Roadwork Trivia Quiz

Answer: Firearms

On November 20, 1973, Barton Dawes steps into Harvey's Gun Shop and makes up a story, on the fly, about buying his cousin a gift-- two gifts, really-- a magnum and a four-sixty Weatherbee rifle, the latter being a recommendation of the shopowner. While he makes a scene of pondering the purchase, even going so far as to use the shopowner's phone to pretend to call his wife for her approval, he's already made the decision to spend the $1,000 on the firearms, indicating that he'll pick them up when the ammunition, not presently in stock for the rifle, arrives in a week.

After the purchase he heads home to his house at 1241 Crestallen St. West, a property he and his wife, Mary, have owned for a couple of decades. It's a home they need to be out of by January 20 as the ongoing construction of Highway 784 will result in the demolishing of their neighbourhood. The couple receive yet another note in the mail about this, and while they have looked at new properties, Barton seems dissatisfied not just with the options, but the mere thought of losing their home. They're running out of time.

Answer: Blue Ribbon Laundry

Barton heads to work at the Blue Ribbon Laundry facility and there, from his office, he sees the construction ongoing, noting his disappointment that the local park and the Grand Theater are both gone. He loses forty minutes in this musing before he goes about his work.

There's a lot of buzz about the new plant in Waterford as the deal to secure it is expected to be signed in the next week. Importantly, Bart is expected to speak to his superior, Steve Ordner, in the coming days about his progress on locking down the new facility. The problem is that earlier in the morning, he received an anxious call about his recent work, a consequence of one of his workers, Vinnie, snitching to Steve over dinner. Bart has a lot of his life tied up in the laundry-- the original owners gave him everything, including an education, to help it thrive. He tells Vinnie that the deal is expected to close on Tuesday and Ordner can deal with closing the current building while Highway 784 comes through.

When Friday rolls around, Bart and Steve finally have their conversation but it's a nervous one. As it's revealed, Bart has refused the initial deals for sale. Worse, Bart tells him that the new facility will have potential added costs-- significant ones-- that will result in not only massive renovations to the building, but a 20% utility hike. Much of this is a lie, however. The deal will expire on Tuesday, at Bart's insistence, and the facility will go to a local shoe facility. The following week, he expects to lose his job altogether. He keeps quiet about this expectation.

On the ride home, Bart laments the loss of the neighbourhood and worries what life will be like in the hollow, new place he and Mary will have to move...provided they can move at all.

Answer: A mobster

Barton speaks with his friend, Tom, at a diner and Bart takes the opportunity to ask him about someone alleged to be a local mobster, Salvatore Magliore, and he strikes on a new idea. That night, he calls Magliore up under the guise of hunting down two Eldorados, making an appointment to speak to him.

That evening, Bart remembers how he and Mary spent half a year saving up for their RCA TV, working together to accomplish their goals. Though he misses what they were so long ago, early in their marriage, he appears to be a completely different man now. The next day, when he runs into an old neighbour, he goes out drinking and spends the time lamenting the highway.

When Bart finally visits Magliore's used car lot, the mobster and his associate get him to turn out his pockets and state his business. Suffice to say, Bart wants to buy something off the man, but first, he needs to receive a background check. The mobster tells him to come back the next day and he'll decide if he wants to work with him or not. He can never be too careful in his line of work.

When Bart gets home, Mary is none-the-wiser. He tells her he's still looking for a new house. That night, he dreams of Charlie. At this point, it's been three years since his son's death.

Answer: Explosives

At the laundry, the workplace's, oldest employee, Johnny, ends up in a bad accident and when Barton goes to St. Mary's to see him, it appears that it was a fatal one. It's enough for Bart to determine that now, as the oldest worker still there, he has a new perspective. He throws out his things, leaves a resignation note, and shuts down the building for the day. At the same time, he receives a message-- his ammunition has arrived at Harvey's Gun Shop.

On the day of his departure, things come to a head with the laundry as it is; the Waterford plant was sold to another buyer and the laundry missed its chance. Bart ends up saying his piece to Steve Ordner, but he never goes back to the office again.

In the evening, Bart heads back to Magliore's and indicates his true reason for reaching out-- he wants to blow up the Highway 784 extension because it's responsible for demolishing twenty years of his life. He's already cashed in his life insurance policy; he's ready to do it. Fortunately, Magliore says no as he's too worried Barton will spill to the cops and make things worse for him. Worse than that, his effort won't help; the state will just repair it and they'll plow him under.

By the time Bart gets home, Mary has already heard the news. She expresses, tearfully, that she feels she's being punished for giving him "one dead son and one time bomb son". The argument doesn't resolve. Instead, Bart takes a seat in front of the TV.

