He didn’t have to go out of his way to go past the blackberry patch, for the cows were in that direction, but he knew well enough that if they hadn’t been, he’d have gone out of his way, for he’d been remembering all day the friendliness he’d found there.
It was still daylight this time, just shading into night, and he could see that the thing, whatever it might be, was not alive, but simply a hunk of metal, like two sauce dishes stuck together, with a rim running around its middle just like there’d be a rim if you stuck two dishes together. It looked like old metal that had been laying around for a long time and you could see where it was pitted like a piece of machinery will get when it stands out in the weather.
It had crushed a path for quite a ways through the blackberry thicket and had plowed up the ground for twenty feet or so, and, sighting back along the way it had come, Johnny could see where it had hit and smashed the top of a tall poplar.
It spoke to him, without words, the way it had the night before, with friendliness and fellowship, although Johnny wouldn’t know that last word, never having run across it in his schoolbooks.
It said, “You may look at us a little now. Look at us quick and then away. Don’t look at us steadily. Just a quick look and then away. That way you get used to us. A little at a time.”
“Where are you?” Johnny asked.
“Right here,” they said.
“Inside of there?” asked Johnny.
“Inside of here,” they said.
“I can’t see you, then,” said Johnny. “I can’t see through metal.” “He can’t see through metal,” said one of them.