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main street of Arrow Junction.
    But of course Maynard did change his ways after he’d gone off to agricultural school at the University.
    He’d come back loudly proclaiming his new dedication to becoming a worker for the Lord. Reverend Andrews had never heard a more enthusiastic vocal pledge to reform than Maynard Styles had made.
    And the truth was that Reverend Andrews had never been sure that the switch from farming to preaching had been done entirely for spiritual reasons.
    Reverend Andrews’s career had produced one long siege of austere existence as he and Lottie moved from one tiny community to another, finally winding up back in Arrow Junction. But a minister’s life could produce something else, as Maynard Styles had proved.
    Maynard Styles had been able to settle comfortably, if not grandly, in Babcock. He had his three-times-a-week broadcast over KWTC, which brought his voice to so many that it would be no time at all before he went on to Omaha or even Chicago. He had his large house with its fine study and fireplace. He had his good gabardine suits, his Stetson hats, and that new De Soto. Reverend Andrews was not at all sure that Maynard Styles could have done so well materially at farming as he had done at ministering. Certainly there would not have been so much ego satisfaction in plowing the land.
    Reverend Andrews tried to shake free from that kind of thinking. Judgments, as he’d told Lottie, should be left up to the Lord. And if sometimes distributions seemed unequal, well, the Lord often saw to balances in His own way.
    “Storm seems to be getting worse,” Lottie said. “It’s a good thing they’ve been through here with the snow plow. I wonder if they’ve been through between Graintown and Arrow Junction?”
    “Let’s hope so.”
    “Are you hungry, dear?”
    “I am a little, yes.”
    Lottie lifted from the back seat one of several cardboard boxes left over from the conference. It was filled with cold fried chicken.
    “I think maybe I’ll just keep driving through tonight, dear.”
    Reverend Andrews settled himself more firmly behind the wheel. In truth he had to keep driving because he didn’t have enough money to stop at a motel for the night. But Reverend Andrews nonetheless sent up his prayers of gratitude. The windshield wipers were working fine. The heater was giving out good heat. The time spent driving might very well solve his problem of what to say on Sunday. Reverend Andrews was suddenly more content.
    They had plenty to eat, after all. There was a gigantic quantity of fried chicken in the back seat. Despite the fact that Reverend and Lottie Andrews had consumed enough fried chicken over the past twenty-three years never to want to hear a chicken cackle, you couldn’t deny that it was always good chicken. The Good Lord was just, Reverend Andrews reminded himself.
    “Here, dear,” said Lottie. “You can have the wishbone this time.”

 
chapter six
     
    Earlier that day, Dr. Hugh Stewart had watched Ann Burley open her eyes in Bob Saywell’s store and known the feeling about her he’d been trying so hard to avoid could no longer be avoided.
    That had been at late morning. He’d driven her home. He’d taken her into her house. He’d been with her alone.
    Now, as the wind increased and darkness moved in late that afternoon, Hugh Stewart paced his small office on the second floor of a building facing the main street of Arrow Junction.
    A quiet man, Arrow Junction had labeled Hugh Stewart. They had even developed a form of distrust for it, neatly prodded along by Bob Saywell. But the quiet was but an outward control for Hugh Stewart to cover the inner fires.
    Hugh Stewart walked across the office and stared at the turbulence outside. This storm—it was like the storm that had begun in him early and continued to reappear, seasonally, with the same inclemency that storms built and raged over these Midwest fields.
    Hugh Stewart stood silently, a tall man who did not look tall