And as we walked in step, the names of the men before me sounded the bass notes through my boot soles: I am Maisie, daughter of Ludlow, son of Ludlow, son of Ludlow, and back and back through Ludlows into nameless time. A litany of solids upon which I close my eyes when I go to sleep, like the familiar furniture in my own dear room at home. But just as the sleeper always drifts elsewhere when he sleeps, the Granges and their story seemed to beckon me beyond my sleeping body—into air. As Bart and I proceeded with silent steps down that cool green alley, I cast about in my mind for visions of what else beside my own thoughts might be loosed from their moorings: hair uncoiling from pins, scent from an unstoppered bottle—and still the dark green firmament, still the warm arm of Bart Hunnowell beneath my own. No, I remonstrated, think of natural things. So geese in a tight autumn V wheeled suddenly free-form, single birds zigzagging cross a previously ordered strip of sky; then umbrellas came to mind, windblown inside out from cap to cup, and then the rooted thing that does not come unmoored—

“Potatoes.”

“I beg your pardon?” Bart had stopped short in his tracks.

I felt the hot color flash up. The word had flown out of my mouth as if bowled down from my brain before my lips could close.

“Except potatoes,” I said, gathering my skirts up in my hand, and suddenly sprinted off down that yellow road. My sun hat flew from my head as I ran, and, laughing, I looked behind me to see what Bart would do. In that glimpse, I saw he’d set his stick on the ground, and I laughed again, my feet racing faster now, and stretched my arms wide to feel the breeze my running stirred against me. I could hear Bart behind, gaining ground, and suddenly I darted left, scrambling breathless over the stone wall that ran beside the road, and flung myself into the surrounding thicket of red spruce and pine, the pathless woods an almost total chaos—the bent limbs blown down by winter winds lying tossed and skeltered all over the ground. The wildness of those woods whipped my laughter still higher bout me, until I felt I was catapulting through those trees in such a frenzy of motion and hilarity, I did not know how to stop myself, or how it could all end.

At last, I was saved by falling, my foot catching one of the tree roots sticking up into the mossy carpet, sending me headfirst into the unforgiving solid of a tree. I was not hurt, although jolted somewhat, and I slid to sitting, then leaned against the trunk, weak and scraped, but laughing still in breathless little chuckles.