“Well, my dear, by now there will be nothing left of Lincoln but a smoldering ruin, aside from the private estates of the governor’s family. I tell you, we are betrayed, sold out by this Antichrist–no seriously, I believe he really is! I know for certain I shall never set foot in my home again. No, no, he has made a refugee of me and countless others, and here in my exile, I must get used to living on the charity of others. Oh, Christine! It’s so good to see you. Sit down and talk with me.”

These words were uttered in May 2029 by Carloline Scherer née Kracl, a Daughter of the American Revolution and distinguished guest at the ranch of her brother and sister-in-law. It was her greeting to her niece Christine Kruger, wife to the heir of an extensive meat processing and fertilizer fortune and also born Kracl, who had arrived early for her brother’s graduation party. Caroline Scherer had a cough; she had been battling pneumonia ever since her arrival five weeks before, when a ranch hand had first descried Christine’s haggard brother leading his aunt on a donkey along the shoulder of Nebraska Highway 2. The young man wore a pair of mud-caked jeans, a sun-bleached ball cap on his head, and a tee shirt stiff from dried sweat and the rain. The meager woman was curled into a ball, loosely clutching a blanket on the animal’s back. In spite of her serious illness and the long, harrowing journey, Caroline Scherer’s feisty opening gave her niece to understand her recovery was complete. She was in high spirits for her nephew’s graduation party. In the invitations, the distribution of which her sister-in-law had cleverly planned and had Mr. Kracl carry out over the course of several weeks–at a meeting of the Sheridan County Board of Supervisors, at a Natural Resource District meeting, even at the trial of a cattle rustler down at the county courthouse where Mr. Kracl was plaintiff–read handwritten on thick, plain white card stock:

“If you can manage under these exceptional circumstances, Luke and Mary Kracl would request the honor of your presence at a graduation party for their son, John Kracl, Ph.D., on May twenty-first at seven in the evening.”

Christine Kruger gripped a bottle of white by the neck and worked a corkscrew as she leaned in to accept a kiss from her aunt. She poured into an empty glass and left the bottle in a marble wine cooler on the granite countertop where Caroline Scherer sliced tomatoes in the rays of the late afternoon sun.

“I can see Mom and Dad have already driven you crazy, you poor thing!” Mrs. Kruger lamented. “I should have come to rescue you sooner.” Mrs. Scherer scoffed playfully at her niece’s feigned despair. Mrs. Kruger sat down at the kitchen table and crossed her legs under a floral cotton dress, her wrist resting lightly on the edge of the table as she ran her middle finger up the stem of her wine glass. “Mom may have nursed you back to health, but the more you talk, the more you make clear you need a good vacation. Let’s get you out of this house for a while,” mused Mrs. Kruger. “You should come with us to the lake house this summer with the kids,” she now urged. “Sam and I were already out to de-winterize back in March. The trip is not too bad with a stagecoach. You should really see the carriages we have had fixed up for getting around. Actually, Sam was thinking of having some built for Mom and Dad. Maybe one of those should be for you, Aunt Caroline. It occurs to me now that you have been here too long here with no way to drive to town or come visit me at our ranch.”

“That’s kind of your husband, dear,” said Mrs. Scherer.

“But tell me really: are you holding up fine?” asked her niece.

“How can one be fine when there is such disarray, such suffering? How can one help but be worried?” Mrs. Scherer set her knife down on the cutting board and coughed crackily into her elbow, her whole frame rattling. Her sister-in-law shot into the kitchen all of a dither, carrying two baking sheets of dinner rolls covered in cloth napkins. “Your mother still comes running if I do so much as clear my throat,” Mrs. Scherer said as she turned back to face the room. “I’m fine, Mary!” she asserted. Mary Kracl smiled dismissively at her sister-in-law and pecked her daughter on the temple as she passed by the kitchen table. The ladies began pulling the rolls apart and arranging them in napkin-lined wicker baskets.

The sighting of Jack and his Aunt Caroline five weeks before had put an end to nearly seven months of nervous waiting, in which Mary Kracl occupied herself with nothing else but pacing the hallways and staring out the front window of the farmhouse, and had ushered in a therapeutic period of careful attendance upon her eldest son and older sister-in-law. Even still, the relief had only just taken root in her slight, rigid frame and had yet to find and unwind all the knots which anxiety had bound up inside her. Mrs. Kracl relieved her sister of slicing tomatoes. She applied quick, jerky motions against the cutting board and shifted her weight from one leg to the other as she worked, but her eyes were brilliant and her face bore a smile on the afternoon of her son’s graduation party.

“Meanwhile,” Mrs. Scherer began, returning to her politics; “–our supreme ruler is holed up in the governor’s mansion, using what is left of the national guard as his personal retinue and calmly observing the city burn to the ground around him. They say he plays tennis. Tennis, mind you! And I swear to you: my house had no fewer than four break-ins in the days before Jack rode up on that donkey to rescue me! I played dead under the comforter each time, though it’s hardly ‘playing’ when one doesn’t eat for days on end. My little diet notwithstanding, on the way out of town, my savior and I saw no shortage of wagons rolling in with supplies–and even a few antique diesel trucks, if you can believe it–all apparently bound for the governor’s compound. What he does with it all no one can say.

