“I’ve never told you this,” she said. “But there’s something about taking the cart back instead of leaving it in the parking lot. I don’t know when this came to me; it was a few years ago. There’s a difference between leaving it where you empty it and taking it back to the front of the store. It’s significant.”

“Because somebody has to take them in.”

“Yes. And if you know that, and you do it for that one guy, you do something else. You join the world. With your body. And for those few moments, you join it with your soul. You move out of your isolation and become universal. But they were standing there watching me. Then I was afraid: a woman so far removed from nature that the checkout clerk had to tell me which way the wind was blowing. And she heard it from someone in the coffee room. Then the men left, and I pushed the cart back. I live by trying to be what I’m doing. I could do nearly everything I do without thinking about it. But I’d be different.”

His face was tender in the light of the fire; he said: “Yes.”