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In three installments from her in-progress book "The Four Spent the Day Together," Chris Kraus dives deep into the small-town dramas of Hibbing, Minnesota—in the state’s Iron Range—leading up to a homicide on a snowmobile trail.

Dajon & Brittney: Friday Night and Saturday Morning

 is the last of three excerpts from influential writer Chris Kraus’s in-progress book, 

, which are being published exclusively by the 

. Inspired by the real-life crime the Mesabi Trail Murder, the book dives deep into the small-town dramas of Hibbing, Minnesota—in the state’s Iron Range—leading up to a homicide on a snowmobile trail. Read the first installment 

Dajon was fourteen years old when he had his first encounter with the local police. His mom, Shannon Duell, called 911 because she was frightened. Her husband Mark was at work and Dajon was completely out of control, screaming and kicking and threatening to jump out the upstairs bedroom window he’d just smashed with a chair. He was refusing to take his new medication, the Risperidal tablets the PA at Fairview Hospital had just prescribed for him. Dajon hated this new drug. It was impossible to think and it made him so fat he’d started growing tits.

Of course this wasn’t the first time the police had been called. Shannon had been calling for help since Dajon was a toddler—in Berwyn, Nebraska, in Minnesota where they’d lived in Minneapolis, Apple Valley, Cambridge, and Pine City, and then in Charlotte, North Carolina—but this was the first time she’d called the police since they’d all moved up to Hibbing the year before.

In Nebraska, the doctors and therapists thought Dajon’s rages were just extreme childhood tantrums. 

Just let him do his thing, ride it out until he gets tired. 

His biological father, Shannon’s first husband Austen, didn’t agree. He believed if their son did something wrong, he should be disciplined. How else would he learn? Instead of letting Dajon just act out, Austen, an ex-wrestling coach, would try and restrain him, taking Dajon in his arms while the boy flailed in every direction, until Dajon, already big for his age, finally collapsed in exhaustion. Austen and Shannon did their best, but there were limits as to how much they could do, because their second child Mordecai, eleven months Dajon’s junior, had so many special needs. The doctors had never seen anything like it before, arising from cerebral palsy, epilepsy, neuropathy, and a few other things.

When Dajon was three the tantrums continued, but a new side of his rage emerged. And this new side was even scarier because it was cooler, almost rational. Threatening to kill their neighbor’s thirteen-year old daughter, he told them, without a trace of anger, 

I’m going to kill her and she’s going to be dead for a long time. 

Threatening to kill their neighbor’s thirteen-year old daughter, he told them, without a trace of anger, I’m going to kill her and she’s going to be dead for a long time. 

He said this with detached curiosity, as if he was remembering a fairy tale. And just a few months later, when his little sister Sierra was a newborn, Dajon picked another boy up by his throat and started bashing his head into a wall. With her infant in a baby sling and Mordecai in his wheelchair, Shannon took Dajon to the doctor. Questioned about his violent impulses, Dajon shocked them all by calmly stating 

I have scissors that can stab you guys while you’re sleeping…I’m gonna stab you all tonight while you’re sleeping. 

That seemed so unlike him. Unless he was gripped by an uncontrollable spasm of rage, Dajon was gentle, protective of others, and sweet. Sometimes it seemed like he was trying on words as if they were clothes. Still, that remark put him in Lincoln Pediatric Psychiatric for two weeks.

Dajon wasn’t diagnosed with high-functioning autism until they moved to Minneapolis. He was treated briefly by psychologists and speech therapists until Shannon missed one too many of their multiple appointments and the treatment team decided there was nothing further they could do for him. Since then, his autism was managed or not managed by a roundelay of psycho-pharmaceuticals.

Dajon’s second encounter with the Iron Range police occurred five months later. By then, they’d moved to Chisholm, an even smaller, poorer town three miles east of Hibbing. Shannon and Mark had found a one-and-a-half story wood-frame “rent to own” house with a big yard on the northwest side of town. For the first time in their married life, they were homeowners. “They,” at this point, included Dajon’s mom, his step-dad Mark, his siblings, and his half-siblings Sierra, Dylan, Eric, Jackeline and Cheyenne, and Brett, a sort-of adopted older brother three years Dajon’s senior, who’d joined the family during a brief sojourn in North Carolina. His little brother Mordecai passed away when Dajon was eleven, but Cheyenne, born four years later, had some of Mordecai’s same special needs.

