Until the years slipped past, and Gretchen turned eleven. Without explanation, her regular visits became more sporadic. When she didn’t show up with Dr. Brink for a third Saturday morning in a row, Sam frantically asked Gretchen’s dad, “Is she okay? Is she sick?”
Dr. Brink put a hand on his shoulder. “She’s not sick, son.” He shook his head, sounding as unhappy as Sam when he explained, “It’s just that her mother decided that she’s a young woman now, and it doesn’t become her to run around a farm all day, getting dirty britches.”
“Doesn’t Mrs. Brink like me?” Sam asked, because he sensed in his heart there was more to it than that.
“You shouldn’t worry about what Mrs. Brink thinks.” The vet ruffled his hair. “You’re a great kid, Sam, and anyone who can’t see that has rocks in her head.”
But Sam did worry, and he pined for Gretchen. He missed having her around so much that it hurt. He even went so far as to take his pocketknife to the back of the walnut tree in the grove’s center, the one split at the trunk by lightning. He carved something deeply into its old bark, something that made him feel at least a little bit better. It was a heart with “S + G” inside it.
Maybe he didn’t know what real love was at that point, but Sam did know for sure that he had a deep and abiding affection for Gretchen.
The next week, he made it a point to track her down at school. Lily even dropped him off early one morning so he could wait outside the door of her classroom, eager for her to appear. When she saw him there, her big blue eyes lit up.
“Sam! I’m sorry I haven’t been out to the farm in a while,” she said as kids pushed around her to get into the room. “But my mom’s been on a tear. She doesn’t believe I should spend so much time running loose with a boy like—” She stopped herself. “Never mind. I’m just sorry is all.” She bit her lip, looking down at her feet.
A boy like him? Is that what she’d been about to say? Sam had a feeling he knew exactly what Mrs. Brink meant. Her aversion to him couldn’t be because he lived on a farm, as half the population of Walnut Ridge did. It was more likely because he had Indian blood running through him. Lots of the kids had made digs about that in the past—some still did—and his parents had told him that such thoughts were passed down from parents who didn’t know better. Sam was just glad that Gretchen did know better than that.
“I feel awful, Sam, honestly. My dad stuck up for you, but Annika put her foot down. And when she does that, it’s not worth fighting over,” she whispered, pressing against the tiled wall and leaning toward him. “No matter what, you will always be my best friend. I’ll see you around school, right? And one day, I’ll be old enough that Annika can’t keep me from doing whatever I want.” She squeezed his hand. “You trust me, don’t you?”
He could do little but nod.
“Good!” She smiled at him, but it wasn’t quite as bright as usual. Then she slipped into her classroom, and Sam shuffled off to his.
That night as he lay in bed, something pained him terribly, an ache in his chest that made it hard to breathe. All he wanted was to be with Gretchen Brink. It seemed like such a simple thing. He turned on his side and pulled his knees to his chest, balling up in frustration, wondering if his head might explode with all his pent-up angst.
Outside, the wind picked up, banging the shutters against the clapboards and moaning through the eaves, the sky as bottled up as Sam, the air emitting a low rumble as if the clouds were as fit to burst as he.
Eighteen
1970
Sam had been in love once and only once.
He knew that some folks were geared toward trial and error, the whole “plenty of fish in the sea” approach to relationships. But at seventeen, he was already sure of where his heart belonged. No one else he’d ever met—or had yet to meet—could make him feel as good as Gretchen.
But he was aware that the sixteen-year-old Gretchen had her share of suitors, not the least of whom was Frank Tilby, son of the sheriff of Walnut Ridge. Even though Sam had caught Gretchen blushing at Tilby’s macho attempts at flirtation in the hallways of the high school, and even though he realized she showed up at Tilby’s baseball games to cheer him on from the stands, something inside Sam couldn’t imagine Gretchen ending up with anyone but him. They had been best friends since Sunday school, even if they didn’t see each other as often as they used to. But that bond between them meant something, didn’t it? She had told him before that she loved him, though maybe that kind of love was more brotherly than he now hoped for. But feelings could change, couldn’t they? He had heard his mother say that the most enduring affection started out slowly and burned more deeply as time passed. Love that came too quickly was more like a flash fire, there and gone in the blink of an eye.
