Dean Koontz - One Door Away From Heaven

Old Yeller, however, smells no trouble. Her natural sociability is engaged, and she wants to explore the scene.

Curtis trusts her instincts. Besides, a crowd offers him some camouflage if the wrong scalawags come prowling with electronics, searching for the unique energy signature that the boy produces.

The meadow is enclosed by a ranch fence of whitewashed boards needing repair and fresh whitening. The tractor guards the open gate.

A tarp on four tall poles shields the hay wagon from the direct sun, and under the tarp, merchandise awaits sale. From a series of picnic coolers filled with crushed ice, the rancher and a teenage boy dispense cans of beer and soft drinks. They offer packaged snack foods like potato chips, as well as homemade cookies, brownies, and jars of "Grandma's locally famous" black-bean-and-corn salsa, which a sign promises is "hot enough to blow your head clean off."

Curtis can conceive of no way in which anyone's head could be blown off cleanly. Decapitation by any means is a messy event.

He has no difficulty understanding why Grandma's deadly salsa is locally famous, but he can't comprehend why anyone would buy it. Yet several jars are missing from the geometric display, and as he watches, two more are sold.

This seems to indicate that a portion of those gathering in the meadow are suicidal. The dog has discounted the theory of a serial-killer convention, since she detects none of the telltale pheromones of full-blown psychosis, but Curtis is equally unenthusiastic about a gathering of the suicide-prone, regardless of their reasons for considering self-destruction.

In addition to beverages, snacks, and the infamous salsa, the hay wagon also offers T-shirts bearing strange messages. NEARY RANCH, one declares, STARPORT USA. Another shirt features the picture of a cow and the words CLARA, FIRST COW IN SPACE. Yet another states WE ARE NOT ALONE — NEARY RANCH. And a fourth insists THE DAY DRAWS NEAR and also features the name of the ranch.

Curtis is interested in Clara. Although he's familiar with the entire history of NASA and with the space program of the former Soviet Union, he's unaware of any attempt to place a cow in orbit or to send one to the moon. No other country possesses the capability to orbit a cow and to bring it back alive. Furthermore, the purpose of sending a bovine astronaut into space completely eludes the boy.

A book is displayed for sale beside the T-shirts: Night on the Neary Ranch: Close Encounters of the Fourth Kind. From the title and the cover illustration — a flying saucer hovering over a farmhouse — Curtis begins to understand that the Neary Ranch is the origin of a modern folk tale similar to those told about Roswell, New Mexico.

Intrigued but still concerned about the suicidal types that are at least a portion of this gathering, he again trusts Old Yeller's judgment. She smells no prospect of exploding heads, and she's eager to sniff her way through the fragrant throng.

Boy and dog enter the meadow without being challenged at the open gate. Evidently they are thought to be with attendees who rented a space and legitimately established camp.

In a holiday mood, carrying drinks, eating homemade cookies, lightly dressed for the heat, people stroll the close-cropped grass in the aisles between campsites, making new friends, greeting old acquaintances. Others gather in the shade under the awnings, playing cards and board games, listening to radios — and talking, talking.

Everywhere, people are engaged in conversation, some quiet and earnest, others noisy and enthusiastic. From the scraps that Curtis hears as he and Old Yeller amble through the field, he concludes that all these folks are UFO buffs. They gather here twice a year, around the dates of two famous saucer visitations, but this assemblage is related to some new and recent event that has excited them.

The campsites are organized like spokes on a wheel, and at the hub is a perfectly circular patch of bare earth about twelve feet in diameter. The meadow grows all around this circle, but the earth within is chalky and hard-packed, not softened by so much as a single weed or blade of grass.

A tall, thickset man, about sixty years of age, stands in the center of this barren plot. Wearing bushman’s boots with rolled white socks, khaki shorts that expose knees as rough and hairy as coconuts, and a short-sleeve khaki shirt with epaulets, he looks as though he will soon embark on an expedition to Africa, to search for the fabled elephants' graveyard.

Eighteen or twenty people have gathered around this man. All appear reluctant to venture into the dead zone where he stands.

As Curtis joins the group, one of the new arrivals explains to another: "That's old man Neary himself. He's been up."

Mr. Neary is talking about Clara, the first cow in space. "She was a good cow, old Clara. She produced a tanker truck of milk with low butterfat content, and she never caused no trouble."

The concept of troublemaking cows is a new one for Curtis, but he resists the urge to ask what offenses cows are likely to commit when they're not as amiable as Clara. His mother always said that you'd never learn anything if you couldn't listen; and Curtis is always in the mood to learn.

"Holsteins as a breed are a stupid bunch," says Mr. Neary. "That is my opinion. Some would argue Holsteins are as smart as Jerseys or Herefords. Frankly, anyone who'd take that position just don't know his cows."

"Alderneys and Galloways are the smartest breeds," says one of those gathered around the dead zone.

"We could stand here all day arguin' cow smartness," says Mr. Neary, "and be no closer to Heaven. Anyway, my Clara wasn't your typical Holstein, in that she was smart. Not smart like you or me, probably not even as smart as that dog there" — he points at Old Yeller—"but she was the one always led the others from barn to pasture in the mornin' and back at the end of the day."

"Lincolnshire reds are smart cows," says a stocky, pipe-smoking woman whose hair is tied in twin ponytails with yellow ribbons.

Mr. Neary gives this rather formidable lady an impatient look. "Well, these aliens didn't go huntin' for no Lincolnshire reds, now did they? They come here and took Clara — and my theory is they knew she was the smartest cow in the field. Anyway, as I was sayin', this vehicle like whirlin' liquid metal hovered over my Clara as she was standin' exactly where I'm standin' now."

Most of those around the circle look up at the afternoon sky, some wary, some with a sense of wonder.

A young woman as pale as Clara's low-butterfat milk says, "Was there any sound? Patterns of harmonic tones?"

"If you mean did me and them play pipe organs at each other like in the movie, no ma'am. The abduction was done in dead silence. This red beam of light come out of the vehicle, like a spotlight, but it was a levitation beam of some type. Clara lifted off the ground in a column of red light, twelve feet in diameter."

"That is a big levitation beam!" exclaims a long-haired young man in jeans and T-shirt that announces FRODO LIVES.

"The good old girl let out just one startled bleat," says Mr. Neary, "and then she went up with no protest, turnin' slowly around, this way and that, end-over-end, like she weighed no more than a feather." He looks pointedly at the pipe-smoking, ponytailed woman. "Had she been a Lincolnshire red, she'd probably have kicked up a hell of a fuss and choked to death on her own cud."

After blowing a smoke ring, the woman replies, "It's next thing to impossible for a ruminant animal to choke on its own cud."

"Ordinarily, I'd agree," concedes Mr. Neary, "but when you're talkin' a fake-smart breed like Lincolnshire reds, I wouldn't be surprised by any dumbness they committed."

Listening, Curtis is learning a great deal about cows, although he can't say to what purpose.