On a Saturday afternoon in February 2017, Dajon was walking alone outside the Chisholm Hockey Arena and Curling Club, a few blocks away from his house. He liked to walk. Officers passing by in a patrol car observed “a tall youth with a shuffling gait” (it was the Risperidal) rummaging through the cigarette canisters alongside the gates. Assuming Dajon was drunk, the cops asked what he was doing. Very precisely, he explained he was going through withdrawal from nicotine. Since he wasn’t old enough to buy cigarettes for himself he was looking for thrown-away butts. They told him to move along, and he did.

Between that afternoon and the night two years later when he kidnapped and killed Jayson Lagrange, there were at least a dozen more police encounters. 

Some were for typical teenage infractions—truancy and drinking, unlicensed driving and fights. Others resulted from Shannon’s panicked calls to 911, where he ended up on the hospital psych ward on 72-hour holds.

All in all, the move from Hibbing to Chisholm was good for Dajon. He was smart in science and math but he knew from his first day in eighth grade at Hibbing High he was going to be one of the hood-rats, and never a preppy, a nerd, or a jock. Of course there’d been cliques at his old school in suburban Pine City, but up here in the country it was so much more pronounced. No matter if they were smart, dumb, grotesque, or hot, all the low-income kids in Hibbing banded together because the college-bound middle-class kids instinctively shut them out. Since all of Chisholm’s middle-class kids bussed over to Hibbing, the Chisholm high school was smaller, with a whole lot less pressure. Nobody cared. The kids in Chisholm looked out for each other. To people in Hibbing, Chisholm was trash.

Dajon’s mom and his step-dad Mark Duell broke up on Christmas Eve when he was seventeen years old. He stood at the window upstairs and watched Mark loading things into his truck. He’d known Mark since he was eight. Three days later he walked into the house to find his mom crouched on the floor, her head bobbing fast up and down between his adopted brother Brett’s bare legs. Enraged, he smashed the TV, the living room windows, and the Christmas tree with a chair. After that, he stopped going to school. When CPS threatened to take him away, Shannon sent him to Wisconsin to stay with his grandmother Cheryl until things blew over, so he’d be safe.

By the end of the school year Dajon moved back home—which was now a three-bedroom apartment in the South Chisholm HRA projects. They’d moved after Shannon stopped paying the house. Nine of them crammed in the apartment and there were fights all the time. His mom bought a gun. For years, she’d worked part-time on and off as a masseuse but now she started doing motel outcalls, determined to save up enough to get them all back into a house. Brett and Shannon were talking about getting married, and they slept in the same bed every night. There was nothing for Dajon to do but accept that twenty-one-year old Brett had become sort of a cross between step-dad and friend. In the end it wasn’t so bad. Besides, Dajon was no longer a kid, he’d be eighteen in the fall. He got his PCA—Personal Care Attendant—credential online so he could help care for his little sister Cheyenne, it was $140 a week. The rest of his money he made selling drugs. The rednecks who fixed up old cars in the HRA parking lot called him a retard. Each time it happened, his mom flew into a rage but Dajon just ignored them. Instead, he fell in with some older Black guys from the Cities who claimed to have ties to the Gangster Disciples. One of them, Jerrom MacBeth, told Dajon if he could get in with the Gangster Disciples they’d take care of his family for life. But how could he do this? He had to kill someone first, Jerrom said. And he had to have proof.

Brittney texted Dajon from her room on Friday afternoon January 4. 

Dajon and Brittney had been together for almost six weeks. Brittney was Misty’s best friend, and now Misty was living in Hibbing with Alan, who’d been a friend of Dajon’s from the Pine City days. When Misty’s ex-boyfriend Marco got sentenced to six months in jail after the big Thanksgiving Day fight, Marco’s brother Javier fled back to Thief River Falls and she was left in the three-bedroom apartment alone.

Misty and Alan got together on Facebook via Shannon, who was their mutual friend. Alan had to get out of Pine City and Misty needed a roommate to help pay the rent, so Shannon, Brett, and Misty drove down to Pine City to pick Alan up. As they drove through the night, as soon as Alan took Misty’s hand in the backseat of the car and she did not take it back an electrical charge ran straight to his heart, and he knew he wasn’t alone anymore. It was a done deal.

