The Handbook for Lightning Strike Survivors

by Michele Young-Stone

  For Rosemary Young

  90% of lightning strike victims survive

  –THE HANDBOOK FOR LIGHTNING STRIKE SURVIVORS

  A fish …

  She was a girl like you or like someone you knew—from a cracked home, a fault line between her parents, for which she felt responsible. A pretty girl with red hair: too curly to contain in barrettes or under headbands, twisting free, needing to spiral and curl like the ocean waves to her right.

  The sun was hot, turning her back pink. She took great strides, walking faster, nearly running, her shadow mixed with the surf. Sanderlings scurrying to and fro mixed with her shadow. Except for the birds, she was alone with her thoughts, with hopes to caulk the crevice between her mother and father, the way she’d seen her mother do, wearing latex gloves, smoothing slow-drying putty around the bathtub’s perimeter. How she set her highball on the tub’s edge, digging out the old grout using a flat-head screwdriver. Mother was always drinking, and Dad was always working, but cracks can be mended so long as you let the caulk dry. They were here at the beach, weren’t they? There was plenty of time to let that stuff dry. At home, Becca would mess it up, running the bathwater too soon, but here, she had hope. Here, she spotted a live fish with a fanlike tail, its gills opening and shutting, silver window blinds. Maybe the fish-on-the-sand happened to you or to someone you knew, but for Becca, it cemented her belief that anything is possible. She carried the fish through Atlantic surf, watching it swim away, running to tell her parents she had saved a life.

  … out of water

  Buckley loved everything about his mother, from the strawberry bumps on her legs where she dry-shaved with her Gillette to the way her black hair knotted at the nape of her neck. When the mean boys, the ones with fathers who taught them to fight before they could walk, jumped him from behind or from the front, Buckley counted himself a survivor. Knocked hard to the dirt, he got back up. It had everything to do with his mother. She was there for him, and he’d always be there for her. He could run fast.

  It seemed that he was always running from someone stronger, bigger, and meaner—but not faster, and that was a very good thing. Today he was tired of running. The angry boys called, “Bastard!” That word didn’t touch him anymore. He’d heard it so often, it’d lost its meaning. He walked, hearing footsteps at his heels and falling to the dirt. Maybe he needed a beating. Covering his head with his hands, he felt the blows to his ribs and legs. Always protect the head. He breathed in the dirt.

  Much later, when he was sixteen, he met Clementine. She smelled like dirt too. Like the earth. Like he could bury his face there between chin and collarbone and be protected. Maybe that’s why he loved her.

  • • •

  When the beating was over, the bullies toed dirt on Buckley’s backside and touted, “Crybaby.” As they left, he struggled to his feet.

  The thing was, he didn’t cry. Not then. Hardly ever. They could’ve kicked and punched until his ribs cracked and his lip split. It didn’t make a difference. He wouldn’t have cried for them. Maybe that was part of what was wrong with him. He was eleven years old, unable to cry, trying not to run from the world.

  [1]

  Lightning, 1977

  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 kitche
n 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.

  Excerpt from

  THE HANDBOOK FOR LIGHTNING STRIKE SURVIVORS

  An estimated 80% of people struck by lightning are men. This is not, as you might think, because men are too stubborn to come in out of the rain; rather, it’s because men tend to engage in outdoor sports and professions more than women.

  Regardless of a victim’s gender, doctors and scientists concur that the surviving victim needs support from family and friends to recover.

  Immediate effects include cardiac arrest and brain damage. Chronic effects include anxiety disorders, memory loss, stiff joints, numbness, and insomnia. For years following a strike, the victim might feel tingling throughout his body. Because it’s often difficult for a victim to describe what happened, it’s important that there is a support group to listen.

  [2]

  A good boy, 1967

  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.

  The revivalists lingered before driving away to their respective sinful spouses and neighbors—those who hadn’t met Reverend Whitehouse. They drove with their windows down, the dry Arkansas heat kissing their faces, calling to one another, “You should come for coffee tomorrow,” feeling this kindred spirit that would dwindle as quickly as it came. Mont Blanc was not a friendly town.

