MIDLAND CITY, Ala. — Many things hold little Southern towns together. There is a common love of the region, the peace that comes with a rural life and, often, prayer.

In this town of 2,300 in the heart of peanut country, people drew on all of those as they endured what by Thursday night had stretched into an unimaginable situation.

A relative newcomer to town — a man who had fought in Vietnam and appeared to harbor a deep distrust of government and a grudge against every neighbor — shot and killed a bus driver on Tuesday, grabbed a 5-year-old boy named Ethan and then disappeared with the boy into a well-equipped bunker he had spent several months digging in his yard.

By all accounts, the man that neighbors and a sheriff’s office official identified as Jimmy Lee Dykes, 65, had no connection to the boy.