Alan was almost part of Dajon’s family. Brandon, Alan’s adoptive brother, was one of Shannon’s best friends. In Pine City they all went to the same church. Alan wasn’t much older than Dajon but he was like a big brother, alert to his moods, making a joke when things got too intense. It was weird how the old Pine City tribe had re-gathered up here in Hibbing, two hours north. This was because Alan was now living with Misty in Hibbing, at the duplex on Third Street, in the apartment next door to the one Landlord Bob had moved them all into that fall until December 15, when he moved them one street away into a house.

The duplex was how Dajon met Brittney. Returning to Hibbing in time for Thanksgiving after being in treatment, she was supposed to be living at home, a few houses away, but she spent most of her time over at Misty’s where she pretty much had her own room.

Dajon had seen Brittney around, but at Misty’s he saw her up close. It was weird how most of the kids felt sorry for her, the little lost girl, when she was the one who should feel sorry for them. Because Brittney was tough, creative, and smart. She was seventeen, but she’d been lying about her age for so long you could almost believe she was thirty years old. Brittney drew, she read books, and she knew how to make all kinds of things out of blown glass. She was beautiful, too, with black biker boots, a wolf tattoo on her chest, and razor-cut hair. Brittney was famous in town for dating guys twice her age. Dajon could hardly believe she was interested in him. Still, there was a side of her that was soft.

Brittney was famous in town for dating guys twice her age. Dajon could hardly believe she was interested in him. Still, there was a side of her that was soft.  

Tyler, Brittney’s 27-year old former boyfriend, was in jail for giving her meth. But it was all so fucked up, Brittney said. People thought she was the victim because of her age, but except for the drugs she’d been trying to take care of him. Tyler had done some dumb stuff down in the Cities with checks, but instead of going to court he’d moved up to the Range to make a fresh start. And anyway she’d been shooting up meth since she was fifteen, which was not Tyler’s fault. Although since finishing treatment she’d stuck to just Addys and weed.

, Dajon texted Brittney from his basement room of the new house. The 20 bucks Jason gave him for weed just flew out of his pocket, now he’d have to borrow two g’s from his mom. He was tired of being so broke all the time in this freezing unheated basement, not even having a car.

That can’t be your go-to every time you’re upset

I’m having Brittney come over tonight, 

Everyone can criticize her but I love her

and I need happy right now I’m really depressed

Before getting dressed to sneak out to Dajon’s, Brittney opened the “Alix French” page on her phone. A 50-year old guy up in Ely wanted a video made: strip and then pussy play. He PayPal’d her forty-five bucks, so she slid down her jeans and held the phone to her crotch. The file was so heavy she had to splice it in two to get it to send.

I don’t really ever cum from masturbation

Brittney slipped out of the house and came back an hour later. Her parents never knew she was gone. They’d been partying out in the garage with some friends.

Late Saturday morning she hooked up with some 33-year old guy from Aurora on Plenty of Fish who said he could give her some Addys. Jayson—that was his name—offered to bring them over to Hibbing for her. He had his own car. Brittney gave him Misty’s address and went over to wait.

Misty was out at some kid’s party over in Chisholm but Alan was home on the couch with a big glass of Lean. As usual, he was playing Skrillex so loud she could hear every beat through his headphones. Brittney went into the room they let her use to hang out and do business—a double mattress, an old boom box, some dresser drawers—and waited for Jayson. He arrived around 1.

Three hours later, Brittney texted Dajon.

She’d already taken a photo of Jayson and fumbled around on her phone.

I’m at Misty’s, I’m too upset to leave here, I’m freaking out, can you come?

Chris Kraus’s eight books include the novels 

. She lives in Los Angeles and teaches writing at Art Center College of Design, Pasadena.

 is the second of three installments from influential writer Chris Kraus’s in-progress book, 

Marco Guillermo Corona hooked up with Misty Hall in Thief River Falls in the summer just before she turned 18. What Marco liked about Misty was she was quiet, no drama, not too intense. Kept herself out of trouble, but so long as it did not involve her personally she didn’t care or even seem to notice what other people did. It was as if she’d practiced moving through the world with her eyes half closed. She was a big girl, better looking on Snap than IRL for sure but she had soft white skin and beautiful red hair. This was his first time being with a redhead. The other good things about Misty were: she wasn’t jealous, it didn’t seem to matter if he fooled around a little bit, and most importantly she wasn’t underage.

