhile, but she had good core values which had been instilled in her by her mother and father. She did not smoke or do drugs, and she drank only in moderation. She was only interested in a monogamous relationship, and didn’t do one night stands or engage in casual sex. Jenna credited her good moral compass to her father. He was a good man who had died way too young.

Jenna’s father, Edward, worked on the sixty fifth floor of the world trade center on that fateful day in 2001. Jenna was in school the morning that the planes hit the towers and remembered the panic that she had felt when the news first broke. She knew that her father was there. She could only pray that he was alright.

When Jenna finally got home on that September morning and was reunited with her mother, Erin, she learned that her father had called. Her mother told her that he had been helping people get out of the burning building. That was the final contact that anyone had with Edward Lester. The family had seen the buildings collapse and hoped for a miracle, but it seemed that in the modern world, miracles were few and far between.

Jenna now stood on the platform waiting for the train. It was an eerie feeling being down there in the wee hours. It was no place for an attractive single woman. She suddenly realized that she was not too far from ground zero and immediately her thoughts raced back to that horrible time. She thought about the days that she spent with her mother handing out her father’s picture and asking passers by if they had seen him. They kept up a constant vigil of hope, even though they knew in their hearts that he was more than likely entombed in the mass of steel and concrete. Eventually the search had ended and Ed Lester was no more. Tears welled up in Jenna’s eyes as she thought about going through her late teens without her father. She decided to get out of the subway and just spend the extra money on a cab. She turned and walked away from the tracks.

As Jenna began to walk she was approached by a homeless man. The man had appeared out of nowhere and closed in on her rapidly. Fear rose in her heart. She didn’t know if he wanted a handout or if he was moving in for some sort of attack. The man caught up with her.

“Miss, could you spare a quarter?”, the man asked, looking into her frightened eyes.

Jenna’s heart almost stopped. She was frozen and almost in a state of shock.

“DADDY!!???” Jenna shouted!

The man looked confused. Jenna fell to her knees and began bawling and repeating the word Daddy over and over again. The commotion caught the attention of a transit cop and the homeless man quickly scampered away. The policeman approached Jenna who was down on her knees crying hysterically.

“Are you okay, lady? Did the bum hurt you?”

“That was not a bum! That was my father!”, Jenna cried.

The cop helped her to her feet.

“I’m sorry, Miss, but I’m a little confused. I thought that he was attacking you?”

Jenna regained her composure and told the officer the whole story about 9/11 and her father. The police man was sympathetic as he listened to her recount the nightmarish tale.

“I lost some buddies on 9/11,” the cop said. “Sometimes I still think that I see them here and there. It never goes away. You probably just saw something in that man that reminded you of your dad and then your mind took off. You said that you had been thinking about him prior to that moment when the bum approached.”

“I know that it seems crazy, but I swear that it was my father,” said Jenna. “He’s alive and I’m going to find him.”

The police officer escorted her to the street and waited until she was safely in a cab. The cop wondered how much that she had to drink or what kind of drugs that she had done earlier that evening. He always saw such crazy shit on the overnight shift.

The next day Jenna went to her mother’s apartment and told her about the subway incident. She expected that her mother would believe her and be excited about the revelation, but such was not the case. Erin Lester could not believe that her daughter had created such a morbid fantasy as to suggest that her father was a beggar who lived in the subway.

“Jenna, you need help. I am going to see if Dr. Andrews will take you on as a patient. She did wonders for me. I thought that you had put this behind you. You have seen your father fifty times over the past nine years. Remember the ice cream man, the park ranger, the cab driver? Your father is dead, Jenna. You have to deal with that or you will never move on with your life!”

Jenna could not fathom that her own mother would not believe her. True she had gone through this before, but this time she felt for sure that she had seen her daddy.

“Take Dr. Andrews and tell her to go scratch! I know what I saw and I don’t care if you don’t believe me. I will prove it to you.”

“Jenna, you are scaring me. I love you. Please stay away from the subway. Please see Dr. Andrews.”

“Fuck Dr. Andrews!” Jenna exclaimed, slamming the door as she exited her mother’s apartment.

Jenna spent the next few weekends hanging around on the subway platform in the early morning hours. She saw drug deals, homeless people, and a variety of bizarre events. She was even approached by someone who thought that she might be a hooker. She saw many things, but she did not see her father. There was no sign of that particular beggar.

She decided that she would give it one more try. She was coming to the realization that her mother was probably right about her. She had spent a good part of the previous nine years seeing her father here and there. Maybe she really was crazy.

