Late Friday night, Gov. Janet Mills stood before a gaggle of news cameras and told us the threat was over. She said it was time to heal.

The governor was right, but healing is tough for the families of the victims, the residents of Lewiston, the Great State of Maine, and our nation. 

We all know the story. Last Wednesday evening, families and friends gathered at a Lewiston bowling alley for an evening of relaxation. Not far away, others were at a local restaurant for an evening that included a cornhole tournament for folks who were hearing impaired.

Suddenly, it seemed all were thrust into the pages of a dark novel where an evil specter invaded our space spewing death.

At around 7 p.m., a man with a deadly weapon walked into the bowling alley and opened fire. A few minutes later, he attacked the restaurant and drove away, crawled into a recycling center trailer filled with debris and killed himself.

In his wake were 18 dead and 13 wounded.

We may never learn what triggered his outburst, what demons possessed his thoughts, and why he pulled the trigger. We know the who, the what, the where, and how he did it, but the why will always be a mystery.

The white-haired set will remember huddling around radios as a dramatic baritone voice said: Who knows what evil lurks in the hearts of men? 

We have learned some patrons of the bowling alley and the restaurant refused to be victims. They rushed the shooter and helped friends escape.  We know the brave Lewiston police rushed in, unlike others at an earlier Texas school mass shooting who held back, to the shame of the profession. We know the Central Maine Medical Center staff welcomed victims by turning shiny hallways into a MASH unit worthy of Trapper John and Hawkeye Pierce.

It took just moments for the docs, nurses, techs and security guards at CMMC  to upgrade their Level Three trauma center into a Level One facility worthy of any major city.

CMMC’s website said it this way: The first patient arrived at 7:24 p.m. Within an hour, a total of 14 patients were transported to CMMC. Of those, eight were admitted, and three died after arriving at the hospital. Two patients were discharged. One patient was transported to Maine Medical Center in Portland. Separately, one patient was taken from the scene to St. Mary’s Medical Center in Lewiston.

On the other side of town, Lewiston’s police asked for help, and they got it. Neighboring towns, state police,feds and agencies from as far away as Boston and beyond arrived. Local turf battles, jurisdictional niceties, and the usual police hierarchical headaches were put on hold as the men and women in blue pulled together to protect the city and find the bad guy.

As they searched, we learned a new term: Shelter in place. Lewiston residents huddled at home, locked the doors as schools closed and businesses darkened. From Central Maine and beyond, it seemed all cooperated with the governmental edicts. Here in Boothbay and Wiscasset, many complied. Even Boothbay Harbor Memorial Library was closed.

On a personal note, my brother called from New Orleans to check on me and said he knew it was serious when he called L.L. Bean in Freeport and was told they were closed. He was thrilled to learn a cousin was one of the brave doctors who treated the victims. Me too.

The official and unofficial response to the massacre took place on center stage as Lewiston became national and world news. TV networks broke in with frantic bulletins and experts, as news outlets from the New York Times and Boston Globe sent staffers to Maine. Local TV stations pulled staffers from their homes and went on a 24-hour marathon as the talkers earned their money repeating and recounting the horror. 

Don’t forget that our friends in the print news biz fired up their staffs and filled their websites with local nuggets that only hometown papers can uncover.

Then Lisbon police got a tip and police found his body in a recycling center trailer, and the national press packed up and moved on to the next major story, leaving Lewiston and us all to deal with what Gov. Mills called the time for healing.

But we know this wound will never heal. We will never experience what experts describe as closure. We will never forget the victims, their grieving families, and two days in October. 

But like the Lewiston families, we will attempt to help one another deal with the unthinkable evil that lurked in the heart of a man.

Then we will bend over, lace up our boots, and get back to work.

Isn’t that what Maine folks do?