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county jail. Tore up a sheet, tied one end around his neck and the other around the frame of his cot, and then just leaned forward and strangled himself.”
    “Damn!”
    “So, no trial for Mr. Huston. And no getting up on the witness stand for Miss Lindahl.”
    “Jesus Christ. He strangled himself?”
    “Doris says that’s why they don’t have lights or any overhead fixtures in the cells. So the prisoners can’t hang themselves. But I guess where there’s a will there’s a way.”
    “Nobody at the Dunbars’ said anything about ...”
    “Maybe they don’t know. This is fresh news.” She stood and straightened her robe. “I guess your doctor can’t save’em all.”
     
    That remark’s nasty edge was almost surely not an accident. I’d always suspected that my mother didn’t like Dr. Dunbar, and while jealousy would have been the obvious explanation, I doubted that was it. She knew I looked up to the doctor, and that I’d attached myself to the family. But those things didn’t seem to bother her. She subscribed to the laissez-faire school of parenting, a philosophy that reflected her own upbringing. She was the seventh of eleven children, and growing up on a dusty little family farm during the Depression fostered in her the belief that we all had to look out for ourselves in this world. Accordingly, she felt she was fulfilling her parental duties by providing food and shelter for her only child. As long as I stayed in school and out of jail, she’d stay out of my life.
    No, my mother’s dislike of the doctor didn’t have its source in jealousy, not least because she believed it was a sin to be impressed by another human being. Her feelings about Rex Dunbar could best be understood in the context of the town’s divided opinion of itself. On one side were the town’s civic leaders and politicians, its merchants and professionals, and the wives of those men. Those people genuinely believed in the town’s slogan—“a city on the rise”—though the use of the term “city” was a bit overstated in light of the fact that its population was right around two thousand at the time. They truly thought that more people hadn’t settled in Willow Falls only because they didn’t know about it. And they saw the presence of Dr. Dunbar as corroboration of their view of Willow Falls as a special place. After all, the Dunbars were discerning, intelligent people, and they could only have chosen Willow Falls because they could see the town for what it was—a desirable place to make a life and raise a family. The attractive and refined Dr. and Mrs. Dunbar, in turn, gave the town a glitter it never had before they arrived. If Willow Falls could see the image of Rex Dunbar when it looked into the mirror, life there had to be ascendant.
    My mother was squarely in the other camp, which included all those suspicious of outsiders and uneasy at the prospect of change. They felt that the Dunbars’ fine clothes, their grand house, and their trips to Minneapolis to take in the symphony or ballet were not markers of culture and sophistication, but rather of ostentation. And for many Minnesotans, there could be no greater failing. These folks were determinedly unpretentious, and their sense that life in Willow Falls didn’t amount to much was consistent with their perspective on life in general. In our wind-blown part of the world, where nothing rose higher than a few cottonwoods, to want too much or to reach too high was to set yourself up for inevitable disappointment. Not surprisingly, most of the people who felt this way had farming in their background; they might have been town dwellers by this point, but not for more than a generation or two, and they likely had a relative or two who still lived out in the country.
    Before leaving the kitchen, my mother said, “Phil asked if you want to bus tables during your Christmas vacation. He’s willing to hire you on.”
    Phil Palmer was my mother’s employer, and I knew she