After Three
Worse happened three days later, when Timothy McVeigh detonated thirteen barrels of ammonium nitrate, loaded into a Ryder
truck, in front of the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City. The truck was in the loading zone directly beneath
the day care center on the second floor. The front of the tower was sheared away, as if it were a toy office building that
Allison and Van and Allison’s parents sat together on the foot of the bed, unable to pull themselves from the live coverage.
Allison’s parents had flown to Greenland to join them, the ex-cheerleader and former congressman, sitting with their daughter
trapped between them. They were with her every minute except when she needed to sleep or attend another interview with the
FBI. Her father hardly let go of her hand.
The street in front of the Murrah building had been obliterated, parked cars flipped over or cooked down to the iron frames.
Allison thought it looked as if the Murrah building had been visited by King Sorrow. Even then, Allie knew this was somehow
part of it, that somehow this was on her too.
She couldn’t talk to Van about it until they went to bed, her parents finally gone. Allie and Van were under the covers, Van
spooning her from behind, when she said, “We have to talk to Colin. He’ll know what we need to do about Oklahoma.”
“What the hell do you think we’re going to do about Oklahoma? We aren’t going to do anything except watch TV and feel fuckin’ sick, same as everyone.” After a few moments of silence, he added, “I need to get high.”
“But, Van,” Allie said. “The guy who did this, he’s the exact same kind of creep as Horation Matthews. He wanted to get at
the ATF, at the FBI. He wanted to water the tree of liberty with the blood of a couple hundred government employees. Don’t
you think the two things are connected? Oklahoma and BA 238? Matthews and McVeigh?” The TV had just started talking about
McVeigh by name, said he was in custody, considered a person of interest.
Even as she said it, she recalled something Matthews had said to her: You can’t play chess with just the black pieces.
A white army must surely stand opposed. My confederates are moving even now.
He had mentioned names. Timothy McVeigh hadn’t been one of them, she was sure of that—which calmed her nerves when she couldn’t
sleep. No matter how she strained at it, she couldn’t dredge up the names Matthews had mentioned. It was months before they
came back to her—Bridges and Parker—and then only because she saw them in print. They had been favorite aliases of McVeigh
and his compadre, Terry Nichols.
“What are you asking me, Allie?” Van asked her. “If they were all friends? That’s your area, not mine. I think sometimes it’s
better not to know the odds.”
In a while he was snoring in her ear, a light, soft, gentle buzz. His hand was around her waist and she held it in hers, and
was more in love with him than she had ever been. When he slept, he reminded her of a stuffed doll at a yard sale, a skinny
rabbit maybe, with a missing eye and some stitches going in one arm and dirt in his fur. It was impossible not to want to
squeeze him close and wish to mend him.
She never knew what sort of aid and comfort Horation Matthews offered McVeigh and Nichols: weapons, or a stolen car, or faked-up
driver’s licenses, or money, or the offer of shelter, or simply encouragement. It seemed likely he would’ve offered his assistance,
even if he wasn’t under King Sorrow’s shadow.
But the dragon had been coming for him. Blotting out the moon at night over his compound and taunting him from the shadows.
She thought a part of Horation had gloried in King Sorrow’s attention.
It made his struggle mythic, as move was met with countermove.
It had thrilled him—was a form of validation.
It was late, well past dragonedy o’clock, and Allie had almost drifted off when she saw the golden flash of flames around
the edges of the curtain. Adrenaline punched into her bloodstream in a cold rush and she sprang awake, thinking, He’s back, the dragon is back, and he’s going to burn this whole village to the ground. For a moment she was too afraid to move.
But the flare of brightness shifted and rippled and took on a new hue, a sort of glow-stick green, which began to shade back
into gold. Allie pushed Van’s hand away and herself free of the blankets and walked to the window in bare feet. She lifted
the curtains and stared into the evening’s last darkness, an atlas of stars spread across the night. A whip of emerald brilliance
uncoiled across the sky and faded. Then a gold belt rose over the ocean, like a line of bronze spears, which fell in turn,
collapsed like the Murrah building, and bright red wings unfurled and opened wide, a dragon as big as the night itself falling
upon the shoreline below. Allison had never seen the northern aurora before—the ouroboros!, she thought—and the air caught in her lungs at the wonder of it.
She watched until the night burned itself down to the gray ash of dawn.