She did not live in a dust bowl. She lived in a place known for the sun spreading its brightness over the land, and she had come to believe there was a quaint truth to the claim. Sometimes the sun’s light seemed to swirl over the valley, giving it a soft brilliance that did not exist in other places. She had tried to explain it away, saying to herself that it was nothing more than an illusion. And maybe it was that—an illusion made from words said so often they had taken on meaning. Words were powerful. Steinbeck had painted the dust bowl with word-strokes over the canvas of book paper. She could see it clearly. Rembrandt could not have painted it more vividly.

Illusions were made of words, like a magician’s singsong of abracadabra secrets.

The Valley of Light could be nothing more than some old settler’s abracadabra.

Still, it was hard for the mind to ignore what the eyes had seen.

The dust bowl had certainly been real enough.

She could feel a choking when she read of the dust bowl.

And there were times when she could feel the same choking in the Valley of Light, and she wondered if it would be the same in California, or some other place.

FOUR

His parents had not been churchgoers, nor had he, not beyond the occasion of his baptism at a springtime revival visited in morning services by the higher grades of the elementary school he had attended. He had given himself to the church—Methodist—because it was expected, because he was a follower and had followed classmates sitting around him to the altar, where he had received a palm-patting of water over the thick matting of his hair and, in so doing, had had his soul coated with the protective grace of God the Father, God the Son, God the Holy Ghost. It had been an experience that seemed wondrous in the moment of its happening. The old minister bending over him, smelling of shaving oils, his warm breath having a scent of mint, saying to him in a whisper that only he could hear, “Follow me and I will make you fishers of men.” Out of the metaphor—though he did not think of it as that, but as something actual and physical—there had been a single pulse of blood jolting his body, rinsing him of all sin, making him as clean as a river bath. Later, he had thought about it and had wondered if what the preacher had said about being a fisher of men was the thing that struck him, causing his blood to jump inside his chest. Wondered if the preacher knew about his fishing.

He did not know if his mother and father had ever been baptized, though he believed they had. In their youth, likely. They were familiar with the Bible, often reading it at night by lamplight, and his mother was fond of certain verses which, for her, held such truth that no argument could be made against them.