“And out here, has anything at all been decided by the county board?” Mrs. Scherer asked her niece, whose diffidence in public matters hardly discouraged her aunt from continuing, albeit in a rhetorical vein. “Your household is always so well informed, Christine, and I can never get a straight account of the facts from that husband of yours, Mary,” she complained. “No really! Luke is a remarkable man. My brother is in all the important rooms, and yet I can never get him to tell me anything. My condition may be fragile, Mary, but it’s the silence around here which will kill me!” Mrs. Kracl just kept slicing, wearing her imperturbable smile, and let her sister carry on. “Take that thief, for instance. Ten head of cattle go missing back in March, and when his boys finally run the man down, Luke has them drive the blackguard all the way up to Rushville. He spends two whole days at the courthouse with a lawyer pleading his case, and what report awaits me when he gets back to this house?” Caroline Scherer affected Mr. Kracl’s bass, “‘He hanged.’ ‘I should certainly hope so!’ I say to your husband; ‘But whom is he working with?’ It doesn’t take a trip to the county courthouse just to see a cattle rustler hang. His boys could have handled him down here just the same and spared Luke the trouble. I’m relieved to hear that justice was done, but here in Antioch we are no closer to order.

“So you will understand now, Christine, that here in my isolation I find myself in great need of moral consolation.” Caroline Scherer took a seat at the end of the kitchen table next to Mrs. Kruger. “I just might do as you say and join you at the lake this summer,” said Mrs. Scherer, drawing out her words. Then, snapping to, she changed the subject. “Where exactly in the world is your husband these days anyways, Christine?”

“Gone on business near Greeley for three weeks now,” Mrs. Kruger said ruefully. “I should really be grateful; his father has been gone since Christmas. He went on a tour of the plants down in Louisiana and Florida. Can you believe it? Thugs skulking in every ditch, and the old man makes a grand tour of the South! It was only as a favor to me and the kids that he left Sam behind. He joined up with his father just three weeks ago as the caravan headed out west. I know he would prefer to have gone with his dad. He worries.” Christine took a sip of wine, then grinned through pursed lips. “You know, truth be told, I kind of like having him gone. Is that wrong?” asked Christine quizzically. Mrs. Scherer cast her niece a look of mock reproach, who quickly tapped her aunt on the hand before staring off, marking her words as jest. “Oh, the kids and I miss him, of course,” she corrected herself. “But with how different things are, I somehow find the privacy kind of relaxing. When you sit out all alone on the deck in that very cool, early part of the morning, and the rising sun just kind of warms the fleece of your jacket,” she trailed off. “Do you know that feeling?”

Boing!–An inflatable rubber ball bounced off the kitchen door, signaling the arrival of Mrs. Kruger’s children in the backyard. Mrs. Kruger looked through the bay window as its curly-haired owner toddled across the deck, carefully lifted it up off the ground and above his head, and fell on his bottom in the windup to throw it back to his au pair. The au pair’s quick, quiet words of affirmation could be heard through the kitchen bay window, which was open just a crack.

“C’est rien, un bisou magique et ca repart!” Her short, dark brown pony tail bobbed up and down and her tennis shoes squeaked as she walked over to the little boy, knelt down in her running shorts, tip toes and bare knees on the wet deck wood, and kissed the little boy on the cheek. The boy pushed himself back up on his feet in an instant, bobbled across the deck, and fell face down in the short, dewy grass, going after his ball.

“Of course, it’s been helpful that Colette has stayed on to help. She only expected to stay through spring, you know.” Outside, the toddler let out a few frustrated sobs that were quickly muffled by the soft fleece of the au pair’s pullover. “I think I managed to talk her into staying on as governess to the older kids,” she said, exercising her diction. “We still just need to find a nanny for the littles.”

“Governess?” Mrs. Scherer raised her eyebrows and rolled her eyes, if not exactly in embarrassment, then at least with surprise at the pretentiousness. “Are you hearing this?” she addressed her sister-in-law. “What a time to be a young mother! If only we had such privilege when we were raising all you kids! I don’t remember the sunrise ever producing a pleasant sensation in me back when I had a two-year-old, do you, Mary?” Mrs. Kracl was wiping off the empty patches of counter and tabletop with a damp dishcloth.

“Well, she can’t exactly sail back to France as things are now, though that’s not to say she didn’t think about it. She was packing her things at one point and trying to convince my father-in-law to take her as far as Florida when he was planning his trip. We eventually talked her out of it. It wasn’t just the old man, we all balked at the thought of dumping that girl somewhere down by the docks in Jacksonville.”

“So it’s true then that you have brought on quite a few helpers for around the house, my dear?” asked Mrs. Scherer with her brow still raised in reproof, but with eyes wider now and the edges of her mouth curled in amusement at her niece’s new, aristocratic mode of housekeeping, which she had first discerned weeks earlier in some passing remarks of her sister-in-law, but which she could now probe for herself.

“Oh, our old help has stayed on. Most of them moved onto our property with their families because the commute became impractical by bike. Some live in the house we had built for the tenant farmer, and some are staying temporarily in our guest rooms while we build more housing. The housework is so much more involved now! I need to talk to Sam about hiring on a few more when he gets back. We really needed it. Besides, there are so many people out of work after we had to lay off most of the meatpackers in Alliance. It’s a shame we haven’t hired any more of them on.” Mrs. Kracl finished up her cleaning and folded the dishcloth over the handle of a bucket of well water. “Oh Mom, please do let me find you some help for around here!”

“Come now, Christine,” Mrs. Scherer beckoned. “Your children are playing in the back. Let’s go sit out on the deck. Oh, how I just adore your darling little tike!”

