Since he’d be close to home, he packed only one extra pair of jeans, with five days’ worth of everything else. To the clothing, he added a pump shotgun and a box of shells. A Glock 9mm semiautomatic pistol went in his Tahoe’s gun safe with two extra magazines. If he needed more than fifty-one shots at somebody, he deserved to die.

When he was packed, he considered the boat. He rarely went anywhere in Minnesota without towing the boat in case an emergency fishing opportunity should jump out in front of him. This time, though, he decided to leave it. There wasn’t fishable water anywhere near Wheatfield, unless you liked carp and bullheads. And he was only an hour from home, so, if he needed to, he could always come and get the boat.

Frankie reappeared to kiss him good-bye and give him a few more minutes of essential advice: “Don’t get shot. With your rug rat chewing on my ankles, I’m gonna need your help.”

“I’ll be back for the ultrasound, even if I haven’t gotten anywhere on the shooting.”

“Better be,” she said. The ultrasound was scheduled for the following week.

Virgil rubbed his chin on Honus the yellow dog’s forehead and then he was on his way, turning south down Highway 169 and out of town.

—

Virgil had passed through Wheatfield a couple of times but had never stopped. He knew little about the place, other than what he’d read in the newspaper stories, of which there had been many in the past few months. It had been settled by Dutch pioneers in the nineteenth century, who gave the town the name Tarweveld, which means “wheatfield.” The Dutch were followed by a bunch of Bavarians, then finally the Irish, few of whom could pronounce the town’s name. By 1900, even the Americanized inhabitants were stumbling over it, and, in 1902, the name was officially changed to Wheatfield. But the Dutch influence remained: just about every other lawn had a miniature windmill on it, the product of a manic carpenter who loved building them and insisted on doing it.

Like a lot of prairie towns, Wheatfield had been dying. Minnesota and the surrounding states had plenty of jobs—Minnesota’s unemployment rate was three percent, and Iowa’s was even lower, down in the two’s. The problem was, the jobs were in the larger towns, the smaller towns having less and less to offer their residents, especially the younger ones.

Wheatfield had reached its peak population of 1,500 as a farm service center after World War II. The Interstate had severely damaged its businesses—it was too easy to get to the larger towns—and a regional Walmart had pretty much finished them off. There was still a cafe and a gas station and a hardware store, and a couple of other businesses, but they’d been moribund as well.

Not anymore, thanks be to God.