Because Marco liked hanging out with kids. Not little kids, he was not a pervert, but girls just as they’re getting little tits and getting into it. Kids old enough to smoke his weed and laugh at all his jokes. Marco was fat, twenty-three, and mostly unemployed. He didn’t have a lot of friends his age. Marco liked hanging out with boys that age as well.

Up to this point he’s had very little trouble with the police. A big, dumb, goofy guy who tries to get along with everyone and kind of blurs into the background. Marco liked, equally, trucks, Trump, drinking, [rapper] Kevin Gates, getting high, Brown Power, the Confederate flag, and Native American culture.

Up to this point he’s had very little trouble with the police. A big, dumb, goofy guy who tries to get along with everyone and kind of blurs into the background. Marco liked, equally, trucks, Trump, drinking, [rapper] Kevin Gates, getting high, Brown Power, the Confederate flag, and Native American culture. His mom Linda Gibson is almost 100% Red Lake Chippewa. She grew up entirely on the rez but she kind of turned herself into a Mexican by marrying his dad, Luis Corona, whom she met around the time she turned 16.  Luis was working as a cook at the 7 Clans Casino south of town. Marco can’t remember much about his dad. He had some immigration issues and he moved back to Durango in 2002 when Marco was six and his little brother Javier was four.

Marco has a photo that he’s kept, taken just before his father left. He and Javier are sitting on the steps outside the house, after Javier’s first day of school. Javier’s hair is freshly cut and he’s all dressed up in a new plaid shirt, smiling sweetly at their father. Wearing a pair of baggy thrift store jeans and a t-shirt that’s too big for him, Marco holds a half-eaten candy bar, smiling vacantly on his sugar high someplace beyond the camera. For a while, this photo summed them up. Marco got transferred from Thief River Falls High to the Northwest Learning Center when he was 14. Almost immediately, he stopped attending. Javier, their mother’s favorite, stayed in school. Tall and lean, Javier ran track, played soccer, and just missed out on a football scholarship to Bemidji State. After that he did some stupid shit, getting drunk and setting fires, but then he settled down and got a job at Arctic Cat, still hanging around town and waiting for something else to happen.

Neither Marco nor Javier has ever met a single person from their father’s family. His name is on their birth certificates but they found out later that the whole time he was living with them, he had a wife and three kids back in Mexico. So when their mom hooked up with their step-dad Esteban, she didn’t even really need to get divorced because her marriage to their dad was never legal. She and Esteban got married right away, and she had their little sister Alejandra.

At first it wasn’t clear to Marco and Javier who their step-dad Esteban was, or what he did. A wizened, scary-looking older guy, he was away a lot. But eventually it gelled. Marco and Javier were in middle school when Esteban got shot outside a stash house in a town called Earlimart in central California. Their mom was eight months pregnant with the baby she’d name Jesus Javier. After that, you’d think the five of them would be completely fucked, but things turned out okay. Officially his mom got government benefits and a small tribal grant, but other money seemed to come her way. Her Facebook page was full of baby pictures, red rose gifs, and lipstick hearts with Sur 13 Familia Terce written out in cursive script. Whenever someone in their family needed something bad enough, it would be there.

But except for sharing drugs with kids he’s hardly a criminal at all. By the time Marco met Misty Hall he was 23 years old with a record that was completely clean, except for this single nothing case that’s been dogging him since September 2017.

They consider me a criminal but I got a heart of gold

, this is one of Marco’s favorite lines from a Stitches rap, 

 Marco thinks. But except for sharing drugs with kids he’s hardly a criminal at all. By the time Marco met Misty Hall he was 23 years old with a record that was completely clean, except for this single nothing case that’s been dogging him since September 2017.

