He wanted to be a thousand miles from Sandy when that day arrived. Sandy wouldn't be nineteen for seven more years.
With a start he came to, saw that snow was falling. The eastern glow was gone, diffused by the clouds, but day had arrived over the fields. He stepped to the corner of the barn and looked back toward the house, looked up at the patched chimney where a thin curl of smoke drifted upward. Hoffman's wife was cooking breakfast before damping the fires for the day. She needn't worry now, not with the snow. A fairly heavy snow would conceal the smoke a reasonable distance away.
He was hungry and turned his steps toward the house, casting one last glance behind him to see if the marauder's trail was disappearing. Sandy poked about the barn occasionally and he didn't want her to see that.
Come spring, he promised himself aloud, the first sign of spring, and he was going to have a look at the heroes hiding in the Washington cellar. To hell with this weather.
10
BLUE-SKY summer. Warm, mellow, peaceful and relaxing, summer in Ohio. He supposed he was in Ohio — someone had chopped down the highway markers and probably used them for firewood the previous winter. He made it a habit to avoid the cities. It didn't matter; if he wanted to think he was in Ohio, then he was there. He lay flat on his back in the tall uncut grass watching the shapeless clouds drift along. A wandering ant explored the skin of his hand but he was too content to brush it away. The sky, the rolling clouds and the smell of the grass.
He had really intended to be here sooner, had wanted to be nearer Washington by this time. Taking leave of Sandy and her parents had been a difficult thing; they had kept him long past his decided departure date, long past the day his eyes began searching the far horizon in eager yearning. He had finally got away from them only by promising that he would return in the early autumn.
Gary watched the slothful clouds in the blue and doubted very much that he would keep that promise.
He would like to go back in perhaps eight or ten years — if he were able — to see Sandy. That would be worth going back to; but to return sooner than that, as early as next winter, no. Next winter he intended to exercise common sense and head back to the Gulf coast, perhaps back to that fisherman's shack on the water where an invitation awaited him. And after that, as deep into Florida as he could go. There he would not freeze unless the weather tricked him, would not starve as long as fish swam in the sea.
Ohio was fine in the warm, lazy summer… so fine and comfortable that he felt no alarm when the distant sound of shooting broke out. He lay still, listening to it, knowing that a sizable party was involved by the number of the guns and knowing too that it was too far away to involve him.