His wife’s brother had been a county commissioner for twenty-two years.

The chief of police of Cutter’s Bluff, a man named Dewey Ratliff, had a son who ran a loading crew at the mill and a daughter whose nursing school had been paid for by the Gaddis Foundation, which is a real charitable foundation that has also paid for a great deal of genuinely good things, including a splash pad and four ambulances.

That is it.

That is the whole empire.