The small mountain town of Putnam, Kentucky has it's fair share of secrets. Some of them are real big ones actually, bigger then you're expect for this quiet town hidden deep in the mountains. It's the local mines, you see. Coal is King in this small mountain town, but it's a well known fact that a mine can have more then one type of rock in it and the mines around Putnam also have radioactive uranium in them. Some very powerful people have been working to keep this a secret, but you can see the effects if you know what you're looking for.<br/><br/>Most dramatically, the men that work in those mines are usually completely sterile within a few years of the beginning of their employment. Some even so far as to lose all desire to touch their wives in any sort of sexual way. The growing sexual frustration is sometimes so thick you can cut it with a knife. Very few people actually know about the radiation in the mines and how it's sexually deadening the men who work there. The previous sheriff knew, not many more. The current sheriff probably could figure out that<em>something</em>is up if he sat down and thought about it, if probably not able to figure out what.<br/><br/>The upside to the sexual inactivity of most of the men is that crime rates are down, even for the statistics of what the town should be getting. The previous sheriff didn't take a deputy until he was almost old enough to retire, and that was just to make the transition easier. Then Deputy Hensley was expected to win the election by a landslide even before he get the previous sheriff's blessing and he'll probably hold the job as long as he wants.<br/><br/>The township of Putnam is fairly small. On paper it's got a few thousand people, but that's including rural houses that just happen to be kinda nearby so in practice it's less then that. The birthrate is obviously much smaller then it should be too given the township's size, also a result of the mines. It's too the point that in the area babies that result from married women cheating on their husbands are secretly nicknamed "Putnam Babies".<br/><br/>Or as the women in Fiona's Hair Salon have nicknamed them, "Hensley Babies". Laura Caldwell just had her baby. Rumor has it that the father isn't her husband Tom but it's Sheriff Hensley. They say that with pretty much all the babies of Putnam granted, for the last 3 years anyway. He was known as Deputy Hensley then, and back when he started they talked about how handsome he was, how sexually dead their husbands were, how he seemed to have more of the twinkle in his eye.<br/><br/>And if half of what they said was true they probably should of been more careful about who they said that around.