“Come harvesttime, even your father will have to say I did something right,” Dad told Mom, the two of them standing on the edge of the field one late June evening, watching the sun set over the Crazy Mountains and the hawks circling above their plump and golden crop of grain.

The last week in July that year, a strange, heavy stillness came over the farm. “High pressure area,” his father said. “Looks to me like a summer storm brewing. One last good rain—just what we need before harvest.”

All day the sky was the flat, dull gray of a battleship, but then it suddenly grew dark as mud. The wind grew still, and a strange, eerie smell seemed to hang over them. Even the cows in the field behind the barn sensed something was coming, milling around like restless schoolchildren during a fire drill. The weather vane didn’t rotate even half an inch.

Then it happened: a freak storm, with hailstones big as baseballs pounding down so hard that one dented the Mercury. Theirs was the only place in the whole county that was hit.

Fifteen minutes later it was over, but the damage had been done: Their entire precious crop was pummeled, while just ten acres over, Ben Landry’s crop of wheat and barley stood untouched. Dad had stood upright as a pitchfork, surveying the damage. But that night Nate had gotten up and seen him through the doorway, shoulders hunched, filling a glass with whiskey. “We’re finished, Helen,” he’d said to Nate’s mom the next morning. “Sam Carter will end up with the deed to our land. Your father will never let me live this down.”

When it was over, they went out to survey the damage— he and Rufus, and even his mom, bending over the stalks and studying them. The buds were knocked off the plants and lying on the ground, mostly. Only bare stems and a few battered leaves were left. There was no choice but to sell what they could for a fraction of what they’d been counting on.

Christmas, there had still been presents under the tree, but just one for each of them. By New Year’s, Nate’s father was spending most of his days sitting in the big chair in the kitchen, staring out the window.

Seeing him that way, a sinking feeling would come over Nate. Something awful was happening, and nothing he could do would make it stop.

Three

AFTER THE POLICE CRUISERS AND THE AMBULANCE pulled away, Nate figured Aunt Sal would tell him and Junie what had happened. But as she set the hot chocolate down in front of them, she didn’t say anything about police cars or barking dogs or their father and all that blood. “Go watch TV,” she told Junie. “Isn’t it time for your favorite show?”