The farmers had their orders. They mounted their huge field tractors and moved off through the ghostly landscape. Jim Bottomly turned to walk to his home in town. Harland stopped him.
“Jim, where is everybody? I thought we’d have one hell of a lot more folks on hand.”
“They’re gone, Harland,” Bottomly whispered. “We lost plenty to the fever. Folks just didn’t stick around after that. You know that. Plenty of them just picked up and left down the rail line to where the Guard crews are clearing things out.”
“Do we have much of a town left, Jim?”
Bottomly looked squarely into Harland’s eyes and simply shook his head no.
Harland and Percy Bliss disappeared inside the coop office. They jogged down to the man-lift and rode the contraption up five stories to the corrugated steel headhouse just to check on their provisions one last time. Once inside the gloom of the structure’s interior, they made their way to the east end to a small window overlooking the town. As they walked, clouds of fine grain dust billowed up from the floor, powdery particles that had accumulated in the headhouse over several years. It had been some time since Bottomly had gotten around to having the place cleaned out.
Chapter One Hundred-One
Rough Diamond cabin puffed woodsmoke into the morning shine. Penny approached the little adobe as fast as her sixty-five-year-old legs could carry her in search of the woman who could handle a firearm. The matron rapped frantically on the door jamb with her knuckles and snapped, “Let me in, Winnie, or I’ll blame you for letting my breakfast go cold on the stove.”
The door latch tripped and Winnie waved the unexpected visitor inside. The younger woman had taken a liking to Penny during her stay in town to take the Total Life Skills seminars. It was a relief to see someone she knew, now that Abel had left the bluffs for Sweetly in the company of Max and Oleg.
The sexagenarian eyed Winnie up and down. The young female presented an unkempt appearance. No doubt she had been sleeping in her clothes for days.
“I came here on business, Winnie. I need some help preparing a big meal tonight, and you’re it.”
“Why do you want me, of all people?” Winnie said, surprised. “No one knows me here.”
“I know you. That’s what matters. This whole town is in a state of shock. We don’t know what happened or why. You come to town and suddenly there are several people and a child dead, and there’s a body floating in the lake.”
“Have a seat, Penny.” The women sat down at the little cabin table and faced one another.
“No one has seen you for many months, young lady. Abel has some feelings for you, so he tells me, but you’re off somewhere in Missouri. Suddenly here you are with a gun in your hand.”
Penny leaned into the table and brought her face close to Winnie’s. “I don’t know what to think, but I see you can handle a loaded pistol. You’ve obviously been trained to use it well enough. You weren’t raised to sell perfume at the dollar store, I gather.”
Winnie let out a nervous laugh but tried to deflect Penny’s inquiry. “I came to town to be with Abel, it’s as simple….”
An open palm slapped down with a bang on the cabin table and Penny chewed the air with her teeth. “Listen, young lady, I saw some things the other day. You were firing bullets at people outside the CC. You! Not me, not anyone else. Who are you? Are you some sort of law enforcement pro, some federal agent or something?”
“Penny, I’m a private citizen. I trained to use a handgun for self-protection. I enrolled in self-defense classes and spent time on a firing range. I brought the gun with me from Kansas City because things are in turmoil there and everywhere. It was dangerous out there.”
Penny scrutinized Winnie’s facial expressions as the she spoke. “Have you ever been in a situation like the one here, where you had to use that, that weapon?”
“Never.”
“So you aren’t in police work or in involved in something bigger than that?”
“No, not exactly. I had a career working for a private company under contract with the government. Last year, when I was here, I was after background information on Abel.”
“Why in heaven’s name were you doing that?”
“Why? Because I specialize in following data trails, ah, you know, digital information left by subversives, radical groups, militias, suspected terror….”
“Do we look like that to you?” said Penny sternly.
“No. There are those who might like to think so, but I don’t believe so, not any longer. My final report cleared the air. But it doesn’t matter now anyway.”
“Why doesn’t it matter?”
“Because of this Yellowstone mess.”
“Oh. Well then, where does that leave you, Winnie? I mean, why did you give up on what you had in Kansas City?”
“Things are disintegrating everywhere. I kept at it, you know, my work, until I couldn’t keep enough food in the house. Desperate people robbed me of every scrap of food; they’d been doing it all over my neighborhood, all over Kansas City for that matter, time and again. Not only that, it was getting impossible to find anything of substance in the city markets.”
Penny ruminated over everything tumbling from Winnie’s lips. “So, everything you were doing last year is behind you now, you’ve given up on all that?
“Yes, I’d have to say I have.”
“Good!
“Why is that good?”
“Listen to me carefully, Winnie. All anyone ever has to know about what you did here is that you were trying to uncover whatever that gunman was doing. You were after him. That’s why you had the gun. It had nothing to do with us. You were just here for the Total Life courses so you could get close to that animal. Do you hear me?”
“That’s not what I was doing.”
“I don’t give a gosh-darn what you were really doing,” Penny fumed. “If the truth gets out, you’re going to be gone. This community isn’t going to stand for someone who’s been spying on them. If you’re ostracized, where are you going to go? You said yourself that Kansas City isn’t terribly appealing right now.”
Winnie nodded. “That’s the truth.”
Penny lowered her tone of voice. “Winnie, people aren’t saying much, what with what just happened; they’ve turned inward. They can’t handle such a terrible thing. But this town has to get stitched back together and soon. To do it, I need you.”
“Why me? What could I possibly do to fix anything here?”
“Two words: Abel Whittemore. Abel needs you, dear. Because he needs you, we need you. You have to realize, he just lost the sweetest child on earth. We all did. We all loved that little one. He’s hurting, more so than the rest of us. But you can help him through it, more than you know.”
Penny leaned back in her chair and peered down the length of her nose beyond the frame of her glasses. “Abel works like no one I have ever known. He pushes himself much too much because he doesn’t have a companion to share his life. He does what he does because, frankly, he’s lonely. He wants to fill every waking second of every day with something to do because he doesn’t want to face going home to his cabin alone. Now that Pelee is gone, it will get worse. With his daughter, he would take time to play games, go for a swim, do some silly things and get away from the incessant demands of this place and his public life.