CHAPTER 6

The summer sped by and then it was fall. The old grain elevator was about to come down. Everyone had been hearing about the demolition for weeks, since the beginning of August. Donna’s friend Mary Anne asked if she wanted to go watch the elevator fall. The destruction of the grain elevator was an event, like the town parade, a rodeo or fireworks. The Messenger ran several stories about it, their three-person newsroom scrambling around for interviews. The radio, newspapers and television ran constant news about BSE, SARS and Iraq. Donna was scared to watch television or read the news, because every single thing depressed her. The world was falling apart. People were dying in Iraq, Toronto was full of SARS, and in town, people were going to lose their shirts if the border didn’t open soon.

The border closure was weighing on Gord. The auction mart opened a week or so after the border closed, but the prices were so low it wasn’t even worth trying to sell.

The other day at breakfast, Gord told Donna about Phil’s bull. Phil raised purebred bulls and had sent one of his champions down to the States. He couldn’t get the animal back since the border was closed, and they wouldn’t let cattle through. Fortunately, one of his American cattle buds was looking after the bull, but Phil wasn’t sure when he would get it back.

Just that morning, when Donna and Gord were in their bedroom, Gord looked in the mirror and examined the greys on his head.

“I think there are more,” he said. “But at least it’s not falling out. I don’t think I could handle losing my looks right now.”

Gord was lucky to have a full head of hair. Craig was balding. His forehead got bigger every week, and the back of his head got shinier. Linda loved the reddish tint of Craig’s hair. Donna knew that secretly, Linda hated that Craig’s hair was falling out, even though she’d never say anything about it to him. A man could control his weight and how big his belly got. But no man, not even a man who ate only steamed vegetables and worked out on a treadmill every day, could control his own hairline.

“You’ve still got your looks,” Donna said, putting her arms around her husband. He was a good-looking man, even if he had a few wrinkles and the start of a spare tire. He had big brown eyes, nice white teeth and the same strong hands, nice arms and muscular back she had fallen in love with. He was her cowboy. They had a pile of good-looking children, and two of them were growing up nicely.

“Don’t worry about this mad cow stuff,” she said, letting go of Gord to pick up a pile of laundry. Ever since the funeral, she was falling behind. Things needed to be done around the house, and she hadn’t gotten to them yet. She was treading water, on the verge of losing her ability to keep afloat. She had piles of stuff to wash. Gord’s barn clothes were starting to smell, which drove her completely crazy. “We’ll be fine,” she said. “You just keep doing what you’re doing. We’ve always been fine.”

His body stiffened, the way the bodies of their dogs did when they saw a coyote in the yard.

“Don’t call it mad cow,” he said. “You need to call it BSE.”

“Why?” she said, her arms full of laundry.

“If you say mad cow, it sounds like something is wrong with the meat. People need to know that they can’t get sick from eating beef.”

Donna sighed. BSE was another bunch of letters, like the rest of farming. Phil Hill was on the board of Alberta Beef Producers, known as ABP. ABP and CCA had constant meetings. Their grain farming neighbours talked about the CWB, and ACPC and going to pick up things at UFA. These people just loved the alphabet. They’d use any excuse to stick three or four letters together.

“I have to put this in the wash,” Donna said as she left the room.

*

She got off work early because of the grain elevator. Anita, the owner of Memorable Moments, thought about keeping the store open so she could make money off the people coming downtown to watch the grain elevator fall at the end of the street.

“I feel sick thinking about it,” Anita said. “But hey, the store could use the business. We have to keep up our sales, so that we’re top of mind when Wal-Mart comes.”

Anita Babchuk had lived in town all her life and was now in her fifties. Sometimes Donna wondered how she could stand it, living her entire life in one place. Didn’t Anita ever wonder what other places were like? She and her husband Kelly used to run the video store in town too, but they sold it when Kelly got into inventing. He started out making those wooden silhouettes of cowboys and wagon wheels that people put in front of their homes. His cut-outs were immensely popular, so Kelly started travelling to farm trade shows and rodeos. He had also invented some kind of watering system for cattle to drink out of when it got cold. The Babchuks were in the money now.

