Free Close Encounters of the Third Kind by Steven Spielberg Page A

friend.” She laughed. “It only takes one experience like that, doesn’t it?”
    Neary nodded, no longer embarrassed. As he did so, a genial-looking man in unmatching slacks and a sports jacket shone a flashlight on them. Their sunburns seemed to stand out in his beam. This seemed to please him, and with a Pentax and strobe, he snapped their picture. Jillian blinked and turned toward him as the man focused at little Barry, sitting near the fence and playing with a mound of dirt.
    Moving swiftly, Jillian got in the way of the amateur photographer. “He’s a little young to have a record,” she told him angrily.
    Neary watched the man cough up an apology and ankle away. “Where do you think he’s from?”
    “Earth,” Jillian muttered bitterly. She bent down to wipe dirt off Barry’s face. He was busily patting together a tall, conical mound.
    “I, uh, have three of my own at home,” Neary announced.
    “Did you tell your wife about what we saw?”
    “Of course.”
    “What does she think?” Jillian asked.
    “She understands,” Neary said with some sarcasm, “perfectly.”
    Jillian grinned. “I called my mother to tell her. She said that’s what I got for living alone.” She paused, and Neary saw that in some way she felt embarrassed, as he had before at the sight of the breasts—well, part of them.
    “I’m not alone at all,” she covered quickly. “There’s Barry and the neighbors and I’m . . . not really . . . alone at all.”
    “Barry’s father?”
    “Died.” She paused. She looked away from him. “I don’t suppose he’d have understood this any better than your wife does.”
    There was nothing Neary could think of to say at this point. Instead he hunkered down to Barry’s level and helped him pat dirt into place. “Working kind of late tonight, huh, kiddo?”
    “I know he should be in bed,” Jillian said in a guilty tone. “But after the way he ran off the other night, I’m not letting him out of my sight.”
    Neary nodded. He stared for a moment at the cone of dirt the little boy had built. He fingered a twig and etched fluted sides into the mound. “Hm.” He reached for some pebbles nearby. “Try these,” he offered.
    Barry arranged them around the base of the cone, as if they were boulders thrown there by some explosion of natural forces.
    “That’s better,” Neary said. Oddly enough both the boy and his mother accepted this as perfectly natural behavior.
    “Hey,” Neary asked, suddenly puzzled. “What does this remind you of?”
    Jillian dug deep for an answer but she didn’t know what. Then she bent over Barry to gently rough up the smooth side facing her. “I like it better like so,” she said.
    “Me, too,” he breathed.
    “Here they come!” a voice shouted.
    “Out of the northwest!” someone yelled.
    Neary and Jillian looked in the direction everyone was pointing. A hush descended over all. Adults and juveniles raised binoculars and cameras. On somebody’s transistor radio the Eagles were singing “Desperado.”
    “There!” Jillian said pointing.
    Two foggy pinpoints of light shifted back and forth, rising, falling, growing brighter in the darkness.
    Neary raised his camera. “I’m ready this time.”
    She had placed her hand on his arm. “You’re trembling.”
    “I know.” Neary laughed recklessly. “What if were just two whackos standing on a hill with a dozen other loonies?”
    “Your eyes burn, don’t they?”
    “For two days now.”
    “Mine, too.”
    “But this is crazy,” he said, his teeth almost chattering. “It’s like Halloween for grown-ups.”
    The lights were bearing down on them inexorably now, blinding, larger, merciless, painful to watch. “Trick or treat?” Jillian asked then.
    Neary aimed his camera, but he had begun shaking so badly he wondered what kind of picture he’d get. “If those things stop and open their doors,” he asked her, “would you get in and go?”
    “If those things stop, I’m going