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By early evening all the sky to the north had darkened 
and the spare terrain they trod had turned a neuter gray 
as far as eye could see. They grouped in the road at the 
top of a rise and looked back. The storm front towered 
above them and the wind was cool on their sweating faces. 
They slumped bleary-eyed in their saddles and looked at 
one another. Shrouded in the black thunderheads the distant 
lightning glowed mutely like welding seen through foundry 
smoke. As if repairs were under way at some flawed place 
in the iron dark of the world.
   It's fixin to come a goodn, said Rawlins.
   I caint be out in this, said Blevins.
   Rawlins laughed and shook his head. Listen at this, 
he said.
   Where do you think you're goin to go? said John Grady.
   I don't know. But I got to get somewheres.
   Why cant you be out in it?
   On account of the lightnin.
   Lightnin?
   Yeah.
   Damn if you dont look about halfway sober all of a 
sudden, said Rawlins.
   You afraid of lightnin? said John Grady.
   I'll be struck sure as the world.
   Rawlins nodded at the canteen hung by its strap from 
the pommel of John Grady's saddle. Dont give him no more 
of that shit. He's comin down with the DT's.
   It runs in the family, said Blevins. My grandaddy 
was killed in a minebucket in West Virginia it run down 
in the hole a hunnerd and eighty feet to get him it couldnt 
even wait for him to get to the top. They had to wet down 
the bucket to cool it fore they could get him out of it, 
him and two other men. It fried em like bacon. My daddy's 
older brother was blowed out of a derrick in the Batson 
Field in the year nineteen and four, cable rig with a wood 
derrick but the lightnin got him anyways and him not 
nineteen year old. Great uncle on my mother's side -- 
mother's side, I said -- got killed on a horse and it never 
singed a hair on that horse and it killed him graveyard 
dead they had to cut his belt off him where it welded the 
buckle shut and I got a cousin aint but four years oldern 
me was struck down in his own yard comin from the barn and 
it paralyzed him all down one side and melted the fillins 
in his teeth and soldered his jaw shut.
   I told you, said Rawlins. He's gone completely dipshit.
   They didn't know what was wrong with him. He'd just 
twitch and mumble and point at his mouth like.
   That's a out and out lie or I never heard one, said 
Rawlins.
   Blevins didnt hear. Beads of sweat stood on his forehead.
Another cousin on my daddy's side it got him it set his 
hair on fire. The change in his pocket burned through and 
fell out on the ground and set the grass alight. I done been
struck twice how come me to be deaf in this one ear. I'm 
double bred for death by fire. You got to get away from 
anything metal at all. You dont know what'll get you. Brads 
in your overalls. Nails in your boots.
   Well what do you intend to do?
   He looked wildly to the north. Try and outride it, he 
said. Only chance I got.