When it got out that John Mickelson had taken the insurance money and invested it in stocks for himself rather than rebuilding the mill, some of Jack’s classmates at school looked at him like they would spit on him if they dared. In truth, the mill’s time had passed; all over the region, the grand old sawmills were closing their doors, as the supply of lumber dwindled with the forests. The people in town didn’t see things that way, though, and the fact that John quickly built a new creamery and a cheese factory made no difference, especially since both only employed a few people. When school started again in the fall, most of the mill kids were gone, their families having moved to Wausau or Merrill for the jobs that could be found there. In the north part of Pine Rapids, the homes they’d left behind sat vacant, were vandalized (sometimes by Jack and his friends, in truth; they were just that age). John Mickelson and the village council felt that these tumbling clapboard houses that had been home to the mill workers were eyesores, since anyone coming into town by train would have to pass them to get from the depot to the nice part of town. By the time Jack got home from the war, many of them were gone, as if they had never been there at all.

As for the mill itself, most of the damaged buildings were taken down immediately, though for several years John left standing the ones that were not so bad off. John was a forward-looker, not one to clean up his messes or even waste time discussing them, or the past. It wasn’t until Jack’s own children were in school that finally the last of the buildings was demolished, after a kid crushed his toe under a beam that shifted while he was in there messing around. The millpond had long since turned to a swamp, a haven for frogs and heron, and for fish who needed a breather from the fast pace of the Bear Trap River, which rushed on past as though it, along with the rest of the world, no longer had much time to spend in Pine Rapids. John Mickelson’s fault, everyone said. Pine Rapids really could have grown into something.