The valley is sleepy in the summertime, but very beautiful, with lush fields of corn and oats rising against a backdrop of wooded hills that stretch for miles toward the horizon. Sometimes, especially in the late afternoons, a hawk or two will come circling overhead, looking for the evening meal or perhaps only for a place to light. Tucker Baines passed this way, and sometimes on a summer’s night they still tell his story in the valley. June is the warmest month, even warmer than July for some reason, maybe because on a July afternoon the heat is often broken by a blowing thunderstorm that comes in low over the hills. June, especially late June, is something else again; hot and humid without a chance of relief, when the big flies buzz around over the fields and roads, and even the hawks are listless in their circling. It was on such a day that Tucker Baines came into the valley. He was, first of all, a wanderer. Born in the swampy Everglades of Florida to parents who ran a roadside alligator farm with a marked indifference to his upbringing, Tuck had learned early to shift for himself.