It started out as no big thing, a sleepover he’d organized one Friday night at his sister Alejandra’s place, since he was still living, basically, with his mother. Alli was at work til 2, and his friends Jasmin, Zack, Mya, and Yolanda all came around. They had some beers, got high, and then watched the movie 

. Zack, a hyper-focused white kid living with his uncle, kept talking about the plot, how it was an allegory for Trump’s border wall and SARS-2, the avian flu, but the rest of them just liked passing joints and watching all the apes ride through the snow on horseback. Zack thought that shot was an allusion to Ulrike Ottinger’s film 

 about a nomadic tribe led by Warrior Princess Ullun Iga, galloping across the steppes but 

 By the time the movie finished everyone was too crunk to move, so Marco got out some blankets and pillows and they fell asleep together on the floor.

Zack woke up first, at 7. Looking through his phone, he saw a code-red alert for two missing kids, Jasmin and Mya, who were, like him, both twelve years old. While they slept, Jasmin’s mom had called the cops and now photos of the girls were being sent to every Minnesota phone. Waking up, Marco took charge and flushed all the weed and empty vapes, even though so far nobody knew that they were there. 

 And no one did. He’d tried kissing Mya on the lips and moving his hands up Jasmin’s legs but both of the girls pushed him away. Okaaay. His favorite Stitches album, 

, was an inspiration. No snitching was the one belief that everybody shared. And then Jasmin left, and Marco drove the rest of them to the water tower and they all walked home from there.

The problem was, one of his sister Allie’s neighbors snitched when they saw Jasmin walking through the parking lot. By the time Marco got back, three flashing squad cars were waiting for him at the apartment.

The cops interviewed everybody twice but everyone was cool, no snitching, and in the end the only charge they filed was Contributing to the Delinquency of a Minor because of all the empty beers, a gross misdemeanor. His mom arranged the $3,000 bail. In the end it all came down to two years on probation.

But probation was a fucking pain. He failed the pee test once, missed an appointment, got pulled over once for driving while revoked and bang, they’re threatening him with a year in jail again. He got free on the same $3,000 bail, but this time they didn’t give him a public defender. His mom wanted to ask his step-dad’s friends for help, but Javier thought that was a bad idea. Why get in debt over this stupid shit? So far they’ve both stayed clear of them.

Ten days before Misty’s eighteenth birthday a warrant was issued for Marco’s arrest. It was mid-August, a week before everyone was going back to school. Misty was still living at the group home on State Street she’d been placed in, hating it, and working part-time at the Dairy Queen. She had no intention of going back to Thief River Falls High School and repeating all the 10th grade classes that she’d failed last year. At this rate she’d be, like, 21 by the time she finished senior year. Almost everyone who stayed in school was tall and blonde because apparently the town was settled by Norwegians.

Except for when she was with Marco, Misty basically hated Thief River Falls. It was a small town of 8000 mostly assholes three hours east of Fargo with a factory that made snowmobiles and ATVs. Two years ago, when Misty’s grandma beat her up and threw her out, the group home on State Street was the only bed they had for her. The Child Protective Services lady seemed so nice. Misty knew the lady knew she cut herself, but the woman didn’t say a word about self-harm, she acted like she’d never seen the scars. Telling them about her grandma was the only time that Misty snitched. But all that happened was she ended up going from a bad situation into something worse.  She’d thought about running away a bunch of times but Thief River Falls was a two and a half hour drive from Hibbing, and of course she didn’t have a car. They said the town was seventy miles from Canada, which was hard to believe because she’d never met a Canadian.

Misty met Marco in June when she and her girlfriend Belle were babysitting his sister Alejandra’s kids. Alli was always short of cash and sometimes Marco, who was around a lot, would get them high instead. He was actually the big brother, but he seemed closer to them in age: a big goofy guy who worshipped Kevin Gates and even looked like him—the same fat cheeks, a mustache, and a beard styled the same way. Marco wanted to be a rapper. He’d watched every episode of 

The devil asked me how I knew my way around the halls of hell … I told him I did not need a map for the darkness I knew so well

. So long as there was an Us against a Them there was a reason she woke up crying half the time and everything felt so bad. Marco was 23 years old, no kids, and even though he said he lived for family it was really just him, Javier, and Alli. He believed in love, he was depressed a lot. He had a van. Marco wasn’t Misty’s first but he was the first who actually seemed proud of going around with her. He took her to all the secret places he and Javier knew when they were kids. In Hibbing she’d never thought once about being white because everyone she hung around with was, but here in Thief River Falls she saw it was a thing that maybe made him like her more. He was all about Brown Power half the time, but who he actually wanted to be with was the white girl with the long red hair. He put his arm around her in the van and kissed her neck and even smelled her hair.

