The End of Vandalism by Tom Drury

filled ditches, flooded basements, and kept farmers from their fields, but it did not stop anyone from visiting the sheriff’s office in Morrisville with supplies for the baby left at the Hy-Vee. Of course, the baby had never been to the sheriff’s office, but the sheriff had found him, and so the people turned up, craning their necks and looking into the hall behind the desk as if expecting to spy the abandoned Quinn in one of the cells or maybe lying on the floor. The visitors were farm women, for the most part, and they came shaking the water out of their scarves, and carrying bundles of diapers, cases of formula, and bales of bleached-out clothing that in at least one case had not been worn since World War II. Helene Plum even brought a beef-macaroni casserole in Corning Ware, although it was not clear who was supposed to eat it. But then, Helene Plum reacted to almost any kind of stressful news by making casseroles, and had once, in Faribault, Minnesota, attended the scene of a burned-out eighteen-wheeler with a pan of scalloped potatoes and ham. True story, told by her daughter-in-law.
    At first Dan and the deputies tried a policy of accepting nothing at the station and directing all supplies over to the Children’s Farm in Stone City. That was where Quinn was. But it seemed you couldn’t tell people they had come to the wrong place—they wouldn’t hear it. This was partly out of dignity and partly because Stone City was a good half hourfrom Morrisville. So when Dan would say, “The baby is out of our hands,” or Earl Kellogg, Jr., would say, “They got the baby over in Stone City,” the women would leave their offerings on the bench against the wall, or on the floor, and say, “Well, hope he can use this busy box,” or “Well, see that he gets these sleepers worn by our Ted,” and then they would turn and go back out to their El Caminos in the rain. The sheriff and his deputies must have made six or eight trips to the Children’s Farm. There was stuff enough for ten babies, and sometimes the sheriff’s department looked more like a Similac warehouse than an agency of the law.
    Claude Robeshaw and his son Albert came in on the ninth or tenth day of rain, but they didn’t have anything for Quinn. Claude’s concern was his son’s share—about seven hundred and fifty dollars—of what it would cost to restore the paint job on the Pinville water tower. Claude Robeshaw was tall, with plowlike features. He was seventy-one years old to Albert’s fifteen. When Dan himself was a teenager he had baled straw for Claude Robeshaw, and he remembered one August Sunday when Claude was driving the tractor and Dan, Willard Schlurholtz, and the Reverend Walt Carr were working the hayrack. The temperature was ninety-seven degrees, and Claude decided that after every round they’d better have a beer so nobody would get dehydrated, and after five rounds young Dan fell off the rack.
    “I’ll climb that tower and paint it myself,” said Claude. “That kind of money, I’ll silver-plate the bastard. I’m serious. I’m dead serious. Why, Jesus Christ, some outfit comes down from out of state and they are playing this county like a piano.”
    “Claude,” said Dan, “your quarrel really is with the board of supervisors. But as it was told to me, they’ve got to havesomebody who is bonded. Now, what is bonded? Well, you go to the state and the state bonds you, and to find out any more about it, I guess you’d have to go to the state. But this is what it costs, apparently, to get somebody who is bonded.”
    Claude turned grimly to his son, who was almost as tall, with short brown hair, jean jacket, eyeglasses. “Do you understand what the sheriff is saying?” he said.
    “No,” said Albert.
    “It’s bullshit, that’s why,” said Claude.
    “They went out and got three bids,” said Dan. “I’ll grant you this was not the lowest. There was one bid that was lower, but that was by a company, their crew got drunk