Finally he slept, scarred big-knuckled hands resting on his knees, head leaning against a length of taut chain. From time to time his eyelids quivered with the progression of bits of dreams, dreams of when he was young, fiery dreams of iron furnaces and trains, dreams of walls and bars and time built as carefully as a mason might erect a structure in stone.

He awoke late in the afternoon, a dull drizzle leaden on the roof and the air smelling fresher and cooler. He took out a pouch of roughcut tobacco and began to pack his pipe. He lit it with a kitchen match and sat bemusedly smoking and letting the balance of the afternoon wear itself away. He had the air of someone used to waiting.

All there was to show he had ever farmed was a motley collection of old equipment about the yard, castoff discs and haymowers and archaic-looking scratchers like something abandoned by early man, all slowly dissolving into rust. It had been years but still he felt some affinity for the earth and the clocking of its seasons. There was something reassuring about the rain, what grass there was in his yard had been dying in circular patches and even the trees had begun to look stunned and wilted. He’d secretly suspected some turning away of the gods, unconcern or incompetence in high places.

Between four and five o’clock the Winer by came by and Oliver was still out to watch him pass. In actual fact he had been awaiting him. Time sometimes weighed heavily on his hands and there were weeks that passed when the only words he spoke were to young Nathan Winer. He watched the boy approach with obvious affection. He had had a son once himself and though the boy, had he lived, would be in middle age, he always thought of him as being Winer’s age.

When Winer was parallel with the house Oliver hailed him: “Boy, you better get in out of this mess.”

Winer was sodden, his outsize shirt and pants flopping and his hair plastered thinly to his skull. He obediently turned from the road and crossed the yard to the porch’s edge. In places the mud was shoemouth deep and sucked at his feet.

“Get in here out of that.”

“It’s too late now,” Winer said. “I don’t see how I can get any wetter.” But he stepped onto the porch and leaned against a support. He pushed his hair back out of his face and wiped his eyes on a dripping sleeve. There was a curiously temporary look about him as if he must soon be off. “It’s fell a flood, ain’t it?”

“Like a cow on a flat rock,” Oliver agreed. “You been workin out in this today?”

“No, we’ve been inside cleaning out the poultry house. Just shoveling it up and loading trailers.”

“Looks like old man Weiss could’ve run you home.”

“I guess he just didn’t think about it.”

“He’d’ve thought of it if he had to walk two miles through it,” the old man said. “You want somethin dry to put on?”

“It’d just get wet again. Anyway, it don’t bother me. I don’t reckon I’ll melt, I never have.”

“Still, it wouldn’t’ve hurt him. I had a car I’d take ye myself but I never owned one.”

“I don’t mind walking.”

“Well, I don’t reckon it hurts a man, I’ve done it all my life. Or so far anyway. You want me to heat up the coffee?”

“I got to get on. It’s getting dark early tonight. Cooled off some too.”

“Maybe a man can sleep then,” Oliver said. “Here lately, it’s been so hot I ain’t been able to get to sleep till two or three o’clock in the mornin.”

The boy rose. “Go with me.”

“I guess I better set around here.” Oliver seemed to be scrutinizing the boy’s feet.