Switching off the radio, he circled the main square of Milford. In the center of the square was the county courthouse, a relic of the early part of the twentieth century. It was a massive red-brick building adorned with pillars and a dome. Even though he saw it almost every day, for some reason this morning it evoked in him the sort of thought he barely allowed himself anymore: the realization that America had once been a nation of high strivings and of grandeur.
On the courthouse lawn stood the proud statue of a World War I soldier, and also the spacious gazebo that for years had served as the focal point for local ceremonies.
Milford had been a bustling market town when the courthouse was built, a center of commerce for farmers. Soon thereafter, however, the community began a long, slow decline. First, in the 1920s, the new railroad line bypassed Milford. Later, during the 1960s, the new interstate highway also went elsewhere, taking with it the potential business and industry that might have spared Milford its economic malaise.
However, if the town of Milford was considered an economic failure, it was a success in other ways. Its wide tree-lined streets were as uncrowded and inviting as they had been in the twenties, and its gracious old homes were as comfortable as they had ever been. The town had little crime, little poverty, and a genuine sense of community spirit.
Peter passed several battered pickups, an ancient John Deere tractor, and a horse and wagon, as well as a couple of vintage cars. The primary mode of transportation in Milford, however, seemed to be bicycles, which far outnumbered all other vehicles combined. Self-consciously, Bradford nestled his jeep between the rows of bikes in front of the only lighted sign in the square:
The neon had long since given up trying to hit all the letters, and it wavered gamely in the gray morning light. Peter entered Herb ’n Betty’s, nodding to the assortment of farmers, truckers, and loafers who gathered there to play cards, gossip, and drink what passed for coffee. The walls were decorated with an elk head, stuffed ducks, and old basketball trophies; the tables were covered with stained, red-and-white-checked tablecloths. As Peter headed for his regular booth in the comer of the cafe, a farmer stopped him to complain about a long-delayed replacement part for his tractor. Another grizzled old-timer seized his arm, leaning into him conspiratorially to ask about the latest talk of guerrilla forces.
“My wife’s sister told me her husband ran off and joined. He was one of them survivalist types. She said there was hundreds of ’em, living in caves in the Rockies.”
“Can’t believe every rumor comes along—”
“Yeah, but what if it’s true?”
Peter shrugged. “Not a lot to do with us, I guess.” The farmer shook his head, reluctantly agreeing. Peter moved toward his booth. Before he had time to take off his coat and sit down, Betty, the timeless owner of the cafe, walked over with a cup of coffee. Betty was a local institution—ageless, shapeless, but seldom speechless. She wore a net over her graying mop of reddish-brown hair, and a sleeveless brown sweater over her white uniform.
“What’ll it be, Peter?”
“Aunt Jemima pancakes with Log Cabin maple syrup, maybe some little pork link sausages, two eggs over easy, and a glass of fresh squeezed orange juice.”
“Yeah, me too.” She smiled at Peter, licking her lips as though she could taste the remembered favorites of the past. “Would you settle for soy cakes with some fresh molasses?”
“Don’t I always?” Peter smiled.
“If you want better, you’ll have to go out to the SSU barracks. I saw a load of stuff go out there yesterday—eggs, pork chops, steaks. Maybe they got your Aunt Jemima. Just tell ’em you’re the county administrator and they’re in the county.”
“Sounds like a plan.”
“’Course, you’d have to eat with ’em.”
Being reminded that he did, in fact, have options, made him uncomfortable and dimly ashamed. Before she could go on, he hastened to make it clear that what everyone else ate was plenty good for him by cutting in with “I’ll take the soy cakes, thanks.”
At that moment, Ward Milford walked in. He was wearing his deputy sheriff uniform, clean Levi’s, a faded flannel shirt, and a fur-lined parka that had seen him through many a cold winter. His wind-stung face set off the whiteness of his unruly shock of hair. Betty automatically poured him a cup of coffee, grunted a good morning, and shuffled away.
“She’s not real chipper this morning,” Ward said. “She’s having supply problems.”
Ward tasted the coffee and grimaced. “It’s tough, living in the middle of the most productive farmland on the planet, and all you can get is soyburgers.”
“So what kind of night did we have?”
“Not so hot. A drunk, just passing through, been drinking lighter fluid. Died. Emergency wouldn’t pump his stomach.”
“Why the hell not?”
“Some new regulation. Triage, they call it. You know what that means?”
“Yeah, doctors decide who to treat and who not to treat. In essence, it means doctors play God.”
Ward shrugged. “Anyway, the poor bastard died.”
“I’ll talk to Alan Drummond about it. I don’t like seeing people die like that, even some wino drifter.”
“Besides the wino,” Ward continued, “we had some runners passing through, probably on some sort of errands for the Resisters further west. We looked the other way. And some kids stole an SSU jeep and took it for a joyride.”
“Any idea who?”
Ward’s face broke into a sheepish grin. “Probably my son or one of his friends.”
“Pass the word, we don’t need that kind of problem. Why rattle the cage? And listen, no matter what Dr. Drummond says about his new regulations, I want an honest record of what happens if someone dies, be it a wino, a drifter, whatever.”
“You think it matters?”
“It does to me. Dammit,” said Peter Bradford, as if struggling desperately to hold on to his own sense of decency. “It’s got to matter.”
Ward stared at him, his face suddenly intense. “What matters to me is that my great-grandfather helped build this goddamned country—cut down the trees with his own hands—built his spread into ten thousand acres. The damn county is named after us, and whatta we got now? Fifty damned acres and I’m a deputy sheriff under a system that decided there shouldn’t be a sheriff. I worked my whole life, and this is where it goes. Sometimes I feel like we’re the only ones who think it does matter. Country’s dead anyway.”
“Speaking of death,” said Betty, who had sidled toward them balancing a couple of plates, “here’s your soy cakes.”
She clattered the plates down rudely on the table, and the two men, more from habit than appetite, dug in.
After one bite, Peter Bradford laid his fork aside. “This is really awful,” he said, his eyes fixed on the colorless lumps on his plate.
Ward’s face relaxed into a small but mirthless smile. “That’s what really makes you want to give up. You can’t even get a good breakfast.”
Chapter 2
A few miles outside Milford, a long, poplar-lined driveway branched off the main road and led to a once-proud Victorian farmhouse. Now, though, the house was in sorry need of repair. Its dilapidated state suggested more than the usual shortages of paint, tools, and building supplies. Those shortages were almost universal during the so-called Transition—that vague and pretty-sounding term for the limbo America had fallen into. But the sad state of the old Victorian farmhouse bespoke another sort of lack—an absence of spirit, a vacuum of hope.