The men did not all show up, but some decided to take their chances on this Tom Meller fellow. He’d acquitted himself well in their presence. He had been firm, but kind. He did not insult the intelligence or the manhood of any of the vagrants, but treated them with at least a modicum of respect. It wasn’t charity he was offering, but dignity, and it wasn’t free. Slowly they trickled in from the south wood, appearing in twos or threes and knocking gently on the kitchen door. Each time, Tom would have Samuel’s mother bring them a cold glass of water and some biscuits. He would sit down with them on the back porch and discuss all of the potential ways they could be needed around the farm. There was no discussion of payment and there was no formal agreement. They were free to go whenever they pleased, but as long as they were going to stay, they were going to work. The men were quiet, grateful for the biscuits, and deferential, offering little more than one word answers or nods.

There was one man who bucked that trend. Samuel had listened in from the stairs, and had even peeked around the corner one time to get a look at the man with the gravelly voice. He was dirty, but less so than the others, as if he’d made some attempts to tidy himself in spite of his situation. He sat up straight as a rod and kept his hands folded in front of him like he was praying. A corn cob was thrust in his shirt pocket, and he smelled of sweet tobacco smoke, even from Samuel’s distance.

“Why would you ask that?” Tom said. “Have I not offered you enough?”

“You’ve offered plenty. More than necessary. I meant you no offense, Mr. Meller. I was only recalling what you said about the barn roof. I’m a fair hand if you can spare the lumber.”

The man was offering to repair the barn roof so that it wouldn’t rain on himself or the other vagrants.

“I’ll see what I can do about some lumber and some roofing nail.”

“Eddard,” the man said. Taking Mr. Meller’s outstretched hand in a shake. “Eddard Morley.”

Around town there were whispers about what Tom Meller was doing out at his place, housing all those vagrants, offering those criminals a warm bed to sleep at night. Some folks said he was fixing to use them as some kind of personal security force around his property, despite the fact that the Mellers had never much cared about the occasional trespasser, so long as they kept to themselves. A few women were willing to offer him the benefit of the doubt and suggest that he was being a good christian.

“Well I think we ought to make sure that’s what he’s doing, don’t you sheriff?”

Ted Fribley was the town malcontent, a handyman by trade, though as Tom Meller said to Del on occasion, “he’s neither very much handy or very much of a man.”

“I’m not a man to slander another man’s good christian charity, but in the interest of the women and children, we should make sure that the situation out at the Meller place is under control.”

“It’s his own property,” Sheriff Meyer said. “Who am I to tell him what he can and can’t do with his old barn?”

With that, the sheriff left the hardware store by the front door, not taking any care to make sure it didn’t slam behind him and in the face of Ted Fribley. Friedrich Meyer liked Tom Meller. When Friedrich had moved to town, there had been all sorts of whispers about “the new kraut sheriff” sent to spy on them for the Germans. Tom had stuck up for him, suggesting the obvious: “The hell do the Germans care about Ohio? Tell you what I do know, I hear they know their way around a keg of beer. How’s that rumor hold up, Meyer?”

Tom had helped Sheriff Meyer set up a garden party on the Meller property and the sheriff had made sure a few kegs of German beer made it to the lawn, and all was forgiven, or at least forgotten for awhile. Meyer had never forgotten and could not bring himself to believe that Tom was doing anything unseemly. Still, he made a note to go and pay the Meller place a visit to see just what was going on out there.

Samuel watched the vagrant men from afar but with great interest. Most of Samuel’s duties were related to either his own self-sufficiency or the dairy side of the farm. His was a world in which he was intentionally cloistered from the potential danger of interaction with the men who lived in the old barn. He had watched from his milking stool, losing his concentration and nearly being kicked in the face by Martha the cow while Eddard Morley patched the roof on the old barn. “Damn near doing me a favor is he,” Samuel’s father would say later. Samuel watched as the man did his work, holding extra roofing nails between his teeth, another hammer looped in his work pants. Morley was shirtless and shining with sweat. His body was a deep tan color that did not match the earliness of the season. Coarse, silver hair reflected the afternoon sun off his chest. He worked with the kind of diligence that Tom Meller could appreciate, the kind of diligence he wished his son would show from time to time.

