I laughed nervously. “They, uh, gave me a bit of a scare yesterday.”

“Tell ya what,” Timmy said. “I want you to be able to relax, so I’ll have the dogs put out in the barn.”

“I’d be most grateful,” I said.

“Wendell,” Timmy said, “take the pups out, okay?”

“Sure thing, Timmy,” he said, and disappeared toward the back of the house.

A heavyset woman, about Timmy’s age I guessed, appeared. She was dressed in a dark T-shirt and stretch slacks, her graying hair pulled back with pins. Her neck was jowly, her nose red and splotchy. “I’m Timmy’s wife, Charlene,” she said, motioning for us to take a seat in the living room, which was littered with mismatched chairs, plaid couches, coffee and end tables buried in car and sporting and gun magazines.

Dad settled into a chair and I was about to take a spot on the couch when I was distracted by something.

Hanging above the fireplace mantel, slipped into a cheap black frame, was a military dress photograph of Timothy McVeigh. The Oklahoma City bomber. The man convicted, and ultimately put to death, for murdering 168 people when his rental truck, loaded with explosives, destroyed one side of a federal government building on April 19, 1995. I instantly recalled that less formal shot of McVeigh, in his orange prison jumpsuit, being paraded before the press on his way to a police van while an angry mob screamed out what they wanted to do with him.

The very idea that someone would frame that man’s picture and put it on a wall left me numb.

For a moment, I didn’t realize Timmy was attempting to make another introduction. “I want you to meet May,” Timmy said, and I turned around to see, standing shyly next to him, the young woman who’d fallen, weeping, into his arms the day before. If it weren’t for her tired and vacant look, she would have been a lovely woman. Her dirty blonde hair half hung over her eyes, which probably suited her at that moment, since she didn’t seem to want to look me or Dad in the eye. She tried to force a smile as she was introduced.

“I’m very sorry,” I said. “I understand you and Mr. Dewart were close. He was your boyfriend?”

Her smile cracked. “We were friends,” she said.

“Awful, awful thing,” said Charlene, and Timmy nodded along with her. “Just awful. Terrible for his family.”

“Daddy says he was looking for a bear,” May said, without, it seemed, much conviction. “It just, it just doesn’t seem possible.”

Timmy Wickens slid an arm around his daughter’s shoulder. “Honey, why don’t you go help Mom with dinner.”

She turned obediently and sleepwalked her way to the kitchen, Charlene following her.

“She’s very upset,” Timmy said, once the women were out of earshot.

“I can imagine,” said Dad.

I was about to sit down on the couch for a second time when another man, the one Timmy had referred to as Dougie the day before, strode into the room with a young boy.

“Well, now you can meet everyone,” Timmy said. “Charlene’s son Dougie, and May is my daughter, and this here is my grandson Jeffrey, May’s boy.”

Dougie nodded and continued on to the kitchen, but Jeffrey approached with his arm extended. He was holding, in his left hand, a TIE fighter, a model spaceship with two hexagonal wings connected to a round pod, from the Star Wars movies.

“Pleased to meet you,” he said, shaking my hand and then Dad’s.

He was a handsome young boy, shiny blond hair swept to one side, a look of innocence in his eyes.

“Hello,” I said. “Nice TIE fighter. You got an Imperial soldier inside the cockpit there?”

Jeffrey brightened. Imagine an adult knowing such a thing. “Wow. No, I haven’t got one of those yet. You like Star Wars?”

“I love Star Wars,” I said. “I love all sorts of science fiction. I’ve even written a few science fiction books.”

“No kidding? Were they made into movies?”

“No,” I said.

“But they were optioned, at least, weren’t they, son?” Dad asked.

“No, Dad, none of them were optioned.” To Jeffrey, I said, “My whole office at home is filled with sci-fi toys. Star Trek, Lost in Space, all kinds of stuff. I’ve never really grown up.”

Jeffrey giggled at that. “I haven’t seen you around very much,” he said. He nodded toward my dad. “I’ve seen Mr. Walker down by the cabins, but not you. Are you renting a cabin?”

