“That’s the one thing about Ludlow I don’t like anymore. That frigging road. No peace from it. They go all day and all night. Wake Norma up sometimes. Hell, wake me up sometimes, and I sleep like a goddam log.”

Louis, who thought this strange Maine landscape almost eerily quiet after the constant roar of Chicago, only nodded his head.

“One day soon the Arabs will pull the plug, and they’ll be able to grow African violets right down the yellow line,” Crandall said.

“You might be right.” Louis tilted his can back and was surprised to find it empty.

Crandall laughed. “You just grab yourself one to grow on, Doc.”

Louis hesitated and then said, “All right, but just one more. I have to be getting back.”

“Sure you do. Ain’t moving a bitch?”

“It is,” Louis agreed, and then for a time they were silent. The silence was a comfortable one, as if they had known each other for a long time. This was a feeling about which Louis had read in books, but which he had never experienced until.

now. He felt ashamed of his casual thoughts about free medical advice earlier.

On the road a semi roared by, its running lights twinkling like earthstars.

“That’s one mean road, all right,” Crandall repeated thoughtfully, almost vaguely, and then turned to Louis. There was a peculiar little smile on his seamed mouth. He poked a Chesterfield into one corner of the smile and popped a match with his thumbnail. “You remember the path there that your little girl commented on?”

For a moment Louis didn’t; Ellie had commented on a whole catalogue of things before finally collapsing for the night. Then he did remember. That wide mown patch winding up through the copse of trees and over the hill.

“Yes, I do. You promised to tell her about it sometime.”

“I did, and I will,” Crandall said.