The first winter was the hardest. The breakdown came at the end of summer, too late for even those of us with seeds to plant a second crop, knowing what was coming. There were too many hungry mouths to feed them all, too little clean water to offer every traveller a swallow for a parched throat. At first we tried to help all who came to the house with just a little food and water before sending them on their way.  Then came the first would be thief, wielding a knife and demanding a week’s provisions for his woman and himself. I hung his body on a tree near the intersection of US 60 and the interstate, his knife in his chest, a sign around his neck, “I tried to steal food”. I gave her a few days provisions and left her in the shade of the tree. After that, we  stopped grazing animals in the pasture visible from the road, stopped using candles and lamps except in the back rooms of the house, took down the old windmill, felled a tree across the main driveway, and wore our pistols always. We made it through the winter without starving, but I ran out of trees near the interstate.

To come: stories, fragments of stories, storylines and digressions of a fertile mind.