The Cokeville Miracle

by Hartt

  Our band teacher, Mr. Miller, had run out of the school through the south doors and was shot in the back by the man, who had come out of the restroom when the bomb went off. Mr. Miller collapsed at the corner on Main Street near where I was standing.

  There were ambulances, crowds of people searching for brothers and sisters with tears in their eyes. It was like I had come back into civilization after being out in the wilds alone. Kids were being hosed off to cool their burns. I went into Steve Taylor’s house to call home, but no one was there. I went back out onto the street, looking for someone to leave a message with that I was going to go down to city hall with some of the other kids and get out of the crowd. That’s when I saw Dad with his arm raised, and Mom with her arms open. I ran to them. I was sure glad to see them. Mom and I hugged for a long time, then Dad caught up to us and we had a three-way hug. I cried. It felt good to cry. I had been too mad to cry before.

  Kam’s Recollections as an Adult, Almost Thirty Years After the Incident, March 2015

  After lunch recess ended, we filed inside for our thirty minutes of quiet reading time. Mr. Mitchell interrupted the silent reading and asked us if we noticed a smell of gasoline. Many of us did. He wondered if Delbert Rentfro, the custodian, was up to something like getting the riding lawn mower ready or something. We had taken a bathroom break and were heading back to class when we were approached by a lady we didn’t know. She asked us to follow her; she said she had a surprise waiting for us in Room 4. Mr. Mitchell was visibly and audibly puzzled. He wondered why he didn’t know anything about this surprise, seeing that his own wife was the teacher in that room.

  As we followed her toward the room, Mr. Mitchell turned to us, asking if any of us knew who this woman was. No one knew. The door opened and the room was darkened, with many of the overhead fluorescent lights turned off. As I looked at the younger children’s faces, they were somber. I wondered what was going on. I saw modeling clay on their desks and I wondered if they were showing off their creations or something. Looking to my left, I noticed M16s and other rifles leaning against the bulletin board that flanked the chalkboard on the north wall of that room. I thought there must be some kind of gun safety assembly or something like that.

  Mr. Moore waved Mr. Mitchell over to talk. I was right next to them as Mr. Moore said, “This man has a bomb and is holding us hostage.” Mr. Mitchell and I turned and noticed the brooding, bearded man near the center of the room. The sound in Mr. Moore’s voice told me he was serious, and his manner seemed very subdued, very not like the boisterous Irish-rooted mountain man we all knew and loved as the fifth grade teacher. Our class found places on the floor near the fifth graders. Hearing the words “hostage” and “bomb,” my mind went straight to the current events that we had been talking about in class.

  Far away, in Libya, a man named Muammar Gaddhafi was using terrorists to be a bully in the world, telling American military ships that if they crossed “the death line,” as Gaddhafi had called it, that he would shoot and sink them. I had drawn pictures of these so-called “terrorists.” I had depicted the terrorists as red ants in every one of them. Mr. Moore had printed out an image of Gaddhafi with targets encircling his face. I asked if I could use it for my dartboard at home. It became shredded over time.

  I knew the man in our room was not Gaddhafi, but I wondered if he was part of something bigger. I immediately thought of the movie Red Dawn I’d seen. I imagined paratroopers landing on the grounds of schools all over the United States, just like in the movie. I looked out the window to the school grounds . . . but there was nothing like that.

  My mind was trying to process all of it. I asked Mr. Mitchell if it was some sort of drill to prepare us. He said if it was a drill, he would know about it, because he was second in command after the principal, Mr. Excell. I probably asked him several more questions, trying to figure out how this was happening. I think my little kid mind was trying to eliminate all the reasons to believe it was real. Maybe realizing that it was real, I looked out the window again, wondering if I’d see FBI and sniper men hiding behind anything out there and peering through scopes into the room. I didn’t see anything like that either, but it occurred to me to get away from the window so I would not be between their shot and the man with the bomb. I was beginning to absorb the reality, but only in fictional doses.

