They had lived in the basement house barely two weeks when Emaline woke at first light to an ominous roaring noise. It sounded like a low-flying plane, so loud that she could feel the vibrations in the bedposts. She jumped out of bed just as the roar turned to a scream and heard the impact as something hit the roof. She could see the ceiling tremble as whatever it was went right on over the house. The water jug she kept on a nightstand next to the bed fell and smashed on the floor, scattering fragments of glass in every direction. She ran up the steps and out the door in her nightgown, shading her eyes to peer up at a sky the color of rose water.

The sky was empty, but the roar was coming at the house again, this time from the other direction. She darted around in back in time to see Jake on the Henderson, roaring along the hard-packed dirt track that led to the house, dressed in his motorcycle outfit. He had to be doing at least forty, maybe fifty miles an hour, coming right at the house. She thought he was completely mad, that he intended to crash into the house and kill himself, but then she saw that he had braced a twelve-foot plank from the ground onto the roof and an identical plank on the opposite side. He had detached the sidecar to make the motorcycle lighter. As it screamed toward her, the royal blue machine glittered in the morning sunlight. Then he bumped onto the plank, the motorcycle roared up the north side of the roof and soared into the air, flew fifteen or twenty feet past the south edge of the house, came down onto the dirt track that led to the pasture. Three or four shingles had been knocked loose and came sailing down with the breeze, one of them landing almost right at her feet. Emaline shook her fist at his receding back. “Have you completely lost your mind?”