A whisper of something other than winter finds its way into Lemuel’s ear: a breeze grazing ground that is no longer frozen, water gushing through the throat of a creek that is no longer choked with ice, the knell of the carillon reverberating through air that no longer stings the nostrils. Confirming the beginning of the end of winter, Lemuel discovers the single hand on Rain’s Swiss watch that tells the phase of the moon and the season leaning against the “S” of “Spring.”
In a wistful fiction, he sees himself leaning against the “R” of “Randomness.”
Something of a celebrity now, Lemuel holds out in the apartment over the Rebbe’s for three full weeks after the trespassing trial before packing his enormous cardboard valise, his Red Army knapsack
