Threatening Sky

In our corner of eastern Missouri we're all still so shell-shocked by the tornadoes that tore a concourse off the airport last year and flattened Joplin last May that dark skies here unnerve us, just a little. People drive faster, heading for home. I've found out, traveling out west, that you have to live in a place for several years to be able to read its sky. But there's nothing like the ink-and-indigo colors of a Midwestern storm about to unzip the firmament and unleash torrents of rain, which are then pulled into silver ingots by the wind. An Iowa painter named Grant Wood, in some paintings, captured this kind of Midwestern sky and the strange sunlight often paired with it. Facing southeast on Highway F about 6 p.m.