Which gave Sam a ray of hope, and he hung on to it.
Oftentimes in the late spring when the weather was neither too hot nor too cold, he and Gretchen would prepare a late-night picnic, and he’d borrow his father’s truck to drive to an open field. He’d park smack in the middle, lower the tailgate, and they’d sit with their legs dangling over.
They would eat first, usually something like cold fried chicken and coleslaw with lemonade. Once they’d filled their bellies, they’d push the basket deep into the bed so they could spread out a quilt and lie flat on their backs.
Then Sam would tell Gretchen to close her eyes, even if she giggled because the whole thing seemed silly.
“Okay, Galileo, what’s in the sky tonight?” she’d ask him on cue.
Gazing above them, he let his eyes inhale the landscape of the night just as his lungs took in a deep and cleansing breath. Carefully choosing his words, he described to her exactly what he saw there. “The Milky Way is so bright that each star shines like a white diamond on black velvet, winking at us like they know so much we’ll never know. The gases they release create an insanely vibrant aura, a bit like I’d imagine halos must look on angels.”
“It’s not often that gas can do that,” she teased with a grin, and Sam cleared his throat. “Oh, wait, I’m interrupting, sorry. What else do you see?” she said, playing along and keeping her eyes closed.
“The aurora borealis,” he told her, “sweeping across the dark with a vaporous chartreuse cloak, illuminating the pitch with such quick strokes, first that limpid green and then lavender . . .”
“Vaporous and limpid!” she repeated with a soft oooh. “My God, Sam, you sure know how to paint a portrait with words. Annika paints with a brush, but she’s always so heavy-handed that mostly things end up looking like an angry blob of mush.”
“I’m sure my perspective is very different from hers,” Sam remarked, knowing he had little in common with Gretchen’s mother.
“Ain’t that the truth.” She sighed and placed clasped hands atop her flat belly, which gently rose and fell as she breathed. “You see things differently than everyone, Sammy. Other boys would just say something like, ‘Yep, it’s pitch-black, and there’s stuff twinkling,’ but you make it sound like poetry.”
“The night sky is poetry,” Sam quietly insisted.
She opened her eyes and turned her head to look at him. “You do realize that you’re connected to the world in a way the rest of us aren’t, right? You always were.”
“Hmm.” Sam wasn’t sure he agreed entirely. Gretchen was as sensitive as anyone he knew. She would no more squash a bug than he would. Life was precious to her, too, and she was incredibly empathetic.
“I’m sure you must feel a part of what’s around us,” he said to her, inching nearer so their shoulders touched. “Most people don’t take the time to notice the colors, the sounds, the way the air feels on their skin. But you and I both do.”
Gretchen unclasped her hands and reached for his. “I don’t imagine anyone feels what you feel or sees what you see, not even me. That’s what makes you special.”
Sam swallowed hard, wishing he could describe how he felt about her as easily as he could describe the stars. But he l
et that moment pass as he had so many others, telling himself, Next time, I will do it.
But it would be weeks after that before he screwed up the courage.
Not long after Gretchen’s father had walked out on Annika, moving away from Walnut Ridge with the school librarian, Miss Childs, Gretchen phoned the farm, asking if they might have another evening picnic. “Please, Sam, I really need to get out of the house. If I don’t slip away for a while, I’ll go mad, I swear it.”
“Are you sure you’re all right?”
“I’ll be fine,” she replied smoothly enough, but he could tell from her voice that she was lying. “Being with you is the perfect medicine.”
“Good.” Sam felt exactly the same.
So that Friday night, he packed some of Lily’s brisket sandwiches, pickles, and potato salad, and he picked Gretchen up at her house in town, idling the pickup out front and giving two quick toots of the horn as she’d instructed him so that he could avoid a confrontation with Annika. “She’s still really angry at my father for leaving,” Gretchen explained. “Actually, she’s angry at all men, so it’s best if you keep a distance.”
