“Here’s to France,” Golly said. “That I make it.”

He meant to the Group of Seven, the G7 assembly of world leaders. Fanta remembered this from the letter he had brought along. The summit would take place in Biarritz, France, in two weeks. This nude and delusional ex-Floridian sitting in a creek in Bad Axe County believed he was going there to change the course of world history.

Dear Mr. Secretary: Look out the window.

But why was Faith Golly driving Derp Hubbard’s truck? How had the Gollys acquired the man’s most prized possession?

Then Golly began to rant, and Fanta could only weakly agree. Yes, the glaciers were melting, the oceans were rising, and the coral reefs were bleaching. Yes, the insects and the birds were diminishing, and the deserts were expanding. Yes, refugees were moving and borders were hardening. Yes, Venice was drowning, Lady Liberty had got her ass wet in Hurricane Sandy, and the Choctaw bayous were underwater.

“Am I wrong, Mr. Fanta?”

He was not wrong. These were all facts from Fanta’s articles and columns. Yes, in twenty years Phoenix was going to be like Pakistan, Pittsburgh like Dar es Salaam. Yes, there was no more Paradise, California, and yes, in twenty years there would be no turning back.

“Faith, more wine.”

Yes, in the Bad Axe the whitetail deer herd was grievously infected, and the Lyme ticks had exploded, and the bacilli had evolved into something newer and worse. And yes, there was E. coli in the aquifer, plus Roundup, atrazine, nitrate, and more.

“Mother wants us out, Fanta. No more shitting in the nest. Precious little time to fix it.”

The gypsy shrouds muttered above. Fanta looked up into them and said, “Why do you have Derp Hubbard’s truck?”

“Never heard of the man.”

“That white truck is his.”

“Faithy, he’s asking for more wine.”

The great dog, Tippy, rose and padded yellow-eyed along the creek bank to stand six inches from Fanta’s neck. The creek’s cold rose straight up his spine to meet the dog’s hot breath. The dead man in the ditch, he thought. That ditch wasn’t far from here.

It’s OK, he told himself. You were killed in Vietnam. You just hadn’t died yet.

CHAPTER 19

Heading back to her family, Sheriff Kick made the call she had been dreading. Inside a home in Massachusetts, the phone rang one and a half times.

“Hello?”

“Hello.” She tried to keep her voice even, unemotional. “Is this Colleen Greevey?”

“It is.”

“My name is Heidi Kick. I’m the sheriff of Bad Axe County, in southwestern Wisconsin.”

“I see. Yes. Hello.”

His mother sounded defeated. Probably she had answered this same kind of call a dozen times before.

“Are you the mother of Daniel Allen Greevey?”

“Yes, yes, that’s me.” She sighed heavily. “What is it?”