Across from Allie sat a man and woman. They were both old, probably thirty. The woman had curly red hair, and her brown eyes looked puffy from crying. The man held her hand. He was skinnier than Leo’s harmonica teacher, with sideburns as long and wide as Elvis Presley’s. In his seat he was half-turned towards his wife, but he was looking up at Allie’s bare knees which were spread about a foot apart as she was forever forgetting a dress wasn’t a pair of jeans. She stood and walked to the rain-streaked window to look for her mother, who had sounded so strangely distraught on the phone. Her voice had gone from sleepy, to sharp and clear, to a sort of whimper, like this news was exactly what she’d been expecting and God, how awful that it’s all finally come to town.

The whimper part surprised Allie; it was the kind of throat sound that can only echo off a lake of devotion. And sitting next to Leo in her father’s truck, hearing him tell of taking the bat and cutting down that man Dwight like a tree, Allie had felt something close to devotion, she was certain. She sat there with a fullness inside her that ached with softness for Leo but then turned when she heard about her father’s blue face. She wished she’d been there herself; she would have swung that bat down on their heads and split them open like pumpkins.

Outside thunder rumbled hollow through the Berkshires, and Leo’s father drove up the hill with his headlights on. Allie watched him cross the parking lot in the rain in his coveralls and short-sleeved shirt, his arms so thick, his mustache already dripping as he made his serious and so wonderfully solid way to the doors. She met him there, and Jim smiled as soon as he saw her, a big one that changed his whole face. She wrapped her arms around his neck and found herself crying into his wet clothes that smelled like denim and sweat and those sour pulp pools outside of town.

By dark the rain hadn’t let up and the wind tore parts of branches from the trees, some falling into the river that swirled them on past black mudbanks and over boulders where they snagged only a moment before being whisked out to the center of the current again, heading south. Veins of lightning flashed out over the mountains, and the rain became a spark of mist against the hills. In town it battered the tin backs of the street lamps, the roof shingles of the houses, the tops of cars, the asphalt of Paper Boulevard. There was such a steady smacking of water, people inside turned up the volume on their televisions and radios. On the Springfield station an announcer with a scratchy voice warned about standard flood heights being reached before midnight.