He knew it was her before he picked it up. He didn't know how.
"Dale," said Nora. "I'm sorry to call. I didn't know who else."
Her voice was steady, but it was the steady he'd heard in the shop the night she told him about the VA, the careful flat nurse's voice, and behind it he could hear the wind hitting the parsonage the same as it was hitting his house.
"What's wrong?"
"Hilma Rautio," she said. "Eino's mother. She's ninety-one, she lives alone out past Wetmore on the old Doty road, on the farm. She won't move to town. I've been taking her communion every Thursday since September." A short breath. "The girl who looks in on her just called me. Hilma's had another stroke. The doctor came out this afternoon, before the roads went, and he says it's hours. Maybe not that. And she's asking for me."
"Where's Eino?"
"Green Bay. His wife had surgery Tuesday. He's trying to get back, but they've closed 41 at Escanaba." She paused. "Dale, she's asking for the pastor. She's ninety-one years old and she's dying in that farmhouse with nobody but a seventeen-year-old girl and a dog, and she's asking for her pastor."
"You can't drive out there in this. It's eleven miles. It's a whiteout. They'll have the county plows pulled off by now."
"I know."
"Nora, the Doty road isn't even paved past the creek. You go in the ditch out there, nobody's going to find you till the thaw. Wait for me. Give me twenty minutes. I'll take you in the wrecker."
"I can't wait twenty minutes. She might not have twenty minutes." A silence on the line, and in it the wind. "I'm not calling to ask you to come. I'm calling because—" Her voice changed. It came apart a little, and then she got hold of it again. "Because you said a person ought to tell somebody where she's going, out here. You said that the first week. So I'm telling somebody. I'm telling you. Hilma Rautio's, the old Doty road, past the second creek, the yellow farmhouse with the red barn. I'm leaving right now. That's all."
"Nora—"
"I've got the spare belt," she said. "I've got the antifreeze, and the coffee can with the candle. I've got the blanket. I haven't eaten the candy bar." He heard her almost laugh. "I listened. I listened to everything you told me. I'm going to be all right."