But I dug elsewhere, in a different place—closer by the house, near the pillars for the back porch. I saw the green plastic of the first canister, and let the shovel fall, pulling the canister out with my hands. We always buried the money shallowly.

“What’s that?” Grayson said.

I shook off the dirt. “My inheritance.”

On the farm, it was easy to forget the world. But the closer we drove into town, the more it came back: how everything had changed. How everything kept changing. A kind of empty feeling had settled over the landscape. Even the foothills of the mountains, crenulations in the distance, seemed hollow, too cold even to hold animals. The playground at the elementary school looked like a cemetery, the seesaws shovels of white. The doors to the building had been chained. The gas station at Crossroads, where I sold weed, had a large, spray-painted sign: NO MORE GAS TODAY.

“How can they be out?” Grayson said.

“Everybody stocking up.”

I was taking Grayson home. First I was taking him to run errands: to the bank to get cash, to get propane for the heater I was letting him borrow—to wherever he wanted to go, really. It was the least I could do. Should I have given him money, let him stay on at the farm alone? What were the rules now that the late-summer sun seemingly set at three in the afternoon—the clouds looked so low and thick it might as well have—and we passed more than one house, where family members were roping suitcases to the roof of their cars? I drove by a house whose windows were blank and wooden, boarded up since the last time I had passed.

I thought of something. “It’s Friday, right?”

“Yeah,” Grayson said. “So?”

The line at the bank was long. The wait for the drive-through snaked into the road, trucks idling, tailpipes gummed with slush. In the lobby we found a similar scene as in the clinic. People filled the room to the corners. The heat was on in the bank, but barely. Some of those waiting were wrapped in blankets. The tellers wore fingerless gloves, skin flashing as they counted out bills.

I told Grayson to get what he needed. I told him I would buy the propane for his heater, then meet back up with him.

It was Friday, and that meant the Filthy Flea: the market in the parking lot of the old roller rink. Usually it stretched clear to the road. I had checked and the tents had been pitched, and I saw a hum of activity near the rink. The market was on. Maybe I could buy ammo for the gun there.

But in the bank lobby, someone was jiggling a shrieking baby. An older woman wept, slumped in a chair, her hand fluttering over her eyes like a handkerchief. I heard one of the employees counseling an elderly couple about their overdrafts.