Donna didn’t know how someone could be as happy as Anita. No one in town ever said anything bad about her. She was the best with customers and could always help anyone find the right card for any occasion. The card she sent the Klassens after the accident still sat on the mantle in Donna and Gord’s house, even though many of the other cards had been thrown out. Anita’s card was beautiful; purple, pink and orange just like a prairie sunset. On the front of the card, a couple wearing cowboy hats stood on a ledge, looking out into a valley. The inside of the card said, Together, we can get through the roughest of times. Wishing you and your family strength and courage during this difficult period.

Anita eventually decided town pride was worth more than commerce and she announced they would close the store early.

“I can’t bear to watch the elevator fall,” Anita said, as they locked up for the night. “I’m going to go home, sit on my back porch and have a glass of wine. When I wake up in the morning, the town will be different.”

Mary Anne knocked on the window of the store. Donna waved at her.

“Go ahead,” Anita said. “I’ll finish up.”

Mary Anne was one of Donna’s oldest friends in town. She was a few years older, but moved to town a few years after Donna did. Clay and Mary Anne’s daughter, Naomi, had been in the same swim class at the town pool when they were little. Mary Anne grew up in Red Deer, and met her ex-husband, John, at Red Deer College before he went to med school. She had worked as an elementary school teacher, but didn’t like it, so she turned to writing. She was now a successful romance author and was known for a series of steamy cowboy romance books that took place in Texas. She spent most of her days in the purple writing studio at the back of her house, staring at a computer screen, her Boston terrier Henry snoring at her feet. Naomi was the same age as Clay and lived in Vancouver.

“I didn’t want to have sex with John for a long time because I thought he was cheating,” Mary Anne confessed late one night, when she and Donna had had a few too many wine coolers on her back porch. “We were staying together because of Naomi. But then one night, he rented The Magnificent Seven, and I don’t know, there was something about Yul Brynner in a cowboy hat that did it for me.”

Mary Anne’s other daughter, Bryn, was born nine months after The Magnificent Seven incident. John started sleeping with the receptionist at his clinic when Bryn was five. John and Mary Anne split up and he moved to Ottawa. Mary Anne stayed in town because she didn’t want to take Bryn out of school, and she loved her sprawling bungalow, which she painted purple after the divorce.

Donna read all of Mary Anne’s books. They were steamy and delicious, focussing on how good a man could look in a Stetson, hoisting himself onto a beautiful, well-muscled horse. It was enough to make any woman need a cold drink. Mary Anne wrote love stories between city girls and ranchers. One time, Donna asked Mary Anne why she didn’t set any of her books in Alberta.

“Books set in Alberta or Saskatchewan don’t sell,” Mary Anne said, taking a sip of her wine. “Have you ever noticed that none of the cows or horses ever shit in any of my books? These cowboys live in shitless worlds. It’s all about the fantasy.”

Donna understood this better than anybody. She had always had a thing for cowboys. She loved all the old westerns, just like everyone else in the Klassen family. Al had called them “dusters”. He didn’t have to teach Donna about westerns when she moved to the farm. She’d known them all already. The Good, the Bad and the Ugly. Gorgeous red-haired Robert Redford and handsome Paul Newman in Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid. John Travolta as The Urban Cowboy. Before she moved to the farm, she’d been obsessed with Dallas and Dolly Parton and the fancy, shiny sequin dresses Dolly wore, especially when she was singing with Kenny. Islands in the stream, how could they be wrong? It was still one of Donna’s favourite songs.

Donna went outside to meet Mary Anne.

“Do you need to eat anything?” Mary Anne said. “Did you have supper?”

