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enough.”
    “They haven’t proved the birth defects are caused by the depleted uranium, have they?” asked Will, so Maggie showed him a newspaper article about the strange freaks of nature being spawned in their own backyard.
    “There are frogs with eight legs!” she whispered, sounding exactly like her own mother, who had taken to whispering after Maggie’s father had left, as if that would somehow cancel out the years of arguments and shouting.
    Will offered up a scientific theorem about causation and correlation. “Not to mention reverse causation and coincidence. Umbrellas don’t make it rain,” he said.
    Lyle nodded his head and said, “Tell me something I don’t know,” as if Will had taken the words right out of his mouth. Lyle was always saying “tell me something I don’t know” the way Pastor Price said “don’t get me wrong” and Misty Mills said “no offense,” but for Lyle, the phrase was a way to avoid having to comment on subjects he knew nothing about.
    “Oh, Lyle!” cried Maggie in frustration.
    “We’re only saying that you don’t have all the facts,” said Will.
    “Who in tarnation does?” asked Maggie. “What does anyone base a decision on? Partial knowledge, that’s what.” She had practiced the line, but now it sounded flat and inadequate. Even Lyle could poke holes in it.
    “That’s what we have experts for,” he said.
    Of course other people knew more than Maggie did, but that didn’t absolve her. “That doesn’t absolve me,” she said. “I have a duty to act.” She wanted to add something about wisdom, about how it didn’t always depend on facts. She wanted to say that the more facts people knew, the more they were blinded by them, but Lyle interrupted her.
    “Lay off, Will,” said Lyle. “Can’t you see your mother’s upset?”
    This only increased Maggie’s aggravation. Her family was allied against her, both coddling her and making a joke of her determination. It was as if Lyle had grabbed on to her sleeve and was pulling her back from an important edge.
    Maggie had shown Lyle and Will the newspaper article, but she didn’t show them the document she had taken from Mr. Winslow’s desk that remained hidden in a separate folder at the very bottom of the evidence pile. She didn’t even like to think of it, yellowing there beneath her sweaters and flannel nightshirts, yellowing except for the crimson border and the threatening red letters marching across the top of the page—and tucked just inside the cover, the letter from the Department of Defense.
    Tucked inside the folder too was the letter from Dolly Jackson describing her experiences as a midwife at a women’s clinic and asking Maggie if she had ever come across evidence that the munitions produced at the plant were making people sick, and if she had, could she copy it and send it on. Maggie hadn’t bothered to write back saying she hadn’t and she wouldn’t—of course she wouldn’t take something that wasn’t hers! But she had. She had, and now she had to do something with the evidence—evidence that was more like ammunition than she liked to think.
    When True came up to her at her going-away party, which was no more than Dr Pepper and a store-bought sheet cake in the lunchroom, and said, “So, you think you’re better than us, do you?” Maggie only had to put her hand on True’s sharp little shoulder blade and say, “Don’t get me wrong,” for True to burst into tears and splutter, “I’m going to miss you, Maggie! Of course I’ll still have Misty, but you know how bossy Misty is.”
    “I suppose you’re going to work at that chicken farm out by the highway,” said Misty, covering up her own dismay with her usual air of superiority.
    “Oh, no!” exclaimed Maggie. “I can’t take a job that will bring suffering to someone else.”
    “Someone! Chickens aren’t people!” True and Misty laughed ’til they cried over that, and the story spread like wildfire throughout