Bomb Threat

My desk is scooted into the darkest part of the Quonset hut, so that I can read Burro on the Beach while Mrs. Richards makes everybody else go through the math assignment. I hate math, especially fractions. I just can’t do it, and if I stay in the back and don’t make any noise, she’ll leave me alone and I won’t have to. Another acoustic tile falls from the ceiling and hits Zach Hughes, which is good, because he’s a dick. They must be testing out at the range. The ceiling’s been falling all day.

I go back to Burro on the Beach, hidden in my math book. The kids in the book are on the beach with their burro, making s’mores. I wish I had a burro. I wish I lived at the beach instead of in the desert. I look up in time to see Mrs. Richards grab one of the Tiffany’s shoulders. She’s bending over, checking her work. I open my desk and flump the book into all the stuff inside. I get a lot of demerits because of my desk. I feel around and find my big tablet of soft paper with solid pale-blue lines and a dotted blue line between them—if I look busy, Mrs. Richards will leave me alone. There’s a knock on our classroom door, and then Mrs. Richards is making us form our usual single-file line and march out of the room. We march to the farthest edge of the playground and then she tells us there is a bomb threat, and that we will stand there until the base bomb squad authorizes re-entry to the school. I look over and the big kids from the junior high annex are standing around on the other side of the playground. We watch the bomb squad go from building to building. No building explodes and they don’t bring any bombs out, and then it’s 3:00 p.m., the buses come, and we can go home.

That week, there are three more bomb threats. Mrs. Richards sighs and leads us all out of the classroom a little more slowly each time. In Assembly, we get a lecture from the man who usually comes once a year to tell us to report people who ask us about our parents’ work. He tells us we will go to federal prison if we make bomb threats. The microphone squeals and he thumps it with his finger. Then he tells us that they think they know who is doing it. And … The … F … B … I … Is … Investigating. Everybody gets quiet after that. The man looks out at us, and I look down at my hands when his eyes move toward me. Even though it’s not me doing it, I feel like it is. I like the bomb threats and every day I’m in school I hope for one.

Although I never stop hoping, there are no more bomb threats the rest of elementary school or junior high.

There haven’t been any bomb threats since I started high school, but high school is interesting on its own. Sitting on a rock out in the desert, drinking a Dr. Pepper with a mix of liquors carefully stolen from my parents’ liquor cabinet—each bottle left at the same relative level—I find out who the bomber was.

“You’re kidding,” I say to Michael van Dreisen, the most straight-edge person I know, “You?”

“Yeah, Beth,” he says, frowning at my drink. “Me.” Michael doesn’t experiment with alcohol, as he puts it. He seems so well adjusted and mature, and as far as I can tell the only thing he does wrong is hang out with me in the desert at night.

I sit on the rock, staring into my Dr. Pepper. Except for really believing that building better missiles will lead to world peace, Michael’s the most normal person in my world. He’s a National Merit Scholar. He lettered in track and swimming. He’s on the forensics team and he’s a mathlete. He actually has fun at the pep rallies. Not only all that, but his father is on the base bomb detection and removal squad.

“No way that was you,” I tell him. He folds his arms and looks me in the eyes.

Years later, after dropping out of college again, I get a letter with no return address on the envelope. It’s from Michael, enclosing my Social Security card, which he found under the seat of his car. I must have lost it there the last time we both were home for Christmas, about three years ago. The letter wants to know if I’ve been feeling socially insecure since then, and includes a phone number with a 619 prefix. Our hometown is 619, so I decide he must be living there despite all the vows not to be one of the people who end up going back. A slow job in the defense industry and a big, cheap house in Ridgecrest is the La Brea Tar Pits for human beings. I call the number and let it ring for a while, waiting for a machine to pick up, and he answers the phone in a whisper.

“What’s up?” I ask, after he informs me that San Diego is also in the 619 area code. He tells me, very quietly, that a few nights ago something ripped into and partially ate a bag of grits he had sitting on the kitchen counter. He suspects a rat is climbing up the palm tree by his kitchen window, coming in and eating his grits. He is sitting in the dark at the kitchen table with a bottle of whiskey and a loaded Sig Sauer .380; I ask what he’s using as a bullet stop.

“The rat,” he whispers. Seriously, I say, if you shoot at this grits-thieving rat, won’t the bullet go through the wall and maybe hit somebody?

“No,” he tells me, “I’m using the same bullets the Israelis use for hijackers.”

“Oh,” I say. “Huh.” I hear the gurgle of a bottle being inverted, and a soft swallowing noise.

“Excuse me,” he says.

“Certainly,” I say. After that, there’s a moment when neither of us says anything, and then I ask: Why not try trapping the rats? He has, he says, and the traps didn’t work. The rats are too smart. So, I ask him, why not just shut your window?

“Too hot for that,” he says.

Keep the grits in a rat-proof container?

“The bag’s too big,” he says.

“Okay,” I say, “so you get this rat. Won’t there be others?”

“Let ‘em come,” he says, “I have a lot of bullets.”

I look out my own kitchen window. There’s a full moon. I picture it above Michael’s apartment building in San Diego. Silver-blue light streams in through the window he’s left open for the rat, making the whiskey on the table glow. I see the moonlight illuminating his profile, glazing the hand that’s resting within reach of the gun in the shadows.

“If any reporters ask me about you,” I say, “I’ll just tell them you were a quiet, polite young man.”

“Do that,” he says.