CHAPTER 1

Sleepy Town

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West of the Hudson River sits a drive-thru town more famous for its nothingthan its something. Before and beyond, you can drive for miles and see nothingbut the dips and jags of the forested mountains stretching out in a toothedline across the horizon. The town itself melds into the nothingness, snug asa fox in its hole. The openness envelopes you, slows you. Wealthy urbanitescome to this place to escape the confining busyness and bustling crowds of thecity, and passersby can't help but remark upon the restful beauty of the virginwoodlands. It is not without reason that Rip Van Winkle chose to slumberin the Catskills.

But being alone changes a place: it gets a quirkiness living all by itslonesome, a strangeness everyone but the people living there can recognize. Itseems that the more solitary a place, the more it remains the same, even as therest of the world changes.

Everyone seems to know everybody here, and the people of this place aresuspicious of strangers. Most people who live here can trace their ancestry allthe way back to the early 1600s, when the town was first founded. The peoplejudge you not only by yourself, but by your parents and grandparents as well.

If you should happen to intrude into their town, you might feel theweight of their wandering eyes following you like the eyes of a subject from aseventeenth-century portrait. If you make it your aim to hide among the crags,they will let you be; that treatment makes this place attractive to the trampsand the drifters alike. And for this reason, the druids and the Mafia both callthis place home.

Yet these people are formidable in friendship. If they should decide toaccept you, they will go to any means necessary to help you in your distress.And locals, authorities included, will decide to fail to see suspicious actions orcircumstances, just because they know the family.

This town, Koopersville, helped make me who I am today. And if I canpossibly help it, I will never go back.

CHAPTER 2

December 2008

On Time

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When I was growing up, there was an old grandfather clock in my house thatno longer kept correct time. To this day, it is a reminder of an era of gears,pins, and levers. You can open it and look at it, and the mechanisms by which itworks are clear. It's a clock that our family has owned for over five generations,and it's passed down to the eldest son as a family heirloom. It was somethingthat I looked forward to giving my own son someday, once I had passed on.But I never will have that chance, and that is the only thing that I regret nothaving, after what happened.

Where had it all gone wrong—or had it? Was there something my wifeand I should have done differently, or did we do the right thing? I had alwaysbeen convinced we were right, but now I'm not so sure.

I was driving in the car at 4:15 a.m. on Monday morning, and I was on myway to work at the Physical Rehabilitation Clinic of Indianapolis. I had justfinished rereading 1984 by George Orwell that weekend, and I was in a pensivemood, to say the least. I reflexively checked my gas tank. It was nearly empty.

I pulled into the gas station by my office and got out of the car. I had gottenused to paying right at the pump with my credit card, although I will admit,today's technology still made me nervous. I felt agitated, but I tried to keep apleasant look on my face.

I shut my car door behind me and then carefully placed my red, white, andblue plastic bonus card into the payment slot. The computer asked if I was aBonus Rewards Card Member, and I carefully pressed the button next to theword yes. I looked at the fuel pump screen and waited as the phrase "ProcessingLoyalty" flashed on the screen. Okay, I thought, my loyalty is being acknowledgedby the computer. I thought of my family. If only loyalty were that easy.

I never had a big brother. I had a big sister, though, and we were very close.In fact, with all of my siblings, there were deep feelings of love, respect, andloyalty, because we were family; that was just the way it was when we weregrowing up. Years ago, my siblings talked of things like love, fairness, andhelping the less fortunate and animals—and yet later on, when we got togetheras a family, they never seemed to remember things the same way that I did, andthey argued among themselves.

"Let's not have discussions," someone would snap. It was always safer tostay out of it, and so I did.

I think they still love me. They say how much they love me in the Christmasor birthday cards they still send me from time to time. Well, at least my bigsister still sends me the occasional card.

I squinted a little, looking at the gas tank screen. I waited for about tenseconds until the screen ordered me to reinsert my credit card.

I did. "Error," it read. "Please swipe card again." I did, faster this time."Error," it still read. I swiped it again, this time very slowly and deliberately."Please see attendant." I grumbled, "What just happened? I hate technology."I threw my credit card on the cement in frustration and then let out anexasperated sigh. Now I had to bend over. I set my coffee on top of the car andbent over. My hip hurt. I stood up again, grasping the top of the car to steadymyself, but in the process I forgot about my coffee cup. I realized I had hit it,but it was too late and it was already airborne. Coffee flew everywhere as thecup careened toward me, covering me and my cleanly pressed white dress shirtin a steamy, sticky mess.

A voice came on over the intercom. "Come inside."

Could it get any worse? I trudged across the parking lot, shaking off dripsof coffee as I walked. I opened the door and walked over to the counter topay.

"Problems there, partner?" said a male clerk whose two front teeth weremissing. He wore a tight T-shirt and had a very large abdomen. He immediatelyreminded me of Lester, the man who, as I saw it, had caused all of my problems.He looked at me and broke out laughing, pointing at the brown coffee that hadsoaked my clothes. "Looks like a case of the Mondays," he said, snorting as helooked at me from over an open magazine. So far I hadn't said anything, and Iwent to give him my credit card.

"Why don't you go on out there and try one of the other pumps?" he said,not accepting my credit card. He leaned over the counter and grabbed a stickybun, opened it, and took a large bite.

"I'm already in here. I may as well pay," I said.

"Okay, gramps. What pump ya on out there?" he asked.

I had no idea which pump I was on. There were four pumps and nocustomers except me, and I was certain he very well knew which pump I wason. He obviously saw the whole thing. I told him, "The one that's broken outthere." I was seething. My father would never do business this way. "It won'ttake my card."

He laughed again and said, "It ain't the pump's fault, dude."

It's 4:30 in the morning, and I'm in a gas station talking with Goober Pyle, Ithought. "All I wanted was gas," I replied.

"You probably put the card in backward or something," he said now witha serious frown and thoughtful expression.

I simply looked at him.

"How much?" he asked.

"I don't know how much," I said. "I want to fill up my tank."

"I need to know how much gas you need," he said.

"How do I know how much it will be?" I said. "We find that out when it'sdone pumping." I...