"Raul--will Caterina want me?" The old man asked humbly, his voice normal. "It might help her." "Then?" "I'll arrange for you to be carried up later." At the stable, Salvador and others were stacking roof tiles knocked off by the fallen eucalyptus. Branches of the huge tree lashed at the men, and the air smelled of oil from the bruised leaves and bark. Someone inside the stable bawled an order; cattle shuffled; a hinge of wind opened and closed. Raul inspected the tree, recalling its shaggy beauty, and fought the gale as he climbed between branches. Someone began to chop at a branch that had gouged the roof. Salvador tapped Raul's arm. "I'll get men with a bucksaw," he said. "Have them saw the trunk close to the roots ... about here," said Raul, indicating a bruise on the tree. "Cut it there and then it can be yanked away from the stable wall." "I'll bring some oxen," said Salvador. "Put a chain to a whippletree and drag it off." "Some of the wall may crumble." "Have the grain moved to a dry place. That should be done right away. You can saw the tree a second time, nearer the top; that'll free two sections." It seemed impossible, measuring the stabbing roots, wet and naked, that the tree could have toppled. "I'm going back inside, to be with Caterina. She's not doing well." Salvador nodded sadly, the wind tearing his hair, his three hundred pounds impressive, soaked with rain. "May God help her," he said. Raul felt the kindness in Salvador's voice; he needed kindness and assurance. He was shaken by the storm, the quakes, and Caterina's condition. Gripping his hat brim, he entered the house through the kitchen. Inside, by the door, near the adobe oven, a boy of five or six sat at a low table, eating. He glanced shyly at Raul. Servants broke off talking. Raul pulled off his hat. A woman was cleaning _garbanzas_, another was grinding coffee, and others were washing clothes. They bowed. The smell of coffee surprised Raul; it seemed so unrelated to his troubled world. He patted the boy's head, and asked: "Will someone find me two men? I want Don Fernando carried upstairs." His hand on the child's chair, he thought of other peasant children, many of them beautiful: how many died every year of diarrhea or dysentery on the hacienda, on every hacienda? He asked himself whose boy this boy might be. Such a calm face. A little embarrassed by his own emotions, he returned to Caterina's room. He told himself that no one escaped death, that death came even to God's house.