“I’m good,” Donna said. She was a bit peckish, but she hadn’t felt like eating much lately. Every time she sat down to eat, all she could think about was poor Abby. Abby, who still had a great figure in her sixties, had loved a good home-cooked meal. She always insisted on having everyone sit down to eat at the table. Her tablecloths were pressed and the knives on the table settings faced inward. When they had holiday dinners at Al and Abby’s, Abby used the good china.

Donna had been visiting Abby a few times a week. Abby was trying to teach her to knit. Donna hated knitting and was really bad at it, but doing it around Abby helped engage her. Rita Dennis suggested it. Rita was usually on the desk when the Klassens came into the hospital. She’d been so great, just telling them all what was actually happening, cutting past the bullshit of the doctors to give them the plain truth. Even Linda said she’d been wrong about Rita.

“That woman has terrible hair, but a great big heart,” Linda said.

Abby was doing better, but still not great. She was eating bits of Jell-O and soup, and looking more like herself, but she was still sleeping a lot. The doctors talked about putting her on antidepressants, but no one had decided anything yet. Abby said she dreamed about Al, but couldn’t remember her dreams when she woke up.

One night when they were visiting, Rita sat Linda and Donna down in an empty room and told them they needed to look out for a few things.

“I don’t want to alarm you because she seems to be doing well,” Rita said. “But when people experience trauma like this, the way Abby has, they often show personality changes. And these changes are generally not for the better.”

Donna and Linda looked at each other. Sure, Abby was tired and listless. She was sleeping a lot. But she’d lost the use of one of her hands, she was paralyzed from the waist down and her husband was dead.

“Aren’t her reactions pretty normal?” Donna asked.

Rita nodded. “So far, she seems okay. But you need to watch her.”

“She’s been watching a lot of Judge Judy,” Linda said. “Maybe we can get her one of those books-on-tape things.”

“I just wanted to let you know,” Rita said as she stood up and left the room, abandoning the two Klassen women.

Craig, Donna, Linda and Gord had a family meeting about Abby and decided to move her to the lodge in town so she would be closer to her house and the kids. Donna was glad she’d be moving to town. Ever since the accident, she’d felt nervous driving on that highway. When she came to the intersection where Abby and Al had been hit, she felt like throwing up. One time, she passed through the intersection and realized she’d been holding her breath the entire time. The next time, she forced herself to count her breaths as she drove down that part of the highway. Thank God Abby would be in the lodge before winter. Donna couldn’t have handled a whole winter of crossing that intersection several times a week. Craig and Linda asked Donna and Gord if they wanted to put a cross at the intersection to mark the spot where Al died, but Donna refused. She thought highway memorials were sad and creepy, and she felt empty every time she saw one. There was no way she could have handled driving past a cross that marked the last place Al had been alive.

“You’re a million miles away,” Mary Anne said. “You doing okay?”

“Just stressed,” Donna said. “So many things happening. There’s not much for me to say that you don’t already know.”

“You can still vent if you want to,” Mary Anne said. “I understand grief.”

Donna wanted to ask Mary Anne how booting a lying, cheating, pig of a man out of the house, enjoying freedom and getting a pile of money was the same as losing a great father-in-law and having a mother-in-law who now sat in a hospital bed, watching reality TV and staring at the walls. She stopped that train of thought. Of course Mary Anne suffered when she and John divorced. It couldn’t have been easy when the entire town was gossiping about you, saying that maybe your husband wouldn’t have cheated on you if you lost a little weight.

“I parked my car around back and I got the lawn chairs inside,” Mary Anne said. “Also I have a screwdriver inside a thermos if you feel like having a nip or two.”

“Sounds good,” Donna said, even though she didn’t want to drink. She felt weird about drinking ever since a drunk driver hit Al and Abby. All people in this town did was drink or talk about drinking.

