The Truth About Love and Lightning

by Susan McBride

  So he’d made a point to go to Patty Pig’s just to see her, asking to be seated in her section, for all the good that did. The joint—oh, and it was a joint—had been noisy and crowded, an incessant string of “you done me wrong” country songs blaring from the jukebox, truck drivers loudly jawing, the smell of pork, cigarette smoke, and unwashed humanity thick in the air.

  As he chewed a sloppy brisket sandwich, he watched her race back and forth between the tables in her bright yellow uniform, pale hair pulled off her sweat-damp face. Half her job, he decided, appeared to involve dancing away from strange men grabbing at her rear end.

  “Can I see you later?” Sam had asked after she’d torn his check from her pad and slapped it down on the table. She’d looked so deflated, like she needed a little cheering up, and he wondered if Annika was responsible. Since her father had left, Gretchen always seemed to be doing too much. “Nothing big, I promise. Maybe we can go for a drive,” he’d suggested.

  “Later tonight?” she’d said, frowning, and tucked her pencil behind her ear. “I don’t know, Sammy. We’ll see,” was the best she could give him.

  Only, they didn’t end up going for a drive, not that night or any night for weeks on end. Not until Sam got a phone call from Gretchen around dinnertime on a Monday evening, barely a week before he was set to depart for West Africa in mid-August.

  “Can you meet me at the park?” she’d asked, such urgency in her voice that Sam worried before he even knew anything was wrong. “I need to talk to you alone.”

  “When?”

  “Is now too soon? I have a shift in two hours.”

  “Now’s good,” he assured her.

  He took the truck into Walnut Ridge, driving as fast as he safely could on the unpaved road, clouds of dust kicking up in his wake. When he reached the town square, he parked smack across from the sheriff’s office. He half expected to run into Frank Tilby, who was in training as a deputy to his old man.

  But Sam didn’t bump into the sheriff’s son on the sidewalk, or when he popped into the drugstore to buy two ice-cold bottles of Coke. Downtown Walnut Ridge seemed blissfully empty in the heat of high afternoon, in that lazy hour before dusk.

  He marched across Main Street, passing the gazebo and the bandstand, heading over to the park proper where the local kids flew kites and played soccer. The green space was empty now save for a few stragglers not yet ready to abandon one of the remaining days of summer for home and supper.

  Sam found Gretchen sitting on a bench, staring into space, her pretty face crumpled, looking for all the world like her life had just ended.

  He slid onto the bench beside her and offered her a Coke. “You thirsty?”

  She shook her head but took it anyway, tucking it between her thighs, bare below the ragged bottoms of her denim shorts. He could see a scrape over one kneecap, and it reminded him of the Saturdays they’d run loose on the farm, getting all sorts of cuts from climbing trees and pretending they were pirates, seeing who could scramble up the imaginary ropes to the bird’s nest first. Gretchen often won, and she’d shout from the highest bough, “Land, ho!” Even with her hair tangled and face smudged with dirt, she’d beamed victoriously.

  But she hardly appeared as carefree at the moment. Tears skidded down her face, plopping onto her blue tank top.

  “What’s wrong?” he asked, setting his soda on the grass so his hands were free. He touched her arm, not sure of what to do. “C’mon, you can tell me.”

  “I’m in trouble, deep trouble,” she mumbled as more tears tumbled from her lashes. She had shadows below her eyes, blotches on her freckled cheeks. Her collarbone jutted noticeably above the scoop neck of her tank. She sure looked like she hadn’t been sleeping much, or eating much for that matter. “I dug myself into a big hole, Sam, and I don’t know how to get out.”

  If it had been anyone else, Sam might’ve instantly thought it was drugs or booze or petty theft. But he couldn’t imagine Gretchen getting into anything heavy. No matter what her family had gone through, she’d always been the best kind of girl. She’d taken care of her blind sisters, had put up with a mother who rubbed all of Walnut Ridge the wrong way, had lost her father to divorce, and still managed to keep a smile on her face, most of the time anyway. But not now.

