Under the Sickle

Fifteen years ago I stared up into the night sky and saw something I had never seen before.

The deaths earlier that day of all those men, women, and children had been an emotionally devastating blow. Who could do this? Who could hate this country so much, to strike at its very heart? Where would they attack next? What would they do next?

No one knew that night. No one would suspect a young, clean-cut Army veteran had plotted and planted and detonated the bomb that killed all those people.

I tried to bring what prescience I might have to bear on what might follow. But I was limited in my imagination. We had seen that a truck bomb was ineffective at destroying a large building like the World Trade Center. Now we knew that such a weapon could be devastatingly effective against a much smaller building. Try as I might, all I could foresee were bigger bombs against bigger buildings. Nothing about passenger jets loaded with fuel.

As I stood outside I tried to clear my thoughts. All those people, I thought, as I stared out into the black sky studded with stars. And then I saw the Sickle.

Leo, my memory informed me. I had never looked at this particular arrangement of stars and known it to be Leo, or more specifically the sickle-shaped mane of Leo. But I had seen it countless times in my magazines and my charts. It was somewhat stunning to have seemingly randomly-arranged stars suddenly coalesce into a pattern, and then have my mind match that pattern correctly with information previously stored. But there it was.

Where do they go?, I wondered. I imagined the souls of the dead as little wispy trails high-tailing it from the rubble of Oklahoma City to the stars and the cosmos beyond. But maybe that wasn't it at all. Maybe when the floor above you pancakes onto the floor below you and crushes your brain into a pulp, that's it. Story's over. You've done all you're gonna do.

I looked at the Sickle. I had seen something new tonight, something I had never seen before. My story wasn't over. Some stories had ended, but a lot of them were still going on. We all had an obligation to go on.

I turned from the stars and headed back into the house.