Mary Anne and Donna went around back to Mary Anne’s purple PT Cruiser and picked up the chairs. A small crowd had gathered at the end of the street. PJ the hot dog vendor had set up his cart. PJ and his mother had been selling hot dogs for years. Everyone knew PJ was touched in the head, so they all bought hot dogs from him. He was allowed to drop the puck during Mustang games too.

“Hi, PJ,” Donna said, waving to him. He waved back, smiling his awkward too big smile.

“I’m so glad summer is here,” Mary Anne said as she sat down. “Naomi will be coming back soon and the three of us are going to take some girls’ trips. We’ll go down to Red Deer and visit my folks. I made some good money off The Bride, The Outlaw and The Baby, so we’ll probably be able to go to Banff and stay in the Fairmont. I think it’s time to take Bryn for a pedicure in a real spa.”

As Mary Anne said this, she looked down at her sandaled feet and inspected her purple nail polish. Donna, who had already sat down in her lawn chair, tucked her feet under her, glad she was wearing closed-toed shoes. She should probably get a pedicure at some point in her life. This town was starting to get to her. She was turning into a country bumpkin. In a couple of years, no one would even be able to tell she had grown up in the city.

Donna looked around to see who else was there. She spotted her own daughter a few rows ahead, hanging out with Amber and that Jeff Chin from Joe’s. She thought Allyson might have a crush on him, the way she was always mooning around him, asking Gord if he could take her to Joe’s with him. It wasn’t because she liked hanging out with the men while they were having their coffee and talking cattle. Tim Coates walked by and Mary Anne didn’t even try to conceal her gawking.

“Look at that tall drink of water,” she said. “I’m getting thirsty.” She leaned over, pulled the thermos out of her purple purse and took a big sip.

Donna looked at him, and then looked away. She’d never been able to stomach Mary Anne’s ability to look at teenagers. She couldn’t do it. She was the mother of two sons, for God’s sake. One time Mary Anne commented on Clay’s arms, and said how he was growing up to be a fine, strapping, good-looking man. Donna changed the subject. “Do you want to make ­something for the school bake sale?” she asked, shutting the conversation down.

But this time, Mary Anne kept staring at Tim for so long that Donna’s curiosity got the better of her. Tim’s pants sat low around his boyish hips. She could see a line of checked boxer shorts rising above his belt as he leaned down to talk to a blonde-haired girl Donna didn’t know. She was old enough to be his mother. So was Mary Anne. How could she not feel dirty looking at these young guys?

“That kid needs to have a party and invite his pants to meet his waist,” she whispered to Mary Anne. Mary Anne laughed, a sharp bark, before she took another sip from her thermos. Donna thought about going up to say hi to Allyson, but she knew better. One time she had gone up to talk to Colton at a public event, and he hadn’t even looked at her. If Allyson wanted to talk, she’d approach her. Donna felt around for her purse. “Shit,” she said. “I left my purse back at the store.”

She stood up. “Just wait. I’ll be right back.”

Mary Anne nodded without taking her eyes off from the crowd. She was probably writing in her head, figuring out a crowd scene for her next novel. Maybe the cowboy in Mary Anne’s next book would have longish, floppy hair and a lanky body like Tim Coates. Donna wouldn’t put that past her.

She started down the street, patting her pockets for her keys. Thank God her keys were in her pockets and not in her bag. Donna passed a few people on the street on the way back to Memorable Moments. She kept her head down, so she wouldn’t have to talk to anyone. She was tired of people asking how she was doing. Everyone wanted to ask her about Abby or the kids and how they were holding up. People kept looking at her face, searching for signs of grief. People in town were talking about the Klassen family, wondering how they were doing with the recent tragedy and this mad cow thing that was putting so much stress on people. She’d done her own share of gossiping over the years, and she knew the drill.

When she got to the front door of Memorable Moments, she took the keys out of her pockets and unlocked the door. The door was sticky so she shoved her weight against it to open it. Gord knew she had to do this, so he often massaged that hip, saying she was wearing her hip down every time she shoved the door open.

