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lightning had flung him. His knees wobbled and bucked, but he drew them
up straight and mopped a big muddy hand across his big muddy face.
He came walking toward us, slow and dreamy-moving, and by now the
rain rushed down instead of fell down. It was like what my old folks used to
call raining tomcats and hoe handles. I bowed my head to it, and made to
pull Page toward Rafe s wigwam; but she wouldn t pull, she held where she
was, till Rafe came up with us. Then, all three, we went to-gether and got
into the tight, dark shelter of the wigwam-house, with the rain and wind
battering the outside of it.
Rafe and I sat on the big bed, and Page on a stool, looking small
there. She wrung the water out of her hair.
You all right? she inquired Rafe.
I looked at him. Between the drain-off and the wigwam, rain had
washed off that mud that gaumed all over him. He was wet and clean, with
his patch-pelt shirt hanging away from his big chest and shoulders in soggy
rags.
The lightning had singed off part of his beard. He lifted big fingers to
wipe off the wet fluffy ash, and I saw the stripe on his naked arm, on the
broad back of his hand, and I made out another stripe just like it on the
other. Lightning had slammed down both hands and arms, and clear down
his flanks and legs I saw the burnt lines on his fringed leggings. It was like
a double lash of God s whip.
Page got off the stool and came close to him. Just then he didn t look
so out-and-out much bigger than she was. She put a long gentle finger on
that lightning lash where it ran along his shoulder.
Does it hurt? she asked. You got some grease I could put on it?
He lifted his head, heavy, but didn t look at her. He looked at me. I
lied to you all, he said.
Lied to us? I asked him.
I did call for the rain. Called for the biggest rain I ever thought of.
Didn t pure down want to kill off the folks in the Notch, but to my reck-oning,
if I made it rain, and saved Page up here
At last he looked at her, with a shamed face.
The others would be gone and forgotten. There d be Page and me.
His dark eyes grabbed her green ones. But I didn t rightly know how she
disgusts the sight of me. His head dropped again. I feel the nearest to
nothing I ever did.
You opened the drain-off and saved the Notch from your rain, put in
Page, her voice so gentle you d never think it. Called down the lightning to
help you.
Called down the lightning to kill me, said Rafe. I never reckoned it
wouldn t. I wanted to die. I want to die now.
Live, she bade him.
He got up at that, standing tall over her.
Don t worry when folks look on you, she said, her voice still ever so
gentle. They re just wondered at you, Rafe. Folks were wondered that
same way at Saint Christopher, the giant who carried Lord Jesus across the
river.
I was too proud, he mumbled in his big bull throat. Proud of my
Genesis giant blood, of being one of the sons of God
Shoo, Rafe, and her voice was gentler still, the least man in size
you d call for, when he speaks to God, he says, Our Father.
Rafe turned from her.
You said I could look on you if I wanted, said Page Jarrett. And I
want.
Back he turned, and bent down, and she rose on her toe tips so their
faces came together.
The rain stopped, the way you d think that stopped it. But they never
seemed to know it, and I picked up my guitar and went out toward the lip of
the cliff.
The falls were going strong, but the drain-off handled enough water
so there d be no washout to drown the folks below. I reckoned the rocks
would be the outdoingist slippery rocks ever climbed down by mortal man,
and it would take me a long time. Long enough, maybe so, for me to think
out the right way to tell Mr. Lane Jarrett he was just before hav-ing himself a
son-in-law of the Genesis giant blood, and pretty soon after while,
grandchildren of the same strain.
The sun came stabbing through the clouds and flung them away in
chunks to right and left, across the bright blue sky.
* * * *
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