  I don’t remember much of what happened between those thoughts and the moment when the fourth grade class arrived, but I do remember the gloom we all felt. We all knew they were the last class to be gathered. We’d heard they were outside somewhere and I thought maybe they wouldn’t be found and captured. But here they came.

  I think it was after all were gathered in that David spoke up and had his “manifesto” paper sent around. It was typed on a sheet of paper with hardly any margins and I took no time to read it once I realized it seemed just plain crazy. This was the first time I had heard him say anything at all. Apparently he had done some yelling at the younger ones and their teachers before our class had arrived. He spoke in a very underwhelming voice, but gave the feeling that he did not care whether we understood his words, almost as though he expected us to not understand. “I am the most wanted man in the culture.” (Yes, I do think he said “culture.”) I wondered what he meant. I heard him say something about sending the letter off to President Reagan and other government officials. . . . He said other things, but I wasn’t following it.

  Somewhere at about this time, David had to shed his gold windbreaker or sweater. I remember some very tense moments as we watched Doris help him take the jackets off. He carefully unwound the white ragged shoelace from around his wrist, lifted his hand slowly from the handle of the cart, and pulled his arm through the shoelace trigger, and then out of his jacket sleeve. He took a moment away from the trigger to adjust a pistol from the front of his pants and put it back. I recall he checked one or two more guns on his body. He placed the shoelace back around his right wrist and settled back into position with his cart. He remained in the middle of the room the entire time I saw him. Doris was only near David when she helped him remove his jacket, or when he called her over. She generally stayed near the main door, once she was done recruiting classes.

  The smell of gasoline was getting thick, and the temperature of that room, with 154 hostages, was on the rise. Kids were throwing up in the sink or garbage cans, and asking for drinks of water. Doris made an announcement: “Kids! Many of you want to get drinks of water, but we can’t have you doing that. If you’re thirsty, get a paper towel wet and put it on your forehead.”

  My buddies and I giggled to each other from our end of the room. “How is a rag on your forehead going to help if you’re thirsty?” Then Doris made another announcement: “Kids, think of this as an adventure . . . this will be something you will tell your children and grandchildren about.”

  One of the teachers spoke up and decided it would be a good idea to sing “Happy Birthday” to Jeremiah Moore. That song sounded dreadful. Many say they noticed David and Doris singing along, which was even more strange. Maybe another song was in order. The first graders were just finishing up a week themed with bears, so they sang a song I’d never heard before: “If you go out in the woods today, you’re sure to get a surprise. . . .” I wondered what kind of song that was! This song thing wasn’t working!

  The mood was still very somber and sobs were heard around the room. Tissue boxes were passed around. I saw one of my classmates, one that is usually very mouthy, have a very uncharacteristic meltdown. He was sobbing while saying out loud, “I’m never going to see my parents again . . . they’re never going to see me. . . .” At about this time I heard Brian Nate say to someone, “Heavenly Father won’t let us die; we’ve done nothing wrong.”

  Although I personally had not even begun to draw conclusions about our situation, I had felt bad for the kids who were crying and I wanted to help. Brian’s words made perfect sense to me—“We haven’t done anything wrong . . . Heavenly Father won’t let us die!�
�� I immediately began spreading that phrase around the room. Brian said it in one direction, and I in the other. We said, “Pass it on!” to the kids in each direction.

  Somebody suggested we should pray. I did an individual prayer silently. Then, someone suggested we say a group prayer. It seemed like a great idea and I remember moving around on my knees to gather people into a circle for a prayer. We didn’t make any effort to conceal ourselves from David or anyone else; we didn’t really even think about it. There were maybe about eight to twelve of us, seems like mostly fifth and sixth graders in a circle. It was about as large an opening as we could make in the crowded room. As I looked around at the circle, I saw a lot of eyes looking at me. I could only guess that they were waiting for me to either say it, or call on someone to say the prayer! I felt the obvious choice was Allyson Cornia because she had always been the smartest kid in class! Made sense to me at the time. She prayed loud enough for the small group to hear. We knelt and bowed our heads and folded our arms. She said a simple prayer—you can imagine the words. The feeling afterward was a feeling of total confidence that we had just placed our lives in the hands of our loving Heavenly Father. There was nothing left to worry about. It was like our part was completely done and it was just a matter of time. I don’t even think we wondered just how long or short or how it would be done, just that it would. At least that’s how I felt.

