Free The Last Kind Word by David Housewright

criminal? I only ask because you seem so comfortable in the role.”
    â€œMe?” I flashed on Harry and Bullert. “You could say I fell in with the wrong crowd.”
    â€œNow I’m the wrong crowd.” Josie’s voice reminded me of a tenor saxophone. It was quiet and calm and totally without self-pity. “I’m the people my parents warned me about when I was growing up. I didn’t mean to become a criminal, you know.”
    â€œNo one ever does. It just kind of sneaks up on you.”
    â€œEverything went from bad to worse so quickly. First, the mines closed—I suppose we all saw that coming, but we were still unprepared for the consequences. Babbitt, the City of Babbitt, was hit hard. It has a high school built for two thousand students and an enrollment of a hundred and sixty. Last time I looked, a four-bedroom house was selling for forty thousand dollars and no takers. A couple of months ago the city’s only grocery and drug stores burned down—maybe they’ll be rebuilt, I don’t know. In the meantime, people have to drive twenty miles to Krueger or Ely just to get a gallon of milk.
    â€œThen the paper mill in Krueger closed, and no one saw that coming. Two hundred and forty employees out of work, and that’s not counting the loggers and truckers and all the others that depended on it. The mill was profitable, too; it was making money producing cardboard boxes for Kellogg, Budweiser, FedEx. Its parent company filed for bankruptcy for reasons that had nothing to do with us, though, and they just boarded it up. We were all hoping the company would sell the mill; we were told that was the plan. Learned that was a lie when the company decided to turn off the heat last January to save a few dollars—turn off the heat in the dead of a Minnesota winter. No matter how hard they tried to drain and winterize, there were so many feet of piping and odd angles—water pipes burst, equipment was destroyed, infrastructure damaged. The mill was built thirty years ago. Today, the place looks like ancient ruins. No one is going to buy it now—reopen it.
    â€œAll this on top of the housing crisis. Unemployment in Krueger is over twenty percent. It’s about sixteen percent across the Range. One in six people is living below the poverty level. The government says it’s a recession. Sure looks like a depression to me. My business—did David tell you I was a real estate agent, that I specialized in selling lake homes? My business went away, too.
    â€œWe’re all supposed to keep a positive attitude, though. We’re all supposed to carry on. That’s what they tell us. Carry on. How? With what? There aren’t any jobs, Dyson, minimum wage or otherwise, and there aren’t going to be any. That’s why the Range is losing population and the Cities are growing at double digits, because that’s where all the jobs are. You either leave the only home you’ve ever known, where your parents lived and your grandparents and great-grandparents lived, or…”
    â€œOr you steal,” I said. “You don’t need to justify yourself to me, Josie.”
    â€œIs that what I’m doing?”
    â€œMy experience, the reason most people are honest, seem to be honest, is because they’ve never had a reason—or at least the opportunity—to be anything else.”
    â€œYou’re saying we’re all thieves at heart?”
    â€œNot at all. Some people are painfully honest. That lovely little girl asleep in there—I bet she’s been against what you’re doing from the very start.”
    â€œJillian doesn’t understand the real world.”
    â€œFrom the bruise on her chin I’d say she’s learning fast.”
    â€œRoy. I suppose it’s been tougher on him than the rest of us.”
    â€œOh yeah?”
    â€œHe was in the army.”
    â€œI gathered that.”
    â€œYou