Jenna took her usual spot in the subway and waited like she had been doing for weeks. There were no homeless men. There were a few people waiting for the train and two other young men sitting on a bench. They looked like the kind of people who could be trouble. They were covered with tattoos and both men had shaved heads. They were wearing some sort of gang related jackets.

Jenna began to worry about her safety and realized how crazy that her quest was. She headed for the ladies room and practically ran in. She was feeling sick to her stomach and was trying to make it to a stall before she vomited on the floor. She made it just in time. Her nerves had caused her to become sick. Jenna got down on her knees and threw up into the filthy toilet. She spit a few times and then went to stand up. That is when she felt two hands on her shoulders.

“Whoa bitch! Where you goin?” the bald headed gang banger asked her. “You are in a perfect position right where you are, baby.”

The man cupped his hand over her mouth and dragged her out of the stall. Jenna was kicking wildly as the other gang member grabbed her legs, securing her to the floor. She struggled and then the first man pulled out a switchblade and held it to her neck.

“Stop the fucking crying and kicking, or I will gut you right here!” he told her.

Jenna started sobbing as the man with the knife began to cut at her clothing, exposing her bra. He then cut through the bra and her bare breasts were now out in the open. The man with the knife began to unbuckle his pants.

“You are like a Christmas gift,” the other man said. “A pretty girl like you down here all alone.”

Both men were concentrating on their prey. It was like two lions salivating over a wounded wildebeest. The man with the knife hit her hard on the head one time and then started to strip off her pants. Jenna began to lose consciousness. The last thing that she saw was a homeless man with a baseball bat walking up behind the unsuspecting thugs.

“Daddy”, she said faintly as she passed out to the sound of wood meeting flesh and bone.

Jenna awoke in a hospital bed. She didn’t appear to have any injuries. Almost immediately, two detectives were at her bedside asking her questions.

“Miss, did you know the two men who attacked you?”, a burly detective asked.

“No”, was the only answer that she could muster. She was still groggy.

“Do you know who came to your assistance?” the younger detective further questioned.

“Was I raped?” Jenna asked the two men without responding to the latter inquiry.

“No, Ma’am, the assault was apparently broken up by someone. We need to find your rescuer,” the young detective answered.

“Why?”

“Because the two men who attacked you are in critical condition and probably won’t live to see the morning. Now do you have any idea who helped you out tonight?”

“Not a clue!” Jenna said with authority. There was no way that they were going to arrest her father.

*********

The homeless man had left the bloodied bat in the ladies room and scurried down the subway tracks. He had to get home. No one would ever know who hurt those two men. Hell, he didn’t even know who he was, himself. He wondered why he even bothered to help that girl. He had seen rapes and murders and muggings countless times before and had never intervened. The beggar had spent many years on the streets and had seen his share of atrocities. All of these thoughts kept circulating through his mind as he entered the abandoned rail yard. It was the place that he had called home for quite a few years.

He sat against a wall and tried to hide his face in the darkness. Some of the other homeless people around him had lit tiny fires and were going through the trash that they had collected on their daily scavenger hunts, but he was not in the mood to work. His mind was not functioning like it normally did. Usually his thoughts were all about survival and making it through to the next night, but this evening was different. Something about the girl had him in a strange place. Why did he care about her?

He picked up a little sack that he had next to him and walked over to one of the other homeless men who had built a small fire.

“Leroy, I need to use your fire so that I can look at something.”

“You go right ahead. I got a half a can of spaghetti if you want some supper?”

“Not tonight, Leroy. I got something on my mind.”

Leroy scooped the spaghetti out of the can with his bare hand, watching closely as his friend dumped the contents of the sack onto the ground and began fumbling through the items. The beggar knew what he was looking for. He found a razor, a pocket knife, some gum, a few baseball cards, and then eventually he hit pay dirt. It was an old brown wallet. It was the same wallet that he pulled from his pocket years ago when he had walked out of the toxic dust cloud and into this life which he now led.

He opened the wallet and saw a NY drivers license with the name Edward Lester. The picture looked like him, but the man was young and clean shaven. It had been years since he had looked at the photo and told himself that he could not possibly be Edward Lester. Edward Lester was a well kept young man and he was just an old bum. He flipped the license over and that is when he saw the picture of a beautiful young teenage girl. All of the years that the beggar had carried the wallet, he had never explored any further than the license picture. The young girl looked just like the woman whom he had saved in the bathroom earlier that evening. He looked at the license picture once again and it suddenly started to come back to him. The memories were overwhelming.

“Jenna?” Edward Lester muttered, sitting next to a tiny fire in an abandoned rail yard.

He got up and started walking into the dark night.

“Where you goin?” Leroy asked him.

“Home,” was all that Ed Lester could say.