“Don’t flatten out your hips,” he would say, running his hands across her hips and lower back. “Don’t want to ruin your great shape.”

Gord hadn’t given her a massage since Al and Abby’s accident. She’d barely rubbed his back either. She should take better care of him. He needed her. Her man was stressed. She didn’t need anyone to tell her that. She should be there for him. That’s what a real farm wife would do.

“Stand by your man,” Donna sang to herself as she walked to the lunchroom at the back of Memorable Moments. She liked to sing, but normally didn’t sing in front of others. In the back room, Donna spotted her purse on the back of a chair. Pam had bought it a few years ago on one of her trips to the United States. She’d got it in Texas. It was a purse made out of a pink, shiny cowboy boot.

“You’re the only person who is country enough to use this,” Pam said when she gave her the present. “I think it’s a one-of-a-kind item.”

When she was a young girl, Donna dreamed of being a country star and living in Nashville. She wanted to dress like she was in Nashville the first few years living on the farm, but there was no way to make that work. Who could dress like that when they were trying to run a farm? Who wanted shit on their sequins? Who had the time to do their make up all the time or put on false eyelashes? She’d been too busy taking care of her family to make her hair big. She was comfortable in jeans, bunnyhugs and t-shirts. She had a nice pair of boots she wore when she went to town, along with a couple of Western shirts and a nice Stetson.

Donna grabbed her purse, locked the front door to Memorable Moments, pulled on the lock to make sure the door was shut and started back up the street. The crowd at the end of the street had grown. She tried to remember why they were knocking down the elevator in the first place. Times were changing, the article in the newspaper said. It cost a lot of money to maintain the old elevators and this one was barely used. It was cheaper to knock it down.

Donna passed by The Messenger office and looked in the windows, hoping to catch a glimpse of Julie Taylor, a reporter who had been working there for a couple of years. She was around Clay’s age. Donna hoped she could set the two of them up. She’d even shown Clay Julie’s picture in the paper.

“Not my type, Mom,” Clay said as he flipped through the paper and took a sip of his coffee.

Julie sometimes came into Memorable Moments to chin wag with Donna. She had grown up in Saskatoon too. She’d gone to journalism school in Montreal and had moved back west to be with her boyfriend, who was still in Saskatoon. Donna met him once before they’d called it quits. When she had looked at his face, she knew he wasn’t good enough for Julie. He mumbled when he talked and couldn’t look Donna in the eye. Julie wouldn’t be in town for much longer. Town reporters never stayed for long. They were all city kids who cut their teeth writing news about fourth-grade plays, special event dinners, town anniversaries and petty crime. After they’d got some experience under their belts, they moved on to greener pastures. One of the reporters who had been at The Messenger was now at The Edmonton Sun. And another had moved on to The Calgary Herald. Julie would probably move on soon. She was young. She would move, travel the world, meet interesting people and write about them.

There was no sign of Julie at the office. She was probably down at the elevator already. Funny how this street seemed so much longer when you were walking it alone. When you were walking along Main Street talking to someone else, the street was just a blip.

She admired the door knocker on the front of Carver and Sons law office. She’d only been in there once with Gord, and the office had been open. She loved that knocker. One night, when she’d been alone, she’d walked up, and grabbed the brass knocker and sneaked a few good knocks in. As she was admiring the knocker, the door opened and Linda and Craig walked out.

“Oh,” Donna said, before she could stop herself. “What are you doing here? Are you trying to sell some chocolate covered almonds?”

The entire Klassen family had been trying to sell chocolate covered almonds to help Allyson raise money for next year’s band trip. Donna had put a little box on the counter at Memorable Moments to try and rack up sales, but Linda was the one who had been selling the most, just because she was always buzzing around town.

Linda’s face was red. She gave her sister-in-law a smile and looked down. Her smile looked plastered and fake, like a smile worn by a girl in a Miss American pageant.

