The Homecoming of Samuel Lake. Jenny Wingfield

had lifted her hair up off the back of her neck and murmured, “Hmm? Oh. Things.”

      Anyway, the swing was out, so Swan passed it by and went on through the yard, past the haphazard jumble of vehicles parked between the house and the road. The regulars had been gathering in to Never Closes for over an hour now.

      Any other time, Swan would have crept around to the back of Never Closes and hid out, trying to get a peek inside. She and her brothers were strictly forbidden to do that, but they did it anyway, every chance they got. So far, they hadn’t seen anything worth looking at, and they’d have given the project up if it hadn’t been forbidden. But the fact that it was had to mean something, so they’d kept after it.

      Tonight, though, Swan didn’t feel much like spying. All she wanted was privacy. She reached the road and walked along the grassy shoulder. She could see perfectly well, even once she’d gotten away from the lights of the house and bar. The moon was almost, almost full. She’d never realized before that the moon could shed enough light to give the world any real brightness. She’d also never strayed far from her family in the dark. But it wasn’t dark. The night was luminous.

      Out there, walking along beside that easy-curving road, Swan decided she didn’t need to find a place to think. Who needed a place, when you could just keep moving, putting one foot in front of the other, enjoying going nowhere.

      By now, her father’s situation had pretty well sorted itself out inside her head. At first, when it had struck her that she and her folks didn’t have an income, or a house to live in, she’d felt guilty for wishing that her life was different. Maybe this was what happened when you wished for something you didn’t know enough about.

      The real gravity of the situation had escaped her, though. The Lake family changed homes every year or two anyway, so it wasn’t as though they were being jerked up by the roots. They didn’t have any roots. Besides, grown-ups worked out problems every day. That’s what grown-ups did. Plus, she figured, this had to be the Lord’s will. Hadn’t her daddy preached, time and again, about how God had a Plan, and how everything works together for those who love God? Her parents certainly loved God. Swan did, too, she was sure, even though she bent His rules with some degree of regularity, and prayed only When It Was Important. She’d never been one to wear God out with small talk.

      Anyway, if you looked at it right, there was a Bible guarantee of a favorable outcome to all this, so her conscience was off the hook.

      She sucked in a deep, glad gulp of honeysuckled air. The tall grass bent beneath her feet and straightened as she passed. She wasn’t ready to turn back just yet. This moment was too delicious. Ahead, and to the left, a narrow lane forked off the main road. She knew she shouldn’t take the lane, shouldn’t even be out here, but it couldn’t do any harm. Bad things happened on Dark and Stormy Nights, not on nights like tonight, when all of creation wore a soft satin sheen.

      Chapter 7

      The little lane wound and twisted and tapered down to almost nothing, and kept on going. Every bend promised some new discovery. And delivered. A slim young tree, silvered by moonlight. Dancing stars, mirrored in the rocky stream that tumbled alongside the rutted lane. Nothing was ordinary tonight. Even cow pastures and falling-down fences had an otherworldly look.

      And the silence! It was like the immense quiet of snowfall, right here in summer. This had to mean something. Something good. Only good could come from so much light where there would ordinarily be darkness.

      These were her thoughts as she rounded a final bend, and saw the house. It was smallish, built of faded wood and topped off by a tin roof. There were lights on inside, so the windows glowed golden against the silver of the night. An extremely neat yard wrapped around the house, and in that yard, there was a gleaming something. A vehicle. A pickup truck. As clear and brilliant as the night was, the light was no good for telling color. But Swan knew in her bones. It was red.

      She heard a dull, grunting noise, like a person makes when they’ve been socked in the stomach. It took a second for her to realize that she’d made the sound herself. She couldn’t seem to move. Surely, her heart had stopped.

      Only her mind was not immobilized. It was racing wildly, imagining the unimaginable. What if that little viper of a man was out here, somewhere, slithering around in the dark? What if he was watching her right now?

      She whirled and fled. Running, scrambling, away and away, back along the rutted lane. She could feel Ballenger, back there, behind her—and could sense him, up there, ahead of her. No direction was safe. The June breeze was his hot breath. The rustle of leaves was a sinister whisper. The snakeman, hissing her name.

      Swan thought of herself as a person who was prepared for anything. But she wasn’t prepared for this. And she wasn’t prepared for what happened next.

      The moon slid behind a thick bank of clouds, and the world went dark. Suddenly, Swan couldn’t see where she was going—so she stumbled. There was nothing to catch hold of, to break her fall. She threw her arms out, flailing every which way like twin windmills, but that didn’t stop her from falling, either.

      It seemed as though she fell for the longest time. Head over heels, and heels over head. When she stopped falling, she lay still, afraid to move. The reason she was afraid to move was that her hand was touching something soft and warm. Another hand.

      Her eyes were closed, and she kept them that way, afraid of what she might see if she opened them.

      “Well, are you dead?” a voice asked.

      It wasn’t Ballenger’s voice. Swan could have died then, from relief. She opened her eyes, just enough so that she could peer through the darkness. Then she sat bolt upright.

      The person talking to her … was the kid. Ballenger’s little boy. The one who had gotten slapped that day outside the store. He was sitting in the ditch, dressed in a ragged T-shirt and underdrawers. A skinny little fellow, his hair standing on end, his eyes studying her soberly. Swan made herself stop trembling and studied him back.

      “What are you doing out here?” she asked him, finally.

      “Waiting.”

      “Waiting for what?”

      “Till it’s okay to go back.”

      “Back where?”

      The kid pointed toward the house.

      Swan said, “Why isn’t it okay to go back right now?”

      “Because.”

      “You’re too little to be outside by yourself at night,” Swan said. “Why can’t you go back?”

      The kid just shrugged.

      Swan sighed. She figured she could guess the answer. Still, this kid really didn’t need to be out here alone, and she couldn’t stay here with him.

      She said, “Well, maybe you ought to go back now, because I’ve got to get on home.”

      He shook his head again, vigorously.

      Swan said, “Well, I can’t babysit you.”

      “Nobody ast you to.”

      She stood up. “Well, don’t let a bobcat see you. A bobcat could eat you in two bites.”

      He said, “I can kill bobcats.”

      “Yeah? With what?”

      He just stared at her. Swan was beginning to feel cross, because she knew she’d get into trouble if she didn’t turn up at Grandma Calla’s pretty soon. They’d have people out looking for her, and nothing makes grown-ups quite so mad as finding a child safe when they’d been scared silly that they might find that child dead.

      She said, “Well, look. I know you’re probably afraid of your daddy. I’m afraid of him, myself, and I only saw him once. So why don’t I have my daddy talk to your daddy? My daddy’s a preacher. He talks people into changing their ways all the time.”

      He