From their deck chairs, Caroline Scherer and Christine Kruger could view the Kracls’ guests roll up. One by one, farm wagons would turn in off the highway and drive up to an iron pipe gate at the property line. A pair of ranch hands sat in the shade of a scraggly pine tree, shotguns at their side. They would lay their playing cards down on a folding table, open the gate, and nod as the wagons passed through. A quarter-mile stretch of gravel drive led to a livery stable, a converted machine shed, where one or two of the Kracls’ nephews would stow their red plastic cups and hop down from their station atop hay bales to receive the travelers. They would uncouple the yokes from the wagons, wedge a chock under the wheels, and lead the horses to a trough, every now and then pumping water to top it back off. Following a gravel path some twenty-five yards down from the stable, the guests would linger for some time around a newly constructed plywood latrine as their party freshened up. From there, they would backtrack up and across the roundabout driveway encircling an apple tree and enter the farmhouse, where a few old-timers sat on couches in the living room. They would be waved in by Mr. and Mrs. Kracl–the elder couple, for the grandparents had moved out of their house in town six months back and had been staying with the younger Kracl couple ever since–to whom the guests would make a short introduction, venture some anodyne observation–for instance, how wonderful it must be to have three generations living under one roof, or how resourcefully the Kracls had already de-electrified their ranch after the disaster–and then at the first chance continue through the farmhouse and out the back door to the deck, where Mrs. Scherer now sat admiring Mrs. Kruger’s sandy-haired toddler.

The guests were gathering at folding tables in the yard. From several vantage points distributed across the lawn, which Mr. Kracl had dutifully mown with a push-mower that morning, they were admiring the little implements of the party set up all around them. Their children were throwing golf balls connected by rope at racks of thin plastic pipe or disentangling the ones that missed from big clumps of freshly mown wet grass. A few men were crouching over a plastic tub filled with irregular chunks of chiseled ice, tapping a keg of beer. The hired band was pulling guitars out of black cases and setting up a drum kit on a few loading palettes.

Caroline Scherer looked out at Jack, who had wandered over to an Adirondack chair by the garden at the edge of the lawn. The graduate wore a short sleeve button-up shirt with thin, vertical, light green stripes. He was neither skinny nor fat, but a robust neck bulged where the drawstring of his straw hat cut under his chin, and his cheeks were rosy and plump and had not a trace of facial hair. His frame, though not muscular, was heavy and solid in proportion to his average height. He had wide-set, dark brown eyes, which people found exceptionally agreeable, perhaps because they constantly bore just the faintest tinge of bewilderment.

Mrs. Kruger watched her curly-haired toddler push a ball off the deck and over to the far edge of the lawn, where he plopped down by Jack in the rich, dark soil and began eating some of the very first strawberries of the season out of Mrs. Kracl’s garden. Soon his fingertips were covered in red juice, and mud cleaved to the gaps between his fingers. Mrs. Scherer grinned and gave the mother a nudge.

Mrs. Scherer admired the little boy for a moment. Then, straining her memory, she called out graciously to the au pair in a little bit of French that she could piece together from her schooling. She managed, “Il mange des fraises,” and pointed at the curly blonde locks fluttering in the light breeze between rows of strawberry plants. Mrs. Scherer shot her niece a smug look, obviously satisfied with her command of the foreign language.

“Merci beaucoup, Madame Scherer.” The au pair took her time walking to the garden. Soft waves of grass rolled through the prairie beyond. Puffy clouds filled the enormous, blue dome of the sky. The sun was sinking low. Before her, the little boy sat rooted in the dark earth between rows of fledgling strawberry plants, popping berries into his mouth. Colette conjured up an allusion to her national literature and said quietly, “Il a l’âme paysanne, comme chez Giono…”

“Like Regain? Or more like Un de Baumugnes?” Jack asked in a tone no less earnest for all its playfulness, interrupting the young woman’s reverie. Unlike his dear aunt, Jack possessed a plausible accent, and he rattled off his French in the quick, crisp nasality of her native country. The au pair wheeled around and backpedaled a few steps, considering the young man in a new light.

“You read those in school here?” The au pair was incredulous. She was wiping off the juice and the mud from the toddler’s hands on the short, wet grass.

Jack shook his head. “I studied chemistry in France for a year,” he explained with a carefully measured nonchalance that obscured the satisfaction he must have felt in making this revelation.

The au pair could not but throw her hands up and shrug her shoulders at the serendipity. “Your sister told me you spoke French, but–you’ll forgive me–I thought to myself, ‘Foutaises! There’s no way.’ All these months I’ve spent with no one but the children to talk to–and now this!” Colette shook her head as she took the toddler by the hand.

If Mrs. Scherer was smug just before, upon overhearing this revelation she became positively superior. The corners of the old woman’s bright eyes trembled in adulation at the educated young man before her, and she reveled in the impressed look that played out in the young Frenchwoman’s features.

“Son–a word?” Luke Kracl called out to his son over the music of the band. The father’s chin jutted out expectantly over the edge of the deck, and his hands gripped the railing firmly. Jack shrugged coyly at the au pair in parting and started across the yard. Luke clasped his son squarely on the shoulder as he stepped up onto the deck, looked him in the eye, and led him into the house. Mary Kracl smiled at her son from a deck chair, then rose and went inside to fetch her teenage daughter and her friends out of the basement.

Through the half-open blinds of Mr. Kracl’s home office, Mrs. Scherer could just barely make out three figures taking up positions within the dark interior: the son sitting down with his back to the window; the father’s outline blending into the recesses of the room; and the grandfather leaning against a filing cabinet, briefly crumpling the thin, aluminum slats of the blinds with his shoulder. For a few minutes, the figures maintained their triangulation.

