Nancy pulled up a chair.
“Just as long as we don’t talk about me,” she said.
“Tell me about Libbie.”
“Let’s see. It was originally settled by a couple of ex–Seventh Cavalrymen who named it after General Custer’s wife, Elizabeth, who everyone called Libbie. What else do you want to know?”
“I think every town has its own personality. I’m trying to figure out Libbie’s; why it’s the way it is.”
“What do you mean?”
“I have discovered two things since I have been here. One is that all the women are preternaturally beautiful.”
“All?”
“All.”
Nancy smiled prettily. “What else?” she said.
“Man for man, this is the most screwed-up community I have ever seen.”
“The politically correct phrase is dysfunctional.”
“Dysfunctional, hell. You guys are raving lunatics. I’m beginning to think that you’re the sanest person in this burg.”
“Thanks for the compliment. I’ll put it in a box at home and take it out when I need cheering up.”
“I just don’t get it.”
“This is a dying town, McKenzie. If you were dying, you’d be screwed up, too.”
“Dying?”
“Have you seen the new high school?”
“Yes.”
“It was built for five hundred and fifty students. We have less than three hundred going there. Next year it’ll be even fewer. It’s happening all over. The counties in the Great Plains have been losing population for decades, and it isn’t going to stop. All the young people are moving to the cities—they should be moving to the cities. Break down the population of an average county and something like twelve-point-five percent will be sixty-five or older. That’s the national average. The average here in the Great Plains is twenty percent. And growing. I know the numbers because of the way it affects the medical community. The biggest industry in most small towns today is nursing homes. When these people die out—there are several hundred thousand square miles of the Great Plains that have fewer than six people per square mile living there; in some cases it’s two people per square mile. The last time that happened was eighteen ninety-something, and they declared that the frontier was closed. It might as well be the frontier again.”
“I remember hearing something about the Buffalo Commons,” I said.
“That was a proposal presented by a couple of sociologists twenty years ago. They claimed that most of the Great Plains was unsustainable, and they wanted the federal government to depopulate the area and turn it into a vast nature preserve. Of course, the government ignored them, but damn if it isn’t coming true anyway. Look around and all you’ll see is empty churches, abandoned farms, closed schoolhouses, shuttered businesses—I heard that there were six thousand ghost towns in Kansas alone. God knows how many there are around here.
“I’m telling you, McKenzie, it’s all dying. Fifty years from now, I doubt that anyone will be living here at all. That’s why people are the way they are. We’re all desperate.”
“Why do you stay?”
“It’s home.”
Nancy returned the chair to its spot near the wall.
“Try to get some sleep,” she said. “I’ll see you soon.”
She wasn’t kidding. Nancy woke me every two hours until her shift ended at 2:00 a.m., and she was replaced by a second nurse practitioner that was just as punctual. I wasn’t happy about it, yet I kept it to myself—crankiness and irritability are symptoms of a concussion, and I didn’t want to confuse anyone. I figured I could always return to the Pioneer Hotel in the morning to get some shuteye. No such luck. The second NP discovered that I had a low-grade temperature. She fed me ibuprofen and insisted that I remain in bed. I spent most of the morning on my cell phone burning minutes, talking to Nina and to Bobby and Shelby. I wondered how Victoria had fared with her research assignment. She was at a soccer tournament for the weekend, though, and wouldn’t return until Sunday evening. I said I’d call later. My fever broke just before noon. I dressed in the clothes I’d worn the previous day and walked to the Pioneer Hotel.
CHAPTER TEN