Tryon had watched his colleagues abandon the city for the country, lecturing those they left behind about the clean air and good values of their new neighbors. The ex-urbanites buy failing farms at rock-bottom prices and then fetishize what they’ve destroyed, scooping up farm tools at bankruptcy sales and nailing them to the walls of their brand-new kitchens. Tryon wondered if their new neighbors might not share the same values as these newcomers, if perhaps they were aligned with stronger, older, bloodier forces that the city folk had forgotten.
