Part 1: Chapters 10, 11, and 12 Summary

Just after midnight, the lightning-rod salesman walks down the empty main street downtown and comes across the storefront that Will's father saw earlier, where the most beautiful woman in the world is frozen in a block of ice. The salesman is breathless at the sight, reminded of similar women he saw during his journeys through Europe. He remembers seeing women like this on the big movie screens when he was a child. He knows for certain that if this woman in the ice were to open her eyes, he would know already what color they were. The salesman steps back out into the street, and snow is now falling.

The night passes with the courthouse clock striking each hour. Both Will and Jim are awakened at three o'clock a.m. by the faint sound of a mournful calliope, followed...