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"What are you going to do?"

"We can’t afford to wait The third truck could arrive at anyat ave it a beat and then scampered out of the Taurus When she disappeared into Buckman’s I left the car and walked swiftly across the county blacktop to the terate I was carrying ate, I slipped Mesabi Security’s padlock off of the chain and replaced it with my own Careful not to accidentally close the shackle on Mesabi’s padlock, I returned to Josie’s Ford Taurus and set it gently on the driver’s-side floor The entire process took less than ninety seconds, and as far as I could tell, no one sawprofusely A moment later, I entered the roadhouse

It was a polite bar despite the s from the warped wooden floor--the kind of place where a restless woman could come in alone, survey as available, maybe even sa tackled in the parking lot or followed ho at a small table just inside the doorith a man who seemed to be in his midtwenties It was hard to tell because he was hunched over his beer and the bar’s lights had been dialed down to give patrons a sense of privacy I let ers brush Josie’s shoulder as I walked past just to let her knoas there She surprisedman

"How’s your mother?" she asked him She asked the question softly with a concern in her voice that told enuine sympathy for anyone as in trouble

I made my way to the end of the bar and found a stool The Tere on the coast playing the Angels, and the pregaitcha?" the bartender asked

He didn’t pour Summit Ale, so I ordered a Sam Adams that he served in the bottle

"You coirl Always cheerful, always cheers the place up She knows, no one else see all onna ue with that, I told him

"How’s business?" I asked, just to be polite I didn’t expect ave me one anyway

"If it improved one hundred percent it would still be lousy," he said "Since the big shock, since the ulars, the truckers and loggers and guys from the mill, they still coestured at the bottle in front ofno pleasure in drinking it, neither The only reason they co cooped up in their ho to the bartender Tough tiion An economy in free fall Everywhere you looked, h no fault of their own Corporations, so like carnival tents Banks failed Retailers from national chains to thetheir doors and throwing away the key Yet even though it was happening to everyone, he said it was hard not to take it personally Especially in ser and Babbitt that had been built around one company or one industry, tohose very existence had been decided on the whim of overpaid, overpampered executives who had never even seen the place

That was only part of it, the bartender said Because of the lack of jobs, people were abandoning the area’s small towns and cities Which reduced their tax base Which lowered their general funds Which caused them to slash the services they could afford to provide the citizens who reed more people to leave Which lowered tax collections even more Which put entire coer," said the bartender, "we’re one disaster away fro disaster, neither A roof collapses on the , a sewer pump burns out, a water main breaks--that’s all it’d take"