The kitchen door flung open completely, its gunmetal handle cracking against the granite countertop. A gaggle of teenage girls pattered across the deck and pranced out into the yard, where they assumed their perches atop the railings and rungs of an outdoor play set. One of these lagged behind the rest.

“Bring her here, dear,” Caroline Scherer motioned to her niece. Encumbered only momentarily by the transfer of her infant daughter, the girl smoothly withdrew her hand from between her aunt’s forearm and the baby’s back, turned nimbly, and skipped on out to the play set, where the girls carried on amongst themselves in the same low tones they had used inside. A handful of doting aunties assembled on the deck around Mrs. Scherer to admire the little fingers and toes of her great-niece and to take turns holding the baby.

Mrs. Scherer discerned silhouettes converging upon Jack within the office. He had risen to his feet, his shoulders bobbing up and down under the force of what must have been handshakes and pats on the back. The three left the office, and Jack emerged onto the deck holding a packet of papers and flanked by his father and grandfather, who carried three small cups and a bottle of corn liquor.

The father and son sat down on the outdoor sectional while the grandfather unscrewed the cap and poured them all a little liquor from the plastic bottle. The men’s eyes trained thoughtfully on the cups before them. Each placed a hand on another’s shoulder in embrace. The men drank.

Mrs. Kracl assumed a serene presence behind her son. Jack turned and gazed up into his mother’s face. She whispered a few quiet words in his ear and produced from her pocket a small, pewter medal, which she strung around her boy’s neck. She stroked the hair on the side of his head tenderly.

Luke Kracl rose and moved to the edge of the deck to address his guests. He cleared his throat. “I want to thank you for joining us at our ranch today.” He clinked a mason jar with a fork to quiet the band, and the guests turned to face their host. Mr. Kracl waited some moments for their talk to quiet. “Eight months ago, the solar flare put any thought of celebration out of mind. Our families turned to practical questions, setting ourselves about the hard work of adapting to the suddenly primitive and unforgiving world around us. Like so many of you, my family wondered if we would ever see our loved ones from distant places again.” Mr. Kracl paused. Only the frantic chirping of songbirds at dusk and the distant giggling of teenage girls were to be heard. “Well, a few weeks ago, our prayers were answered. Today, we celebrate not only with our son, Jack, the man of the hour, the graduate, but also with his aunt, whom he heroically rescued from her home in Lincoln. Against all odds, our family is whole again, and for this I thank the good Lord.

“At the same time, it pains me that the same cannot be said of all my dear guests’ families,” Luke paused to regard his sister, who teared up. Mrs. Kracl gave Mrs. Scherer’s arm a brief, tight squeeze. “And so we begin tonight with a prayer for those who have not yet made it back.” Luke looked to his feet and took a couple breaths. “In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.”

“Amen,” the people prayed. All bowed their heads.

“Hail Mary, full of grace,” Luke began, and the guests joined him in prayer; “–the Lord is with thee. Blessed art thou among women, and blessed is the fruit of thy womb, Jesus. Holy Mary, mother of God, pray for us sinners now and at the hour of our death. Amen.”

“Jack,” his father continued, “We know if the world hadn’t changed, you’d be off at some fancy corporation right now, some hot-shot chemical engineer making big money. We’re sorry for what you lost, son, but we’re grateful to have you back. You get to do something that matters–real responsibilities with a direct impact on your family and hometown. Here’s to you, Jack!” The Kracls’ guests held their drinks up for the toast. “To becoming a man with real purpose. May your learning serve Antioch well in this new world!” Then Luke Kracl said grace. “Bless us, O Lord, and these thy gifts,” he started, and the people prayed along, “–which we are about to receive from thy bounty, through Christ, our Lord. Amen.”

The guests quickly picked their conversations back up where they had left them. The band kicked off a set, and soon the lawn party was rumbling again. Some ladies began shuttling dishes from the kitchen onto a long rectangular folding table on the deck, assembling into a buffet the many bowls of vinegary potato salad and baked beans and napkin-lined baskets of thick-sliced potato chips and dinner rolls that converged atop a red-checkered tablecloth. Mr. Kracl donned a yellow apron and crouched down next to a charcoal chimney starter that lay on a concrete paver on top of the pristine, wet deck wood. As smoke wafted from the chimney, he stood up and began cleaning the grate with a steel wool brush. His wife situated a tray of hamburger patties on the workbench of a large, stainless steel grill.

The buffet table assembled, some of the older ladies returned to the living room, where they quietly knitted on the couches next to their dozing husbands and waited for Mrs. Kracl to call them to dinner. The youngest of the ladies, however, was pried away from her handiwork by Mrs. Scherer and led back out onto the deck.

“This young lady says the two of you went around in high school together, Jack,” his aunt said, the hint of a smile playing at the corners of her lips. “You know Cassie?”

“Well, if it isn’t our hero!” Cassie played along, winking at Jack familiarly. Mrs. Scherer saw Jack blush as he rose awkwardly and quickly cleared his small packet of papers from a seat cushion, gesturing for the young woman to please sit down. She took a seat in the corner of the outdoor sectional, the ankle of one leg nestling up under her thigh and her arm resting on the seat back as she turned on the large seat cushion to face Jack.

Satisfied with her introduction of the pleasant young woman to her favorite nephew, Mrs. Scherer settled into a deck chair nearby and listened as the two young people haltingly traded updates, their words punctuated by the clang of horseshoes behind them and the thud of missed tosses hitting the sand.