  Looking back, the fact that the mood was much lighter tells me I was not the only one that felt it. This is probably the point at which they asked to remove many of the desks into the hallway to make room. Teachers had also asked if they could bring book carts in from the library and later, even a TV on a cart for the kids to watch in the corner.

  Meanwhile, several of us were positioned behind a row of first grade desks near the northeast corner. We were looking at the bomb cart and how it was put together. We saw the wooden clothespins wire-lashed to the cart handle. We knew the shoelace around his wrist was important, but I’m not sure we knew it was the main trigger. We peered into holes in the paper bags and saw Duracell batteries. We conjectured together that maybe when the batteries died out, then the bomb would go off. We saw a coil of chains on a roll underneath everything, at the bottom of the cart. The milk jug with gasoline sat in the top right corner above other boxes and cans. The chains, we thought, might be for tying kids up . . . ? Turns out the chain coil was there to throw shrapnel. That detail gets me every time I think about it. . . . How can a person get to that kind of thinking?! That shrapnel, that bomb, was designed by that man to kill me and everyone else in the room!

  I wanted a closer look and we kind of dared each other to go get a book from the book cart. I took the challenge and walked confidently to the book cart. I grabbed a book. I walked back, eyeing the cart to get a look and then my eyes met his. It seems he knew what I was up to. His eyes were as cold and soulless as I’ve ever seen. There was no light in them. He had no scowl or angry looks, just a cold stare in my direction. I moved past and felt bothered by his stare as I sat back down behind the desks with the others.

  First grade teacher Carol Petersen, maybe noticing that we needed to keep out of trouble, said (in a mock enthusiasm as if we were first graders) “Hey, kids! Who wants to read about dinosaurs?” We laughed heartily, and it broke the momentary tension after my encounter.

  Timelines are hazy, but at some point after the TV was brought in, Mr. Mitchell got everyone’s attention and raised a roll of masking tape in the air. He said, “We are going to make a magic square here on the floor. We’re going to play a game to see who can stay outside of the square. If you go across the line, you’re out.” He and another teacher placed a 9 × 9-foot square around David and his bomb. He was sitting on the corner of a first grader’s desk in the middle of the square, under the one fluorescent white light, and faced north toward the chalkboard.

  When that tape was being laid down on the carpet, I noticed some Lego blocks at the southwest corner of the square. I asked Brenda Hartley if she wanted to go over and play with the blocks. I had my back to the TV as I built a little tank with the Legos. She watched the TV and me, while fiddling with some of the blocks.

  Once I had my tank built, I said to Brenda in a gruff military voice, “Okay men! We’re going to go across the ‘Death Line—Vroommm!!” Brenda laughed. I looked up at David to see if he had heard me. He had heard me and glared at me from over his right shoulder. As I looked up from my position on the floor, and looking past David, I noticed that the light around him and in the room was a yellow/hazy light. I wondered at it, because I knew it should be more of a white fluorescent light. This light was almost more like what you’d see in a smoke-filled room.

  In the process of looking up I also noticed a crowd of fellow sixth graders gathered by the main door. Thinking nothing more about the color of the light, I nudged Brenda and said we should go see what our friends were talking about. This was my first time to this side of the room since I had arrived, and I saw just how easy it would have been to step right out the door into the hallway. I stayed inside, knowing I simply needed to. I listened in on the conversation my friends were having with Doris as she sat on the desk “guarding” the door. She seemed delighted to have our attention. Someone asked how long they were planning to keep us. She said, “Maybe ten days, maybe a month . . . depends on how long—” Drew Cornia interrupted saying, “Shoot! I just got these braces in and I don’t have my special toothbrush!” We all laughed.

