Chapter 17
The first rumors of food shortages drifted into town gossip late that October, right around the time everyone realized Wolf Branch had brought in a record harvest.
Etan’s least favorite part of helping manage the cannery was the meetings, and this one felt a thousand times worse. Partly because it seemed like a thousand people were jammed into the high school auditorium, red and blue and green work clothes clashing with the purple and gold school colors around them. They’d hurriedly relocated from the cannery half an hour ago when it was obvious most of the town was showing up.
Five or six of them could usually stand around the gleaming steel tables, talk for a few minutes, maybe half an hour, then be done with it. Hardly anyone who didn’t work with them seemed to care much a