Marco wasn’t home when the cop delivering the warrant stopped by his mother’s house. It was, as Zack would have said, ironic—her husband Javier trafficked tons of shit for years completely unmolested (except for getting shot) and now Marco’s become a fucking fugitive over half a case of empty beers.

The fugitive thing freaked Misty out. She’s stayed out of trouble all her life—a little weed, some pills maybe, but no hard drugs. She may look dumb but Misty knows exactly who to avoid. Except for shoplifting with her friend Bailey when they were 12 she never broke the law. She started thinking: maybe the best thing for Marco to do was leave. But where? They were all broke so there was no point thinking about moving to the Cities. Besides, they didn’t really know anybody there.

The fugitive thing freaked Misty out. She’s stayed out of trouble all her life—a little weed, some pills maybe, but no hard drugs. She may look dumb but Misty knows exactly who to avoid.

The easiest place to go back to was Hibbing. Before saying anything about it to Marco she called her grandma’s boyfriend Ronald. Misty got along okay with Ronald, even though you could say he was the reason all the trouble started. Although in fact that wasn’t right, Ronald didn’t do anything, it was her grandma’s psychotic raving, the way she usually did when she was coming off a binge. Ronald drank a bit but that was all. He worked. Maybe things had settled down?

And Ronald was very nice. He said he’d talk to Grandma Jean and then he called her back. He said her grandma missed her. The best thing was, he’d traded someone for an old RV this summer. She and Marco could sleep there while they were looking for an apartment.

Except for going to concerts in the Cities, Marco never left Thief River Falls but he didn’t want to go to jail. Avoiding cops was questionable in a town this small. Still—moving there alone with Misty to her family place seemed a little premature. What if she got pregnant? They’d have to get engaged. So he asked Javier to come along. Javier was still waiting for something else to happen. So far it hadn’t. Maybe this was the opportunity.

They got to Hibbing a few days before Misty turned eighteen. Almost immediately things blew up. Grandma Jean was doing meth and saying racist shit. The three of them were crammed into the RV without a toilet, and Misty wept because her birthday sucked.  Finally Ronald gave them 700 bucks and called Landlord Bob, a guy he’d done some maintenance for. Bob owned or managed dozens of houses and apartments right in town where all the kids lived. Bob could surely hook them up, then Ronald could stop being in the middle and watch the game and drink his beer in peace. ♦

Marco & Misty

 is the first of three installments from influential writer Chris Kraus’s in-progress book, 

(working title); each "chapter" or section is

 Inspired by the real-life crime the Mesabi Trail Murder, the book dives deep into the small-town dramas of Hibbing, Minnesota—in the state’s Iron Range—leading up to a homicide on a snowmobile trail.

A one-and-a-half story old wood-frame house on the east side of Hibbing, Minnesota: built by the mine companies in the 1930s, it’s looked exactly the same for as long as anyone here can remember, a mustard-beige house with brown trim partly hidden behind two half-dead Hemlock trees. The half-story is an expanded attic with boat-ceiled rooms under the eaves. All of the houses are set close to the street. In front of each one, a short concrete walk runs from the sidewalk to three or four cement steps leading up to the front door. On the southeast side of Hibbing, there must be 150 houses like this, and on the southwest, 150 more. Hibbing’s professional class, resigned to pursuing careers in a spent mining town four hours north of the Twin Cities, six when the weather is bad, keeps itself hid.

Two streets away from this house on Third Avenue East, First Avenue runs the mile from Highway 169 to Howard Street, downtown’s main street. Downtown is the Veteran’s Thrift Store and the Goodwill and the Salvation Army; a couple of mom and pop antique stores that are closed more often than not; a China Buffet; Rudy’s Pizza and Sammy’s Pizza for takeout; a closed Mexican restaurant, a closed chiropractor’s office, a closed shoe store; a hair salon, closed; another hair salon, expensive and open; a tattoo studio, a bike shop and the Howard Street Office Suites.

