What got to Marty were the lies, the utter shameless hypocrisy of it all. He carried the shame for all those who didn’t feel it.
It takes the dead to teach us about life. Those corpses full of poison, that’s what tipped the scales of justice. If he killed, he would send a message that could not be ignored. He could get his hands on a few assault weapons. This is America. Easy. But would you use such a weapon? Marty asked himself. No, he thought. Real damage is a bomb.
If I’m going to do it—and he still prefaced his plans with if—If I’m going to do it, Marty/Mardan told himself, it will be without the blessing of Brent, without having to listen to the narcissistic bloviating of that so-called environmentalist, that TV evangelist clone, that smarmy motivational speaker, that asshole. Even though he was right.
And I’ll choose the target. Why Missouri? Why Verfaille? Greedy capitalist. Everyone knew he was a pig. Someone had to strike out, instead, at the complicit institutions. With something that spoke louder than a keyed car.
He wouldn’t need fertilizer from Joseph. What for? The simpler the plan, the fewer people involved, the more likely to succeed. If.
A plan is not an act. He could figure it out—if he wanted to—on the internet. A thousand match heads. He could get a radio-controlled plane from any toy store. Cash at the register, just pay and go, no story about a nephew’s birthday, don’t call attention. Buying things doesn’t mean it’s been decided. Two pressure cookers, two different stores. Nails from the hardware store.
Innocent life? It wasn’t that he thought everyone was guilty. It was that we were all dying slowly, breathing poison, eating poison, drinking poison. And if we’re not buried in lead-lined caskets, we poison the earth. And what about the lead? How much easier a fast and sudden death. Not for himself, of course. If he did it, the plan was a remote detonation.
He started to save his Lincoln pennies, shrapnel with meaning, though he wasn’t sure if he meant emancipation or civil war.
His bike wouldn’t do. For this, he needed a car. Then he’d go back to OSU. He’d learned more. Decades of lies. Expert opinion for sale, professors testifying that Agent Orange was entirely safe, in spite of deformed children born in Vietnam while right down the road from the university, aerial spraying turned water sources toxic, poison rained down on homes, babies were born without brains, or with spina bifida, women miscarried, kittens were born with four eyes or none at all. And now they defended RoundUp, Monsanto’s RoundUp. Weapons of mass destruction.
What makes a man, a respectable man, willing to endorse such horrors? he wondered. To become part of the killing machine. What motivates such people?
As for agro chemicals, he wouldn’t touch them even for the attack. If anyone deserved to be blown off the face of the earth, the Ag School was it.
He didn’t bother to check the rental car for dents or scratches. He handed back the diagram and smiled. Every day, every hour, every minute that went by, more damage was done. “No damage,” he said.
Marty hugged the cliffside in the fog between Mendocino and Ft. Bragg. If he plunged to his death here it would be meaningless. But he stayed on the coast road north to Oregon because of Lori. See her? Yes. No. Yes. As uncertain as his plan. He had an address for her in Florence. He parked and climbed down to the beach. The waves caught his shoes, broke on the high rocks. Maybe they would walk here together. Probably she wouldn’t be home.
She answered the bell. Awkward moments as he stood in her doorway. She didn’t ask him in. Maybe there was someone—some guy—inside. He wanted to tell her, to explain, but all Lori had ever done was criticize, hold him back. Though maybe that was what he wanted. So yeah, what’s new, how are you? She was working for PeaceHealth. Part time. So what makes it Peace? he asked. The healing comes through Jesus, she said. Oh, great, he said, you pray over people. No, I’m a sterile processing technician, for the surgical instruments. Oh, you mean they do real medicine? She scowled at him. What do you think? It’s a hospital.
He thought, There is no cure.
Unless, maybe, if he did it, start to cut and blast away everything gone rotten.
Her words echoed. His head hurt and he felt the urgency again, to be done with it.