<div>David Rhodes's long-awaited new novel turns an unblinking eye on an array of eccentric characters and situations. The setting is Words, Wisconsin, an anonymous town of only a few hundred people. But under its sleepy surface, life rages. Cora and Graham guard their dairy farm, and family, from the wicked schemes of their milk co-op. Lifelong paraplegic Olivia suddenly starts to walk, only to find herself crippled by her fury toward her sister and caretaker, Violet. Recently retired Rusty finds a cougar living in his haymow, dredging up haunting childhood memories. Winifred becomes pastor of the Friends church and stumbles on enlightenment in a very unlikely place. And Julia Montgomery, both private and gregarious, instigates a series of events that threatens the town's solitude and doggedly suspicious ways. <i>Driftless</i> finds the author's powers undiminished in this unforgettable story that evokes a small-town America previously unmapped, and the damaged denizens who must make their way through it.</div>

DRIFTLESS

By David Rhodes

MILKWEED EDITIONS

Copyright © 2008 David Rhodes
All right reserved.
ISBN: 978-1-57131-059-0

Contents

Prologue............................................3No reason...........................................7A Nation of Families................................17Scheduled Violence..................................26Mottled Sunlight....................................28Grief...............................................32Painted Bodies and Orange Fires.....................36Gathering Evidence..................................41Think Less, Do More.................................47Protecting Papers...................................51Keeping a Respectful Distance.......................54Humped Floors.......................................60A Room without Furniture............................67faith Keeps No treasure.............................70Broken Things.......................................77Hot Milk............................................83Hiring Help.........................................88Perpetual Perishing.................................98Epiphany............................................102Theft...............................................113Visitor.............................................118Straight Flush......................................122Testimony...........................................127A Private Heaven....................................134Work Begins.........................................141letter to the Editor................................146Fire in the Field...................................155A New Song..........................................160Finishing Up........................................164Snow................................................167Remembered Love.....................................172Desperation.........................................176Completing the Circle...............................182Family..............................................187Envy................................................193Seeking Help........................................200Theodyssey..........................................204Fear................................................210Reunion.............................................216Don't Go That Way...................................223Measuring Up........................................235The Meaning of Truth................................238A fragile Balance...................................249Insurgency..........................................255Slaughter...........................................264Sighting Dogs.......................................271The Thief...........................................285The Universal Acorn.................................292Hunting.............................................301Spring..............................................308New love............................................312Keeping in One's Place..............................317Mushrooms Are Up....................................324Making Bail.........................................328the Heartland Federal Reserve.......................332Inside the Neighbor's House.........................341Trapped by the Past.................................345Value...............................................350Letting Go..........................................358Lawyers.............................................360Resemblance.........................................365The County fair.....................................370Making Other Arrangements...........................376Meeting at snow Corners.............................379The Look of Death...................................391Finding July........................................394Selling Land........................................399Inside the Church...................................403The funeral.........................................409Driftless...........................................422

Chapter One

NO REASON

THE MORNING RIPENED SLOWLY. TEN O'CLOCK FELT LIKE NOON. July Montgomery cut open a sack of ground feed and poured it into the cement trough. He looked out of the barn window into his hay field, where a low-lying fog stole silently out of the ground, filling space with milky distance. Beyond the fence, the tops of maple, oak, and hickory formed a lumpy, embroidered edge against infinity.

July had lived here for more than twenty years, but because of the dreamy quality of the morning, the landscape now appeared almost unfamiliar. The row of round bales of hay-which he'd placed near the road only weeks before-seemed foreign and completely removed from any history that included him. The road itself looked different, and when a hawk stepped off a utility pole, opened its wings, and sailed up the blacktop road toward the nearby village of Words, it disappeared into the looming fog as though entering another world. July marveled at how easily the characters of even the massive, stationary things of reality could be changed by a little moisture in the atmosphere.

On the other side of the barn he could hear his small dairy herd hurrying back from the pasture. He had let them out just an hour before, and it seemed odd that they would be coming back. Normally, they preferred to graze all day, knee-deep in grass, even in the most inclement weather.

Several cows anxiously butted their heads against the wooden sides of the building and he opened the doors, allowing them back into the barn. Agitated, they bellowed and crowded against each other, milling nervously from one area to the next, swarming in slow motion.

Something had frightened them, and July stood in the opening and searched for an explanation-a pack of dogs, perhaps. But he could see nothing, and indeed it wasn't always possible to identify the reason for a herd's agitation. Like the fear that often seizes human society, it sometimes had no tangible cause. Given the social nature of animals, an errant yet terrifying idea could flare up in a single limbic system and spread into the surrounding neighborhood, communicated with the speed of a startled flock of birds. Before long, a climate of fear was established, perpetuated through the psyche's network of instinctual rumor.

A movement caught his eye. Several hundred yards away, at the very edge of where the fog swallowed objects wholesale, a large black animal jumped the fence into his hay field, turned around in an almost ritual manner, and looked directly at him.

Now there's something, July thought, staring back. It appeared to be a very big cat, a panther, also known as a cougar, puma, or mountain lion. He'd seen them out west and up north, but never here. Though they had once been native to the area, there had been no reports of them, as far as he knew, for generations. It wasn't even necessary to actually see one, of course; a stray scent of the beast-inhaled by a single cow-and the whole herd would vibrate with primordial anxiety.

Moving slowly, the panther paced with elastic ease along the old fence, carefully measuring its distance from the barn, keeping partially hidden in the fog, like a ghost not willing to assume corporeal form. As it moved, it continued to stare at July, and July continued to look back.

He wondered why a panther would reenter an area its ancestors had long ago abandoned. The larger reasons, of course, included the encroachment of human civilization and depletion of natural habitat; but July wondered what the urge itself must have felt like-from the inside-to compel it to leave its familiar haunts. If it was a male, the pursuit of a female...