Road to Bountiful Read Online Free PDF

and we’re doing eighty-five. I ease up a little. A bolt smashes down, maybe a quarter of a mile away. Even over the engine’s roar, the thunder booms and sends a shiver through the car. It’s starting to rain. It’s starting to hail. The end is near! I expect to see a funny old guy dressed in white with a long scraggly beard with a sign announcing that the world is about to be swallowed up whole. This seems apocalyptic. Biblical. Just plain ugly. I push a knob, and the windshield wipers are flipping full speed back and forth. I sneak a glance at Uncle Loyal. I can’t read him. His face is glassy. He’s just staring straight ahead. He seemed fairly normal back at the house, but now, not so much. Ignoring this storm is like ignoring that you’re going through a car wash. With your windows down. Only this is louder. I get this vision in my mind of an old movie. I used to have nightmares about tornadoes after watching The Wizard of Oz . We might be the local version of Dorothy and Toto, for all I know. But Uncle Loyal just keeps his eyes on the road. Maybe this isn’t a big deal to him, just a gentle North Dakota summer shower, good for rinsing the dust out of the air.
    Uncle Loyal looks at me and says pleasantly, “Big storm, eh?”
    Lightning jags down maybe a couple of hundred yards away, and the instant roar causes my stomach to knot up. My hands are locked on the steering wheel with a viselike grip. Finally, I crack, and my voice comes out squeaky, a little-boy croak, the same kind of sound I made when my upper lip first turned fuzzy.
    “Is this normal, Uncle Loyal? The lightning seems to be hitting awfully close.”
    He looks toward me and gives me a thin smile and says, “Oh, this is a pretty good one. Pretty good indeed. We get one of these every week or two this time of the year. But I don’t think there are any tornadoes associated with it. We should not be fearful.”
    Tornadoes? He said tornadoes. That is a word that sends big alarms off in me. That is not the word I wanted to hear. Next stop: Munchkin Land . I may die in North Dakota.
    Stay calm, Levi. Don’t squeal or flutter or panic or let your eyes bug out too far. You were a Star Scout. You earned eight merit badges and one of them was meteorology , I think. Another was first aid. Both of them might come in handy. I mentally review the steps for artificial resuscitation. Tilt the head back and thump the chest. Or is it the other way around? Every news report I’ve ever seen with a reporter standing grim-faced and nothing but twisted metal and broken trees in the background flashes across my mind. “This is where the town of Bumperbelt, North Dakota, stood until last night,” the reporter says, nodding over his shoulder toward the remains of a red car. “These travelers, a brilliant and handsome young man in the flower of life and his older companion never knew what hit them. Now, they are like day-old bacon.”
    In the most calm voice I can muster, I ask a question, but my voice still comes out about the way it did when I was thirteen years old: up and down, up and down, and cracking.
    “Tornado! Could we be in a tornado? What should we do? Hide under the car?” Well, that didn’t quite come out right.
    I drop my speed all the way down to sixty. I’m having a hard time seeing the road ahead.
    Uncle Loyal looks outside for a moment. He scans the sky and ever so mildly says, “No, I don’t believe any tornadoes are touching down. There’s no green in the sky, and when a tornado is close, the sky takes on a green tint. Odd, but it does. I’ve seen plenty of tornadoes in my day, but this sky doesn’t quite look right for one.”
    The hail pounds, and my wipers are almost useless. I worry that the car might get dented and the rental company will hold me responsible. Aunt Barbara might not enjoy getting the bill for a totaled car, done in by hail the size of golf balls.
    I nod my head. For some reason, maybe to show that I am cool and calm