“I’m borrowing one. I’m Zack Walker. That’s my dad.”

Jeffrey nodded, then frowned. “I guess you heard about Morton.”

“Yes,” I said. “We have.”

“He was looking for a bear and it killed him. That’s what happened.” He said it with conviction.

“How old are you, Jeffrey?” I asked.

“I’m ten,” he said. “I don’t go to school. I learn right here at home. My mom teaches me, and Grandpa helps prepare lessons for me.”

“Isn’t that great,” I said.

Jeffrey said he had to go and ran off after Dougie. Timmy smiled proudly as I sat down on the couch. “He’s a great kid.”

“Who’s that?” Dad said, pointing to the McVeigh portrait. Jesus, Dad, don’t go there, I thought.

Timmy smiled reverently. “That’s Timothy McVeigh, a famous fighter for freedom. You must have heard of him.”

Dad, who’s never been quite as plugged into the news as I, might not have recognized the picture, but he had no trouble with the name. “Christ, he’s the one blew up that building, isn’t he?”

Timmy shook his head sadly. “That’s what they’d have you believe, but there are a lot of interesting questions about that day. Did you know that?”

We shook our heads.

“Well, one big question is, why did some federal employees who did FBI work not come to the Alfred P. Murrah Building that day? Huh? Did you know that a lot of them didn’t report for work? Pretended to be sick? Do you know why? It’s because they knew something was going to happen, that’s why.”

I leaned forward on the couch. This was not something I’d heard before. “What are you getting at, Timmy?”

“What I’m saying is, they had to have been tipped off by the military. You see, the amount of damage done to the building could never have been accomplished with the kind of bomb they say Mr. McVeigh had in that cube van. Absolutely impossible. Had to be something much bigger, something that detonated either instead of, or in addition to, that rental truck.”

“I’m a bit confused,” I said. “You’re saying the military, the U.S. government, knew the bombing was going to happen, and got some of its people out of there, but let the rest die?”

“They didn’t just know about the bombing,” he said, and paused. “They’re the ones that did it.”

I was speechless for a few seconds. “The government bombed its own people?”

“It’s incredible, isn’t it?” Wickens said, as if sharing in my astonishment. “There are a lot of parallels between that event and what happened at the Twin Towers. You know how they pancaked down, one floor collapsing on top of another?”

The unforgettable images flashed in my mind. “Yeah,” I said.

“That was because there were already bombs in the buildings. That’s how they came down so perfectly, like when those demolition experts go in and drop a building, you know.”

I paused. “You noticed those two planes, right?”

Timmy smiled and waved his hand at me. “Anyway, with the Oklahoma City thing, it just shows you what lengths the government will go to.”

“To do what?” I asked. “What lengths?”

“To discredit honest, hardworking people, patriots, people like Timothy McVeigh, people like us and yourselves. You know,” he said, smiling, “I’ve always found it a curious coincidence that he and I share the same first name.”

“I’m still not sure I follow,” I said. “How did this discredit people like McVeigh, and you?”

Timmy Wickens nodded patiently, as though he’d had to explain this to others many times, and was willing to go through it as often as was necessary to get his message out there. “The government, when it becomes too powerful and strives to interfere too much in people’s lives, by tracking their movements, their financial transactions, by taking away their ability to defend themselves by bearing arms, will go to drastic measures to turn the public against those people who are fighting back to reclaim their constitutional rights and stop this country from slipping into moral bankruptcy and the watering down of the races.” He was jabbing a finger in the air at me to make his point. “What are we to make of a world that lets colored people run rampant and turn our cities into jungles, that lets faggots get their own TV shows and lets them live together without no shame at all? Did you know, right here in Braynor, the faggots want to put a float into the parade? And that the town, our white mayor, who is married to a colored, is probably going to let them? Can you imagine such a thing? They’ll probably build a huge purse and ride in it.” He chuckled at his own joke.