  Suddenly, the group broke apart when David called Doris away from her post. Apparently he had called her so he could hand the bomb over to her. He needed a break in the tiny bathroom between the two first grade rooms. He needed to either use the bathroom, or was having a diabetic episode, or was disturbed with the way the kids no longer seemed nervous. Could it have been the influence of what I learned later was angels encircling the bomb? I don’t know what led David to leave at that moment, but something was in the works.

  I moved myself from within a few feet of the bomb to only about eight feet from the main exit. According to the accounts of Rachel and Katie Walker, they had been told by an angel that the bomb would go off “and to listen to their brother’s instructions.” Travis Walker, in the meantime, had heard and followed a prompting to get his sisters near the window because the bomb would be going off “soon.” Their account is in direct timeline with the strange light I had noticed about ten minutes earlier. Maybe it’s just coincidence, but I have to wonder if that is one more way God works in our lives. He orchestrates masterfully, even if we don’t hear the orchestra or see the performers.

  When the bomb went off, I remember immediately hearing my inner voice say, “The bomb!” I do not remember the sound of an explosion. My mind was so far removed from the dangers of the day, it’s as if my instincts had to remind me that I needed to run for my life. Of course all this was in milliseconds of time. But time did [seem to] slow down for those moments and I recall vividly what I saw and what happened next: I was being lifted and spun around in the air, in the direction of the open door. So now I was positioned 180 degrees from how I had been, and floating (what seemed very slowly) through the air. As I spun around I saw pitch-black smoke in the far side of the room right where that TV had been set up, and where maybe most of the kids were. In front of that blackness was an orange dome-shaped fireball—not a mushroom blast shape, or fireball with fingers of flames, but a smooth edged, orange dome shape. I’m not saying that’s all it was, that’s just what it looked like when I saw it. It’s possible that the big flash happened before I ever got clear of the tables to be able to see anything clearly in that direction.

  This all was happening very, very fast, but it seemed slow to me. As I was flying through the air toward the door, I saw slow-moving pieces of paper with the leading edge in flames. I had to pull my head back to dodge them. What I wonder about today is why those pieces of paper were being blasted outward, away from the bomb, yet I was being blasted in the opposite direction toward the open h
allway—The physics of that doesn’t seem natural. I had always said that I was literally “blown out the door,” but with other’s accounts of divine intervention, I wonder exactly what was going on with me.

  About this point, still airborne, I remember thinking, “The fire alarm has not gone off yet! Those little kids gathered in front of the TV in the far end of the room (where it was so black) aren’t going to know to run!” My eyes turned upwards at the digital clock and intercom speaker that was above the door. “The fire alarm should be going off!” I thought frantically. Just as I was beginning to panic, the alarm went off, and I was relieved. Somehow I thought that the simple sound of the alarm was going to be the difference in those kids getting out safely! Who knows?!

  Still flying through the air, looking back downward, I noticed a puff of black smoke billowing right in my direction, just a few feet off the ground. I thought to myself, “Don’t breath the smoke in! Stay low! Get below it.” I tried to get below it, but couldn’t.

  The light from the hallway was illuminating everything through the doorway. I had experienced very little darkness, but I knew how dark it was on that other side of the room.

  It’s possible that at this point my feet hit the ground, but it must have been a bounce more than a step because I was immediately in the hallway and in a full run. There had been no one else around at all, but once I was running north toward the main school exit, I remember seeing a first grade kid suddenly by my side and a little behind me. I don’t remember his name, but I know for sure it was the kid that the fifth and sixth grade classes fought over in recess football games because he was so fast. He was short, super tough, and nearly impossible to tackle. I remember thinking, “Wow, if I stay ahead of him, I’m doing good!” I knew he was safe and running hard. It’s good I was in front because when I came to the front doors of the building, I just stiff-armed them open at full speed with my sixth grader size. I knew he was close enough behind me that he’d catch the open door. As far as I know, he and I were the only ones that came out that exit.