May. But the snow had only just melted, new grass begun, rising, and the trees were not yet risking leaves. Dick Felt stood on the porch of the rambling summer hotel with his coat buttoned tightly to his neck. He watched deer grazing in the distant hollows of the golf course. When spring came, this world would be unceremoniously tumbled into summer. Leaves would burst out overnight, birds would flock in as if they had hatched with the black flies, and the heavy thunderstorms of June would flood streams not yet relieved of the winter run-off. He had seen it in other years, had learned not to come before mid-April, no matter how much earlier spring arrived in the Carolinas or how much he had to do in overseeing the opening of the place. He had been manager for 30 years, and this would be the last. Then he would live with the milder shifts of seasons in South Carolina, where he had bought a small home near Charleston with most of his savings. If he was permitted to live much into retirement.