She did not mention how badly this had affected her and tried to keep her tone light-hearted.
“I’m glad things are working out for you,” said Will. “You’ve got people’s attention and you’re bound to get some volunteers to help you. You’ll get all the help you need, or at least all the publicity. I’ve decided to get back on the road. It’s still a long way to New York.”
As he spoke, Karen’s sadness over their spat—it couldn’t be called a lovers’ quarrel—turned to vexation. She’d told him she couldn’t sleep with him, but she liked him, liked him a lot and he knew it. Yet it appeared that sex was so important to him, or maybe even the only reason he was interested in her, that now that he couldn’t get what he wanted, he was leaving town. Well, fine, she thought. Fine. He could go satisfy his lust in New York. She suppressed the memory of her taking such pleasure in his caresses at the riverbank. To stop herself from crying she bit her lower lip.
Edna looked back and forth between them.
“Has something happened?” she asked. “Since you arrived here tonight, you’ve both looked—what should I say? Sad?” She paused. “Oh. Because you both knew Will was leaving, is that it?
“I didn’t know,” said Karen, glowering briefly at Will, before turning away.
“My brother called again,” he lied. “The family really needs my help and I’m not doing much here to help so—”
“And there’s really nothing for you to stay here for, is there?” said Karen, interrupting him. Damn, she thought. She was wearing her heart on her sleeve.
“Needless to say, I’m disappointed,” said Edna. “You’ve been a great help to me, but I am touched by your dedication to your mother. When do you plan to leave?”
Will hung his head. “I was thinking about tomorrow.”
Abruptly Karen stood. “Excuse me.”
She walked to the bathroom.
“She’s upset,” said Edna. “She must be very fond of you.”
“The feeling’s mutual,” said Will.
“Is your mother in extremis?”
“No. No. Nothing like that. It’s hard to explain.”
“So she’s not dying.”
“No. She’s just… She’s just having difficulties.”
“And your brother can’t handle it. I’m sorry.”
Could his capable, well-to-do brother, if he knew he had to, handle it? Will didn’t want to discuss family dynamics with Edna. Family dynamics, though, was indeed useful in understanding why some families were unhappy or did hurtful things to each other, like flushing each other’s medications down the toilet. Happy families didn’t have family dynamics.
He asked about Edna’s near term plans. She wasn’t sure, and was reluctant to talk honestly about her discouragement, her diminishing energy, her dissipating hope. And she certainly didn’t want to give him cause for guilt by telling him how much he’d bolstered her spirits and that she dreaded the idea now of working without him. Instead she said she’d been considering inviting interested people to her house, maybe to reconstitute the Missile Land Owner’s Association.
“Though I really wonder if there are people in this town who are ready to stand up and be counted, if I may coin a phrase.”
“I’m sure there are,” said Will.
Karen was still in the bathroom when the explosion went off, blowing in the living room window, the shock wave felt thought the house.
“What in God’s name—” said Edna.
“Get down!” said Will.
“But…but shouldn’t we go look?”
“Now! To the floor,” he commanded.
He took her arm and steadied her as she reached down for a soft three-point landing and then sat on the floor.
Moments later Karen came running.
“What happened?”
“Get down!” ordered Will so forcefully that she did so at once.
He crawled to the kitchen cabinet that housed the shotgun and removed it. He broke open the gun, exposing the breach and two shells. He snapped the barrels back into place and crawled to the switch to turn off the kitchen light.
“Call 911,” he said. Karen dialed on her cell phone.
He crawled to the front door where, still on hands and knees he reached up to turn off the rest of the lights, including the porch light.
He flung open the door, and crouching, scuttled out on his feet and one hand, shotgun in the other. He rolled to the side, next to one of the four-by-four posts supporting the handrail. On his belly, he pointed the gun into the front yard.
The light from the half moon was sufficient to make shadows.
He saw the car about to leave the driveway and turn onto the road.
Standing, then springing from the porch, he ran, but the car was well on its way when he reached the road. He aimed and fired both barrels.
He went back inside. “You can get up now.” He turned on the lights.
As Edna and Karen arose to take seats at the kitchen table, Will replaced the spent shotgun shells and put the weapon back in the cabinet.
“I was wrong about this being a funny place for a shotgun. It’s a damn good place.”
“What is going on, Will?” asked Edna, her expression drawn.
He stepped behind her, squeezing her shoulders reassuringly.
“Everything’s under control, so to speak. Someone threw a bomb onto the porch, but I think it was meant to scare us, not kill us.”
“Not scare us. Me,” said Edna. “And I’m not sure about them not wanting to kill me, either.”
“Whoever it was could have thrown the bomb through the window but didn’t.”
“Why did you make us get on the floor?” asked Karen.
“Just to be safe. In my experience shooting sometimes follows bombing, at least it did in Afghanistan. Are you two alright?”
“Well, I’m a little shook up, that’s all,” said Edna, before she started to cry. Will remained behind her, massaging her shoulders.”
“Did you shoot anyone?” asked Karen.
