Chapter 7: Golf Ball Hail

By seven o'clock the sky over the west pasture had turned the color of a bruise gone green.

I know that color.

I'd stood in a hundred fields under it with a clipboard, after.

This was my first time standing under it before.

"Eight pairs in the lot," Colby said, coming across the yard at a jog. "The horse is haltered."

"The other fifty-two cows?"

"They'll go under the cottonwoods on the creek. They know how."

"And the combine?"

"In the Quonset, next to the grain truck."

"Your combine."

"I keep forgetting," I said.

"I know you do. It's nice."

We drove the pairs into the hay barn with a bucket of feed and a lot of shouting, and the calves went in complaining.

The old gelding walked in last, swinging his head at the dark.

Colby shut the big door and dropped the bar.

The first stone hit the tin roof at 8:41.

It sounded like somebody dropped a wrench on a drum.

Then there were ten, then a hundred, and then it wasn't separate sounds anymore.

It was one steady roar, so loud I felt it in my teeth.

The calves went quiet.

The horse stamped.

The lights flickered and died, and Colby clicked on a flashlight and set it upright on a bale, so the ceiling glowed.

I sat on a hay bale and put my hands over my ears, which did nothing.

I was counting.

I couldn't help it.