He had thought he knew what darkness was. He had ridden fence on moonless nights and found the water tank by sound. This was different. This was the inside of a closed building in a blizzard with no power for twenty miles in any direction, no moon, no yard light, no window; the darkness of the inside of the earth. He held his hand in front of his face and could not see it. He could not tell, except by the wind on his neck, which way was in and which was out.
He felt behind him along the wall for the rifle and found it and picked it up.
The barn was full of sound. Inside, the roar of the wind became a deep groaning that came from everywhere at once, as if the building were a living thing in pain. Tin booming. Snow hissing down from overhead in long dry sifts, like sand through fingers. The heifers milling, hooves knocking against boards, a frightened snorting. And from far down the alley on the east side the bawling, that terrible cracked bawling, and under it, closer, just at the edge of what he could hear, a man breathing hard.
He smelled kerosene. Kerosene, and fresh-split pine, sharp as turpentine, the smell of wood that has just been broken open. And blood. And birth.
He put the rifle up. He did not aim it at anything. There was nothing to aim at. He held it across his chest with his thumb on the hammer and he said into the dark, in a voice that came out lower and rougher than he meant, "Who's in here."
The breathing stopped.
"Arne." The voice came from down the alley, from the east side, from the dark. "Arne, don't come any farther. Stay right there by the door."
He knew the voice. He had known it all his life.
"Albin." His thumb was on the hammer. "What are you doing in my barn."