Swan eventually got over her anger, and things continued as before, but most of what came after had been blurred by the passing years. What Henry remembered most was how tense that summer had been, how the sky would pile up each afternoon with slate-gray clouds that looked full of rain but brought only dry thunder. People on the street were grouchy. The white people were tense, the blacks scared or angry. The air felt so still that noises sounded different than usual. To make things worse, Henry’s father came home and stayed for three straight weeks. All he talked about was “nigger trouble” all over the South, and the “goddamn Kennedys twistin’ up LBJ.” Henry’s only escape was the hours he got to spend at school or with Swan.

One August afternoon, while he and Swan sat on the store steps, Albert walked out, looked at the sky, and said, “This drought done turned the ground into a drum.” Swan poked a stick in the dust and said, “What you talkin’ ’bout, Daddy?” Albert sat down and illustrated his words with his flattened hands. “The ground is the top head, the bedrock the bottom, and precious little water between. Every time a truck goes by, I hear the earth echo. Everybody’s prayin’ for God to send rain. White and black, they prayin’ the same words.”

Henry liked it when Albert talked this way, and he wondered why he seemed more in tune with these thoughts than Swan. Swan lived so instinctively that she seemed to care nothing about codifying feelings into language. If it rained, it rained. If it didn’t, she’d make do with the heat.

“Is it ever going to rain again?” Henry asked.

Albert did something then that he’d never done in public: he laid a comforting hand on Henry’s shoulder and squeezed. “Son,” he said softly, “I think maybe a storm’s comin’ that could wash away everything we know.”

Recognizing the anxiety in her father’s voice, Swan finally looked up.

“You chil’ren be careful from now on,” Albert said. “Don’t let nobody see you together. There’s good folks and bad in this town, same as everywhere else. But right now the bad ones got the power. You hear me?”

Swan locked eyes with Henry, and they knew then that nothing ever got past her father.