Shock Wave

it might be tangled up with bribery.
    He could also stay in bed, the pillow hard as a pumpkin, and spend the night brooding about Lee Coakley. Had she already been unfaithful? What about himself; was thinking about the honeyhaired Marie Chapman actually unfaithful? Taking her out to dinner? Jimmy Carter would have said . . . But, you know, fuck Jimmy Carter.
     
     
    IN THE MORNING, he cleaned up and decided to head out to Country Kitchen for French toast and link sausage; and, he thought, since he didn’t know exactly what he’d be doing all day, he might as well take the boat, just in case.
    He backed around, hooked up, and took off. At the street, he took the curb-cut too short and he felt the trailer’s right wheel bounce over the curb.

    IN AN INFINITESIMALLY SHORT SPACE of time, the bomb in the trailer blew up and the world lurched and Virgil found himself on the street, crawling away from the truck, with the sense of blood in his nose and mouth, though when he wiped his face with his hand, there wasn’t any. He rolled onto his butt and looked back. The boat had been cut in half, but the truck itself seemed untouched; gasoline was pouring onto the street, and he thought, Fire .
    He turned and continued crawling, then got to his feet and staggered away. He thought, How did I get in the street . . . ?
    He could hear sirens, then, and two people ran out of the Holiday Inn’s front door; he saw a window had blown out. The smell of gasoline was intense.... He pulled himself together and realized that when the bomb went off, he’d instinctively jammed the truck’s gear shift into park, and had rolled out the door.... Hadn’t thought about it—nothing had gone through his mind at all—he’d just done it.
    More people were running toward him, and the truck and trailer, and he pointed at the two closest, the ones who’d come out of the Holiday Inn, and said, “Keep everybody away. Keep everybody back. There’s gasoline all over the place. One of you, get inside and call nine-one-one and tell them we need a fire truck here now. Go.”
    A minute later, when the first deputy arrived, Virgil was already on the phone to Barlow: “The guy came after me. He blew up my boat.”
    “I’m coming,” Barlow said.

    THE DEPUTY RAN UP and asked, “You okay?”
    “Well, I’m scared shitless,” Virgil said.
    “Man: you’re lucky to be alive. Anybody hurt inside?” He went running into the Holiday Inn.
    Virgil let him go: he was feeling a little distant from events.
     
     
    GAS HAD STOPPED POURING out of the boat, but was still trickling out. He had a twenty-gallon tank that ran under the floor, and it had been a miracle, he thought, that the gas hadn’t started burning. Staying well back, Virgil made a wide circle, checking the damage. The boat was gone: totaled. The blast had ripped the boat in half, right at the midsection. The bomb must have been in one of the rod-storage lockers down the right side of the boat, he thought.
    He worked through it. The bomb would have been more certainly deadly, he thought, if it had been placed under the driver’s door of the truck. That would have done him for sure. But he’d parked the truck right out front, where it could be seen from both the Holiday Inn and the highway. Too much traffic to take the risk . . .
    The boat, on the other hand, had been in the overflow lot, where Virgil had parked it to get it out of the way. There were lights, but it’d still be dim back there; and depending on how the bomb was rigged, it wouldn’t have taken more than a few seconds to put it down inside the rod locker.
    At least, he thought—still feeling a little distant—they hadn’t gotten his muskie rods. He hadn’t had them out yet. He’d lost a couple walleye rigs, and a nice little ultralight bass rod and reel....
    More deputies came in, and rubberneckers, and then the fire truck, and Virgil stood on a curb and watched them foam the gasoline. Barlow arrived, and came trotting over, followed by one of the crime-scene technicians. He put a hand on Virgil’s shoulder and asked, “You okay?”
    “More or less,” Virgil said. “I’d like to get the truck away from there, so I can stay mobile. I didn’t want to do anything until you got here.”
    “Give us a few minutes to look at it,” Barlow said. Then, “I wonder why he didn’t put it under the truck . . . ?”
    Virgil told him his theory on that, and the ATF man nodded and said, “You’re probably right.”