Answer: She's hitchhiking

As the month changes to December, Bart's days at home start to blur together. With Mary having moved out to her parents' place, he goes out driving the turnpike during his days and he goes home to watch TV with the heat on, drunk, at night.

On December 6, Bart picks up Olivia, a hitchhiker, as she passes through en route to Vegas. She seems rightfully guarded, but when he opens up about his gripes with society-- notably that Americans like to be trained to obey-- she gives in to his honesty. Instead of dropping her off at an inevitable destination down the road, he convinces her back to his house, taking her in for a full dinner and a warm place to sleep. He offers her drinks and cash and, though he insists against it in the beginning, he joins her in bed later that night.

The next morning, Bart assures Olivia that he doesn't know what he plans to do going forward. He drives her westward in the direction she needs to head and she confides in him that he doesn't look well. She offers him mescaline, which he takes, before she continues on her way alone. He asks her to call him on Christmas if she can, and she doesn't make the guarantee. She does warn him, however, to be careful; he seems like he's wandering in the void, like she is.

Answer: A construction site

As December continues, Bart calls Mary during one of his sober periods and asks if she'll talk over lunch. She agrees to this, but on the condition that he look into getting a psychiatrist. He agrees to, but never decides to act on it. The next day, he learns over a radio announcement that one gallon of gasoline contains as much explosive potential as twelve sticks of dynamite when its fumes mix with air.

Over lunch, Bart ends up drinking quite a bit and his talk with Mary doesn't go anywhere. Despite an insistence that he's getting a job and a therapist, they still have no home to go to in January. He suggests he may change the government's mind about the roadway, telling her off for thinking otherwise.

Soon, instead, he takes some of his life insurance money and uses it to buy expensive Christmas gifts for family and friends, inadvertently running into Vinnie Mason at the mall and discovering he has a lucrative new job elsewhere in the organization. Their conversation goes south fast, with Bart attempting to get under his former coworker's skin. It ends with him getting punched in the face.

A couple days later, Bart gets the news that the Blue Ribbon Laundry building is set to be demolished. The next day, when it comes down, he watches from nearby, staying through the whole event. He heads home that night, fills the car with gas, and then siphons it into bottles in his garage. Tearing strips of fabric he prepares them as molotov cocktails, waits until the snow is coming down heavier, and heads down to the construction site, intent on blowing up the machinery to slow down their efforts. Somehow, he manages to make it home without getting followed or caught. In the night, he dreams of suicide.

Answer: Steve Ordner

When Bart wakes up the night after his attack on the construction site he feels horrible, but the news of the aftermath leaves him giddy; as he discovers, he delayed construction by a month and cost the effort $100,000. He speaks to Mary again, this time insisting on delivering presents for her and the family, and he continues to lie about his efforts to fix his life up. She offers an invitation to Christmas dinner, which he refuses, but indicates that their friend, Wally Hammer, is having a New Year's Eve party, and he opts to go to that.

When Christmas finally arrives, Bart's surprised to receive a call from Olivia in Las Vegas. She admits it was a bad decision and he tries to foist $500 on her, but she refuses to take his money. Bart responds that everywhere is awful-- it's not just Vegas-- and he admits he's considering suicide before hanging up. She calls back, but he refuses to accept the charges.

The last call Bart receives on Christmas is from Salvatore Magliore; Dawes answers the phone drunk. While Magliore congratulates Bart on the damages, he lets him know that they have contingencies for all of their equipment and destroyed files, so all-in-all, there will be no setback on the roadwork. To add insult to injury, Bart receives a letter from city council the next day inquiring as to his relocation effort. He still needs to be out, non-negotiably, at midnight on January 19.

In light of the events and the holiday, Bart spends a lot of time thinking about his son Charlie's final days and his inoperable brain tumour, recognizing that when he died, Mary was inconsolable. That said, while she cried endlessly, he didn't at all, and perhaps that's why he continues to suffer for it.

Answer: No

As Bart heads to the New Year's Eve party at Wally Hammer's. he feels his way into his jacket pocket and finds the mescaline that Olivia handed to him. Thinking on how rowdy Wally's parties can normally get, he takes the pill before heading inside, unsure of how he'll really feel. It takes only a bit of time before he locates Mary, who appears happy to see him, but it's not long before the mescaline hits and his mind begins to change. He has to admit the truth to her early, and she doesn't mask her disappointment, but it leads Bart to follow his paranoia, searching the house for a quiet spot away from peoples' gaze.