“We had some business,” Craig said. “Just trying to sort out a few things. We had some questions Ken could help us with. You going to watch the elevator?”

Linda had moved ahead and was looking in the planter boxes up the street. She bent down and fiddled with her shoe.

“Yeah,” Donna said. “Mary Anne’s waiting for me over there.”

“Well,” Craig said. He wasn’t wearing his Stetson or his John Deere hat. Donna looked at his hairline. He would be bald as a cue ball in a couple of years. The thought gave her a shiver of joy.

Craig walked up to his truck. Linda opened the door of the truck and got in.

“Donna,” Craig said. “Promise you won’t tell Gord you saw us at the lawyer’s. I don’t want him to worry.”

Donna nodded, but inside she seethed. Of course she was going to tell her husband. Why would she keep that secret from him? What kind of wife did they think she was?

Craig started the truck. The engine sounded old and tired. As she watched them go, she wondered if the truck would die soon, if it just wanted to sit and rest and not have to work so hard. After she watched them go, she thought about going back to Memorable Moments to call Gord and let him know that she’d seen Craig and Linda acting cagy at the lawyer’s. But Gord probably wouldn’t answer. He might be out in the yard, in a pasture or in the barn. She was dying to know why Craig and Linda had been at the lawyer. And if this was something family-related, why hadn’t she and Gord been invited? Were they sneaking around with Abby and Al’s estate? She took a deep breath, willed herself to calm down and started walking. It was hard for anyone to keep secrets in this town. How could Craig ask her not to tell her husband what she had seen, even if she didn’t know all the details? She was going to let Gord know, that was for god damn sure.

More people gathered at the end of the street. Mary Anne was talking to the mayor, Barb McGuinty. Barb had been the town mayor for about five years now. She grew up in town, and her dad was the mayor years ago. He passed away before Donna had moved to town, but he was a legend, because of his golf game, charitable work and his legacy as a great mayor. People were pretty happy with Barb as mayor. Her husband Paul worked in the patch and he was often away. Barb’s mother, Faye, stood on the other side of Mary Anne.

“Are you okay?” Mary Anne said as Donna walked up to join them. “You look as though something’s wrong.”

Barb and Faye turned their heads. Donna might have told Mary Anne that she’d seen Craig and Linda coming out of the lawyer’s office, but she certainly wasn’t going to mention it in front of the mayor and her mother.

“Just tired,” Donna said. “A lot going on.”

“I haven’t seen you since the funeral,” Barb said. “How are you holding up?”

“Okay,” Donna said. “Everybody’s okay.”

Faye leaned in towards Donna and gave her a quick, fast hug. Faye was the town hugger. The good thing about her hugs was that she didn’t hold on too long.

“I’ve been out to see Abby,” Faye said. “But I know what it’s like. You feel like hell when you lose your other half.”

Faye’s husband had died in a tragic farming accident. Donna couldn’t remember the details, but she was pretty sure it involved a grain auger.

“It’ll be good when she gets into town,” Faye said. “You’re moving her next week, yes?”

God, Faye was a talker. Was Abby getting moved next week? Donna didn’t even know if they’d made all the arrangements for that yet. Donna must have looked worried, because Faye patted her arm and hugged her again. “I shouldn’t be talking about these kinds of things,” she said. “I should sit down and let you enjoy the event.”

Donna walked back to her lawn chair and sank down into it. After Mary Anne settled herself too, she passed the thermos to Donna, who took a sip. Faye and Barb moved away to talk to Mabel Jacobson. Mary Anne looked at Faye and then closed her fingers and thumbs together in quick succession, imitating Faye’s flapping lips. Donna swirled the orange juice and vodka around in her mouth and smirked. Everyone in town knew Faye couldn’t shut up. If you ever wanted someone in town to know something, you told her. She spread news faster than The Messenger.

