She stood by Benjamin’s side wearing a high-collared calico dress; a ruche of ruffles and pleats spread across her chest. Her cheeks were hollowed. Her hair hung halfway down her back without a hairpin.

They had dispensed with camouflage: members of their last crowd wore purple beanies and long braids bent around wire--pinned to their heads like handles. Those caught short by the party quickly lost interest. As in all small towns, the bizarre pierced the banal here, daily. The day’s headlines read MAN BIT WIFE ALMOST TO DEATH, and GIRL ATE BIRD FOOD (Yet these are always, in retrospect, “the good ‘ol days”).