The board voted not to refer it to the district attorney as long as the payments came on time. There was some grumbling about that, and I understood the grumbling. But nobody could explain to me what Boone Ashworth sitting in a county jail would do for the pool fund.
The co-op had no interest. Every kilowatt-hour had gone through a properly metered account and been paid. Nobody had stolen from Blanco Ridge Electric, Tomás told me. They'd stolen from their neighbors, which is a sadder thing, and not one the co-op had a form for.
Deputy Quiroga called me the week after the meeting. Rusty Ferrell, she said, was in the clear as far as her office was concerned; he'd acted on documents he had every reason to believe were genuine. Glenda Ashworth was a different matter. The resolution she'd shown Rusty had never been voted on. She had authorized four men to enter a fenced yard and haul off six thousand dollars' worth of property on her own say-so, and lied about the notice to do it.
"The report's open," the deputy said. "I can forward it to the county attorney for criminal trespass, and possibly more. Or, if you'd rather handle it civilly, you can tell me you don't wish to pursue charges, and I'll close it out. It's your call, Ms. Sundquist. You don't have to make it today."
I said I'd think about it. I said that a lot, those six weeks.
XII.
Rusty Ferrell brought my things back himself, on a Saturday morning in October, in the same white box truck, with the same kid driving the mower down the ramp, though this time the kid said "yes ma'am" every time I opened my mouth. Rusty wheeled the freezer onto the patio and set it back on its pavers and plugged it into the outlet, and then he lifted the lid and showed me: everything still hard as a brick, labeled in my handwriting and Ozzie's. BACKSTRAP. GROUND. STEW.
"Told you," Rusty said.
I sent him home with two packages of backstrap. He tried to refuse. He didn't try very hard.
That night I cooked the rest of the backstrap on the patio, seared hot and sliced thin, and fed Ozzie and Lamont and Ines and her husband and Rafa, who announced that deer tasted "like a hamburger that went to college," and Tomás, who drove out from the co-op still in his work boots, and Arlette, who brought a pie and her own thermal camera, which she pointed at my battery rack through the utility room door for fun and pronounced "boringly perfect." The string lights came on over the counter at dusk. The inverters didn't blink. Splice worked the crowd for scraps with the dignity of an old professional.
Glenda came by four days later.