“Want some popcorn?” Mary Anne asked, holding a brown paper out to Donna. Donna put her hand into the greasy, butter-covered bag and took a handful.

“Where did you get this?” she asked as she crunched the ­kernels.

“The theatre,” Mary Anne said, pointing with her purple nails. “I guess they’ve got a cart now.”

Donna hadn’t been to the town theatre in months. The last time she’d been, the projector had acted up. She, Abby, Linda, Chloe and Allyson had come into town to see Chicago. The theatre was almost empty. The film kept slipping up, cutting off Catherine Zeta-Jones and Renee Zellweger’s heads as they danced. Donna went to tell the staff at the front of the theatre what was happening, and they fixed the problem for a while. The last straw had been when Richard Gere’s beautiful face disappeared from the screen for a few minutes. Donna made a promise to herself to boycott the theatre until things improved. She wanted to ask for a refund but Abby wouldn’t let her.

“Who needs to see the top of someone’s head anyway?” Abby said in the car on the way home. “All I’m really interested in is the dancing.”

“What did you pay for this?” Donna asked, pointing to the popcorn bag.

“Nothing,” Mary Anne said around a mouth full of corn. “They’re giving it away.”

If that crap theatre was giving it away, Donna was going to take advantage.

“I’ll be right back,” she said, as she stood up to go over to the cart.

Donna came back with the popcorn in hand, and sat down next to Mary Anne, who was searching through her purse. Her purse was so big that Donna was always amazed by what came out of it. There were probably entire meals in there. Mary Anne pulled out a small purple notebook and started scribbling.

“Sorry,” she said, her pen still moving across the page. “I just had a few ideas. Came up with a new name for the hero. The cowboy’s name is going to be Lance Fairley.”

“Nice one,” Donna said. She’d seen Mary Anne do this before. She lived in perpetual fear that she was going to forget her ideas, so she tried to write them down as soon as she could.

The crowd had been sitting for over half an hour, and nothing had happened yet. She watched as the bulldozer started towards the elevator. There were lots of young boys in the crowd, excited to see a wrecking ball in action. Her boys would have loved to see this when they were young, Colton especially.

“It’s about to happen,” Mary Anne said. “Got to freshen my drink.”

She reached into her voluminous purse and pulled out a flask. Hiding her hands behind her purse, she poured the vodka into the thermos.

“It’s been a rough week,” Mary Anne said. “I had copy edits from hell and one of my characters is mad at another and won’t tell me why. I’m just trying to get them into bed with each other.”

She passed the thermos to Donna. “Bottoms up,” she said.

Donna handed it back to her without taking a sip. The crowd had stopped moving and was staring ahead, waiting for something to happen. A team of volunteer firemen stood at the front of the group, preventing the crowd from getting too close.

People are so dumb, Donna thought. They like to get close to danger. Thank God she and Mary Anne were sitting far away. Donna looked over at her daughter. She was still off to the side with Jeff and Amber. She was drawing in a notebook. That girl was so talented.

The bulldozer wound up, the wrecking ball ready. The crowd leaned forward, watching. Donna looked at Barb and Faye. The two women were holding hands. Tears streamed down Barb’s face. That woman loved the town. It was a good thing she was mayor. As Donna watched, the wrecking ball hit the wood of the elevator with a sharp crack. A few people in the crowd cheered. The wrecking ball swung back out and hit the structure again. The elevator began to crumple and topple. As the wrecking ball hit the elevator for the third time, a huge cloud of dust burst forth from the elevator walls and enveloped the crowd. When Donna opened her eyes again, everything was hazy and covered with dirt. She tasted grit in her teeth and could feel it in her ears. Mary Anne wiped her face with a large purple handkerchief. The crowd, which had screamed when the giant dust ball enveloped them, was now quiet. Donna looked ahead, at the pile of rubble, lumber and cement that had once been the town’s grain elevator.