‘I’m going to make one thing straight,’ he said. ‘On this farm, I’m in charge of everything and everybody. I’m in charge, and I’m also responsible. That’s the way it is, even when we don’t have a crisis on our hands. But right now, we have, and that increases my authority even more. This country isn’t safe for people to wander around on their own, particularly women, and particularly obese senior senators with a price on their heads. Our society’s broken down into tribes, and the way I see it, each tribe has to hold together to survive. This is our tribe, and unless anybody wants to argue about it, I’m the chief. Now, we’re ail getting out of here, we’re all helping to load up the wagons, and then we’re all heading west.’

Shearson, gripping the arms of his chair to support himself, slowly rose to his feet He stood there for a moment swaddled in his bathrobe, breathing loudly and hoarsely with the exertion of getting up.

‘Mr Hardesty,’ he said, ‘my late father once told me never to argue with fools, ignoramuses, or people with loaded guns. Since you fall into all three categories, I don’t think I have any alternative but to comply with your wishes. Mrs McIntosh – shall we light out for Los Angeles?’

Della, furious, stalked out of the living-room ahead of any of them. ‘Well, now,’ Shearson said to Ed, pulling down his eyelid with his finger in a gesture of shared confidence, ‘I seem to have made the right decision. Anything that infuriates an agent of the FBI can’t be all bad.’

*

At the same time that Ed Hardesty’s farmworkers were trying to hold off the raiders who threatened South Burlington, a small and simple tragedy was taking place in a dilapidated frame house on the outskirts of Fort Wayne, Indiana. The house had once been neat and proud, part of a row that had all belonged to International Harvester workers, foremen and supervisors and chief engineers. Now it was overshadowed by unkempt sycamores, and a rusty rundown Nash was parked in the driveway. This was where the welfare cases lived; the tired single-parent wives with their second-hand strollers and their dime-store dresses; the paraplegic husbands who could do nothing more than nod and shuffle, and whose sick pay had long since run out.

Number 8 was the home of John Frederick Walters, his wife Elizabeth, and their three daughters, Alice, Wendy and Jenna. Alice was the oldest, at six; Wendy was three and Jenna was six months.