- Then tell me of your long journey home, Ada said. Inman thought about it, but then he let himself imagine he had at last come out on the far side of trouble and had no wish to revisit it, so he told only how along the way he watched the nights of the moon and counted them out to twenty-eight and then started over, how he watched Orion climb higher up the slope of sky night by night, and how he had tried to walk with no hope and no fear but had failed miserably, for he had done both. But how on the best days of walking he achieved some success in matching his thoughts to the weather, dark or bright, so as to attune with what freak of God's mind sent cloud or shine. Then he added, I met a number of folks on the way. There was a goatwoman that fed me, and she claimed it's a sign of God's mercy that He won't let us remember the reddest details of pain. He knows the parts we can't bear and won't let our minds render them again. In time, from disuse, they pale away. At least such was her thinking. God lays the unbearable on you and then takes some back.