Everything else—the Walmart, the Lowe’s, the hospital, the DMV and the Municipal Center, Comcast, Super One, Holiday Gas and the Chevrolet dealership—takes place on Highway 169 outside of town. The east and west sides lie on either side of the old downtown but so far, no one has thought to call it a historic district, paint their front door Tangerine or French Blue or put an Everyone Is Welcome Here sign in their yard. The only yard signs you’ll see are for mining or Trump. We Support Mining/Mining Supports Us. … which is no longer technically true, almost 50% of the town’s jobs are in health care and the rest are in retail or service; but mining is Hibbing’s origin myth, a legend that goes back to the days of the clean-living working class family supported solely by dad, a time no one alive now remembers, did it even exist? A time when a family needed only one car, mom walked down to the Blue Hen IGA on First and Howard to buy groceries while the kids were at school, and they all went to hockey games, Knights of Columbus and church.  

Mining is Hibbing’s origin myth, a legend that goes back to the days of the clean-living working class family supported solely by dad, a time no one alive now remembers, did it even exist?

It’s 4:20 pm on the first Friday in January and Brittney French, 17, 5’2”, skinny but not a jock, is upstairs in her room with the door closed. The dull granite sky outside the house has nearly faded to black. Her friend Misty is there. A sheer orange scarf tacked over a window that rattles whenever it storms turns the closet-sized room into a bright cozy hive. Brittney’s hair is cut short, long pieces on top, razor-shaved on the side and the back, but she softens the look with lip gloss and soft smoky eyes. Brittney’s on the narrow twin bed under the eaves and Misty’s sprawled on a pouf on the floor. They’re both hard at work on their phones.  

Waking up around noon, Misty did this and that, waiting until 4pm when Brittney and her boyfriend Dajon would get home from school. Since getting laid off at Walmart Misty’s been helping her grandmother’s boyfriend do odd jobs around town, but there was no work today. The last couple days had warmed up, turning the bright Christmas snow into slush so it wasn’t freezing today, but in Hibbing without transportation you couldn’t do much. She’d thought about walking over to First to do laundry but decided against it. Instead, she signed up for LiveMe and downloaded some new filters from Snap.  

Technically Brittney is “grounded,” but she and her mom understand that at this point the word doesn’t mean shit. She’s run away so many times, she’s been in treatment and juvie and treatment again, and besides she is 

, old enough now to be out on her own like Misty’s been since she arrived back in Hibbing after Thief River Falls, a frozen town in the middle of nowhere four hours away.

The last treatment Brittney was in was a teens-only place all the way down in St. Paul and she’d actually done well. She graduated in time for Thanksgiving, and she and her mom reached a détente: she could come home and move back into her room so long as she enrolled at ERATS, a charter school without formal classes, to get her high school diploma, or at least try. Her dad by that point was too pissed to care. The second time she’d been arrested they couldn’t find her a place in rehab anywhere so they sent her to juvie, an hour away in Duluth. Both of her sisters moved out while she was gone, but somehow it seems like her mom has more time for her now. Technically Brittney and Misty are best friends, but if Brittney were pressed to reflect, she’d say it was more like Misty, like the rest of her quote unquote Hibbing friends, was just 

 Misty’s said more than once now that she’s dropped out of school and given up on her childhood as an unwanted thing of the past. Misty can actually remember being plopped in a crib alongside Brittney at her Grandma Barb’s house. She remembers when they were five, maybe six, watching out for wild rabbits and climbing trees in the yard. She doesn’t like to remember much that occurred after that.

A plump strawberry blonde in fleece leggings, Misty turned eighteen last August and immediately formalized her non-attendance at school, filling out all the forms at the Municipal Center, signing them with her own name as an adult. She didn’t want any trouble. She had just moved back to Hibbing with her boyfriend Marco and into the duplex with his brother Javier.  

Misty and Marco met while she was living in a group home in Thief River Falls. She had to get out of her grandmother’s place and there were no beds anywhere in the county so CPS sent her there, taking a bad situation and making it worse. At Thief River Falls High, where she knew no one, they made her repeat sophomore year. Misty never understood how Marco’s mom, who was from Durango, ended up in Thief River Falls, but he and his siblings had all grown up there. Marco sold weed and other drugs and hung out with a lot of the kids. He was older than her, 23, and being around him made her feel good. When she got in trouble for missing curfew over and over again, Marco came up with a plan: they’d leave town and start over in Hibbing where she was from and his brother Javier was already living. Marco had problems in town of his own.  

