I would like to acknowledge:

Bruce Berman, for his suggestions at the outset of this project as well as his insightful critique of the outline for Toxin; Nikki Fox, for sharing with me her extensive research on food-borne illness; Ron Savenor, for helping me overcome a particular barrier in my own research; and Jean Reeds, for her invaluable comments and suggestions on the work in progress.

January 9th

The sky was an immense, inverted bowl of gray clouds that arched from one flat horizon to the other. It was the kind of sky that hovered over the American Midwest. In the summer the ground would be awash in a sea of corn and soybeans. But now in the depths of winter it was a frozen stubble with patches of dirty snow and a few lonely, leafless, skeletonized trees.

The leaden clouds had excreted a lazy drizzle all day – more of a mist than a rain. But by two o'clock the precipitation had abated and the single functioning windshield wiper of the aged, recycled UPS delivery van was no longer necessary as the vehicle negotiated a rutted dirt road.

"What did old man Oakly say?" Bart Winslow asked. Bart was the driver of the van. He and his partner, Willy Brown, sitting in the passenger seat, were in their fifties and could have been mistaken for brothers. Their creased, leather faces bore witness to a lifetime of labor on the farm, both were dressed in soiled and tattered overalls over layered sweatshirts and both were chewing tobacco.