Michael Malone - Weebly

Chief John "Hawk" Haig had built his house upon
mud, having bulldozed his way through everything that
lay on top of it. Now a light red brick ranch house
squatted like a solitary hog in the newly landscaped
clearing at the edge of town, on Route 3 south of the
marshlands and not too far east of Wild Oat Ridge.
What the hell was he doing there? his former Madder
neighbors wanted to know. If he was going to build,
why not be sociable and build in Astor Heights along
with everybody else who could afford to get out of
Madder? The truth was that Haig did feel like a fool out
there in the wilderness.
Listening to rumors, he had outsmarted himself;
rather, he had outdistanced the rumors.
There was to be a highway, a big one with excellent
connections.
That dead stretch along Route 3 which Haig now
owned (or, more technically, for which he now made
monthly payments to Ransom Bank) would bloom like
yuccas in the desert then, and when it did, the police
chief, of course, would have the last yuck on them all.
And as Rumor promised, the state did begin