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It would get dark and then you'd hear it dinging off the hood of our car. My mom loved it. "Look," she said as it hopped in the grass. "How big around would you say those are?" She put a slicker on and a pot on her head and ran outside to put the car in the garage. On the way back she filled her apron, saving the bigger pieces for the freezer. Jody-Jo staved under the dining-room table, resting his head on the carpet. I turned the TV on to see which counties were getting hit. The weathermen were on all the channels. Pea-sized. they said, marble-sized. Golf ball, baseball, soft ball. Outside it was like nighttime. My mom went out on the porch.
    "Come see the lightning," she said.
    I'd only go to the door. Leaves Flew in around my shins. The glider was going all by itself; the yard looked like it was covered with mothballs. I knew at work my dad would have to calm the horses down. I was afraid one would kick him in the head like they did in the movies. I was afraid he'd be trying to get home, driving with his windshield wipers on high. He d have to lie in a ditch when the tornado came. His car could roll over on him, or the wind might pick him up. and then there were the wires still shooting sparks, the poles falling like trees.
    In the west, lightning branched down the sky.
    "Marjorie, look!" my mom said. "Isn't it beautiful?"

    Of all the ways they kill people, the only one I'm afraid of is the firing squad. Here's why. They're made up of five people, usually guards. They stand behind this screen with a slit in it and you sit in a chair with a cloth target over your heart. If they like you, they don't want to be the one to kill you. So what the state does is put a blank in one of the guns. Anyone who's fired a rifle knows a blank doesn't have a recoil like the real thing. It's not like the electric chair, where there's two switches and one's a fake. The same thing goes for lethal injection; there are two buttons that press the plungers. With the firing squad, you know who's doing it.
    What happens sometimes is everyone on the squad like- tin person, and they all fire away from the heart. It's happened a bunch of times in this country, and even more during war. Everyone hits you in the right side of the chest and you bleed to death while they're reloading. So it's better if they don't like you. When they killed Gary Gilmore, the four shots overlapped at the heart of the target —like a four-leaf clover, the book said. I wouldn't want Janille to have to make that choice.
    You asked me about dreams. There's this great dream in Monty Python where this guy's about to be shot. The firing squad's locked and loaded on him, and all of a sudden he wakes up in this chaise lounge in his backyard. His mom's there, and he says, "Oh, Mom, thank heavens, it was all a dream." And his mom says, "No, dear, this is the dream," and he wakes up in front of the firing squad again. That's what it's like sometimes, especially this last week. You expect Darcy to be there but there's only Janille.
    The firing squad's not very popular anymore. Only Utah and Idaho use it. It's worse in foreign countries and during wars. They'll shoot you anywhere.

    But what about you, what are you afraid of? No one reading your books after you're dead, I bet. Hey, it's okay, they'll still watch your movies, and that's what counts.

12
    I don't call myself born-again and I don't go to any particular church. I'm a Christian because I believe in Jesus Christ. That's it and that's all. I don't believe in figuring out all of the world's problems. I don't think I'm going* to save anybody, even myself. There's no guarantees of anything.

    When I became one is a tougher question. I began reading the Bible my second year here. Even before my trial I was getting letters From people who didn't know me telling me that God hat! saved me for this. Some of them thought I was innocent and some of them said it didn't matter. It was a kind of tribulation, they said. I would be a witness.