Chapter One

The bus dropped him off at a little café that doubled as a bus station. It was just off the main business street, and he hadn’t walked a hundred yards before he could see the town was dying.

Sure, there were cars parked on the main street– officially Cole Street, but the locals just called it Main Street, he knew. But there were plenty of empty parking spots, too, even though it was clear all the parking meters had been removed, and the holes where they had stood were roughly cemented over in an obvious effort to get more people to come downtown to shop. And as for pedestrians, even the sunny, warm, early afternoon wasn’t enough to produce more than a few people on the sidewalks, and even those few scurried back and forth with purpose, not slowing down to examine the window displays in the few open stores.

No wonder, he thought to himself. The window displays looked as if they hadn’t been changed since Clinton was president. They were invariably dusty and some were seriously sun-faded. Some of the stores hadn’t even bothered with window displays at all.

As for the other potential stores, some were closed, their window dull and dirty, and others were occupied by a few doctors, dentists, lawyers, and offices that advertised“Real Estate, Insurance, Notary Public.” All of the storefronts were outmoded; even the few that had once been remodeled were at least a generation old.

The scene was depressing to him. He remembered a time when the town had been vibrant– every parking space filled and even small-town versions of chain stores– Penny’s, Montgomery Ward, a Sears catalogue store and a Rexall Drugs. But they were all gone now, along with two thousand residents who had moved on to the bigger towns, like Omaha, only a little over an hour away, or all the way to Kansas City, or even further. He’d looked up the last census numbers before he had started his trip to Deer Falls, noting that the town was only a shade over five thousand residents now.

He resisted the impulse to shrug. He’d seen it before, many times. All across the country, small farm towns that had once been profitable commercial centers were losing population, as there were fewer farmers tending larger farms. They took their business to the larger towns, leaving farming communities like Deer Falls to die their slow but inevitable deaths. The fate of the town didn’t concern him, though. It never had and it never would. This would be his last trip to Deer Falls, no matter what happened. It might be a depressing sight, but that was progress for you, and in a few days, he’d say good-bye to the town forever.

Just ahead, half a block or so was his destination– Culpepper Realty and Insurance (with Notary Public in smaller letters below, of course). The sign hung down from