I open the images Ernie has sent and at a magnification of 100X the BP granules look like broken pieces of coal, black and irregular. At 500X they look like meteorites big enough to land a spacecraft on, rugged and jagged, no two shapes alike. They’re mingled with other debris, what looks like thick cables and cords and crystals in vivid colors. Dirt is only dirt when we don’t see it up close. Under magnification it becomes a ruined world of broken edifices and habitats and the disintegrating remains of past lives that include bacteria and beetles and human beings.

“Well it’s definitely not like smokeless powder, not like any manufactured propellant I’ve seen.” I save the photographs in a folder. “Those granules come in a variety of shapes and sizes that are uniform and don’t occur in nature. They don’t look anything like what you just showed me. But I have to ask you again, Ernie. Old or new? What if someone makes BP? Will it look the same as it did centuries ago?”

“She could be making the stuff,” he says as I watch the Gilbert’s front door open. “Cooking it herself, sure she could. Jim says most people into BP these days are do-it-yourselfers, and it’s risky as hell but not all that hard. Just saltpeter, sulfur and carbon with a dash or two of water and voilà, you’ve made a cake. And I always add the caveat of not trying this at home.”

Amanda Gilbert emerges first on the front porch, and I feel a deep sense of doom rumble through me like an earthquake.

“When it’s dry you break it up and force it through screens or whatever’s handy in the kitchen like a spaghetti strainer.” Ernie continues his deadly cooking lesson while my thoughts keep bumping into Carrie Grethen.

How cruel and cunning it would be to resort to a low-tech black powder bomb loaded with vicious frag like ball bearings and nails. I’d much rather be shot. So would most people. Carrie no doubt would be amused by the thought of such a mutilating way to die. Or maybe her goal is to maim and torment, to terrorize, to rip us apart one inch, one limb, one portion of scalp at a time.

I watch Amanda Gilbert, Benton and Marino talking on the front porch out of the rain as Ernie tells me about other microscopic fragments that he considers significant. It’s possible the black powder was once stored in oak kegs, he’s decided. It could go back to the American Revolution or the Civil War. Unless it’s homemade? The BP Ernie has found can’t be modern. He’s quite certain it isn’t but I’m withholding judgment. If I’m mindful of nothing else this day it’s to be very careful of assumptions.