He watched her fly out the front door of the neat gingerbread house and race toward him through the dusk, her corn-silk blond hair bouncing in waves on her shoulders. When she hopped into the cab beside him, she leaned over to peck his cheek before she settled in. Sam inhaled the scent of her, as fresh as the sky after rain and as sweet as a daffodil.
“What are you waiting for?” she asked and thumped a palm on the dash. “Let’s get out of here before Annika appears and drags me back inside, kicking and screaming.”
The tires screeched as Sam hit the gas and took off, Gretchen laughing through the open window, hair blowing in the wind.
The truck bumped along the country road that took them outside of town, the pop of gravel a constant under the wheels and the sound of cicadas spilling through the opened windows. Sam liked riding in silence. It felt companionable, like they didn’t need to talk to fill the space. But Gretchen apparently didn’t agree. She sighed and turned on the radio. Sam had an eight-track tape pushed in, and it started playing in the middle of the Beatles’ “Something,” right where he’d left off with George Harrison asking when would his love grow and replying, “I don’t know, I don’t know.”
Gretchen reached over and popped the cartridge out, hitting the buttons for the AM radio instead, switching from crackly station to station—although there weren’t many to choose from—muttering about “stupid farm reports” until she found Patsy Cline singing “Crazy” and left it there. She let out a doleful moan and settled back in the seat, resting her arm on the door.
“How can a man who once loved a woman enough to marry her and have three daughters fall out of love so easily?” she asked, her mood downshifting. “It doesn’t make sense.”
How was Sam supposed to answer that? He was hardly a fount of knowledge when it came to relationships. The only member of the opposite sex who interested him sat three feet away, and he could hardly begin to understand how her mind worked.
So he fell back onto facts, with which he felt far more comfortable.
“Does it make sense that a dragonfly only lives for a few months?” he said, the first thing that came to mind. “Or that when a worker bee stings to protect its hive, it instantly dies? And you don’t even want to hear about the poor mosquito fish. It only lives about a year, but has something like a hundred babies before it croaks.”
“Oh, Sam!” The way she said his name was like a sob.
“What is it?” He took his eyes off the headlights skimming the road to glance at her sideways. She had her hands on her face and, for a moment, he thought she was crying. Great balls of fire, what had he done?
“Gretch?”
She surprised him when she began to giggle, the noise bubbling up from within. It sounded less like amusement and more like hysteria.
“What is it?” He wondered if she was losing it, having a nervous breakdown or something. Everyone in Walnut Ridge talked about how Annika had gotten even crazier since Dr. Brink had run off with Miss Childs, and Gretchen was undoubtedly bearing a lot of the burden. Just to be safe, he pulled the truck over, barely keeping it on the shoulder and avoiding the ditch. He jerked to a stop and threw on the brake so he could face her.
“What’s going on? What did I do?”
“You didn’t do anything, Sam! You’re the only one who hasn’t messed up my life completely,” she told him, her voice too high-pitched. “No, I take that back, what you’ve done is absolutely everything!”
Gretchen suddenly scooted over, setting her head on his shoulder. Sam could hardly breathe.
“What you did,” she said, her voice softer and less frantic, “was the perfect thing. Compared to the poor mosquito fish, maybe my parents splitting up isn’t so bad.”
“You’ll get through it.” Sam let go of the wheel and reached for her hand, which rested on her thigh. It felt cool against his warm skin. “I’m sure your father didn’t mean to hurt you.”
She lifted her chin, looking straight at him. They were practically nose to nose. “I feel like he deserted all of us, not just my mother. Me and Bennie and Trudy.”
“He probably didn’t see it that way at all.” Sam defended her father, although he wasn’t sure why. He had always liked Dr. Brink very much, but he didn’t admire him for ditching his responsibilities, even if the poor man had felt trapped with a shrew like Annika. “Sometimes the path we take isn’t clear-cut. Sometimes it forks, and we have to make hard choices.”
