Dee gave him a weary smile, made of words: Thank you. Siri had begun to bounce, pumping her knees with pleasure. The little girl pointed a chubby finger out the window, squealing with delight. Thank you for this.
And then, before they knew it, they’d arrived. Through the windshield of the transport, the fields of North Ag Complex leapt into view, its vast patchwork laid out below them like the squares of a motley quilt: corn and wheat, cotton and beans, rice and barley and oats. Fifteen thousand acres stitched together by a fretwork of dusty roads, and, at their edges, windbreaks of cottonwood and oak; the watchtowers and pump houses with their catch basins and nests of pipe and, dispersed at regular intervals, the hardboxes, marked by tall orange banners, hanging limply in the breathless air. Vorhees knew their locations cold, but when the corn was tall, you couldn’t always find them quickly without the flags.
He rose and moved to the front, where Dee’s brother, Nathan—everybody called him Cruk—was standing behind the driver. Vorhees was foreman, but it was Cruk, as the senior Domestic Security officer, who was really in charge.
“Looks like we’ve got a good day for this,” Vorhees said.
Cruk shrugged but said nothing. Like the field hands, he was dressed in whatever he had: patched jeans and a khaki shirt frayed at the collar and wrists. Atop this he wore a plastic vest, bright orange, with the words TEXAS DEPARTMENT OF TRANSPORATION printed on the back. He was holding his rifle, a long-barreled .30-06 with a sniper scope, across his chest; a reconditioned .45 was holstered to his thigh. The rifle was standard issue, but the .45 was something special, old military or maybe police, with an oiled black finish and a polished wood grip. He even had a name for it; he called it Abigail. You had to know somebody to get a weapon like that, and Vorhees didn’t have to think too hard to figure out who this person might be; it was pretty much common knowledge that Tifty was on the trade. Vorhees’s .38, with its paltry three rounds, felt meager in comparison, but there was no way he could have afforded a weapon like that.
“You can always say it was Dee’s idea,” Cruk said.
“So you don’t think this is smart.”
His brother-in-law gave a stifled laugh. It was at such moments that Cruk’s resemblance to his sister was the most striking, though it was also true that this was more suggestion than actual physical similarity, and something only Vorhees would have noticed. Most people, in fact, remarked on how different the two of them looked.
“Doesn’t matter what I think. You know that as well as I do. Dee sets her mind to something, you might as well just hang up your balls and call it a day.”
The bus gave a bone-jarring bang; Vorhees fought to stay upright. Behind them, the children shrieked with happiness.
“Hey, Dar,” Cruk said, “you think maybe you can miss some of those?”
The old woman at the wheel responded with a wet harrumph; telling Dar what to do with her bus was tantamount to an act of war. All the transport drivers were older women, usually widows; there was no rule about this—it was just how things were done. With a face ossified into a permanent scowl, Dar was a figure of legendary cantankerousness, as no-nonsense a woman as ever walked the earth. She kept time with a stopwatch hung around her neck and would leave you standing in a cloud of dust if you were so much as one minute late for the last transport. More than one field hand had spent a night in a hardbox scared out of his wits, counting the minutes till dawn.
“A busload of kids, for Christ’s sake. I can barely think with all this noise.” Dar shot her eyes to the pitted mirror above the windshield. “For the love of it, pipe down back there! Duncan Withers, you get down off that bench this instant! And don’t think I can’t see you, Jules Francis! That’s right,” she warned with an icy glare, “I’m talking to you, young lady. You can wipe that smirk off your face right now.”
Everyone fell abruptly silent, even the wives. But when Dar returned her eyes to the road, Vorhees realized her anger was false; it was all the woman could do not to break out laughing.
Cruk clapped a big hand on his shoulder. “Relax, Vor. Just let everyone enjoy the