The ground was trembling now. He could feel the tremor underfoot. The billowing tidal wave of dust was rolling up the street toward him like a volcano’s pyroclastic flow. He must back away and flee. He had no choice. He couldn’t stand his ground. He backed into Chambers Street, hoping the dust wave would not sweep down over the rooftops and smother him. But the rumbling continued, for nine interminable seconds, as the tower fell, and the cloud of dust, as if it had acquired a life of its own, grew and roiled on itself, and grew again until, in all the streets around, you could not see the light at all.

He could hear people running northward, half choking, many of them. After a while, he unbuttoned the top of his shirt, pulled it up to use as a mask, and tried to make his way south into the dust storm. But it was no good. He was choking and he couldn’t see. Finally, like everyone else, he retreated further up the street, and reaching a point where the air was somewhat clearer, he sat down on the sidewalk, and watched the gray-dusted figures as they passed, like Shades from Hades, in the forlorn hope that one of them, after all, might be his wife.

And then, after ten minutes, she came toward him.

“Hoped I might find you here,” she said.

“I thought …”

“I’d only just left the building when it started coming down. I guess it broke the cell connection. Then a whole bunch of us went into a café to get out of the dust. But I came up the street as soon as I could. You look awful.”

“And you look wonderful.” He took her in his arms.

“I’m a little dusty.”

“You’re alive.”

“I think we mostly got out. I’m not sure about the people higher up though, above the fire.”

“Oh my God.”

“What?”

“Katie Keller. She told me she was going to a meeting somewhere in the Financial District this morning. Do you have her cell number?”

“I think so.”

“Let’s try to call.”

But there was no answer when they did.

As it moved to and fro that morning, still wrapped around the waist of Sarah Adler in the high room in the tower, the wampum belt had looked very well. Its little white and colored shells were as bright as on the day they were strung. To those who could read its message, woven with such love, it declared: “Father of Pale Feather.”