  “What could you possibly have done?” he asked, dying to put his arm around her and comfort her, but afraid she’d take it the wrong way. He didn’t want her to think he was coming on to her because she was feeling weak. “I’m sure it’s not as bad as you think.”

  Her chin trembled as she nodded. “Oh, it’s bad,” she said, unable to meet his gaze. “I can’t imagine what my mother will say when I get up the nerve to tell her. I wouldn’t be surprised if she kicks me out.” Gretchen exhaled noisily and fiddled with the neck of the Coke bottle, finally plucking the thing from between her thighs and depositing it on the bench. “I made a huge mistake, and I don’t think there’s any good way to fix it.”

  Sam still couldn’t envision anything Gretchen would have done that could be so unforgivable. “Did you get fired? Did you steal something? Did you burn all of Annika’s awful paintings?”

  Glumly, she told him, “No, nothing like that.”

  So Sam asked the next thing that came to mind, the short hairs at the back of his neck prickling even as he said it. “Did that idiot Frank Tilby get you into trouble? Because if he did, I’ll kick his butt.”

  He might be the sheriff’s kid, but Tilby was no angel. Sam had seen him drunk as a skunk, out driving the back roads in his pickup with his buddies, hunting lights turned on, tossing beer cans out the windows. Had Gretchen been in the truck with him when he’d hit something or someone? Sam wasn’t blind. He’d hung around some of the high school baseball games, watching Gretchen’s eyes on Tilby. He knew they’d seen each other some, though he didn’t like to think about it.

  “If he’s hurt you, Gretch—” Sam continued, balling his hands into fists.

  “No!” She stared at him, wide-eyed. “I swear, Frank has nothing to do with this. I’ve hardly seen him all summer. All he does is play baseball, get wasted, and work for his dad.”

  Though he wasn’t sure that he believed her—she could have been lying just to keep him from hunting Frank down and knocking out all his teeth—Sam gave her the benefit of the doubt. He leaned back against the bench, following her gaze and staring off into the distance. “If it’s not Tilby, then what is it?” he said. “You’ll feel better once you get it off your chest.”

  “I’m not so sure about that,” she said and averted her eyes, staring at her lap again.

  The sun had dipped below the line of trees, the sky less a blue than a mix of mottled pinks and purples. Hardly anyone remained except an older woman walking a dog that kept stopping to sniff every bush within leash length.

  They sat there in silence for another ten minutes, the nightly chorus of crickets warming up their serenade. An owl did a soft who-who in the distance. Sam figured Lily was wondering where he was and why he was late for dinner, as he’d run out of the house without telling anyone where he was going. But Gretchen was more important than a scolding from his mother.

  “I’m pregnant, Sam.”

  “What?” he said, not sure he’d heard right. She’d caught him half listening. “What’d you say?”

  “I’m pregnant,” Gretchen repeated, and still he couldn’t believe it.

  Sam peeled his arm off the back of the bench and turned to face her. Gretchen’s head was down, avoiding him, which didn’t help matters any as Sam found his own gaze drawn toward the spot beneath her ribbed tank top that covered her belly. She looked as slender as she always had. She must be wrong. She couldn’t possibly be right.

  “No,” he whispered, mostly to himself. “You can’t be.”

  “I missed my period,” she told him, sniffing back her tears. “I went to a clinic over in Washington and took a blood test. There’s no mistake, Sam. I’m going to have a baby.”

  “Maybe
you need to take another test,” he said, hardly able to focus. Both his brain and his heart clouded up, darkening like the evening sky. “Maybe the first one was wrong. I could take you back tomorrow and you could do it over again—”

  “No.” She tucked hay-colored hair behind her ears, her fingers trembling. “I don’t need to retake anything.” She dropped her hands to her thighs and began softly sobbing. “It wasn’t wrong. I messed up and now I’m paying for it.”

  “How?” he asked, his breaths choppy, feeling as though his chest had been cut open wide. “How did it happen?”

