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They called it home.
"Sending you home, Billy. Back to your people, loving arms,
bosom of the family, good for the body, good for the soul."
But Billy didn't call it home; Falls City, Nebraska, was simply
where he grew up, a scratch on the Great Plains with a population
of a mere five thousand people, and at that still the largest
town for fifty miles or more in any direction through the
corn and wheat and soybeans. He had left it without a backward
glance; it hadn't been home for years. The Service had filled that
space for him
for a decade and a half, whatever government-provided accommodation
he found
himself in, whatever city needed to be screened for malcontents,
radicals,
and psychos serving well enough for Billy Tree as a temporary
base, a place to hang his
hat and take his women and ply his curious trade.
Reprinted with permission
from Heartland
Copyright © 2001
by David Wiltse
St Martin's Press
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Bibliography
