The rutted track was playing hell with Jerry Schneider’s shocks. He could feel every cleft and furrow ramming hard into the base of his spine and shooting up to the top of his skull, so that by the time the farmhouse came into view he already had the beginnings of a raging headache. Migraines were his affliction, and he hoped this wasn’t about to be the start of one of them. He had work to do, and those damn things left him near puking on his bed, just wishing to die.

Jerry didn’t much care for the detour to the Benson farm at the best of times. They were religious nutcases, the whole bunch of ’em: a family of seven, living pretty much apart from the rest of the world, keeping mostly to themselves except when they headed into town to buy supplies, or when Jerry made his twice-weekly call to pick up a load of free-range eggs and a selection of their homemade cheeses. Jerry thought the cheeses stank to high heaven, and he only ate his eggs scrambled and with enough salt to empty the Dead Sea, but the new wealthy who flocked to the state during both summer and winter swore by the taste of the Bensons’ cheese and eggs and were prepared to pay top dollar for them at Vern Smolley’s place. Vern was a smart one, Jerry would give him that: he’d spotted the gap in the market straight off and transformed the rear of his general store into a kind of gourmet’s paradise. Jerry sometimes had trouble even finding a space in which to park, Vern’s lot being filled to the brim with Lexuses, salesroom-polished Mercedes convertibles, and, in winter, the kind of snazzy 4WDs that only rich people drove, with a smattering of designer mud on them for that authentic country look.