She saw a silver cylinder that looked ever so much like pictures of guided missiles she had seen in the newspapers except that this one was bigger than any of them. Its nose was dug she could not tell how far into the earth and some of the metal on the sides was battered and bent and the tail was she guessed about a hundred and fifty feet in the air. It was about twenty-five feet across. There were clusters of people about and she recognized many of them she hadn't seen for a long time and she was glad she had come because it gave her a rare chance to visit; Mac seldom cared for just visiting. She talked to the Blaines, the Purveses, to the Gordon children whose parents had let them remain at the wreck site even after they had gone home for chores, to the Barfords and Hocholters and many others. They asked about Mac and she offered her usual excuses for him. While she was there she saw an army car driven up. She watched while some men got out and went through the roped-off area and pounded and scraped on the cylinder and then stood off looking at the tail of it, scratching their heads. * * * * * When she went home she was surprised to see how far the sun had moved across the sky and hoped Mac wouldn't be upset by her prolonged absence. She was gratified to see that he wasn't in the house. She petted Dobie for a while before she went in to stir up the stove and prepare supper. During the meal Alice tried to tell her husband something of what she had seen at the wreck site but if he paid any attention to her he didn't reveal it. He had propped up a farm equipment catalogue against the sugar bowl and studied the pages without saying a word. She resigned herself to eating in silence with this great hulk of a man before her and reflected that this night was no different from most of the others. She wondered what it was that made him the way he was, so intent on his farm to the exclusion of everything else, including humanity. It was a fetish, an obsession that didn't pay off because she couldn't see that they were better off than the Swearingens or the Abbeys or any of the others in the neighborhood. When he was through he simply got up, put on his overcoat and went outside. In a few minutes she could hear the car start and knew it would be another lonely evening. Mac would be home when he felt like it, reeking of liquor but handling it well. She did not begrudge him these absences because the man obviously needed something to take his mind off his work. But she wished she had some comparable escape. She had got out her writing board, had settled herself comfortably with pen in hand in Mac's big chair and had even put the date on the letter to her mother who lived in Canada when she heard Dobie's excited bark.