Free Early Warning by Jane Smiley

for about four hours, taking Jesse for a checkup, then shopping, mailing some letters, visiting with Dave Crest at the store, and browsing at the Denby library. Witnesses? Joe didn’t say anything at first; then: “I guess my only witness is the cultivated field.”
    The deputy nodded, but Sheriff Dee remained serious and still.
    Rosanna said that, yes, Roland Frederick had appeared—when was that?—two years ago now, came and went, said he was working in Omaha, seemed like he’d been drinking steadily for eight years, hardly coherent, but, no, he hadn’t seemed threatening, exactly, and he’d gone away as quickly as he came. She had told Minnie about it. Joe’s head snapped toward Minnie; then, under the table, he took Lois’s hand.
    Minnie said, “I thought I mentioned it to you, Lois.” She cleared her throat.
    Once they had been “questioned,” Joe and Minnie sat there while Sheriff Dee and Deputy Carson—oh, Seth, his name was, Rodney’s kid—walked around the house, looking at this and that, going out on both of the porches, then coming in, staring at the floor, checking doorknobs. They went back down into the cellar, but this time only stayed for under five minutes. It was now after six. Sheriff Dee went to the phone and called the undertaker. Lois asked if they were free to go over to Rosanna’s for the rest of the evening, and that’s where Minnie, Lois, Jesse, Rosanna, and Annie did go, taking Poppy along. But Joe stayed, sitting quietly at the table, making sure that Nat sat next to his leg while the undertaker and his two assistants carried the shrouded corpse up the stairs, through the kitchen, and out the front door. Nat growled once or twice, but he knew better than to bark. Joe gazed at him, wondering what he knew—he would not have been in the house, but he might have seen something. Joe felt ashamed and somehow suspected, though he didn’t know why or of what. Maybe because he really was an interloper in the Frederick house? Maybe because at last the farm was his?
    —
    DR. KATZ SAID , “How about dreams?”
    Andy was lying on his couch, though it was more like a daybed. He was behind her. This was her thirty-second appointment. She had started in the summer, after reading about how H-bombs had potential as usable conventional weapons. She realized that she could not get the word “fallout” out of her mind—it was planted in there like a black pea that sometimes sprouted and sometimes did not—but Dr. Katz didn’t seem interested or impressed by her worries. He said he wanted something “deeper.” She was up to five days a week now, as of September 1, when they both returned from their August vacations. It had been fifteen dollars a session, but since she was seeing him every morning, like a regular job, he was doing it for $12.50. Frank didn’t mind. This year he stood to earn fifty thousand dollars at Grumman, and that did not include their investments in what they called their “Uncle Jens Fund,” named after that strange great-great-uncle of hers who had left all his money to be divided up among his descendants, but only after those who were living when he was still alive had themselves died—a grouchy, Nordic legacy that Andy hadn’t yet mentioned to Dr. Katz. She said, “Not much. Well, one sticks in my mind.”
    It was part of her job to offer the dream. She lay there for a minute or two, allowing the silence to build around her, then said, “Two mornings ago. I’d sort of forgot it, but it’s coming back to me.”
    She closed her eyes and continued. “There were hills, but no trees. I am on a hillside, and a river is running below me, fast and frothy. I am supposed to go down there. I’m a little afraid. I also know that I’m a very beautiful girl—say, fifteen. But I’m not me. I have silky blond hair to below my waist. I’m sitting on the hillside, twisting my hair between my hands.”
    Actually, the dream was not a dream, but a story she had read. Andy,