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"No one ever does It just kind of sneaks up on you"

"Everything went from bad to worse so quickly First, the , but ere still unprepared for the consequences Babbitt, the City of Babbitt, was hit hard It has a high school built for two thousand students and an enrollment of a hundred and sixty Last ti for forty thousand dollars and no takers A couple ofstores burned down--maybe they’ll be rebuilt, I don’t know In the er or Ely just to get a gallon of er closed, and no one saw that co Two hundred and forty eers and truckers and all the others that depended on it Thecardboard boxes for Kellogg, Budweiser, FedEx Its parent co to do with us, though, and they just boarded it up We were all hoping the company would sell the mill; ere told that was the plan Learned that was a lie when the company decided to turn off the heat last January to save a few dollars--turn off the heat in the dead of a Minnesota winter No matter how hard they tried to drain and winterize, there were so les--water pipes burst, equiped The o Today, the place looks like ancient ruins No one is going to buy it now--reopen it

"All this on top of the housing crisis Uneer is over twenty percent It’s about sixteen percent across the Range One in six people is living below the poverty level The government says it’s a recession Sure looks like a depression to ent, that I specialized in selling lake homes? My business went away, too

"We’re all supposed to keep a positive attitude, though We’re all supposed to carry on That’s what they tell us Carry on How? With what? There aren’t any jobs, Dyson,to be any That’s why the Range is losing population and the Cities are growing at double digits, because that’s where all the jobs are You either leave the only horandparents and great-grandparents lived, or…"

"Or you steal," I said "You don’t need to justify yourself to ?"

"My experience, the reason most people are honest, seem to be honest, is because they’ve never had a reason--or at least the opportunity--to be anything else"

"You’re saying we’re all thieves at heart?"

"Not at all Soirl asleep in there--I bet she’s been against what you’re doing from the very start"

"Jillian doesn’t understand the real world"

"Fro fast"

"Roy I suppose it’s been tougher on him than the rest of us"

"Oh yeah?"

"He was in the ar at parade rest"

"You don’t miss ave hiement position at the paper mill They hired hiet their hands dirty He hated doing it, just hated it, but he was used to following orders He became terribly depressed It didn’t help that since he was theout the pink slips, people held hi He was the face of the company; people didn’t knohom else to blame When he finished the job, the company fired him, too--fired him in an e-mail This is a man who’s known structure his entire life Now he’s adrift"

"Isn’t that just too damn bad for Roy?"

"You’re not a particularly compassionate character, are you, Dyson?"

"Compassion has its downside For exaive Roy for abusing his wife"

"I didn’twhat to do"

"Think so? If Jill were my cousin, I’d knohat to do I’d beat the sonuvabitch to death for hitting her, and I wouldn’t give a rat’s ass what drove hiest, I’m not particularly virtuous"