The sign said "Stutzman Produce." Sweetcorn was $4.00 for a dozen ears or $5.50 for eighteen. He and his wife had stopped here many times over the years. She liked Sarah Stutzman's homemade bread and apple butter. Moses Stutzman also ran a small sawmill. You could bring your logs to him and he would cut them to whatever thickness that you wanted. He had brought a number of logs here in the past. Oak, maple, and cherry that he had Moses saw into one inch boards. Out by the road the family had built a small produce stand. It was just a simple structure with a shed roof. They had painted it white. Usually it was one or more of their seven children who would wait on any customers who stopped by. They kept it supplied with fresh produce that the family grew in their two acre garden. In the spring they sold baked goods, flower baskets, maple syrup and Adirondack chairs that Moses built in his shop during the winter. Sarah, with the help from her young girls, could usually put together two or three heirloom quality quilts over the winter months. She was known for her "giant Dahlia" pattern. They were sought after by collectors. During autumn they sold pumpkins, squash and a variety of mums. People would say that they had the nicest mums in Bottineau County.

He slipped down off Fireball and stood there bent over for a few moments. His hip throbbed. "I love you old girl but you're like sitting astride a propane tank" he chuckled as he patted her neck. The produce, left untended, had all decayed and gone bad. Tomatoes, cucumbers, peppers, blueberries...now a moldy putrefying mess. There was a crate of sweetcorn off to the side. He took out an ear and pulled the husk down. He thought for as long as it must have set here that it didn't look too bad. He turned and held it out to Fireball and she took it without hesitation. He pulled the husks down on four more ears and tossed them on the grass beside the stand. "That should keep you busy for a while" he said to her. He also took one of the better ears to eat and limped up the gravel drive towards the house and outbuildings. It felt good to stretch his legs.

The house was intact. A blue curtain hung out an open window and the screen door on the side porch entrance hung ajar. A pair of black muck boots sat on the steps. The drive widened as it passed the house into a larger graveled area which was wide enough to turn around a wagon with a team of horses. The main barn set a few yards behind the house and on the opposite side of the drive. The north half of the barn had been shattered by some force. Torn metal roofing lay twisted and crumpled in the barnyard and for a ways out into the pasture. Loose hay which had been carefully stored in the mow had been scattered about. The heavy beams that supported the hay mow and roof structure were snapped and splintered. There was a steel track at the peak of the roof that was used to lift the hay into the mow. Now it projected out into the open space like some giant hypodermic needle. The floor boards had blown apart and he could see only blackness into the basement below. He walked around the south end of the barn and descended down to the foundation level along the east side. There were two large openings there through the foundation wall about ten feet wide that allowed livestock to go in and out. Both led to a row of ten or twelve stalls with stanchions used for milking cows. He knew what he would find inside even before he got close to the opening. The smell hit his nose as soon as he came around the corner of the barn. If he had to describe it, he might say it was like cabbage and bananas boiled in paint thinner with a few squirts of Windex mixed in. But he had grown accustomed to it. Moses had six nice Holstein cows that he milked. He sold his milk to a local cheese business that bought milk from other Amish families also. The cows lay in their stalls still secured around their necks by the stanchion mechanism. It looked to him that they had perished not from some trauma but from starvation and lack of water. He could only imagine how they must have bellowed and struggled to free themselves when in their dim minds they realized nobody was coming for them. Toward the north end of the basement the remaining stanchions had been removed and pens had been built. Inside one of the pens were the decomposing remains of three pigs. The pen at the far end ran the entire width of the barn. Inside this pen Moses kept his two Belgian work horses and a dark standard bred gelding that was used to pull their buggy. It was here that the hurtling projectile crashed through the roof and floor of the barn. It had obliterated the pen and the horses inside. Through the tangle of shattered boards and concrete he could glimpse the blond manes and hooves of the giant Belgians. He decided to discard the ear of sweetcorn that he still held in his hand.

