The Sixth Station Read Online Free

thousand different cultures—curry seeping from the pores of some, garlic oozing out of others, and everyone was sweating despite the sixty-eight-degree temperature.
    With an unbelievable effort, I pushed and shoved like all the other people who had to be there that day for whatever reasons, and managed to skirt over to the outer edge of the street on the south side.
    Being on that side, albeit shoved up against the barricades, gave me a good view of the sidewalk, where the vendors were hawking everything from T-shirts with ben Yusef’s picture emblazoned on the front baring slogans like “King of the Terrorists” and “King of the News,” to the obscene, “He Made a Killing in New York!” Others were selling flags, balloons, and other totally inappropriate items for an occasion that was supposed to be so solemn.
    It seemed like foods from every nation were being sold from carts whose smells assaulted and invigorated my senses: Thai satay, peppers-sausage-onions, steaming hot dogs, and toasted soft pretzels that could always bring me back to my first autumn in New York as cub reporter, when I’d left the comfort of my parents’ Long Island row house to make it “on my own” all of thirty-five miles away.
    Despite being 1960s hippies who were still true believers in peace, love, and granola, they acted like overly protective suburbanites when it came to my brother and me, as they went about saving the world—my dad as head of a NYC homeless organization, and my mom as a pediatrician in a clinic.
    When I moved out of the first apartment I’d had with roommates in the city and took a studio in the Village on my own, they worried I’d be lonely and alone at best, and murdered by an intruder at worst.
    Despite their terror, I had not been murdered by a crazed serial killer/intruder, nor had “alone” ever been my problem. Except for when I was out of work, I always felt, if anything, that my life was too crowded. There was always another story, never a shortage of interesting friends and interested men. No one like Donald, of course, but I suspected that he was my excuse for not getting involved with anyone who might actually be available. I wanted my freedom to rush to a story wherever there was one.
    Now I was in it again full force—in a massive mess of humanity. And I loved it.
    But even more overwhelming than the smell and sight and push of the crowd was the din. The Super Bowl, the World Series, and the World Cup at the same time. It seemed that the very air had turned solid with sound—filled with deafening chants, curses, and complaints.
    Over all of that was the ever-present blast of police-car sirens, ear-shattering blasts when they were near you. I made a mental note to never have a drink again as long as I lived.
    “SOS. Save our Savior!” “Kill the pig! Kill him dead!” “Kid killer!” the protestors screamed, trying to out-decibel each other.
    Crazy, I thought, that there hasn’t yet been an incident . Incredible, actually. But that day there weren’t any—unless you count the personally earth-shattering incident that awaited me not half an hour later.
    The angry people, I understood—but it was the others, the terrorist’s so-called “followers” and “believers,” that I didn’t understand—or want to.
    Crazy conspiracy-theorist morons, I thought. I wished the damned Internet had never been invented. It alone had made the mass-murdering “prophet,” whom we’d all nonetheless come to see that day, possible.
    To millions he was the Savior; to others, Hitler reincarnated—and they were all out here yelling.
    It had taken just four years for ben Yusef to rise, via cyberspace, from just another tweeting YouTube ranter to a man known throughout the world.
    By the time the mainstream media paid attention, it was almost too late. They filled their editorial pages with fire and filled their airspaces with TV talking heads gasbagging about how such a terrorist monster was loved and