She watched him from the window over the sink. The wind whipped his ponytail even as the rain tried to flatten it against his threadbare Levi jacket. Even wet, his hair was a bright gold rope beating on his back where it fell from beneath the dilapidated Cubs hat. She’d never seen the wind blow so hard and watching him stand, seemingly unconcerned, in such a maelstrom scared her in a way she didn’t understand.

His face was held in a frown of concentration as he studied the pile of scrap wood that had been accumulating from the odd jobs that he’d taken up and down this stretch of Oregon’s North Coast. She didn’t notice the long sigh that escaped her as he suddenly stooped and picked up a three-foot length of wood, tapered slightly from one end to the other. Even though they were each painfully aware of where the other was, he didn’t so much as glance at the window as he disappeared from her line of sight, toward the work shed out back by the river.

Turning from the window, she reached for the dish towel and wiped her eyes. She felt a moment’s panic when she considered that tomorrow was, indeed, Thanksgiving Day. She settled into her rocker by the woodstove and tried not to look at the phone.

Around back, he paused for a moment to watch the river. The wind, blasting out of the south, was pushing the surface of the water back upstream, like a flood tide. But he knew the tide was on its way out. This meant that the wind was blowing a pretty steady sixty, with gusts much higher than that. What a stupid time for an adventure. He cussed himself for his inability, sometimes, to find any middle ground at all.

The inside of the shed was calm. The rain beating on the roof was a friendly sound, but he knew that once the big front passed and the wind died some, the rain sound in here would be deafening. As it was, the wind was almost that way. He shuddered at the thought of what he was going to try, dicey at best even on a good day. Maybe this weather would be an ally instead. He snorted at the thought.

Clamping the piece of wood he’d chosen in the rust-pitted, but well-oiled vice, he rummaged for the eight-inch gutter spikes he knew he had. When he had them in hand, he picked up his framing hammer and commenced to work, grateful for something to do. When he was finished, he had what resembled a medieval mace, four of the spikes hammered at odd and forbidding angles through the thicker end of the wood.