“Shouldn’t we make the choice that hurts the least amount of people?”
“That sounds real nice, but I don’t think it always works that way.”
She didn’t respond for a moment, just stared out the windshield. He hadn’t cut off the headlamps, and bugs danced in front of the lights, batting at each other and against the truck grille.
“Promise me something?” Gretchen tightened her grip on his fingers. “Promise you won’t ever abandon me, Sammy?”
“I won’t.” He swallowed hard, his muscles tightening. “Not if I can help it.”
“You’ll always be there for me, right? My best friend through thick and thin?”
“Yes,” he said, nodding so hard it hurt his neck. “As long as you want me to be. Until you tell me to scram.”
Despite the knot in his gut and the breathless race of his heart, he shifted his weight so one thigh pressed into the steering wheel. He had to see her face full-on. He had to see her eyes. “I—” He stopped and swallowed hard, starting again. “I love you, Gretchen,” he got out in a rush. “I mean, I really love you. I think I always have. You must know that by now.”
She smiled gently, but it was enough to light up the dark like bright moonbeams. Still, there was a glisten in her eyes, a sadness that he wasn’t used to seeing. “I love you, too, Sam,” she said. “You’re my rock. You’re like a bro—”
“Don’t say it.” He cut her off, putting fingers across her lips because he didn’t want to hear the word brother come out of her mouth. He couldn’t bear it. “What if I don’t want to be that anymore? What if I want something else?” he whispered, hoping her answer wouldn’t tear his heart in two. He was risking everything, being so sincere, but maybe it was time he took the risk.
“Oh, Sam.” She sighed, and her hand slipped away from his. She touched his arm, the gesture sweet but platonic. “I don’t know how to put this, but I’m just not sure that I feel that way about you . . . about us.”
Sam could hardly speak. He ground out, “You could try.”
“Please,” she said, laying her palm against his cheek. “Please, don’t do this. Let’s pretend we never had this conversation. I don’t want to lose you, and romance is the quickest way I know to kill a friendship.”
But it was too late.
He had told her how he felt, and she’d shot him down. It didn’t even matter how kindly she’d done it. The whole world
Sam had built in his head, his entire existence, had been suddenly squashed like a bug against the truck grille.
“Sam? Talk to me.”
Instead, he murmured, “Leave me alone for a minute.”
He turned his back on her, fumbled for the door handle, and pushed his way out. Before she could follow, he slammed the door in her face, shutting her in. Then he stood there beside the cab, hands curled into fists, his face turned toward the heavens, wondering what he had done to deserve this. He’d been her playmate, her shoulder, her rock, everything but what he wanted.
The thunder came first, a low growl that rumbled across the night and shook the earth, sending a tremor rattling up Sam’s skeleton. Next came the lightning, which turned the black sky a brilliant silver, cracking like an angry whip.
When the rain fell, it fell hard, pounding at the earth around them, drumming loudly on the metal body of the truck so that it drowned out all other sounds. And still Sam couldn’t move, even as the drops hit him hard in the face, so sharp they felt like they would slice him to ribbons.
They never made it to their picnic spot, never saw the stars that night. Sam took Gretchen straight home, his eyes on the road all the way back to town. He didn’t say another word, not even when he let her out in front of the gingerbread-trimmed Victorian.
Lily was waiting up when he arrived at the farm. His father was already in bed, tuckered out from a long day in the groves. His mom looked up from her book as he leaned into the parlor to say good night.
“Oh, Sam.” She sighed and set the book aside. She doubtless wondered why he was dripping wet, hair plastered to his head, his face loudly broadcasting his dejection. She grabbed the knitted throw from the back of the sofa and held it open to him. “Come here,” she said. “Come dry off and sit down for a minute.”
Reluctantly, he crossed the room, stiffly perching on the cushion as she tossed the throw over his shoulders and began to rub. He kept his hands on his knees the whole time, avoiding her eyes.
The Truth About Love and Lightning Page 18