Morley was getting on in years, too old most would say, to be doing roofing work, but Samuel was struck by the beauty of the old man’s body. It was not a sexual urge that Samuel was feeling. He was too young to have felt that in any capacity just yet, but he felt a startling sense of reverence watching the old man work. He had the beauty of a gnarled oak tree in its last decade of many, wounded but determined to live the remainder of its time with dignity and allow some of its former strength and glory to shine through in its final moments. It did not occur to Samuel at such a young age how this view of Eddard might have been insulting, condescending even. He was enraptured by the man’s presence on the farm, but could not invent any way for their paths to cross. He was forced for some time to observe the figure from afar, perhaps adding to the mythical proportions in which Samuel held him in his mind. From the screen porch on the front of the farmhouse, Samuel saw the old man pulling weeds with the rest of the men, only he wasn’t pulling anything. While the rest of the men bent over and stretched out their hands to pluck weeds from the ground, the old man carried a scythe at his side, gently nicking the weeds at their root and leaving them lying dead atop the grass. After some time, another man would come by and notice the pile and collect them. All the while, Eddard Morley remained erect and walking with dignity that none of the other men could muster.

Once, from his bedroom window, he saw Eddard directing the other men in a game of baseball. He sat on a stump, pipe in the side of his mouth, and pointed with his arms, extending a long middle finger to point. Distance and windowpane prevented Samuel from hearing any words from the old man’s lips, but he saw the look of rapt attention on the other men’s faces as they stopped what they were doing to pay attention to Eddard Morley. Samuel watched the baseball game with enjoyment, cheering along in his room as if he was listening to the Cardinals on the radio. It was unclear who was on what team, with men switching back and forth at all times, but everyone was having a grand time. Once, Eddard Morley slapped his knees in uncontrolled mirth and fell backwards off the stump on which he sat, still laughing as another man ran to offer him a hand up from the ground. All of the men looked more complete during the game, as if while they were picking weeds or chopping wood, or lounging about the yard, they were only half men, managing miraculously to continue until the rest of their body was able to find them.

When Samuel told his mother and father about the baseball game, he was surprised at the violence of their response. They were not upset at the men for having their fun, but at Samuel’s words.

“It isn’t fit to talk like that,” his mother said. “They’re just men like any other and that’s the end of it.”

“Your mother’s right. You oughtn’t have spied on them that way. It’s inappropriate.”

There was something in his parents’ tone that confused Samuel. Their arguments didn’t make any sense, and it seemed that they knew it. They spoke with a greater intensity and anger because they knew they weren’t making any sense. If they were only men like anyone else, then why was it wrong to watch them play their game? It didn’t add up.

“You are not to associate with those men,” Tom Meller said firmly.

“But you talk to them just like Del or Friedrich. I’ve seen you. You don’t treat them any different.”

“I’m a man, Samuel. You’re just a boy. I can afford to treat them with respect. If there’s anything you should learn from these men, it’s this: always give the respect you can afford, and not an iota more. I took you out into the south wood with me for a reason. I wanted you to see how to act like a man. Right now I want you to act like a boy and mind.”

No matter how he thought on it, Samuel could not make any sense of his parents’ words. He couldn’t for the life of him understand what they were so worried about. Hadn’t they seen Eddard Morley too? If any man had dignity, it was him. He didn’t deserve to be among the men he was, patching barn roofs and living on another man’s land. He was better than that. He was better than all of them, no matter what Samuel’s parents thought about it.

The night after the afternoon baseball game was the night of the storm, the night the old barn nearly met its end, and the night that Samuel lost some of his innocence.