It was a tumbledown Victorian that needed paint. Pieces of its gingerbread trim had cracked and fallen apart over the years, and here and there bits of it were broken off or hanging by rusted nails. Someone had started to patch the place up, sanding and repairing the wooden fretwork, but the work was sketchily done, a long time ago by the look of it, and the rickety two-by-four scaffolding nailed to the west side of the house where some-one had once been scraping eaves had turned gray in the weather. The yard was brown and overgrown, with old yellowed newspapers, still in their rubber bands, lying discarded in the weeds. Howard shut the motor off and sat there. He was still full of pancakes and bacon, and he had managed that morning to wash and dry a load of clothes. All his errands were finished. He had arrived at his destination, ready to knock on Uncle Roy’s door and introduce himself—the long-lost nephew from down south. He felt relieved at last. He was among family again, and as run-down as the house was, there was something comfortable in the very notion that it was a shelter from the crazy hailstorm that had been pounding him since yesterday afternoon.
