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Show -33 "What if you don't happen to die in bed with plenty of time to congratulate yourself on having been a good citizen?" I said. "Won't you feel cheated?" "Stop," Morgan said. The wind picked up speed and forced the dense clouds to belly down low; it pushed them down the slopes and herded them across the valley at a dead run. Now and then a more powerful gust rocked our car and flattened the tall weeds along the roadside ditches. We were running through flooded fields that reflected the clouds; it see.ied as if we were trapped between two galloping skies which could clap together at any time and drown us. I was glad when Morgan slid closer and laid her head on my shoulder. Not that I couldn't have cheered myself up; melancholy is in the mind of the sad man-to a naturally cheerful person all landscapes are happy ones. My father did his best to teach us the opposite by his example; he was a moody man, easily affected by the weather and even by the time of day- "Do you know what Adam did?" I asked Morgan. "When he decided to turn our living-room into his studio, a few months after my mother left him, he put in banks of fluorescent lights and then he carefully boarded up every window. He told us it was so he wouldn't be distracted by what happened outside, but I knew it was so that he wouldn't have to watch the evenings come. Evenings made him sad. |