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morning rainstorm, piercing the sky with occasional crackling bolts. It was a good spring shower, the kind that cleanses the land and refreshes crops.
    As day broke, electricity was crossing the sky in a different form. Linemen, resembling steeplejacks shimmying up church spires, climbed wooden poles planted along Clark Road. Ropey black wires were strung along the tops of the poles, bearing the promise of cheap and plentiful power on demand courtesy of Michigan’s Consumers Power Company. This promised an enormous change for the rural town. Some homes— such as Kehoe’s—used a generator for electricity. Public buildings—including the Bath Consolidated School—also used generators. There was a public generator in town as well for some of the other buildings, although it wasn’t reliable. That was the problem with generators. Even the best of them had to be nursed like newborn kittens, constantly fed and watched over to make sure they maintained healthy purrs.
    The men on the poles represented a new dawn. The instantaneous bright lights of the Roaring Twenties were—at last—coming to Bath.
     
    Beneath the Consolidated School building, electricity was in limbo. The well pump, which provided water to the school, was acting up. Frank Smith was expecting the repairman, a Mr. Harrington, but didn’t know what time he was coming. 1
    Harrington was a real character. He only had one arm, and for fun he liked to grab a student now and again, hold the victim between his stump and rib cage, and give a wicked head rub using his only hand. 2
    Figuring it would be a few hours before Harrington arrived to fix the pump, Smith didn’t want to fire up the generator just yet. The school would have to make do without power this morning. 3
     
    The near-future of Kehoe’s farm was dependent on electricity as well, though it would have to wait a little longer to unleash. There was business to attend to first. Shortly after daybreak, Kehoe loaded a package into his truck and drove to town. It was urgent that the package—an old packing crate cut down to size, loaded with some kind of material, and sealed tight—be sent this morning to Clyde B. Smith, a Lansing insurance man. The two had a working relationship through the school board: Smith’s agency was responsible for the six-thousand-dollar surety bond on Bath Consolidated, which Kehoe had posted after he was elected treasurer.
    From his farm it was a quick drive into town. Kehoe parked his machine in front of the post office. The building had yet to open for the day. With no desire to waste time, Kehoe carried his package over to the nearby railway depot and arranged for a morning delivery to Lansing. The box could be sent express rail via the next train to Laingsburg, and from there it would go out on the first train to Lansing. The stencil noting the box’s original contents apparently made little impression on D. B. Huffman, the railway agent.
    The simple black letters read, “High Explosives. Dangerous.” 4
     
    Albert Detluff was also in town at this early hour, having just picked up some duck’s eggs from a nearby farm. He knew about Smith’s situation with the pump and wanted to check out the problem for himself. Seeing Kehoe walking to his truck, Detluff called out and drove his machine over to his fellow school board trustee.
    The two men engaged in idle talk, the kind of banter that one takes for granted in the moment but becomes strangely significant in starkhindsight. Detluff asked Kehoe when the next board meeting was. Either the nineteenth or the twentieth, Kehoe replied. Detluff mentioned that there were problems with the well at the school and would Kehoe mind joining him to take a quick look?
    Kehoe got in his truck and drove to the schoolhouse as Detluff followed in his own car. When they arrived, Kehoe told Detluff he remembered that the school board meeting was this Friday, the twentieth. As they walked into the building, Kehoe checked his watch: 8:25.