Nor will it die in the minds of those who lived through it. I have a confession in our final moments together. In the author’s note at the beginning of this book, I told you about Alice Barlow, one of the archers for the ShopGirls. I told you about her social media page and how her mother was isolating her daughter until she could find some solace. After that piece was written and most of the reporting was put to bed, Alice’s mother contacted me and said Alice wanted to talk. She wanted to unburden herself, but was unsure how much of her story she could tell.
I traveled to the small farming town in Oklahoma where she lived on a hot July day, the climate change that produced Hurricane Sadie fully on display as the mercury pushed 103 degrees. Her mother welcomed me and led me to Alice’s room. It was just as I had pictured it. Alice was on her bed. Her mother introduced us and quietly shut the door, leaving a silence as deep as any I’ve experienced as a journalist. I introduced myself. I told her what I was doing and who I had spoken with. For a time, there was happy chitchat about mutual acquaintances. How was Clara Ann doing? Elvis made it out? That was great! Then I asked her about her story.
She didn’t get far.
This is going to sound trite, but as that young woman sobbed and sobbed and as her mother ran in to console her and as I watched the seconds tick on my digital recorder—two minutes, five minutes, seven minutes—I could not help but feel intense anger. I was mad at the people who took the “What tribe are you?” quiz online—if the person who wrote it were there, I would have read them the riot act. I was mad at the people who want to turn the former FantasticLand into an “experience” where tourists can relive the battle. I was mad at the toll that this slaughter took on those who survived. Mostly, I was mad at myself. Alice Barlow was not ready to talk to me. She would never be ready. But I wanted to know. We all want to know. How many did you kill? How did it feel? What were the Pirates like? Did you ever meet Brock Hockney? We all want to know, and watching that girl sob brought the weight of my guilt crashing on my head. I started to cry too. I wouldn’t be human if I had not.
At the end of the day, this project left me with the sense that I was not the reporter I imagined myself to be. Yes, I was able to convince most of my subjects to tell their stories, but in the end, what have we learned? That violence lurks in all of us? That we are easily led by those with less than the purest of intentions? To always check how much TNT you’re using?
I don’t know. I wish I did. I wish I could tie this up in a bow. I wish I knew why Alice Barlow could hold and protect that baby duck and shoot arrows into her fellow employees two months later. I wish I knew, but I don’t.
None of us do.
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