Along The Route, A New Kind Of Heartbreak

Dan Barry: HOPKINTON, Mass.

It all starts here, as Hopkinton likes to say. And last week, once again, thousands of marathoners formed a block of Main Street determination that stretched past the Town Common’s spring grass, and the Korean Presbyterian Church’s white spire, and the public library offering brief amnesty for overdue items, and the Lovely Lady salon, on and on.

But the start of this never-completed race now seems from the distant past, after all that followed. The deadly finish-line explosions. The tense manhunt and unnerving lockdown. The killing and wounding of police officers. And, finally, the shootout death of one suspect and the capture of the other, found bloodied and cowering in a boat in someone’s yard, just 25 miles and so far from here.

What motivated the bombing suspects — two young immigrant brothers of Chechen descent and Muslim faith, living New England lives — has yet to be revealed. At least in part, their intent was to disrupt exactly what events like the Boston Marathon celebrate: the American given, as found along a 26.2-mile stretch of Massachusetts pavement.