QUINTER, Kan. – Sitting in the front seat of a red pickup as wind-whipped sorghum husks fly down Main Street like snowflakes, Ivy Charles fingers the white surgical mask slipped down beneath her chin. "He was a puzzle piece who can never be replaced," she says, tears welling into her tired eyes. "He was supposed to get better. We weren't expecting him to die." Just over a month ago, the now-rampaging coronavirus pandemic tore through this rural town of 1,000 and surrounding Gove County, killing 20 residents. Among them was Charles' father, Edward "Mac" McElhaney, 78. Here, where most everyone knows most everyone else, the pandemic has killed farmers and their wives. The town's unofficial historian. The beloved grandmother whose sour cream chocolate cake with chocolate fudge frosting was always the talk of the party. The mom whose piano-playing still echoes in the heads of her friends.