Groups of family and friends were circulating over to Jack. As hamburgers sizzled on the nearby grill, groups would congratulate the new grad and ask about his harrowing trip home. Sometimes an honest guest would admit they had forgotten what degree he obtained or the field of study. A few ventured a polite question about his thesis topic. But most guests would ask Jack what he thought his future might hold. This last question the guests asked in part out of genuine interest in the promising young man before them, but in the fullness of truth, they sought in Jack’s answer some sign pointing to the greater fortune of Antioch. After all, the healthy career prospects of a freshly-minted chemical engineering Ph.D. should signal relief from their current desolation, while uncertainty could portend continued deterioration of the social order.

In answer to their question, Jack would describe in broad outline his new role on the family ranch. Mrs. Scherer, in her profound suburbanity, struggled to grasp what her nephew’s new role exactly entailed, but such a slight knowledge gap did nothing to prevent her from interjecting her own thoughts on this development. The proud aunt heaped praise on the young man. All the guests would congratulate Jack heartily on his new role, and the few who grasped the importance of his fledgling enterprise would probe him on points of common business interest.

In between visits by arriving guests, Jack and Cassie carried on amicably on the sectional. Now and then, Caroline Scherer could make out the more animated fragments of their shared memories, such as this one, which Cassie reserved for a moment when Mr. Kracl was away, collecting rough numbers as to how many of his guests wanted cheese on their patties.

“–and when your dad came into the barn in the middle of the night with that jenny that was about to foal?” Cassie drummed up another episode from their checkered past. “I still can’t believe the timing. I had to sneak out, crawling through the side door. My homecoming dress was ruined! I wonder how I ended up explaining that to my mother,” she pondered, trailing off.

“A little hay on your dress?” Jack laughed. “That’s nothing–my dad made me stay and help him deliver the foal. I only realized at dawn that I was still in the slacks from my tuxedo! The rental guy was furious.” He shook his head. “Besides, I was scared to death the whole night my dad would smell the beer on my breath. Thank God that donkey was so smelly! I wonder what my dad even thought I was doing out there all alone in the first place.” So their anecdotes went on among a half-remembered litany of classmates, teachers, coaches, and parents.

“Well, if you’ve refined your palate any since those days, I think we ought to grab a cup of my dad’s home-brew,” Jack politely suggested, nodding in the direction of the bar, where his father was now pouring out beer into red plastic cups and mason jars.

Cassie looked down at the thin belt around her middle. They had drawn near that inevitable point at which their banter could no longer move forward, could not develop into a full conversation, without Cassie painting Jack a more complete picture of her current station in life. From the fragments which Caroline overheard, it seemed that Cassie remained true to the account which was then current in town. It was from this gossip that Caroline filled in the parts which eavesdropping alone could not supply.

Cassie had gotten married during college, you see. Her husband had been a kind man, and the couple had come back to Antioch hoping to start a family. After the solar flare hit and the jobs went away, the drinking bouts she had assumed were just the vestiges of a dying college habit increased beyond the mere Friday night out with “the boys”. By the time Cassie had finally gotten pregnant as they once had hoped–she was now some four months along, yes, thank you–her husband had started raising a hand to her. The two separated a few months back when the thing became hopeless. Mrs. Scherer had heard from independent sources that the husband carried on as a barfly in Alliance for a while, but apparently nobody had seen him in weeks.

All this Cassie rattled off in clear statements of fact as something which it was her duty to spell out plainly for an old friend. Although Mrs. Scherer clearly perceived in the young woman’s frankness a vulnerability which demanded something of Jack in that moment, she did not get to see what qualities it drew forth in her nephew, for in that moment her eye was drawn far off to something on the property line, something which was out of place.

From her coign of vantage, Mrs. Scherer had spotted what she discerned was a distant column of carriages nearing the property line. She rose and walked to the edge of the deck, where she tapped Luke Kracl on the shoulder and pointed at the distant gate. Behind her, Cassie brought her story to its conclusion.

“And so for the past month or so I have been working at the bank with my dad. I take it yours gave you your graduation present already?” the young woman asked, eyeing the packet Jack held in his hand. “We did some of the paperwork,” she explained. “Your family has been planning this for weeks. How does it feel?”

Mrs. Scherer overheard her nephew trying out the words: “Operational control of mineral extraction on the family land.” A long pause indicated the boy was trying them on for size. He studied the young woman’s face for a hint of what he should make of the thing.

“You’re a big deal in Antioch,” Cassie informed him. “A lot of people need the work.”

“I don’t know, Cassie. I’m not exactly a seasoned engineer. I’ve only just finished my thesis. What do I know about industry? I was thinking I’d have to start off small.”

“Oh, you can’t, Jack! You haven’t been back long, so you probably haven’t seen it, but let me tell you: it’s so depressing working the counter at the bank. Farmers selling useless old farm equipment for scrap. Women peddling their jewelry for groceries. You would think my dad was running a pawn shop to look at it! And what’s worse is that all the good people are skipping town. The Wiegers, the McCormacks, Jen’s mom–I could go on–all those old families are ready to pack it up and try their luck someplace else. What will they do without those jobs? Your salt works is the only industry promising stable work. Some folks tell me they will hold off on leaving just long enough to see if they can get someone on your payroll. I tell them to have faith. The Kracl land is rich in natural resources. They’ll get something going here. For my part, I’m hopeful there will be something here for the next generation.” Cassie trailed off wistfully, her palm pressed against her middle. “Oh, don’t give me that look!” Cassie laughed and reassured him, “This should be just the thing for a chemical engineer, right? You got this.”

Jack leaned back and looked up at the sky for a moment before his aunt caught his eye and, with the turn of her head, directed his gaze to the scene unfolding at the distant gate.

