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I have one last rooster, the only one who’s survived repeated eagle attacks and raccoon depredations, and he now struts the enclosure, all his tail feathers intact, looking unalarmed by the loss of yet another of his harem. What a useless cock. So many of them are.
Old age confers anonymity, which makes it the most effective disguise of all.
Over the sixteen years since my retirement, I’ve slowly let down my guard. Now I’m so accustomed to being a small-town chicken farmer that I’ve started to believe that’s all I am. The way Ben’s just a retired salesman for hotel supplies, and Declan’s just a retired history professor. We know the truth, but we keep each other’s secrets, because we each have our own to guard. There’s safety in mutual blackmail.
It had everything he required: a bookstore, a decent town library, a coffee shop that served espresso, and no nearby nuclear targets.
Pain is a powerful spice, the other face of pleasure. Some of us crave it, just enough of it, to remind us we’re alive.
Money is not like water. It moves uphill instead. It flows from people who have too much of it, to people who have even more of it.”
There are already enough widows and orphans, on every side, for every cause.
There’s always some secret corner of your life that you cannot share with anyone. Treason would certainly be one of those secrets.
And that’s what we must learn to deal with: Our place in a world that sees us as used up and irrelevant. This new generation looks only to the future, with little regard for the past and what it could teach them. What we could teach them.
Crime in progress. Is there any village, any town, where these words do not apply? We have learned that even our small town is not protected from the woes of the world. If a nuclear bomb falls on Washington, the prevailing winds will bring radioactive dust straight to our safe little corner. If countries collapse in Europe, or war erupts in East Asia, the ripples of devastation will eventually wash up in Purity, Maine. We are not immune. No one is.