  “I was stupid is how. It was an accident,” she said as she wiped futilely at her falling tears. “It was a crazy night at work, and I was so dead on my feet. Nothing’s been going right for months and months, you know, not with Annika, not with”—you, Sam was sure she was going to say, but instead she finished with—“anyone. This guy who came into Patty’s, he was so sweet to me. He was with friends, they said their car had broken down. He was so gracious, not at all like the normal crowd.” Her freckled features screwed up, and she exhaled slowly. “When his pals took off, he hung around until I clocked out.” She shrugged. “I left with him because he made me smile.” She played with the frayed edge of her shorts. “I’ve hardly had any fun all summer, working so much, giving the money to Annika for bills. I can’t even remember exactly how it all happened, but it did.” She dropped her head into her hands, crying harder now. “It was just one of those things—”

  Sam stared at her, unable to blink, barely able to breathe.

  One of those things? Like, oops, I slipped and fell against the guy, and we made a baby. God dammit. God dammit!

  At that point, Sam couldn’t stand to listen further. Every word she’d already uttered was killing him, twisting his guts in the most painful way. He shut her out, closing his eyes, fingers curled around the edge of the bench until he felt splinters. He seethed inwardly and watched angry clouds rolling in. He fought to keep his heart from bursting out of his chest and creating a bloody mess.

  Why, Gretchen, why?

  How could she have done something like this? How could she have let this happen? Sam wasn’t naïve; he knew she loved him but she wasn’t in love with him, not the way he was with her. Still, he’d always imagined, had always hoped, that she would realize they were meant to be together. That someday, she would be his. They would marry, settle down, and have kids.

  And now she was having some other man’s baby?

  He touched the beads at his throat, fingering the turquoise that had once been his grandfather’s, wishing whatever magic they contained could make him forget everything he’d just heard. But he knew that wouldn’t work. Gretchen’s words had already been imprinted on his soul.

  What do I do? he thought. Grandfather, help me deal with this.

  The air whispered in his ear as the wind began to blow, rustling the leaves in the trees above them, ruffling the grass beneath his feet. It tugged at Gretchen’s hair, whipping the pale curls about her face. She didn’t even try to push them back, and Sam didn’t do it for her either.

  “Do you hate me?” she asked, her voice so small he was hardly aware she’d said anything at all until she touched his cheek, startling him, and he kicked over the bottle of Coke he’d set aside.

  “I can understand if you do,” she said and jumped to her feet. “I can understand if you never want to see me again. I let you down. I let everyone down.”

  Sam could hardly refute her. He couldn’t think of a thing to say that would make her feel better. She could not have done anything that would have hurt him worse.

  “It’s okay, I understand. I’d hate me, too,” she said, hugging her arms around her waist. “Well, okay, good-bye then, Sam. I hope you have a good trip.” She turned her back to him, her head down.

  And he realized that if he allowed her to walk away, she might never come back. That it would surely be the end of them.

  “Gretchen!”

  Sam couldn’t let her go. If he left for Africa letting her believe he didn’t love her anymore, that he’d rejected her completely, he could never forgive himself. In that split second, he understood what he had to do, however it pained him.

  He hopped up and went after her, catching her by the wrist before she’d gone too far. “Wait,” he begged, close to tears himself. “You can’t leave me, not like this.”

  Gretchen stood stock-still, her hand limp in his grasp.

  So Sam did the only thing he could, the only thing he knew he could do and live with himself. “A while ago, I made you a promise that I wouldn’t abandon you, and I meant it. If there’s any way I can make things right, you let me know, and I’ll do it.”

  Her damp eyes glistened in the dusk. “Sam?”

  “Whatever you need, Gretch. Anything.”

  Her fingers slowly intertwined with his, and she squeezed his hand, smiling sadly before she released him.

  “Thank you” was all she said.

  She didn’t take him up on his offer, not then. He didn’t find out that she had until years and years later, long after he was already gone.

  Twenty-three

  August–September 1970

  Once Sam arrived in the coastal West African town and tossed his duffel bag into the back of a battered Jeep, already crammed full, he didn’t have time to be homesick or even to dwell much on Gretchen. The drive out to the refugee camp near the interior border was one of the longest rides he’d ever taken, and not merely because the Jeep’s driver had packed four grown men and one woman inside so that they were wedged shoulder to shoulder; but the heat was oppressive, the road even dustier than the rural route for Walnut Ridge, and they were stopped at numerous checkpoints manned by sweaty and angry-looking armed militants.