One morning that summer, instead of going to work, Marco picked her up in his van and they left. Javier’s apartment was a cluster of rooms upstairs in a two-family house painted white with black trim. And it was on the same street as Brittney’s, just four blocks down. Which was weird but in a mostly good way, being brought back to the scene of her childhood by these two older Mexican guys. Technically CPS could have reported her disappearance to the police but they were in different counties, and she was about to age out of the system, so they just let it slide.

But now six months later, the apartment no longer belongs to Javier, it’s all hers. Javier moved out before Thanksgiving in the aftermath of a fight that brought half of Hibbing’s on-duty police force to their place. It started out as a fight between Javier and Shannon, Dajon’s mom, and her boyfriend AJ—who were all, along with Shannon’s five other kids, living downstairs. Marco kicked in a window, and even though half of Misty’s face was torn up she didn’t talk, didn’t tell, didn’t snitch. Marco was 

 drunk and angry he spit at a cop. As soon as he sobered up, he asked the detective downtown if he could talk to the cop face-to-face and he said he was sorry, but they still put him in jail for six months.

Misty’s face healed and she started working at Walmart until she got laid off. She was alone now and the biggest problem was paying the rent. The landlord Bob, who was a friend or acquaintance of Brittney’s dad, managed the place for a couple of guys out of state he called his “investors.” Bob was okay, a little weird, maybe a former meth-head? With an Aspberger’s kid. He kept texting for money but he was basically chill. The downstairs of the duplex was trashed but still, he let Shannon’s family move across the alley into a house that he owned, the house where he and his wife had brought up their kids.

After the fight Misty started spending more time with Dajon, Brittney’s boyfriend, and Shannon. They’d been on the [Iron] Range—first Chisholm, then Hibbing—since 2015. Before that they’d lived in Isanti County, down by the Cities an hour or two north. Shannon and AJ, her boyfriend, drove back to Isanti every month to see friends and buy weed, a pound or a half at a time. Whatever they didn’t use they gave to the kids to sell to their friends. Misty and Shannon Facebook friended each other right away, which was how Misty met Alan, who liked or loved all of her posts. Alan was two years older than her, he liked working on cars, he was cute. A couple of comments, and then he started messaging her, and then they were messaging eight times a day.  

She’d already decided to break up with Marco when he got out of jail, and Alan had just broken up with his ex. After one of the fights between Alan and Amber, his ex, he messaged Misty, 

, and most of the time she felt like that too. Alan was staying in Hinckley, about two-and-a-half hours away with his brother Brandon at his Aunt Karen’s place. Brandon and Karen weren’t Alan's bio-brother or aunt but they felt like his real family, a situation to which Misty could almost relate. Still. When Karen got cited by Housing for Alan vaping inside she told him he’d have to move out. This happened just before Christmas and then the whole plan fell into place. Alan would move up to Hibbing and into the duplex, he’d pay half the rent and get Misty’s landlord off her back. And then when Marco got out of jail things would be really clear. Everyone thought this was a good idea.

Alan's truck was impounded, so Shannon and AJ drove down with Misty to Hinckley to pick him up in Shannon’s Explorer. They sat in the front, and she and Alan sat holding hands in the back. That night they slept together for the first time and the next day he posted on Facebook 

Everyone that’s messaging me asking if I’m single I’m not I’m taken thank you Misty Hart

And now, since returning from treatment, Brittney is dating Dajon! They’d met at ERATS and gotten together at a party the day after Christmas. Before meeting Alan, Misty hadn’t really noticed Dajon. He was the intense-looking kid living downstairs who seemed to come and go on his own. He looked like Edward Scissorhands or one of those Columbine kids who shot up their school. Dajon’s skin was paler than pale, his hair was thick raven black and he wore a long black wool overcoat. He was definitely different. Not slow, more mentally ill or Asperger’s maybe. He had a bad temper for sure. The whole big fight started with something Dajon did or said to Javier.  

Dajon is eighteen, the same age as Misty. She’s never known Brittney to date someone that young. What does she see in Dajon? Misty can’t really understand anything Brittney does anymore. Still, her thing with Dajon has brought them together again—the two girls, the two guys, all of them friends—in a new grown-up way. It’s cool and it’s fun.  

And now here they are hanging out in Brittney’s blue bedroom as if they were 12.  