He lowered the Land Cruiser’s tailgate, broke his rod down, and laid it in the bed. He took off his waders, folded them, and set them in a milk crate. Rocket jumped on the tailgate and made his way to the front of the vehicle, where he took his place in the passenger seat, waiting. It was his vehicle now, Klay just lucky to be the dog’s chauffeur.

Klay drove to Van Guilder’s Mercantile for fuel. As usual, Norman Van Guilder was sitting in a rocking chair on the front porch as Klay pulled up to a pump, the old man dressed in the same flannel shirt, torn carpenter pants, and work boots he’d been born in. Not playing chess this afternoon, though often he was, completing the picture. The old man nodded hello.

Norman’s usual chess partner, Russell, the town fire chief, owned a farm a half hour away, a nice property on either side of a rural county road where he raised beef cattle, hogs, and chickens. A few years back, traffic on the road got heavy enough that the township decided to improve Russell’s road for him. They repaved the whole thing “smooth as a black snake,” Russell said. The only change for Russell was that the leaf lookers from the City drove faster through his property now. The county put up some yellow signs for the tourists about slowing down, but it didn’t do any good. It got to be dangerous, so Russell made up a sign that got straight to the point. He painted it himself and staked it into the rocky ground just before the turn onto his property. The sign read, “Stop Killing My Chickens!”

When he noticed people were slowing down to photograph his sign, Russell built a lean-to just beyond the sign with a table under it, and placed a small refrigerator and a freezer on it. For power he ran an orange extension cord across his yard, up the steps of his front porch, and through a cracked window into his house. A sign told you how much the steaks, sausages, chicken parts, and pork chops inside the freezer cost, though it was hit or miss what you might find on your particular visit. Russell vacuum-sealed the meat and wrote the date the animal was butchered on the plastic wrap with a Sharpie. Another sign asked you to raise the red metal flag welded to the refrigerator to let him know when he was out of eggs. The supply of both eggs and chickens generally depended on the foxes.