To the south of the barn, Moses had built an open sided structure that housed his sawmill. It was a long, narrow building that protected his equipment from the rain and snow. It also allowed him to work in most any kind of weather. It was a band type saw that seemed to be the favored type for small operations. The log was rolled and secured onto a long steel frame. The saw blade, which ran horizontally between two large wheels, was set at the desired depth and then the whole mechanism, including the gasoline motor that powered it, was carefully pushed down the length of the log. The motor was powerful and the blade was thin and sharp. It took little time to make a cut down the entire length of the log….unless the blade hit a nail, which happened on one of his logs once. Moses called them "yard trees." They were trees that had grown near people's homes and had been cut down for some reason. Maybe the tree had been damaged or they had grown old and threatened to fall on the house if a strong wind came up. Invariably, over the years, people would pound a nail or screw an eye bolt into the tree to hang a bird feeder or clothesline. It was those logs that he examined carefully. If the blade hit a nail or screw it would not cut properly and the blade would need to be changed.

Typically there would be neat stacks of sawn boards positioned on the rough concrete floor waiting to be picked up. Outside there were bundles of slab wood. Slab wood was what came off the log when it was being squared up. It was tapered and mostly bark. They were held together in bundles by two wide metal bands and sold for firewood. A few paces away from the side of the building sat an old Ruston Bucyrus dragline. Two large logs had been anchored on top of supports that extended on a slight decline between the drag line and the frame of the sawmill. The drag line was used to place heavy logs onto this log track so that they could be easily rolled onto the mill using a cant hook. It was also used to load slabwood onto trucks or trailers when it was purchased. The shed and its contents had burned and lay in a blackened pile of ruins. Everything within a hundred foot radius had been incinerated. The painted mill was now just charred debris. The heat from the flames had been so intense that it had caused the boom on the dragline to sag and twist. Broken banding straps that once secured the bundles of slabwood poked through the ash. Near the cab of the dragline it smelled of burned electrical wiring and plastic upholstery seat cushions.

He made his way across the drive and back up towards the house. He stepped up on the porch and although the door hung open he rapped on the siding and hollered "Anyone home?" It was silent inside the home. He walked slowly through the rooms on the first floor and it seemed to him that Moses and his family had just vanished. Everything was left as if they had just disappeared. There were plates and dishes with remnants of a breakfast meal left on the table…a few unfinished cups of coffee. Sarah's quilting frame was set up in the family room. Chairs and other homemade oak furniture set properly around the room. The curtains were closed in the main bedroom. The bed had not been made. One of Sarah's dahlia quilts lay folded at the foot of the bed. In the backroom there was a stairway that led to the basement. There were no electrical lights, but there were a few small windows towards the top of the foundation wall that let in some light. It took his eyes a few moments to accustom to the dimness. Along the one wall were shelves stocked with a multitude of jars of canned vegetables and fruit. A large rectangular table set in the middle of the room and across the other wall were more storage shelves and hooks where winter clothing hung. There were also wooden crates of fresh dug potatoes and turnips. He took a quart jar of pickled beets and one of what looked like to him to be corn relish.

At the head of the stairs was a window that looked out to the west. He glanced out the window and noticed what appeared to be a chimney pipe with a cap on top that rose from a grass covered mound in the yard. He thought that it might be either a storm shelter or a root cellar. The entrance to the cellar was on the south side. It was a little more than three feet wide and landscaped in such a way that most people wouldn't notice it if they were just passing by. Ten concrete steps led down to a small landing at the bottom. A heavy windowless door hinged on thick hardwood jambs that were anchored into the concrete wall. There was a heavy metal latch that was operable from either side of the door. He lifted the latch and pushed on the door but something was against it on the inside that would not allow it to swing open freely. He pushed against the door more forcefully with his shoulder and the torso and head of a young child slumped out onto the concrete landing at his feet. He pushed the door open further and in the dim light he could see what he assumed was Moses and his family huddled together at the far end of the cellar. It looked to him that Moses was cradling their smallest child in his arms while the other children and Sarah embraced him and each other, locked in death.

Fireball was standing alongside the porch when he walked back around the corner of the house. There was a five gallon plastic bucket setting beside a cast iron pitcher pump a short distance from the steps. He filled the bucket with fresh water and both he and Fireball drank their fill. He stuck the jars of pickled beets and corn relish in the sack that he had brought and led Fireball back down the drive towards the road. On one side of the vegetable stand was a bench. He led Fireball alongside the bench and from there clambered onto her back. He took the Stolichnaya from the sack and took a long purposeful drink from the bottle. He looked at his Omega watch. It was a little after 10:00. They had come about halfway on their journey. He stuck the bottle of vodka back in the sack, the watch back inside his hatband and said quietly, "Ok girl, let's go." They headed west toward Antler.