The Handbook for Lightning Strike Survivors

The wind shifted and Becca stopped running. Her dad was taking her for a chocolate-dipped soft serve, but first she needed a bath. He wouldn’t be seen with her this way. Her knee, bloody from tripping over a knobby root during hide-and-seek, had that sticky-tight feeling, and the other knee, scraped from tumbling on the sidewalk, burned. She needed to be more careful. How many times had her dad told her “Stop picking those scabs or you will scar, and scars last forever”?

The wind picked up—a rare cold wind. From her driveway, she watched the willow tree’s branches, like charm-laden arms, sway back and forth, and thought about her ice cream, about her dad. She thought about the summer’s end, another boring school year about to begin, about the dried blood caked on her knee—and her world exploded. It cracked open and Becca fell inside a whiteness that erased everything: the driveway, the tree, the long summer’s day, the blood, the ice cream. For a time, the world was blank. She was still.

She woke up, her fingertips tingling, her head full of static, raindrops only now wetting her legs. She knew she’d been struck by lightning. There was never a question. She stood up, feeling peculiar, seeing herself from a distance as someone else might: wild hair, freckled nose, pink lips, pony T-shirt, corduroy shorts and gray sneakers; gangly arms and legs.

She hobbled inside to the den. With blood trickling down
her shin, her voice shaky, she said, “Dad, I got struck by lightning.”

He sat on the sofa. “If you got struck by lightning, you’d be dead.” He didn’t look up.

The den’s gold drapes were parted. The sky was black. Becca shivered, waiting for her dad to say something more like
We need to get you to the hospital!
or
Oh my God! I’ll call an ambulance!
, but instead he picked up
Yachting Today
. He was in love with sailing then. He was in love with all things that required large sums of money, and Becca was in love with him.

Becca said, “It knocked me down.”

“Who knocked you down? Did you knock them down first?” He looked at her then. Finally.

The rain streaked the front window. She said, “I think I got struck by lightning.”

“Well, you seem fine now.” He was used to seeing her bloodied and bruised. Like her mother, she lacked balance. “Get cleaned up.” He returned to his magazine.

Upstairs, she undressed, leaving the bathroom door open. She looked at her watch before stepping in the tub. The hands had stopped at five-fourteen.
That must’ve been when the lightning struck. Or, maybe Dad is right: Who gets struck by lightning and walks away?
She knew the answer:
Me. I do
.

In the bathtub, with her big toe up the spigot, the water turned gray. Becca smelled bleach. She was trembling again. Shutting off the cold, she turned up the hot. She closed her eyes and took deep breaths to stop from shaking. She imagined hovering, twirling in the sky, shooting lightning bolts from her fingertips like a gun-slinger before dropping, landing cold and wet in the driveway. She opened her eyes and felt sick. Her hands and feet ached. She used to ask her mother, “How can I turn off my imagination?” Back then, she didn’t pronounce the
i
, saying, “’magination” instead. It was back then that she’d started painting, to give her “’magination” something to do. Maybe the prickling in her feet and the headache
were imagination. Maybe she’d bumped her head falling down somewhere earlier today but didn’t remember. More deep breaths. Her mother, who took smoke-filled breaths, said that deep breaths calmed the nerves. Becca, taking the deepest breaths possible, felt light-headed. She pulled the tub’s stopper.

Looking at herself in the mirror, she decided to curb the breathing. She was pale. She might pass out, and she’d been through enough today.

Downstairs, she toweled her hair and waited for her dad to get off the phone. He said, “I’ll be there,” smiling at Becca, holding up his pointer finger to indicate
Be with you in a second
. He often held up his pointer finger. Sometimes when he wanted Becca to do something like fold laundry, he’d look at her and point to the full basket. He was a man of few words. Into the phone he said, “I told you: I’ll be there.”

Becca, having waited patiently, said, “I’m ready.”

Covering the mouthpiece, he said, “Ready for what?”

“Ice cream. We’re supposed to—”

He didn’t let her finish. “Sorry. Another night.” Returning to his phone conversation, he said, “I won’t be later than eight.”

Becca pulled the towel from her head and dropped it on the kitchen floor. She went upstairs to her room to paint a picture of a girl getting struck by lightning. She was certain that her father was in the kitchen pointing at the wet towel and waiting for someone to pick it up. Later, when he’d gone, she’d come back downstairs and the towel would still be there. It wasn’t his responsibility to clean up after them.

Buckley R. Pitank imagined himself Jesse James, even as his jaw was pressed into the red clay roads of Mont Blanc, Arkansas. He spat and tried not to swallow the dirt that swirled into his eyes and nose. He’d eaten enough of this dirt. He choked on it and cried out, but that only made the other boy push his face harder into the cracked earth. The other boy was not one boy, but one of many.

Buckley was
one
boy born on his mother’s mattress in Mont Blanc, Arkansas, in 1959. Raised by his mother, Abigail, and his grandmother, Winter, he never knew his father.

Mont Blanc, despite its name, had no mountains, not even snow-topped hills. It was a desolate wasteland for Buckley, with buzzing mosquitoes and snakes and jumping spiders the size of his fist. He was miserable, born to these two women: his grandmother, who said there was no time and no need for a hospital—she could manage quite well—and his mother, who said his birth was the worst experience of her life, everything bloody and slimy, her insides torn out, and she might never have recovered were it not for Buckley himself. Her joy.

Even as he struggled under the weight of a shoe in his back and a hand on his neck, he thought his future would be great. He had hopes and dreams, spawned by TV shows like
Bonanza
—espousing the world’s fairness. In due time, Buckley thought that he would have his reward.

With the red clay of Mont Blanc caked on his two front teeth, Buckley invented epic tales about his father: He was an FBI agent working undercover, and if Buckley knew of his identity, the safety of America and the world would be at stake. He was a ship’s captain who’d met Abigail in port (though when questioned by Buckley, Abigail reported to have never seen the ocean). Returning to sea, the captain promised to write, to come back for Abigail, but he was killed, ambushed by the Reds.

There were stories, endless possibilities. Buckley had faith that all would turn out right with the world. Later, he would stop believing in heroics and let the world do with him what it would.

One man who contributed to Buckley’s loss of faith was the Reverend John Whitehouse. For two years in a row, Buckley had seen Reverend Whitehouse erect tents on Mrs. Catawall’s overgrown acreage and Buckley had stayed clear, but on this Saturday night, red dirt under his fingernails, Buckley hid behind a dying magnolia, catching bits of the reverend’s sermon.

Reverend Whitehouse preached about hellfire, the wages of sin, and the rewards for living a Christ-loving life. Buckley, Abigail, and Winter Pitank did not attend church, but that night, restless and curious about God, Buckley listened to those who filed out of the blue tent. They talked of being filled with the spirit: “I was sad when we got here. You saw me! I was as down as the dirt under these old heels, and now I’m changed! Look at me.” He saw the flock’s bright faces, seemingly oiled by God’s own hands. “I never imagined,” said a squat, freckled woman, her face slick with tears. “I should’ve made John come. He would’ve been glad he did.” Her friend, holding a buckled purse at her breasts, said, “You’d think more people would turn out, but they’re afraid of Jesus’ love. I know if Jerry would’ve come, he’d have stopped the drink tonight. I know it.” Buckley wanted desperately to be changed.