"First the blade . 



IN APRIL, under the spring rains, the passive cornfields lie 

 on the countryside in sodden brown patches. Ribbons of 

 darker brown roads, rutted by the frost and by wagon wheels 

 bind them to the scattered farmhouses and barns. The sky 

 drops down until it seems to smother the earth. All the bright, 

 song-filled space, the home of the bee, the meadow lark and 

 the hawk, is filled with drifting mist. 



At this season the country is lonelier than at any other time 

 of the year. 



The towns feel this. They draw away from the farmlands 

 and huddle about the white-spired churches. The houses press 

 shoulder to shoulder, turning their backs on the pitiful 

 stretches of naked, wet earth, as men turn their eyes from 

 sight of a drowned man. 



But late in April a day comes when the low-hanging mists 

 lift and draw together into a black ball. There is a roll of 

 thunder, followed by a vicious downpour of rain. It rains 

 harder then than on any day since the break-up of winter. 

 Dusk draws in, night falls; the downpour goes on. The long 

 fingers of the rain beat on the tin and shingled roofs. They 

 flatten the cornlands to a muddy brown sea. 



Sometime between midnight and dawn the rain stops, and 

 it is very still. The stillness wakes the men who have been 

 waiting for this to happen. They stumble out of bed and pull 

 aside the curtains and peer out at the flooded world. In the 

 east a pale sun is struggling through the clouds. It strikes across 

 the slimy fields. A crow, hunched on the ridge-pole of a barn, 

 flies down the shaft of light and pecks at a lump of wet earth. 