Unlike the farm wagons on which most of the Kracl’s guests arrived, the distant caravan was made up of heavy, black stagecoaches. They had uniformed drivers and conductors and were pulled by four draft horses apiece. The conductor at the van of the column had dismounted and was exchanging words with one ranch hand over the iron pipe gate while the other jogged down the gravel drive with a card in his hand.

The band played on, but the whole party was stealing looks at Luke Kracl, who strode out to meet the ranch hand on the driveway. Guests held horseshoes idly in their hands and stared curiously at the distant caravan between bites of hamburger and sips of beer. Mr. Kracl turned the thick cardstock over in his hands a few times, took a long, hard look at the property line, and then had the one ranch hand beckon to the other at the gate. The Kracls’ guests soon heard the deep rumble of wheels and hooves pounding the gravel drive. A dozen horses lathered with foam strained in their harnesses as they drew near. The drivers circled the coaches around the apple tree and slowly brought their teams to a halt in front of the farmhouse.

Boots thumped the ground as six men hopped down from the vanguard in black canvas clothing. Their attire, with its numerous pockets and belts, loops and holsters, struck Mrs. Scherer as eminently practical, perhaps even tactical. The bodyguards stretched slowly and inconspicuously, as one does after a long journey, and surveyed their new surroundings. A few men in tee shirts bearing fertilizer company logos were consulting the Kracl nephews about stabling the animals. They opened up trunks on the rearmost wagon and attended to the various practicalities demanded by the caravan’s arrival. Conductors hopped down to open doors and offer a hand to the passengers disembarking the middle coaches. From behind velvet curtains that blocked out the windows, Mrs. Scherer watched no fewer than ten men in business suits descend from the stagecoaches. Christine Kruger launched off the deck and embraced one of them, whom Mrs. Scherer recognized in the failing light of dusk as her niece’s husband.

The last to disembark wore a plaid shirt and blazer. His thinning salt and pepper hair was gelled and combed evenly over the top of his square head. In the light of a conductor’s gas lamp, Mrs. Scherer recognized him as Samuel Kruger Senior, the fertilizer magnate and sometimes resident of Sheridan County. The hard leather soles of his loafers crunched on the gravel path as he carefully trod over coarse stones to the Kracls on the deck.

Samuel Kruger Senior greeted John and Luke Kracl. As they talked, the magnate gestured back at his company, who were milling around the stagecoaches, testing their legs after the cramped conditions of their journey. He chewed on a toothpick as he spoke, now and then rolling it from one corner of his mouth to the other with the flick of his tongue.

John and Luke turned aside, and Mr. Kruger strode into the midst of the Kracls to address his hosts: “It’s good to be back here among sensible people in Sheridan Country!” The magnate gestured to the other businessmen, who still stood by the coaches in the light of the conductors’ gas lamps. “Thank you for receiving us sojourners at your party.” Mr. Kracl shrugged sheepishly as the businessmen entered the yard and started milling around the deck and a few folding tables at the edge of the lawn. Mrs. Scherer furrowed her brow at this shrug, the first gesture that looked out of place on her brother all evening.

“So this is our engineer,” Mr. Kruger said to Jack. “Congratulations, by the way! I hear from your father that you have been newly christened a fertilizer man–one of us, I suppose I can say!” He winked and smiled. “Now, I’m sorry to intrude on your party, but you will learn soon enough that in business some things can’t wait. I have a proposal to make to you, son, and I promise to make it worth your time.” He crooked his finger at his colleagues and clicked his tongue. One businessman lumbered up onto the deck and bussed the paper plates from the coffee table while two others opened an oversized portfolio case and laid it out flat on the granite surface. Maps, geological surveys, and spreadsheets fluttered in the breeze. The colleagues crouched down on either side of their boss to hold the corners down with their fingertips. One bumped Cassie’s knee with his behind in his abrupt descent. “I will soon be restarting production at my packing plants. Your grandfather and father tell me you will be developing the minerals on your land, and I believe I see in this most welcome news an opportunity for you and me to work together.” Mr. Kruger paused and studied Jack’s wide-set eyes for a sign as to how he should continue. “The matter at hand is plain and simple: I want to buy,” he declared. “To be precise, I would like purchasing rights on your product, and I am prepared to talk timelines and quantity and put a dollar sign in front of it.”

Luke stood in the corner, thumbs through his belt loops. John sat rigid on a wooden stool. Mrs. Scherer saw their weather-beaten brows furrow and their eyes narrow as Mr. Kruger showed Jack a futures contract which he had taken the liberty of drawing up. He talked financing options over a fluttering sound made by his colleague whirling the pages of a binder. He sought Jack’s opinion on some yield projections he had worked out, using his maps to cross-reference the location of bodies of water and comparing with mineral deposits in his geological surveys.

Businessmen now completely surrounded the sectional, crowding out Cassie on the cushion next to Jack. Mrs. Scherer rose and wandered off the deck for air, not so far into the yard as to let the music of the band drown out the unsettled matters playing out on the deck, but ceding room to the dense throng of suits.

At the edge of the garden, which the string lights of the yard party could barely penetrate, Mrs. Scherer discerned two little legs sticking out the end of a row of strawberry plants. She gently caught the attention of the au pair, who was then leaning against the deck railing and staring off at the glossy, jet-black stagecoaches in the drive, and indicated to her the location of the sleeping Kruger child. She then turned back to face the deck as Mr. Kruger came to his point.

