“Timothy McVeigh is a martyr. He was a plant, but he was a martyr. They sacrificed him.”
“Yes,” Susan said. “He’s a martyr. He’s also dead and a dirty word to practically every ordinary American. Make sense for a little while, will you please? What is it that you think you’re playing with here?”
“I’m not playing.”
“No,” Susan said. “And neither are they. They’ve got tanks, and mortar, and nuclear bombs. We talk about the Second Amendment and about how the right to bear arms means that we’ll be able to defend ourselves against the government if they ever come after us, but that’s not true. They’ve got stuff we couldn’t get our hands on if we tried, and couldn’t conceal if we got our hands on it. Howitzers. Grenades.”
“We’ve got grenades.”
“We do? Good. But it doesn’t change anything. They can put together an army to storm this place if they want to. How are we going to protect it? How is Michael going to protect it? I’m not saying he’s completely wrong. I can see his point. That—FBI agent. Yes. I can see how that’s going to get us into a lot of trouble, but the smart thing to do in that case is to run, take off for Idaho or Montana or one of those places where we’d be impossible to find. Go to Alaska. Go to Canada—”
“I’ve got a headache,” Kathi said. “I’ve got to get an aspirin.” Susan leaned forward and picked up her Diet Coke. The curls on the top of her head looked fake. The thin chain bracelet around her left wrist made her arm look too plump. Her eye shadow was smeared. She had not been laid off her job. She had taken a sick day to be here now. Kathi walked away from her, through the small dining room, into the kitchen. It was the middle of the morning now, but the world was still grey. She had begun to feel that the world had been grey nonstop all her life. Even when she was growing up, there had never been any sun. That was ridiculous. She had to be careful. It was far too easy to go off the rails when you were under this much pressure.
She went to the cabinet next to the refrigerator and got out her bottle of aspirin—generic, bought at Price Heaven for half the price of name-brand aspirin. That was one of the ways Americans could figure out what was going on in their country, if they were willing to pay attention. The health care crisis was a sham, cooked up by the insurance companies and the hospitals and the big government health care centers to make Americans think they had to have socialized medicine if they were going to have health care at all. It was just one more thing, one more signpost on the way to tyranny. Once they got control of the health care system, they would be able to impose all kinds of rules. Never mind the rules against smoking, which were unconstitutional and tyrannical as they stood. They could force people to change their diets to grains and rice instead of meat and potatoes. They could make daily exercise a requirement for every citizen. They could fine people for doing things like eating at McDonald’s or sleeping in on Sunday mornings. If society pays for it, society should be able to make the rules for how it is used. How would Americans feel when that little precept was applied to the very food they ate and the hours they spent asleep in bed?
Kathi got a glass from another cabinet and went to the sink and filled it with water. Then she went to the wall phone. She didn’t need to look up the number. She knew it by heart, and had, for over two years. It was really true that she was not good at planning. She was not good at making decisions, either. She never liked to do anything drastic without consulting somebody with better information. The phone on the other end of the line rang and rang. Her head ached. Suddenly, the line was picked up and a recorded voice said, “We’re sorry. The number you have called is not in service at this time.” Kathi hung up and stared at the phone. She was sure she couldn’t have dialed a wrong number. This wasn’t a number she had to look up. Still, she was nervous. She could have made a mistake. She dialed again and listened to the ring again. The line was picked up and the recorded voice repeated,
“We’re sorry. The number you have called is not in service at this time.” Kathi hung up again. She got two aspirin out of the bottle and took them. She bit her lip and tried to think. Everything was on the move, now. Michael was on the move too. He must have canceled his phone service and started to go into hiding already. By tonight, they would all be in hiding. There was nothing to worry about. She just hadn’t realized it was all happening so fast. Even though she’d been stressing speed and urgency to Susan, somewhere at the core of her she had still been tied to the old rhythms, when there had been no emergency. She had still been thinking the way she thought before Anthony Ross was dead.