The Oregon Experiment by Keith Scribner Read Free Book Online

anarchists you came across.
    Clay passed him his coffee cup. “That sounds good,” he said. “I’ll get it ready.”
    Panama drank some coffee, then handed the cup back, and they both listened to Flak for a minute.
    “That other thing,” Clay said. “How about it? I’ve done some preparation. Real simple detonators.”
    “That’s your own deal,” Panama said.
    “I could use a partner,” Clay told him.
    Panama took a step toward the door, shaking his head. “That one’s suicide.”
    An hour later Clay moved through the shadows beneath the bridge, his black bag pulling heavy on his shoulder, nervy glints of moonlight off the river. A whistle blew as the train rolled into Southtown. His boots crushed through woodchips and mulch, then he squatted low, watching a yellow light go red, watching for cars coming over the bridge and the occasional pedestrian in downtown Douglas after ten p.m. on a Monday.
    The whistle blew closer. Crossing gates dropped, lights flashed, bells rang.
    Crouching down beside the Bank of America, he could see that the Wells Fargo across the street had already replaced their glass. Tonight was risky, just one night later, but as his plans became more sophisticated, he needed to ratchet up the risk and test his abilities. These local actions, even the operation with Panama, were honing Clay’s skills for devising plans and carrying through under pressure—training for the big one.
    After he threw the brick tonight, he could probably just walk the four blocks back to his room, but he would stick with his plan.
Make a plan, stick to it
. First priority,
always:
no one gets injured. Second priority: don’t get caught. Third priority: achieve the objective of destroying property owned by religious bigots, corporations, and the U.S. government. Disrupt the system to hasten its downfall.
    He ran through the plan in his mind. In seconds he’d be across the tracks, and a minute later the train would pass by at walking speed. Three engines, a dozen flatbeds stacked with lumber and plywood, then raw logs with mangled bark oozing sap, then open-topped cars heaped with pulp for the cardboard plant downriver—the screech and clank of hundreds of tons of slow rumbling steel—and with an easy hop he’d be sitting in an empty boxcar, his legs hanging out the door.
    On the river side of the train, Clay would be invisible. They’d roll past his buddy’s auto-body shop and Crazy Eights, where Randall would no longer run Clay a tab. Behind the bar the tracks hooked left through the old switching yard, a desolate space cut off by the highway. It was one of the oldest parts of Douglas, but over the decades brainless development had left it orphaned. A tiny old church, abandoned for half a century, was all that remained under a sick orange halo from the Home Depot across the highway.
    He’d ride the twenty minutes to Fullerton and spend the night at afriend’s place a block from the tracks. In the morning he’d hop the five-o’clock back to Douglas and get to work an hour later.
    The train was two blocks away. The ground shook. Clay rose from his crouch, and for a long moment the world paused to provide him his chance: he tossed the brick back and forth between his hands, the earthy red dust dry in his nose; he cocked his arm as the train whistle blew, and heaved the brick like a catapult, not a quarterback, savoring the heartbeats from action to result. The plate glass buckled, then dropped, along with everything reflected in it. The glowing Bank of America sign, the seven-story riverfront luxury condos, the courthouse, and the Church of the Savior—all of it crashed straight down, and in the seconds before the alarm, the last falling shards tinkled like a baby’s music box.

Chapter 2
    T hursday morning, a week after arriving in Douglas, Scanlon took his bowl of Cheerios into the backyard. Plump blueberries came off by the handful, and he kept dropping more in the bowl as he ate. Barefoot, in boxers