County Road Double-O, and this many at one time was downright unheard of.
'Here you go.' Hazel distributed five plates at one booth, all expertly balanced on her slablike arms, then pulled a map out of her pocket and slapped it down on the table. 'But like I said, all you gotta do is head up to Double-O, hang a left, then keep going. You'll hit Beaver Lake in under an hour if you don't get the itch to wander off the county roads again.'
A frazzled-looking woman in sunglasses with tiger stripes on them took the map and tucked it into her purse. 'We'll take the map, just in case.'
'Suit yourself.' Hazel poked her fists into hips like bread dough and looked down at Tommy. 'Well, Tommy Wittig, as I live and breathe I swear you've grown a foot since I saw you last!'
Tommy blushed because Hazel saw him almost every day of his life, and he was sure everyone in the cafe, stranger or not, knew that.
'Must be because your birthday is tomorrow and you're growin' so fast.' She tipped her head sideways, and for one terrible minute, Tommy thought that pile of black hair was going to fall right off and land at his feet like some dead animal.
'I need two donuts really quick!'
Hazel laughed a big laugh, like a man, then went behind the counter and opened the glass case where her homemade donuts were laid out like jewelry. 'What kind today, honey?'
Tommy looked up at that broad, sagging face with its familiar smear of red lipstick, and the dark eyes that always twinkled, and thought how silly he was to have been so leery of old Hazel this past week, to have thought of her as a stranger.
'Hazel?'
'What, hon?'
'Urn . . . I'm sorry . . , well . . . I'm sorry your dad died.'
Hazel's face went quiet then, and she looked at him for a long time. It was sort of a grown-up look, and in a funny-nice kind of way, it made Tommy feel old. 'Why, thank you, Tommy. I appreciate that,'
she finally said, and then she took one of the little white bakery bags that she put donuts in off a stack on the case and shook it open.
By the time he got back outside, the mist was gone from the woods across the road, and Grandpa Dale was standing next to Dad at the pickup truck, hands shoved deep in his coverall pockets. If Mom had scolded him for telling the story about the lodge fire and Hazel's dad, it was over now, because all three of them were smiling around a secret. They stopped talking abruptly when they saw him coming, and Tommy knew they'd been whispering about his birthday present.
He walked toward the truck slowly, his eyes on his dad in absolute adoration, pushing back the nagging thought that if Hazel's daddy could die, then maybe other daddies could die. But not his. His was the tallest, broadest, strongest dad in the world, and even fire couldn't hurt him. Sometimes he'd catch a head-butt from one of the cows clattering out of the barn after milking, and he'd holler after her that she was a goddamn milkin' whore, and Mom's face would get all stiff and she'd tell him he'd burn for taking the Lord's name in vain, and that's when he always said he was too full of vinegar to ever catch fire.
His father laid a big, work-roughened hand on his shoulder as he passed and squeezed a little. 'Be good, son.'
'Yes, sir.' His shoulder felt cold and light when his father took his hand away and climbed into the truck.
'Thanks, honey.' His mom took the donut bag and leaned out the window and planted a kiss on his head. 'You be good, now. See you at suppertime.'
Grandpa Dale walked him out to the center of the road and they stood there, waving after the pickup as it roared away around the curve toward County Road Double-P. The pup sat crookedly at Tommy's side, leaning against his leg, pink tongue lolling.
Grandpa Dale put his hand on Tommy's shoulder. It wasn't nearly as big as Dad's hand, or as warm. 'Unusual number of strangers intown this morning.' He nodded toward the two unfamiliar cars parked on the side street between the station and the cafe.
'They got lost,' Tommy said.
'I figured. Pumped nearly thirty gallons of gas already just on those two.'
'That's a lot.'
Grandpa Dale nodded. 'Your grandma's in there working on the books today. Guess she could pump gas with the best of them if the need arises, which means maybe you and me could go fishing in a bit, if we had a mind to.'
Tommy grinned up at him, and Grandpa Dale ruffled his hair.
A quarter mile north of town, Pastor Swenson's twin sixteen-year-old sons, Mark and Matthew, were working in the Wittig's roadside pasture. The house and hundred-year-old barn were behind them, etched against a cornflower sky at the end of a drive as straight and true as the rows in Harold Wittig's cornfield. Behind the barn, Whitestone Lake lay like a giant blue plate in a necklace of cattails.
A prime herd of Holsteins grazed close to where the boys were repairing the white board fence, near a sign that read 'Pleasant Hills Dairy Farm.' Jean Wittig had painted the sign herself with green enamel left over after Harold touched up the old John Deere, and everyone agreed that on the whole, the sign looked mighty professional. The P in 'Pleasant' was canted slightly to the right, as if it were in a hurry to catch up to the other letters, but Harold thought that gave the sign zip, and he wouldn't let Jean repaint it.
Mark and Matthew had their headphones on full blast, listening to their favorite heavy-metal bands, so they didn't hear the truck making the turn off Double-O, and wouldn't have thought much of it, even if they'd looked up and seen it coming. It was a sight they were used to-just a truck that looked like all the other dairy tankers traveling from farm to farm on Wisconsin's secondary roads, taking on raw milk from the state's productive herds. It had a dusty white cab and a shiny stainless-steel tank that looked like a giant's Thermos bottle. 'Good Health Dairies' was spelled out in royal blue lettering along its length.
The truck was going forty miles per hour when it hit the place the tar had buckled in yesterday's afternoon heat, right at the end of the long driveway leading back to the Wittig farm. The cab's right front tire bounced violently over the worst of the break, then veered into the soft pea gravel of the shoulder. There was a long, high- pitched squeal as the driver slammed on the brakes, and then, its forward momentum diverted, the truck began a sickening lurch to one side. It balanced on its left wheels for an endless moment, as if giving the driver time to think about what was to come, then jackknifed and crashed to its side and slid across the asphalt with a deafening metallic screech.
Wide-eyed and terrified, the driver lay pressed against his door, the metal handle poking into his ribs, his hands still frozen in a white-knuckled grip around the steering wheel. The cab was pointed toward a distant cluster of farm buildings, and through the stone-pocked windshield, he saw two boys running toward him down the dusty drive. In an adjacent pasture, a tight cluster of panicked Holsteins was running the other way.
'Shit,' he finally managed in a shuddered exhale that broke the word into half a dozen syllables. He flexed his fingers on the wheel, wiggled his toes, then released a shaky, breathy laugh, giddy to find all his body parts intact. His smile froze when he heard the compressor behind the cab kick in, and vanished altogether when he glanced at the dashboard and saw the needle on the bulk tank gauge dropping slowly.
'Sweet Jesus,' he whispered, groping frantically for the small computer unit built into the console. He depressed the large red button in the middle, then hit the send key. A message appeared on the tiny screen, blinking innocently in large, baby blue letters.
SPILLED MILK
SPILLED MILK
SPILLED MILK
Mark and Matthew were almost to the truck, running flat out, legs and arms and hearts pumping hard. They dropped like stones a few yards shy of the truck, and for one terrifying instant, saw horror in each other's eyes.
On the other side of the pasture, the cows in Harold Wittig's prime herd of Holsteins began to sink to their knees.
Haifa mile downwind in Four Corners, the screeching noise had split the quiet morning like a thousand fingernails scraping down a blackboard. The puppy wailed and batted at his ears; Grandpa Dale and Tommy both