Bart ends up hiding away in a den where it appears quiet enough to wait out the high, but there he meets Phil Drake, who introduces himself as a local coffee shop owner and former priest. Phil talks him through the high and Bart opens up enough to talk about the concept of suicide and its effect on the soul, but it gets him no closer to understanding his true feelings. When Phil offers Bart a ride home, well before midnight, he accepts. It's an easy out and he's not prepared to face people again midway through his drug trip.

And with that, Bart ends up watching the ball drop alone, at home, on TV. Immediately after, without really realizing why, he takes a hammer and smashes the TV set before passing out for the night.

Answer: Malglinite

It takes less than a week for Bart to flip between a sense of temporary calm and chaotic certainty. Heading to the Shop 'n' Save in an effort to do normal errands, he witnesses a woman die in the aisle of an unexpected brain hemorrhage, and this event shakes him back into drinking and searching the attic, hunting for Charlie's old clothes.

The next day, a lawyer arrives on behalf of city council delivering a relocation form. The truth it that he's there to negotiate with Bart since the city doesn't know how dramatic he'll be come the twentieth, when he's forced to relinquish the property. The lawyer offers to raise the valuation of the property by $5,000 and not tell anyone about the girl he was seen having over in December. Bart says he'll call him back in the afternoon, but asks him to leave, and the truth is that he intends to do that. First, he requests a cashier's cheque for the full total and admits he knows they bugged his phone. Second, he reiterates that the house is his until the twentieth of January no matter what. The next day, he has dinner with Magliore one last time, asking for his assistance. Magliore's men sweep through Bart's house, on his request, and find the bugs in his phones, clearing them out.

Soon after, Bart heads to the bank and withdraws half the cash given to him for the property, earmarking the balance for Mary and her parents. He gives $9,000 of his share to Magliore, part of their deal to get him forty sticks of malglinite, each sixty times more powerful than dynamite. He rendezvous with Magliore's men at a bowling alley, then retrieves the explosives at a hotel outside of town. Magliore says he never wants to hear from him again after this, not wanting to be linked to his crazy plan. Bart eventually leaves the explosives in his closet at home.

As some of his final to-dos, Bart goes to Phil Drake's coffee shop to thank him for the help he gave to him on New Year's, and with this, he hands over $5,000, an amount Phil refuses outright, claiming it's just one more justified step in Bart's commitment to suicide. The day after this, he goes to Sears to buy a battery; he needs one for the fuse for the malglinite.

Magliore does end up speaking to Bart once more, even though he doesn't want to, because Bart wants to hand over $18,000. $3,000 of this is for Magliore as a finder's fee, but the rest for Olivia, who he'll have to locate in Vegas. In addition, Bart requests that he will invest the money in lucrative operations and pay her in dividends. Magliore says it sounds like he's executor to his last will and testament, but he accepts the job.

Bart also mails Mary the chequebook the next day, giving over her half of the house payment. The following day she calls about it, assuming the cash split means he's serious about her offer of divorce. It does. He lies about his circumstance, but agrees she should draft the papers. As one last blow, he calls Steve Ordner as well, almost as if just to argue.

Answer: No

On January 19th Barton Dawes loads his guns and test fires the Weatherbee, blasting holes in his car by accident. When he awakens early on the 20th he's ready to get working, placing explosives in bundles around his house and connecting the fuses, preparing them for the likelihood of connecting them to the battery he purchased a few days earlier. It's just after 10am when the vehicles arrive at his house, and the city officials and police officers with them are none the wiser.

Bart starts the shooting with the police cruiser outside his window, exchanging fire with the cops as reinforcements are called in. They arrive in short order, blocking him into the home, but his goal is to wait them out, keeping them occupied until the TV crews show up.

When the local reporters arrive, Bart forces the cops to set up the cameras in the house across the street, threatening to set off the explosives if they don't follow through. A reporter is sent in, eager to get the scoop, and Bart encourages this, reiterating that he wouldn't harm the messenger, and when asked why he's doing all of this, all he can say is that it's the roadwork's fault.

The reporter is eventually able to get out, leaving Bart to continue his face-off, but instead of backing down he puts on a Rolling Stones record and watches as smoke canisters are tossed into his busted-out windows. He tosses his now-empty guns out the windows in one last concession, but this leaves him free to enact his final step, connecting the fuses and setting off the explosion, levelling the house completely and killing himself with it.

The news of the event is presented, in the aftermath, as a full documentary-- one that wins the reporter a Pulitzer Prize for the work. The event is called into the public eye and scrutinized heavily, especially in regards to the level of government waste brought on by the ordeal. Eighteen months after the explosion, the Highway 784 Extension is completed ahead of schedule.