There’s a darn statue of the guy! Of a thousand-year-old German! What doesn’t work about this? If I am understanding correctly, you are telling me that this town was hit hard by PROHIBITION? Is this a joke? A settlement of nearly pure German blood decimated by congressional afterthought! It’s on a river, for goodness sake! A prime trade route! It heads straight to the Mississippi, then to the Gulf! And prohibition is over, for goodness sakes! I’m very confused, Siegfried! Very!

That is the top cultural location for our flagship Midwest camp. There isn’t anything else that works. You also told me—had the audacity to tell me—that the denizens of the small town aren’t particularly empathetic to Adolf Hitler and prioritize their American identity over that of the German, which I absolutely refuse to believe. Absolutely. Why, they aren’t surrounded by anything over there. No blacks, no Jews, no nothing. This should bolster their pride and easy living. Why—what they set out to do one hundred years ago is exactly what we have been doing with planned communities in New York.

So their economy is struggling. Fine! That means they haven’t tore down any of the original buildings. Perfect! You tell me that you can’t stoke that kind of fervor out there—that is, and will be, a failure on your part.

What kind of power play are you making here, Siegfried? Have you run off with the Gund’s money already? Do you intend to make me look like a fool?

“The future of our country’s anti-communist and nationalist leaders will not come from the countryside—they will come from the centers of industry and from the centers of culture. You can’t stoke the fire necessary out here, so removed from everything. It’s a bad idea. Armin is a lonely, isolated place that has been ground into dust more and more with every decade of its existence.”

Do you know how stupid you sound?

Don’t write back until you have cost estimates! Time isn’t exactly on our side!

•••

The Gas Station Attendant watched the evening news. He had stripped himself of his gas station uniform and was sitting on his couch in his underwear and socks. He was drinking a cup of black tea and sipping loudly in the comfort of his own home. The news kept talking about things from either Columbia or St. Louis. Every few minutes he would stand up to peer out of the front window of his home at the encroaching riverbank in front of him. The brown water was coming forward. It had lopped over the dredged banks of the Missouri river and had started oozing through the sparse grass toward his home.

“Gonna get a snorkel,” he said to no one.

“Shit!” he said to no one.