The Nonette's rows of willows appeared copper grey--cloud shadowed. The river had a few white swans at a curve and beyond the curve some men were rowing in a white rowboat. The water slid under a stone bridge and they biked across the bridge and followed a cobbled road.
On the bike road the wagon-car-truck ruts had tall grass between them; the surface was smooth; his handlebars looked down on her squatty ones as they peddled. He thought her dress amusingly sedate, hardly a dress for cycling, but then she hadn't planned to ride.
As they rode she felt more and more at ease: it was fun knocking at weeds and grass with the pedals: all of a sudden France became USA, became Wisconsin, not foreignness, not isolation. The rooster on a fence, the dog barking at someone's gate, crows flying: weren't they home?
"This way, darling. Our path ends at a farm."
Someone's windmill squawked rustily as their route narrowed and ended at a barbed wire fence: the windmill vanished behind trees, behind time.
Orville got off his bike alongside a stile and laid the bike on the road; Jeannette leaned her handlebars against the wire of the fence. Beyond them, a field of grass stretched to another fence line, a smooth, green field, anchored in space by a red mowing machine deserted for the season.
"I used to mow hay in this field," he said.
She climbed onto the stile and sat beside him, the weathered planks shaky, beetles crawling about under the bottom step ... Chuck had collected beetles as a kid ... Chuck would like it here, sitting in the sun.
"Now ... now where?" she made herself ask.
"We can't let a little thing like rain stop us."
"Wait ... not so fast. My skirt's tight."
A field of grass: after the tank corps any field was inviting. In Ithaca, fields had extended toward the lake, downslope, fields between residences and groves: _High above Cayuga's waters_ ... the Cornell song twanged for an instant.
Jeannette thought him handsome in his floppy trousers, tight striped jacket. How far off the hospital and its wounded! Orville, she said to herself. "Orv, Orv!" she said, as they walked through grass. Rushing forward she grabbed him, spun him around, and kissed him.
"Over here there's a shed, if it hasn't been torn down ... see, there it is. That's it."