Everything You Want Me to Be(91)

On the morning of the blast, we dropped the boat in and parked the cruiser in front of the entrance to the lot at 5:00 a.m., well before dawn. I posted the Lake Closed sign next to the newspaper notice on the gate.

“Warm already,” I commented as we pulled away from the dock.

Bud sat in the passenger seat, looking ahead at the black water. His face was unreadable as he nodded. “It’s gonna be a scorcher this year.”

Neither one of us spoke after that. The demo wasn’t scheduled for another hour, so I killed the motor and drifted into one of the better inlets, handing the bait to Bud. We cast out the lines in silence and waited. Every once in a while I turned to check the crew’s progress. They milled around the barn, a bunch of dark figures against the faint orange lightening up the horizon. A few days ago they’d strung up a net to catch the bits that were going to blast into the water, making it look like the barn was caught on a giant flyswatter.

Bud didn’t turn around. When he got a bite, he didn’t even pull the fish out. Pull it up, I wanted to say, but the words wouldn’t come. We both watched the line tug this way and that until the fish thrashed free of the hook and swam away.

After a while the sun showed its face, throwing the cattails and weeds into that hollow first morning light. I reeled in my line.

“It’s time.”

Bud followed suit and set his pole aside without comment.

“Better do one last sweep of the perimeter and then we can set up in the middle of the water. We’ll be well clear of the blast radius.”

He nodded.

I slowed down when we got to the launch, making sure nobody was trying to slip by the cruiser and set in anyway. There were plenty of cars lined up on the road, but folks were lounging on their hoods with binoculars—they’d come for the show. There’d been a lot of grumbling on the timing of the thing, and now no serious fishermen were bothering with the lake at all today.

I motored over toward the east side by the barn, giving the demo crew a quick nod to let them know we were clear.

“Fifteen minutes,” the foreman shouted from the bank. I waved and headed back to the middle of the lake.

Bud’s stare seemed to harden when we pulled up near the barn, but he still didn’t have a word to say. Even though we’d shared plenty of quiet moments over the years, most of that had come from my side. Bud had always been the one who reached out, ready with a joke or a story about the kids. I’d lived with my silence until it was like a wife to me and I didn’t think twice about it. Bud’s silence was unnatural. I didn’t know how to break through it. There was a barrier between us now, a hard place that used to be easy.

I positioned the boat and killed the motor. There wasn’t any breeze today, which was good. As the seconds ticked by, I couldn’t help tensing up, feeling that old nausea.

“Damned if I’ll ever get used to explosions again,” I said, just to say something.

We watched as the last of the men cleared out of the barn and drove their 4x4s in the direction of Winifred’s house, where they’d set up the controls. It was soon now.

I wiped a rag over my forehead, which felt sweaty and cold. Bud let out a long, loud breath.

“Don’t suppose you’ve got any of that confiscated booze around here.”

I was surprised—Bud didn’t drink. “I don’t. No one’s been on the water yet this year. And usually the boys’ll split whatever we do take. It doesn’t last long.”

“Probably best anyway. It’s just . . . I can’t . . .”

“I know.”

“You don’t know.” He shook his head and his eyes seared into the barn. He wouldn’t look away from it.

“You don’t know the first thing about having your daughter’s life ripped away from you, making you feel about as powerless as a gnat. And then to find out she was sleeping with her teacher—her married teacher. It was like I didn’t know her at all. I didn’t know my own flesh and blood.”

“Hogwash. Course you knew her. She was a teenager, Bud. They think they’re in love and do stupid things. They all snap out of it eventually. Hattie would have, too.”

“And him.” His rage took over again.

“I sat across from him at Hattie’s conferences not two months ago and listened to him tell us what a bright, talented girl she was. And all the while he had his dirty hands under her skirt. God, he should rot in prison his whole life just for that. But then to take her life . . . to stab her in her heart . . .”

Bud’s entire body was shaking now, the anger was pure and boiling in him and it had nowhere to go.

“It’s not enough, Del. Prison’s not enough. I need to do something to him. I want to throw him in that barn right now. I want that son of a bitch blown into fish bait for what he did.”

“Bud—” I didn’t know what I was going to say. I didn’t know if there was anything to say to something like that, but it didn’t matter because the blast tore open the morning sky.

The barn exploded in a series of flashes and flying wood, then the smoke billowed out, hiding everything. Without thinking, I had snapped my hand to my holster and crouched behind the windshield of the boat. Bud didn’t seem to notice. As the smoke drifted away and the smell of dynamite singed the air, I eased up a little and took us closer to the shore. These demolition guys knew what they were doing. The barn was now a scrap heap of wood and rubble, half on land and half caught in their giant net.