Bending over the coffee table, the boss proposed his terms. “How does that sound to you, Jack: six tons of salt at 25¢ a pound and fifty tons of potash at 45¢ a pound, paid in currency backed by the full faith and credit of Sheridan County, with delivery next February?” For a moment, the magnate stood still, pressing all his weight down on the portfolio with his knuckles. “Do we have a deal, son?”

“I–” Jack hesitated. He was staring down at the maps, spreadsheets, and surveys arrayed before him.

“Yes?” The magnate drew the word out long, letting his tone rise and head nod as if in an attempt to lure Jack’s eyes off the portfolio and into his own intent gaze.

“I appreciate the offer,” Jack said, raising his head to meet Mr. Kruger’s sight line. Jack’s expression seemed to Mrs. Scherer as if her nephew were experiencing physical pain in prying his eyes from the portfolio.

John Kracl held back in the corner, shaking his head. Luke rose and jutted his torso sideways through the businessmen, his shoulders drawn upwards in tension. His tight jaw lowered, and he prepared to speak.

“–But no,” Jack said quietly, preempting his father. Then louder: “No, I don’t think so.” In an instant, the deck went completely still. Luke Kracl pulled back and relaxed his shoulders and jaw just a bit.

Mr. Kruger stood up. “I’m talking, of course, about a deal only in principle. You didn’t think I expected you to sign on the spot at your graduation party!” He laughed, slapping the thick portfolio shut and handing it off to his colleagues. “We’ll leave the details for tomorrow.”

“No,” Jack insisted, “I can already tell you that a deal along the lines you presented won’t work. If it is only the ‘details’ that you would want to revisit tomorrow, as you say, then I see no need to revisit the deal at all.”

Mrs. Scherer watched Mr. Kruger’s smile falter at the definiteness of the response, so incommensurate, it seemed to her, with the rosy-cheeked, wide-eyed college graduate who sat before him. “I beg your pardon?” The businessmen exchanged nervous glances. Mr. Kruger glared at the boy, then the father. He threw up his hands in exasperation. “May I have the pleasure of knowing what exactly about my deal is so ‘unacceptable’ to you?”

Tension shot again through Luke Kracl’s shoulders and jaw, and John shifted his weight on his stool, but neither man injected himself into the negotiation. It seemed to Mrs. Scherer that the men were torturing her nephew in exercising such reserve. They left the next word to Jack.

“The thing is,” he began, “I want to sell, but I will be producing in larger quantities than you seem to be expecting. I am really only looking to sell in bulk.”

“Is fifty six tons not ‘bulk’ to you?” Mr. Kruger squinted but otherwise kept up the appearance of amused incredulity.

“I need you to buy at least a hundred and fifty tons of potash for this deal to work,” Jack explained. “The price is 65¢ a pound, and I would need half your payment up front, not in county scrip, but in silver dollars. Delivery will not be possible next February. You can take possession the following winter.”

“The following winter?” Mr. Kruger exclaimed, mouth agape. “You are asking me to wait a full twenty months to receive your product? Put aside for a moment the operational impact a full year without potash will have on my production targets. I have contracts with far shorter terms–for sweet corn, soybeans, urea, packaging, hand tools, you name it–and every day I receive notice that one contract or another is not being honored. Warehouses looted, family farms folding, supply chains evaporating! They’re falling through left and right, and do you think insurance is paying out on stuff like that? Some days I think I am the only man holding up his end of the bargain,” he trailed off, exasperated. “And you are asking for a down payment on a product to be delivered a year and a half from now?”

“Excusez-moi, Madame Kruger,” the au pair mouthed quietly to Christine Kruger as she shuffled past her employer on the deck, the juice-streaked face of the sleeping toddler peeking out from between her arms. “Cela suffit pour les fraises pour aujourd’hui,” she cooed softly to the little one. “Demain est un autre jour.” She took the toddler inside, and the door sweep squeaked closed behind her.

“Who exactly am I to you, Mr. Kruger?” Jack’s voice sounded thin and plaintive to his aunt at first but quickly became confident as he gave fuller expression to this thought. “Am I some line manager with a clipboard in a fertilizer plant? Some starving farmer with fields of withering crops? My sister is your daughter-in-law. Has there ever been a rift between your family and mine? Our mutual interests are the de facto insurance on any contract. Our ties run deeper than ink on a page.”

Mrs. Scherer noticed her sister-in-law’s cheeks redden at the plainness of her son’s assertion. In general, Caroline understood her sister to eschew touting her connections to the Kruger family, not at all out of contempt of her daughter’s in-laws, for Mary would often speak highly of them, but rather–as Caroline supposed–out of the incongruence of the Kracls’ dignified but humble ranching background with the Kruger agribusiness dynasty. That the new college graduate, only recently reintegrated back into family life after an absence of nearly a decade, would presume such an intimate and–as his mother might figure–gratuitous connection between the Kruger family and his own was likely felt by his mother as an unexpected affront to her carefully guarded sense of humility.

Christine, for her part, swayed unsteadily on her feet for a moment before quietly slipping off inside. Her husband seemed to be the only one besides Mrs. Scherer to take notice. He scowled as his gaze flitted back and forth erratically between his brother-in-law and father.

“Moreover–and I really want to know this, Mr. Kruger–do you have a producer who could possibly supply you any earlier? How much brine do you think they’re pumping up from thousand-foot depths in Moab? Are Canadian miners still waking up in the morning and dropping three thousand feet down into mine shafts in Saskatchewan?” Jack shook his head slowly. “This ranch lies on the only viable potash deposit in North America, and I am telling you it will take all next year to spin up production.”

