He was like a man inside a kaleidoscope to her, fractured bits and pieces coming together and moving apart and then coming together again in a slightly different form.There he was again, hoisting an ax overhead, then crashing it down on a bucked-up piece of wood with a force so fluid, so skillful, the log seemed to split willingly, happily, obediently.Then he was on his back in the gravel driveway, his body half buried underneath the tractor her father kept for other men to use, his long, lanky legs sticking out as if they were another part of the machine itself.Later he was up on a ladder, reattaching something to the ridge of the barn, something that had been making a gentle flapping noise in the night. It was a sound that drove her mother crazy, but which Miranda knew she’d miss once it was gone because otherwise the nights were filled with a quiet so deep, so pervasive, she sometimes felt compelled to walk out into it, to see if there was substance or feeling in it, as if it were a dark lake in which she might be contented to drown.She paused by a window that framed his figure on the ladder.