“I doubt it. They were too far away.”
“They?”
“Well, I couldn’t see but I assume there was the bomb thrower and the getaway driver.”
“I’m alright,” said Edna. She reached back to pat Will’s hand. “Would you get me that.” She pointed to a box of tissue paper. She blew her nose.
“Why would anyone do this?” asked Karen.
“To frighten me, like Will said. And they have succeeded but I feel better now. I must say it’s nice to have a man around the house.”
“I’m going to look at the porch,” said Karen.
Will and Edna followed her.
A nasty looking jagged hole, about the size of a dinner plate, had been blasted through the porch’s wood floor. Deep cracks radiated up the wall.
“Who would want to do a thing like this?” asked Karen.
“A missile hugger,” said Edna, managing a weak laugh.
Sheriff Andresen had been called at nine that night as was his wish.
“When an oddball or horrendous crime occurs, call me, day or night.”
He had once chewed out a new dispatcher when she, uninformed about exactly which crimes fell under the categories of odd or horrendous, forgot to follow his wishes. He was never to be seen as ignorant if confronted by the public about one of these crimes: arson, occurring on average once or twice a year and murder, occurring on average once every other year. Not that he was uninterested in rapes, assaults, and burglaries.
Murder was the worst and most newsworthy crime, so naturally he was to be informed immediately.
As for his interest in arson, only his wife knew that once, at age ten, he had started a fire playing with matches. It had quickly spread across the empty plot, devouring an ample fuel supply of weeds and dry grass, reaching a familiar two story, clapboard house on the far side of the lot, which itself was soon in flames.
Terrified, he ran home to inform his mother that a house was on fire. H
e didn’t mention the matches.
It was his great good fortune, not to mention the good fortune of the residents of the burning house, that the fire department arrived quickly. Their neighbor, alone at the time and temporarily wheelchair bound, toppled over in the living room in her rush to escape the building, but was not seriously hurt. She could have been burned to death.
He wasn’t preoccupied with arson, until arson occurred. The explosion wasn’t arson, but the dispatcher took no chances.
He arrived at O’Hare’s before the firetruck, having far exceeded the speed limit, Officer Shirley Johansen, in the seat beside him, ordinarily a stickler for rules, wisely silent.
While Edna made tea, Andresen, and Johansen, with flashlights, followed by Will and Karen, walked around the house and out to the road.
Officer Johansen took a photo of a tire track on the dirt shoulder two car lengths away from the entrance to the house’s driveway.
“If you’d been looking out the window, you might have seen the guy,” said Andresen.
“The guy?” said Johansen.
“The person. The perpetrator,” said Andresen.
“The son-of-a-bitch,” said Will.
“That’s charitable,” said Karen.
The fire engine came wailing and flashing up the road. Though no one had mentioned fire, the crew was taking no chances. The medic spoke to the three of them. Another fireman determined that no gas line had ruptured. Indeed, other than lines from the propane tank outside the kitchen, there were no gas lines.
“We’ll get them, Edna. I promise you,” said Andresen.
Chapter Forty-Seven
The next morning when Karen arrived, Will, kneeling on the porch, was prying something from the wall near the front door with a pocketknife. He kept his back to her as he worked, though he’d surely heard the car. This was the day he was to depart, but as she stood there watching him gingerly remove something from the wall and dropping it into a paper bag, she knew he’d changed his plans. The change, however, had nothing to do with her. He should stop mooching from Edna, she thought, and get a hotel room so she wouldn’t have to see him when she came by or accompanied Edna into town on her campaign.
Will moved along the wall and began prying at a new spot. Karen moved closer, quietly as if stalking him. Her stealth ended as she climbed the front steps to see what he was doing. She really didn’t want to talk with him and could have simply gone into the house, but she was too curious.
“What are you doing?”
“Collecting shrapnel.”
He didn’t sound angry with her, just businesslike.
She said, “A box of grenades went missing at the base. I should have thought of that last night.”
Still on his knees, he now turned and looked up at her. Ironically she was disappointed in herself to be so happy to see him. They stared at each other briefly before he stood up. She kept a straight face. He held the bag out toward her and shook it. Metal shards tinkled. She’d read in a fairy tale how a wizard had bewitched a girl by ringing a magic bell in her face. The wizard too was a sex fiend, but the story only spoke of enchantment, of course. Her anger was re-awakened.
“I thought you were leaving today.”
“I changed my mind.”
“Playing detective?”
“I’m not playing.”
“What about your poor mother?”
“You don’t have to talk to me like that. I haven’t done anything to you. I’m staying because Edna needs some protection.”
Karen walked past him into the house, calling “Edna.”
Edna invited Will to join them for breakfast and to make plans.
Addressing Will, Edna asked, “You don’t think they want to kill me, just scare me. Is that right?”
Will nodded.
“Well, like I said, they have scared me.” She hung her head.
“But who are they?” asked Karen. “We should make a list.”
