Storming Heaven

Carrie brings Rondal back to her Aunt Jane’s house on the Homeplace. Rondal is angry and bitter most of the time, mean to Ben and Flora’s children, and refuses to go down to their home for visits. On Old Christmas Eve, the night the wise men arrived with their gifts for baby Jesus, Carrie tells Rondal about one time as a child when she spent the night in the barn and saw all the animals go down on their knees at midnight. Rondal suggests they sleep out in the barn. The next morning, Rondal says he saw the animals go down on their knees, but Carrie must have been asleep. That spring, the baby is born, and Rondal names him Dillon. Rondal suggests that he and Carrie get married, but Carrie says she wants the baby to have Albion’s last name, Freeman. Rondal loves taking care of the baby while Carrie is out working in the garden, and the baby often falls asleep on Rondal’s chest. One day, Carrie hears Rondal gasping in his sleep. By the time Carrie reaches him, Rondal is dead. The family buries Rondal in the family cemetery where “the headstones did not stand in tidy rows on that slope beside Scary mountain. They were placed companionably, as people will sit together and talk—Aunt Jane beside Uncle Alec, Albion facing them beneath a spreading oak, Florrie’s dead baby at his feet” (291).