Then the roar again, the whining blast. Rudy covered his head, I let go of my rifle and clapped my hands to my ears. We dropped to our knees, gaped upward to see the helicopter beat over the ridgeline again, blazing yellow like it was bringing the sun with it. It pulsed down low over the trees only a hundred feet up, maybe less, like it planned to land on us, or drop something, bombs, propaganda, who could say? It was so close I could almost make out the company man inside with his fly eyes. The trees waved and dipped to the propeller. We cowered, our teeth clacking in our heads, and the helicopter didn’t land, it didn’t drop bombs or any kind of paper. It tracked the path of the pipeline, lifted up over the opposite slope, cleared the next ridge, gone, leaving the frank morning in its wake.

Rudy squinted after it. “Doing another flyover, inspection or some shit, right?” he said.

“But this early in the morning?” I asked. “I never saw them do that before.”

“I told you those assholes are planning something,” Rudy said. “After all these years, they’re finally checking on the line.”

“If they’re selling out, maybe they’ll leave us alone,” I said.

“Maybe,” Rudy said. “Maybe not. Maybe what’s next will be something worse. The devil you know.”

Karen and Lily were on the sofa eating reheated acorn mush for breakfast when I replaced the .22 in the rafters. Perley sat on the high stool at the kitchen counter, murmuring to himself over a comic, his bowl of mush untouched beside him.

“Well?” Lily asked.

“The pipeline company sent a helicopter out,” I said.

“How do you know it was the pipeline company?” asked Karen.

“Rudy says he heard it from the mailman,” I said.

“What in the hell is Rudy doing out there this early?” asked Karen.

“He’s camping on the pipeline,” I said.

“He’s living out there?” asked Karen.

“He wants to be close to his fruit trees,” I said.

“This is exactly what I was worried about. That man will not rest until he’s eating dinner with us every night,” said Karen.

“And sleeping in our beds,” added Lily.

“I don’t think he eats dinner,” I said. “He doesn’t sleep in a bed. Did we get any mail from the company recently? About plans to sell or something? Mowing?”

Karen shrugged. Lily shook her head. Perley closed his comic book and sat with his hands in his lap, gazing out the window. Karen and Lily looked at each other.

“Come on, Perley, eat your mush,” Lily said. “Mush is a treat! Mush is fun!”

Perley smiled gently.

“Oh please, Lily,” Karen said. “Can you quit it with that? That is such bullshit.”

“He needs to eat,” Lily said.