The plane went up predawn, its navigation lights strobing green and red through clouds of rising river fog. As the tiny vessel thumped through air pockets, Sheriff Kick vomited into a Piggly Wiggly sack while a pilot from Iowa named Jack Bristol hollered tour-guide information.

“That’s the Guttenberg Dike down there!

“There’s the Bishops Ferry Pronto station! Great cheese curds!

“As the crow flies, a guy can hardly sing ‘Happy Birthday’ between Iowa and Wisconsin! Gotta pull up or hit these bluffs! That’s Battle Rock! You ever been on Battle Rock?”

As soon as the plane had climbed high enough to clear the Mississippi bluffs, Jack Bristol abruptly swooped low and with a deafening hiss unleashed plumes of Bacillus thuringiensis kurstaki across treetops in Town of Irish Ridge.

“It’s completely harmless to humans!” he yelled over his engine and propeller.

“Very low toxicity!

“If you eat fresh fruit or vegetables, then you’ve eaten plenty of this stuff!

“And look at you! You’re fine!”

He pulled up and looped back through his plume. She thought she tasted rubber, and overripe bananas.

“We only spray at dawn and dusk!

“Or if there’s no wind!

“Lately there’s no wind! We can spray all day!”

He hauled back on a lever and released another gusher.

“Die, you sonsabitches! Die!”

She twisted shut her barf bag and tried to focus on the horizon. She had never seen the Bad Axe from above. Her place on earth was both a mote and a motherland, draping itself in every direction over the planet’s disappearing point. As she stared, the fragment gnawed at her. Found Hubbards truck and Fantas car way back in… What was Oppo doing out at 2:13 A.M.? Who was Oppo?

The plane nose lifted. In the same gaze she could see both ridges and coulees, the rising sun gilding fields and pastures while shadowing watersheds as they fingered down into streams reflecting blue-pink sky.

“Liberty Hill!” hollered Jack Bristol.

Looking east, she saw the landmark flattened by perspective but still outstanding among lesser hilltops, as it must have been, with a tall flag flying, to Grover Cleveland campaigning from his railroad car. The Golly land extended ruggedly behind it, north. The plane tilted south toward a blue-green glint a mile or so away.

“Elmo Quarry Pond!” the pilot hollered. “A couple more passes, we’ll be heading over what you want to see! What exactly are we looking for?”

“Lay of the land,” she yelled back. “A road in. A homestead.”

“Never seen anything like that!”

“Somebody lives in there.”

“News to me!”

“Maybe a white truck or a green car.”

“OK! My eyes are peeled!”