Heaven Should Fall - By Rebecca Coleman Page 0,121

want a trip into D.C. to be pointless. It was a long drive, after all, and I hadn’t been lying to Jill when I said I was still amenable to plan A.

It was dawn when I merged onto the New Jersey Turnpike. The sky was streaked pink and orange, but my eyes had gotten so bleary by that point that it was all running together like a wet painting. I pulled into the first rest stop to take a leak and buy some Red Bull. In the men’s room there was this guy helping his kid change clothes—I guess the kid had spilled a drink on himself or gotten carsick or something—and the boy was crying and crying, just beside himself, standing there in his shirt and socks and a pair of diapers. You could tell he was exhausted. The dad was talking to him real softly, saying things like “One-two-three!” as he lifted the kid’s shirt over his head, wiping down his chest with a wet paper towel. That about killed me to watch. I couldn’t pee fast enough. I hated thinking about how I was never going to be there for TJ like that, hated it like death. The thought crept into my mind then: Maybe this isn’t worth it. If it had just been me driving down there, to be perfectly honest, I probably would have turned around at that point and driven home. But this wasn’t just about me, and it was crucial that I remember that. I was already shut out of every way I knew to work the system, and it wasn’t acceptable to just roll over and let my brother be a victim of the government’s indifference. At the end of this I wanted somebody up there to sincerely regret that they had brushed off Elias Olmstead, and there was no other option but action. So I got back in the truck, and Dodge drove the rest of the way.

Just outside the D.C. line we stopped at a Starbucks and I ran in to change clothes in the bathroom. Starbucks always has these big single-toilet bathrooms, no stalls, so you can lock the door and get all that space to yourself. I ruffled up the front of my hair a little bit, left a collar button undone, tried to look the way I always did. Casual but polished. It made people comfortable. As I smoothed on some aftershave I looked at my reflection in the mirror over the sink and tried to psych myself up a little. The Most Handsome Bastard in the World. Never had any trouble winning people over to my side. Turn it on, Cade, I thought, and hustled back out to the truck.

First we drove down to the National Mall and Dodge dropped me off at the curb. I had my messenger bag with me and also a plastic shopping bag, in which was a box containing one of the pipe bombs I’d built. It was a crappy little thing and chances were fair that it wouldn’t even go off. I didn’t care, since the object of it was to draw every emergency vehicle and cop in the city to this one little corner, not to be the big event. I jogged down the stairs into the Metro station, left the box next to a bench, then jumped on the train to Union Station. All over every Metro station are these signs that read, If You See Something, Say Something, and I had my fingers crossed that somebody would. Otherwise the day was going to involve a whole lot of waiting.

In Union Station I dropped all my letters in the mailbox and stopped at the Au Bon Pain to get coffee and a croissant and kill some time. Standing there in front of the bakery rack, looking at the chocolate croissants, I had this automatic thought that I ought to pick out something healthier. The irony—even in the midst of a plan to blow up a Senate building and off myself in the process, the fear of developing love handles was still as pure as ever. I got the plain croissant anyway just on principle of staying true to what I believed in, right down to the last minute, and went outside to sit on a planter and watch for signs of chaos. Dodge was circling the block, listening to the handheld police scanner for news to call me about, and every time his truck passed by I felt