He was going down the line staying them when a light flashed from the rear barn doors, brilliant and blue. For a moment the birches in the south field stood icily illuminated, their shadows stretching behind them across the surf of hay. Then Edgar felt a pressure against his eardrums that slowly resolved itself into a sound, as if the sky above had been gripped at the corners and shaken out.

Trudy

SHE LAY WAITING AND LISTENING FOR THE SOUND OF EDGAR’S FOOTSTEPS on the porch. She didn’t understand what he might be looking for in the barn and she didn’t care. She was willing to humor him in any way required as long as he came to the house. It had been dark for a long time and he must be nearly done. She thought about how gaunt he’d looked. She thought about the expression on his face when she’d brought up Almondine.

The dogs began barking. Then, among the barks, a man’s voice, moaning or crying. She sat bolt upright in bed.

“What’s that?” she said. “Who’s that?”

Trudy thought Claude was sleeping, but at the sound of the dogs he’d jerked as if stung, and now he was sitting up, too. He looked wide awake. He had a puzzled expression on his face, though it seemed somehow arranged that way, and beneath the puzzlement was a look of alarm.

“Don’t get up,” he said. “I’ll check.” He was already pulling on his clothes. The man’s voice rang out again. It was coming from the backyard. Trudy couldn’t quite make out the words, but there was an unmistakable note of fear and pain in them.

“That sounds like Glen,” she said.

“Oh Jesus. Howling drunk, I bet. He’s been hitting the sauce lately. I ran into him last week, three sheets to the wind before sunset. I told him to come over if he ever needed to talk. I didn’t think it would be in the middle of the night, though.”

Trudy dressed hurriedly and ran to the back porch. Claude stood in the doorway, looking into the yard. The truck was parked where he’d left it that afternoon, facing the hitch end of the tractor. The dogs were flagging up and down their runs, barking and looking toward the south field. At first Trudy didn’t see anything unusual there. Then the image registered: it was Glen. He was kneeling in front of the tractor with his forehead pressed against the close-set front tires, as if in supplication.

Claude seemed rooted to the porch. She pushed past him and ran across the lawn. Glen was sobbing. His hair and face and shoulders were powdered white. Behind him, the shadow of the barn was divided by a flickering light, and in it stood Edgar. The moment their gazes met, he turned and walked into the dark, staggering as he went. Trudy pulled up short, feeling as if she were splitting in two; one half of her cried, Go to Edgar! and the other half wanted only to distract Claude, close behind her, from the sight of him. The idea that Edgar might run away again was paramount in her mind. At first she didn’t even connect Glen’s presence with Edgar’s. She only wanted to turn everyone around, get them facing the house.

“Glen,” she said. “What’s going on?”

“Trudy. Please. Get water,” Glen said. “I need to wash out my eyes.” His voice was quaking. He alternately clutched the front of the tractor and held his hands over his face, as if, by tremendous will, not touching his eyes. He sucked his breath through his teeth. Tear tracks cut through the white powder on his cheeks. By then Claude was there and he knelt beside Glen.

“All right, Hoss,” he said. “We’re cutting you off for the night.” He worked his shoulder under Glen’s thick arm and began to guide him to his feet.

“No,” Trudy said. “Wait.”

Claude looked at her, his face carefully composed into a mask of surprise. She ran her fingertip across Glen’s cheek and brought it to her mouth. There was no mistaking the awful, chalky taste of quicklime and the burning sensation the moment it got wet. She looked into Glen’s flour-white face.

“What were you doing here?”

“Ask him after we’ve got him in the house,” Claude said. “That’s quicklime.”

“I know what it is,” she said. “First he’s going to explain what he was doing here.”

These last words came out as a screech.

“I just wanted to ask him a question,” Glen said. “Tell her, Claude! It was just to ask him a question.”

She turned to Claude. He shook his head and shrugged as if to say it was the ranting of a drunk.

“Liar,” she said.

Then, before she understood quite what she was doing, she’d twined her fingers into the curls atop Glen’s head and yanked his face up. Her other palm caught him squarely on the flat of his cheek. Crack of skin against skin. Glen swayed and nearly collapsed, but instead he began to whimper and clutch at his eyes.

“You’ll wait,” she said, “until I know my son is safe.”

She untangled her fingers from Glen’s hair and stood. The dogs in the front runs pressed against their pen doors, barking and whining and straining to see what was happening. From behind the kennel, Trudy heard a rattling and banging. Pen doors being opened. She had taken only a few steps toward the sound when the first azure bubble of gas bellied out of the back doors. It crawled into the air, shifting from blue to yellow as it rose. It lit the field, then disappeared, bottom to top, halfway to the eaves. There was the low huff of vaporous ignition, the sound of a match tossed into a barbeque soaked with lighter fluid. Then a second belch of flame shot out of the doorway, more orange than the first, eating itself almost before it had a chance to rise. In the still night air, a thread of smoke began to seep from the top of the doorway. It tracked upward along the red siding and pooled under the eaves. With sickening rapidity, it broadened into a gray ribbon that spanned the doorway.

Trudy stopped, flatfooted, her thoughts momentarily logjammed. She jerked about in a circle, unable to decide in which direction to move first. A vast, soft explosion had erupted in the barn. Why? They didn’t store flammables in there. Glen had been in there. He was covered with quicklime. Had Glen meant to burn down the barn? Had he doused the inside with gasoline? Why? Claude had Glen on his feet. They were walking toward the house, Glen’s massive arm draped over Claude’s shoulders. Had Claude not heard the sound? He was speaking urgently to Glen, but Trudy couldn’t make out what he was saying. Then Glen stumbled and drove them both to the ground.

Not until Opal rounded the back corner of the barn and bolted past her did Trudy know for certain that Edgar had to be all right: he was releasing the dogs from their pens. She ran along the front pens, unlatching the doors and throwing them open, clapping and shouting, “Out! Come on! Out!” By the time she finished, two dozen dogs were loose; another twelve or fourteen were rounding the barn from the back. Packs formed and reformed and flowed into one another and split apart as they dashed behind the barn and across the yard and circled the house and garden. Claude had gotten Glen to his feet again, and the two men waded through the dogs that surrounded them.

“Get!” Claude shouted at the dogs, and “Come on, come on” to Glen.

“Call the fire department,” Trudy shouted. “He’s set the barn on fire!”

Claude stared back at her for a moment. Then he nodded and turned. With Glen’s arm draped across his shoulders, they hobbled the rest of the way to the porch steps and he there guided the man down and ran past him into the house.

Two of the dogs began to snarl at each other. Trudy ran to the nearest and lifted it by its tail and wheeled it backward, shouting, “Go! Leave! Get!” to the other. She dropped the dog’s tail and stepped quickly forward and shook it by the ruff. When she looked up, a pair of dogs were running through the orchard, close to the road. “You two,” she called. “Come!” The dogs wheeled and began heading toward her but instead joined one of the packs circulating in the yard. She began methodically recalling and downing dogs, one by one, looking over her shoulder and waiting for Edgar to appear, and every time she looked again, more smoke streamed from the barn.