The drumming of the rain had forced an early-night sleep on the old woman, giving Eleanor time for her own rest, something her body needed but her mind could not understand. Her mind was restless. Had been all day, and perhaps for several days, and she believed she had finally reached the point of change. People had said to her that it would happen. Had said she would wake up one morning and place her feet on the floor and she would realize her life had changed during the night. Magically changed. Changed as though some angel had visited and swept its healing hand over her body as she slept. It would be like coming out of a high-fever sickness, or like a butterfly escaping its cocoon, they had said. Done so suddenly it would puzzle her until she accepted the truth of it.

She believed it had happened that morning, the morning of sleeping late, of having wishes for a man’s touch.

She went to the closet holding the clothing of her late husband, and to the bedroom dresser, and she took the clothing off hangers and out of drawers, and she folded and stacked them on the bed. Gathered his shaving cream and after-shave lotion, his razors, his toothbrush, his deodorant—all the things that still carried his man-scent—and she dropped them into a waste can.

Soon, she would take the clothes to churches in the area and would offer them as gifts for people needing clothes. Would do it in Boyd’s name, having a sense that Boyd would go away with the clothing, like in an act of exorcism.

A flash of lightning—quick, splendid in its white heat—burned across the darkness of the clouds covering the Valley of Light and thunder exploded near the house. She went to the window and looked out. On the windowpane before her, she saw water rivulets making the outline of a man with water legs and arms, a water hat covering a water head. She thought of a caricature of Don Quixote she had seen in a book. Skinny as a skeleton, riding a swayback horse, carrying a lance with a broken tip.

Or the rivulets could have been Tom Joad. Or Noah Locke.

But not her husband. Not Boyd.

A surge of relief flowed in her.

• • •

The rain had stopped and the clouds bringing it had thinned, leaving a fluorescence of light from moon and stars. At the lake shack, Noah sat in the dark of the screened-in porch and watched the dripping of water from the roof and from tree leaves that had the look of wet wax.

The day had been long—a stretched-out day, started early. His body ached from nothing more than the hours it had endured. Still, he was not sleepy. It had been the same in the war, he thought. Long days of long marches, of wondering if there were Germans hidden along the way, ready to do their killing. Sleep had never been easy after such days. Not for him. For Marvin Linquist, yes, but not for him. Marvin had boasted he could sleep on a bed made of thorns, under a blanket of chigger briars, if given the chance. Sleep, Marvin had said, was just a matter of letting your body go limp, like shutting off the motor of a Jeep.