  They left behind the waving palms of the port—and the director of the mission, who seemed inclined to stay within his air-conditioned office—until all Sam saw was desert surrounding them and then dots of white littering the landscape the closer they came to the border. He quickly realized all those dots were tents, thousands of them, maybe even a hundred thousand. And there were people everywhere, moving like trails of ants, many of them standing in lines, some waiting for water, some trying to locate missing family, and others seeking medical attention.

  “Dear Lord,” said the brown-skinned woman beside him, whose name was Colleen. Her eyes looked as big as saucers as she surveyed the sprawl of the refugee camp. “How are the five of us supposed to make a dent?”

  “Or even a ding,” a freckled and redheaded fellow named Brett groused from the front seat. He’d taken a semester away from college and looked like he was regretting it already.

  Once the Jeep had jerked to a stop, they were all ordered out, told to grab their gear from the back, and given vague instructions about finding the proper tents. Before Sam could ask for more details, the driver hopped back into the Jeep and sped off.

  “So where’s the welcoming committee?” Colleen asked, glancing around; her backpack was so heavy that it caused her left shoulder to sink under its weight.

  They were surrounded by faces black and white and every color in between. Sam even saw a few dogs and some goats.

  “The youth ministry volunteers’ tents?” he asked a few in passing. Some pointed them left and others right.

  “Maybe we should just pick a direction and go,” Colleen suggested.

  “Yeah, but which?” Sam wondered aloud, searching for a sign of some sort, an arrow pointing the way, perhaps. But no such signs existed.

  “Where’s the rest of the group?” Colleen asked next and stood on the toes of her boots, looking for Brett and the other two from their shuttle.

  “I haven’t a clue,” Sam told her, hanging on to the straps of his backpack and doing a slow circle around them, seeking Brett’s rust-red hair. But by the time he’d made a single turn within the noise and the smells and the confusion, he’d lost Colleen, too.

  A bubble of panic seeped up from his gut,
burning in his throat, and he thought about standing on the nearest truck and shouting for help.

  “You must be fresh meat,” a voice said from behind him before he did anything too rash. “You look confused.”

  “I’m just trying to find my way,” he replied, and faced a woman who looked to be in her early twenties wearing a dirty white shirt and even dustier jeans. She stared him squarely in the eye.

  “We’re all trying to find our way,” she quipped and gave him a crooked grin. “Just be careful of the clean-looking ones who say they’re running things from their nice offices on the coast. Sods, the lot of them. They’re the ones who know the least,” she told him, adding with a shrug, “The rest of us have learned how to muddle our way through. It’s either that or lose our minds.”

  “Got it,” Sam said, appreciating her directness.

  She wasn’t pretty by any conventional means—tall, angular, hair as short as a boy’s, a wide nose, and a noticeable gap between her teeth—but she had a take-charge air about her that he liked on the spot.

  “Sam Winston,” he introduced himself, letting go of a strap to extend his hand, “from Walnut Ridge, Missouri.”

  “Cate,” she said simply, ignoring the gesture. “Follow me, Missouri, and I’ll see if I can’t get you settled so you can make yourself useful.” She started walking, brushing past unsmiling men in tan military uniforms and women in bright-colored rags tugging children by the hand.

  One such mother grabbed Sam’s arm, begging him for something in a language he didn’t understand.

  Cate gently took the woman’s arm, uttering a few words that made the dark head nod before she turned away. “It’s heartbreaking,” she said to Sam as they moved along, past another endless row of tents. “They’ve lost so much, and not just their possessions. Their fathers and brothers and husbands and sons. But you know what they say: war is hell. And, come to think of it, so is this place. Anyway, here’s your new digs, Missouri.”

  Cate paused before a muddied canvas flap. “If you need anything, well”—she shot him that crooked grin again—“you’ll figure it out yourself, or you can find me again.”