Emaline paused in her washing up and stared at him. “That’s crazy. What are we going to do in Nebraska?”

“I don’t know. Rent a farm, save enough money so we can buy another place. Train horses. Go to work at the sugar factory. Any damned thing except sit here and listen to it drip all day long.”

He began to pack even before she had time to finish the breakfast dishes. She tried to hold him back, to get him to at least sit down and listen to reason. He had a fine job and steady pay. Red loved it here. So did she. It was wet now, but it was the rainy season. Soon the rain would stop. Even with the rain, the winter was much milder than it was in Nebraska. It was almost December and they hadn’t yet seen a snowflake, let alone a blizzard. The work at the mill was hard, but when you were done, you were done. There was no getting up in the middle of the night to check on a sick calf, or crawling out at three o’clock in the morning to start irrigating the fields, or adding columns of numbers until long past midnight, trying to figure out whether there was any chance they could hold on for another year. She tried a dozen different arguments to stop him. If he listened at all, Jake gave no sign. His mind was made up. He was going back to Nebraska. He went on packing in his haphazard way, until Emaline had to help to keep him from breaking all the dishes.

She thought of refusing to leave. She could just sit right there with Clay and Alice and their kids in Millwood, watching the rain fall on the tall fir trees and taking long walks every day down the long slope to the mighty Columbia River. When the weather was better, they could drive to the Pacific on Sunday afternoons. But once she got past the Tatros and some of the young mothers with children, she did not know a soul in Oregon. She had no way to support herself. She had no job and no real skill that might land her one, other than waiting tables. She could take in sewing, bake a few pies, do jobs that other women in Millwood were doing, but that wasn’t going to pay the rent on their little company house. While she tried to decide what to do, Jake was loading the trailer. He had to use the canvas tarp to cover the trailer this time, since it would likely rain at least as far east as Pendleton, but he already had the trailer full and the tarp tied down. Red was almost in tears.

“Why do we have to go?” he kept asking. “Why do we have to go? I like it here.”