His grandfather's brother had tried to fight it back in Iowa during the ethanol craze. The politicians had hopped on that bandwagon, claiming that corn would make the country independent of foreign oil. They didn't pay much attention to the chemical physics that said it cost more energy to make ethanol from corn than you could get from burning the ethanol as fuel. Once the government subsidies were canceled and the automakers could no longer get subsidized for their fuel efficient cars, the corn-ethanol agribusiness concerns went under. Great uncle Joe had walked out to the barn and put a shotgun in his mouth one fine Sunday morning.

Ward wasn't about to do that, no matter how bad things got. He figured that if the shit really hit the fan, he would take the family down to that old mine with every damn gun they owned. They could hold off the fucking marines there if they had to. He would certainly go down fighting.

One missing calf wasn't a disaster. Still, it was money. He would try to find it.

"Come on, Sal, let's go look for that damn calf."

"In the dark? In the cold?"

"It will take a while. But the herd hadn't gone far, had it?"

"No. They were over by that old windmill."

"There's a stand of old birch just over the hill from there. Maybe the calf wandered in there and Blacky didn't see it. It might be trapped in a snow drift."