“I’ve thought about that,” said Edna. “There’s the business community, Grumman itself, our congressman and senators, and maybe some gung-ho weekend warriors, you know, fanatics, who don’t just want to keep their AK47’s but their hydrogen bombs, too. Thinking about it makes me sick. Anyway, we’ll never figure it out.”
She looked at Karen with sad eyes.
“Did Will tell you he was going to stay with me for a while. Sort of like a bodyguard. I’m embarrassed to say I like the idea. But I don’t think you should be involved. It’s too dangerous.”
Karen choked on a piece of bacon, coughing. She covered her mouth with a napkin.
“Say something,” said Will.
“You say something,” she said angrily.
“I just wanted to see if you can breathe.”
The coughing subsided.
“I want to work on your project, too, Edna. I want to.”
“What about your parents?”
“Well, first of all, I didn’t tell them what happened last night and I’m not going to. They will learn sooner or later but I’ll face that when I have to.”
Edna looked at Will.
“Looks like you’ll have to be her bodyguard, too.”
Will shrugged his shoulders.
Karen wanted to say “no”, but she feared her voice would betray emotion.
“I don’t think she wants a bodyguard,” he said finally.
As they ate Edna talked about her plans to stay home this day to call some home security companies. She wanted to install one of those newfangled video surveillance systems.
“You can actually see who’s hanging around the house and who shouldn’t be.”
“But there’s that rally at the TV station,” said Karen.
Edna frowned. “Frankly, at the moment, I don’t feel up to that rally. I’m a bit ashamed to say this, but I don’t feel like going out of the house for a while. Karen, I wonder if you’d consider standing in my place—”
“But—” began Karen.
“Just to introduce the speakers. People are coming mainly to hear Dr. Rasmussen, anyway. Oh, drat, I forgot. He’s no longer working with us. But back to you. You’re from Minot. That gives you some credibility and the fact that your father works on the base does too. I know. I know. You don’t want him to find out about it, but you have to be realistic. Sooner or later he’s going to learn that you’re still protesting. What am I thinking! You shouldn’t have anything more to do with me. It’s dangerous.”
“Edna!”
Eager for business, Jason’s Electronic Security sent an installer out in the early afternoon. Will and Karen found themselves together following the installer around and asking questions as she installed a top-of-the-line system of video cameras, microphones, and alarms.
After the installer had left, Will looked over Karen’s shoulder as she worked on Edna’s undeveloped website, The Missiles of Minot.
Then Amy Haugen arrived. Forewarned that her mother was coming to get a scoop about the explosion, Karen had decided that rather than hide upstairs, she’d go for a long walk.
“You go with her, Will,” demanded Edna.
“That’s not necessary,” said Karen.
“I’d feel much better if he’d go with you. Please.”
The bitter criticism she’d experienced, the slander, vandalism, harassment, violence, and finally an actual bombing, had deeply dispirited her. She had put these young people in danger. Further demoralizing her was Dr. Rasmussen’s unexplained withdrawal from participation.
They walked side by side, silently, both considering whether to speak but waiting for the other to speak first. They walked for over a mile, leaving the O’Hare property and climbing the gentle slope of a low, grassy hill toward a crowning copse of basswood before they stopped to look back.
Karen sat, crossing her legs, staring straight ahead.
“Tired?” asked Will sitting down beside her.
“No.”
“About what I said—” began Will.
“A
bout the explosion?”
“No. About leaving. I shouldn’t have said that. I was just disappointed.”
“That you couldn’t have sex. I know.”
He sighed.
She didn’t want to talk. He’d been disappointed and pouted, cutting her off, planning to leave. Now he was trying to apologize but she didn’t feel like forgiving him, making her feel ungenerous. But what would happen if she forgave him? What did she mean “happen?” Nothing would, nothing could happen now.
Not far from them, a rabbit, which had been hiding there in the tall grass all along, stuck its head up, sniffed the air, and dashed away down the hill.
She thought of Alice in Wonderland. Might she herself have fallen down a rabbit hole if she’d let herself? Entered a surreal world?
Like Alice, she gave herself good advice but unlike Alice, she usually took it. Nor did she tend to scold herself, or like pretending to be two different people. But the question that now occurred to her revealed the fissure dividing her into two selves: the seeker of truth, despite the risk of pain, and the defender of stability, despite the risk of ignorance.
“Did you have a condom with you that night?”
“Of course.”
She uncrossed her legs, pulling them up to her chest, and wrapped her arms around her knees. She gazed straight ahead. Did being prepared mean he expected compliance? And if he did, what did that make her in his eyes? Or was being prepared just common sense? Respectful even?
A half hour passed before Will spoke.
“Edna’s in danger. It actually would be best if she’d stop her protest.”
“Well, she’s already unnerved,” said Karen, relieved for the distraction from rumination, “and she’s close to giving up.”
“You need to be careful. You’re in danger, too.”
Karen sighed,
“You know,” said Will, “we’re going to have to work together. I’m sorry I acted like a kid.”
“I thought you weren’t even sure the missiles were a bad idea. You want to keep protesting even if Edna can’t?”
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