“That’s all the same,” the magnate said dismissively. “I don’t think you understand the deal you are proposing, Jack. Even if you could deliver a hundred and fifty tons–and I’m willing to suppose for the moment you really can, okay?–where exactly do you think I’m going to get the nitrogen to justify that volume of potash? I like where your head’s at, son, I really do. These are the times to be ambitious! Oh, what I would give to be a young man again right now!” The magnate grinned, toothpick locking into place in his jaw. The string lights gleamed in his beady black eyes. “But over the past three months, I have been all the way down to Florida and back, and then over to Colorado. I am telling you: the big fertilizer plants are still dead in the water. The Haber-Bosch facilities need massive, continuous power loads that nobody can deliver anymore. Put yourself in my shoes: I’m planning to restart production using what we can actually get: bone meal from my slaughterhouses, composted manure, maybe some fish emulsion if I can work out the logistics. That’s realistic, Jack. That’s what’s actually possible. Those organic sources only need maybe fifty tons of potash to balance out properly, depending on the purity.” Mr. Kruger threw his arms up. “Your hundred and fifty tons would only make sense if I had access to industrial quantities of urea and DAP, and I’m telling you–” He pressed his fingers straight down on the coffee table. “–nobody is producing that anymore. The industrial ammonia plants are silent, son. I am selling the machines for scrap and the buildings at book value.”

Jack shook his head quietly. “You’re assuming ammonia production requires the same massive grid infrastructure it always has, but there’s another way.” He leaned forward, his voice gaining confidence. “You say the big plants can’t run anymore, and I believe it–they need constant, enormous power loads. But in the university lab, we routinely performed ammonia synthesis on a small scale. You split water with electricity to get hydrogen, pull nitrogen from the air, and run the reaction in modular units. Those can handle intermittent power.”

Jack paused, studying Kruger’s skeptical expression. “I know you personally own three abandoned ammonia plants within a hundred miles of here, Mr. Kruger. The reaction vessels are intact, the catalysts can be regenerated, and the air separation equipment is salvageable. What they lack is steady grid power, but they don’t need it. Diesel generators can provide the electricity. I know where several large industrial generators are sitting unused, and diesel fuel is still available here and there. You store the hydrogen until you’re ready to make ammonia in batches.

“If I say I will sell you a hundred and fifty tons of potash, Mr. Kruger, it’s because I know methods to produce the urea and DAP to go with it. If your company has already resigned itself to bone meal and manure, that’s fine; I’ll find another buyer who wants to manufacture synthetic fertilizer on an industrial scale.”

Mr. Kruger slowly paced the deck, loafers clicking on the hardwood. The businessmen clutched their maps and portfolios closely and scrunched together, bumping into one another along the railings and against the siding of the farmhouse as they yielded space to their boss. Mr. Kruger came to a stop and fiddled with the toothpick in his jaw.

“This isn’t the first time a man has talked my ear off about newfangled chemistry, Jack. A man down in Florida approached me with much the same idea, but I am advised it is a speculative proposition.” Jack opened his mouth to interject, but Mr. Kruger kept on with a dismissive wave of the hand. “Whether or not that is true is beside the point,” he talked over Jack, “Indulge me! Mine is a Haber-Bosch shop, as was every other major fertilizer manufacturer in the world, not a research institute or startup. You can tell me it works, that’s fine. It’s not going to sway my board–not going to sway me for that matter.

“My doubts notwithstanding, I happen to know there is already a lot of speculation on the prospect of its success. I will not be the fool who opens his wallet to finance a bunch of odd, expensive chemical experiments, but I want skin in the game, Jack. Entrepreneurs riskier than I will try this, and in the meanwhile, I need potash of my own to balance out the manure. If I told you I want in–financially, of course, the operations I leave entirely to you,” he nodded with deference in the direction of the elder Kracl men, then turned to face Jack, “would you now agree we indeed have some details to hash out over an egg?”

Mrs. Scherer saw a spark flicker in the magnate’s eyes as Jack quickly rose. Without another word, Jack Kracl shook Mr. Kruger’s hand. The businessmen relaxed visibly, unclenching their belongings and taking a few steps to spread themselves out. In the newly created space between business suits, Mrs. Scherer could make out John Kracl leaning gravely on the arm of a deck chair, hand to his chin, his son whispering at length into his ear.

By this point, the Kracls’ guests had accustomed themselves to the distant presence of stagecoaches and suits and had lost curiosity in whatever had been playing out on the deck. They were drinking at folding tables and dancing in the soft, yellow glow of string lights. Periodically, teenage boys would call out brazenly to a gaggle of girls dangling from the rungs and ladders of the outdoor playset, who occasionally would let one or two of their number be led off to the dance floor, but who more often amused themselves by rejecting their suitors, an abuse which they committed frequently and with much satisfaction.

Mrs. Scherer watched the magnate draw Jack past Cassie and off to the side of the deck, near to the place the au pair was standing out of the way. Mr. Kruger had an employee produce for him a small wooden box, which he opened and presented to his newest supplier. It contained a gold wristwatch with a brown leather strap. Colette stepped up next to Jack, attracted by the fine instrument. Jack turned the box around so she could see it straight on. The au pair clasped her hands and pressed them between bent knees as she leaned in close to appreciate its craftsmanship. Jack jostled the watch a little in its box and nudged the Frenchwoman playfully, who looked to him and Mr. Kruger for permission before removing it from the box and fastening it around Jack’s wrist. He held out his arm and swiveled his wrist for her to admire. She giggled as the timepiece glinted under the string lights. Mr. Kruger laughed and slapped his new associate on the back.

“The first deal of many, my boy!” the magnate roared. “The first of many!”