Lots of people claimed these were the Judgment Days. It wasn’t just the droughts and the absence of jobs that made them say it. It was the boll weevil eating through all the cotton. It was the food shortages in Atlanta, the scarlet fever and tuberculosis, the dust in Kansas and Oklahoma, the bread lines in New York and New Jersey, and the price of living. It was enough tragedy that it made weaker-minded men kill themselves. And suicide was becoming an epidemic in some places.

“You reckon God’s gonna wipe us all off the planet?”

“I don’t know,” said Paul. “But it don’t make no difference either way to me. God does his thing, I do mine. I don’t bother him, and I ask him to give me the same treatment.”

A long silence passed between them. Eulah rocked the baby in her arms until the child fell asleep. And so did Eulah. Her eyes were shut tight. She coughed now and then. It was a productive cough that sounded like her lungs were rattling. Paul watched her and felt sorry for her and for all she’d been through. He felt sorry for her children, and for the baby, and even sorrier for himself—for he was out of cigarettes.

Then . . .

The sky was lit with red-and-purple light, only for a moment. Paul could hardly believe it. The sound of thunder shook the highway. It happened again. And for a flash, the tree line became visible before an electric sky.

“Well, I’ll be,” said Paul in a whisper. He didn’t want to say it too loud. He didn’t want to wake the tired woman beside him.

Paul pulled the car over. Vern pulled over behind him, crackling on the gravel shoulder. Paul stepped out of the truck, removed his hat, and looked upward. The sky was putting on a light show for the world to see.

It hadn’t rained since three weeks before they started construction on the Dreyfus barn. In fact, their dry world had gone so long without rain, Paul couldn’t even remember what the stuff smelled like. And the smell of rain was his favorite smell. It awakened the farmer inside him, which was a piece of himself he thought had been eaten up by boll weevils and greedy banks.

“You think she’s gonna go?” said Vern, walking toward him, looking upward.

“Dunno,” said Paul.

They waited several minutes until it finally started. One drop at a time. The rain began beating the roofs of the two vehicles. Slow at first. Then harder. Soon it sounded like a freight train crashing into the world. Loud. Heavy. Warm. Water.

Paul laughed with an open mouth. He let the hot rain hit his old face and felt the weight of the heavy drops on his cheeks.

“Reckon someone must’ve hung a rattlesnake on a fence,” said Vern.