Majestic Read Free Page A

gotten themselves killed anyway.
    You'd think sheep had been going through thunderstorms for a long time. But this bunch, they got all worked up over a little sheet lightning, forget the thunder and wind and the hail.
    He heard the sheep faintly, far off now, moaning and bleating.
    Meanwhile the glowing object left the outskirts of Roswell and the Whites lost it in the darkness.
    Cats that had leaped into bookshelves looked out. Dogs that had run under houses scrambled back to their master's sides. Babies that had been screaming began to sniffle and coo. Children sighed in their beds, their half-formed nightmares subsiding.
    Lightning flared across the west, and the Ungars' radio crackled. ". .. tornado five miles south of Caprock ..."
    Then the static returned.
    "Oh, Lord," Bob said.
    "That's way away from here." Ellie reached toward him, then withdrew her hand.
    "A hundred miles isn't nothin,' not s'far as these storms are concerned."
    "We'll get through," she said.
    "I moved the sheep up that draw. They got a little shelter in there."
    "I worry about the water comin' down there."
    "Don't you worry now."
    Some dance music came out of the radio. Fox-trot music. "Where is your gingham dress?" "In the cedar chest." "Will you put it on for me?"
    She smiled the strong, accepting smile that he loved, and went into their bedroom. When she returned she was wearing the dress. She swayed to the music. He took his work-thin wife in his arms, and danced with her as the lightning flashes flickered.
    "Oh, Lordy," she said, "do you remember the night we decided to get married? The conga line?"
    How they had danced! "Old Joe really got that conga goin'." "Bobby, I think that was the happiest dance of my life." He closed his eyes and bent his head to her woman-smelling hair, and saw the black window float past.
    At that moment there was a crack of thunder and the rising roar of wind. The radio was drowned out. He turned it off; no use in wasting the battery.
    The wind came sweeping around the house, shaking the boards, screaming in the eaves, bringing with it the perfume of the range, sweet flowers, sage, dust. He imagined his animals out there in the storm. They'd be milling, nervous, ready to stampede all the way to the wire if lightning struck nearby.
    He wondered how it could help but strike them. Looking at it, he realized that he'd never seen another storm quite like it, not in all of his years on this New Mexico land. He doused the lamp. "Ellie, come look." They went out onto the porch together. The storm was a huge, glowing wall of clouds. It seemed to ride on a forest of lightning bolts. "I've never seen so much lightning," Ellie said.
    "If it comes over the house - "
    "Look at the way they strike."
    "Yeah. 'Lightning never strikes twice in the same place.' So much for that idea." He turned away. "God help the small rancher," he said bitterly.
    They went to their bedroom. He took off his clothes and sat on the bed rolling a last cigarette. They lay back together, sharing drags. After a while she put her hand on his chest.
    And then they slept.
    His father came to him, his face lit as if by the light of a lantern. Astonished, he stared. He was aware that this was a dream, but amazed at how real it was. There was Dad, his lean, hard features, his dark eyes, his grim-set mouth. "Dad," Bob said. "Dad!" His father didn't say anything, but Bob felt like some kind of a warning had been given. He woke up feeling very afraid. A lot of time had passed; he'd been asleep for hours.
    Ellie beside him was snoring.
    Long thoughts started whispering through his mind. He wondered why he lived like this. His poor ranch couldn't last. But then what the hell would happen to him? He worked this place. "I'm a sheepman." He could say those honorable and proud words.
    He noticed, through his dark reverie, that there was an awful lot of light in the room. He opened his eyes, thinking for an instant that he'd overslept and it was daylight.
    The room was full