  Buckley caught the Reverend Whitehouse after the service; or rather the reverend caught Buckley. “What are you doing over there? Come out here, son.” Buckley thought about making a run for it. Instead, he slunk from behind the tree, both hands deep in his pockets. “I said come here.” Reverend Whitehouse was a lanky man in a black suit. He had long arms and a nose bumpy like a summer squash.

  The reverend pulled a handkerchief from his pocket and blotted his forehead. “You want to make some money?”

  It was rare that a grown man took an interest in Buckley. In fact, it had never happened.

  “I asked you a question.”

  Buckley shrugged.

  “Do you or don’t you? This ain’t a trick question. Can’t you speak?”

  “I can speak.”

  “So what’ll it be? Do you want to make some money?” The reverend blotted his forehead again, leaving a beige stain on the folded kerchief.

  “Yeah, I want to.”

  “Smart boy.”

  Buckley wanted a lot of things, but at the top of his list was for his mother to be happy. It seemed to him that she was always sad. She was a good mom—never a mean word crossed her lips—but like Buckley, she seldom smiled. She was fat, and it was hard for Buckley when they went places to hear people snicker and know she heard it too.

  The first night Buckley met the reverend, he tromped along in scuffed cowboy boots beside the towering man over to a Chevy pickup. He could hear people inside the tent and wondered if they were the reverend’s wife and children. The reverend stuffed a bunch of slick folded garbage bags into Buckley’s hands. “Start over there. I didn’t catch your name.”

  “Buckley, sir.”

  “All right, Buck.” He handed Buckley a flashlight. Looking down at a grease-smeared popcorn container, the reverend said, “Good Christians don’t litter. They know that I, the Lord’s servant, have more important things to do than pick up their garbage.” The reverend looked to Mrs. Catawall’s big house. “The nice lady who owns this land don’t abide trash in any form.”

  “Yes, sir.” Buckley fumbled with the trash bags and the light, leaving all but one bag on the ground beside the truck’s tire so he could find them in the dark.

  The reverend shook his head. “I do God’s work. What do you do? Are you in school?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “When I was a boy, I missed a lot of school. I spent October and November pulling tobacco, and then it was hard to catch up. Education can spoil a boy.”

  “Yes, sir, but our teacher says that …”

  The reverend held up his hand. “Don’t back-talk me. I’m hiring you to work. Let’s get to it.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  In truth, Buckley’s teacher didn’t say much to him. It was actually Buckley’s mother who told him, “Education makes a man. Ignorant people don’t count for much.” Buckley’s teacher wrote math problems and vocabulary words on the chalkboard. She collected papers, most of which she never marked, and sat at her desk filing her nails.

  Buckley couldn’t even fill the first garbage bag, finding two deflated balloons, thirty or so cigarette butts (some stained with lipstick), and a few hard candy wrappers. He said, “This is all I can find.”

  “Keep looking.”

  For good measure, Buckley threw some twigs a
nd dead brush in the bag. He didn’t want to disappoint the reverend.

  “Let’s get out of here,” the reverend said.

  Buckley picked up the leftover garbage bags, wondering if despite his light trash haul this man was going to pay him as he’d said he would. Then again, it didn’t really matter. He hadn’t had anything better to do. It was August. There was no school. Still, his mom had taught him that you judge a man by his word, and the man had sure enough mentioned money.

  “I’ll give you a lift home,” the reverend said.

  “That’s all right. I don’t live far.” Buckley hiked up his pants. They were from a secondhand shop his grandmother frequented. She bought everything two sizes too big, thinking the clothes would last longer, not caring that Buckley looked like a clown.

  “Get in.” The Reverend Whitehouse climbed into the pickup, and Buckley, who did as he was told, followed suit. “So how old are you?”

  “Eight, sir. I don’t live far. I can walk.”

  “Nonsense.”

  Buckley pulled the door shut. He did not want the reverend to come to his house. Even if he was getting paid, he didn’t want the reverend to see his mother. Somehow seeing her gave strangers an advantage over him. He wondered if the empty blue and orange boxes of Kraft macaroni and cheese were still stacked in a pyramid on the kitchen table, a testament to her obesity. His grandmother had said last night, “I’ve had enough of this, Abby,” and then his mother had boiled another pot of water on the old gas stove with the timer that no longer timed, and his grandmother swiped the box, adding it to her pyramid. Buckley couldn’t help but think his Grandmother Winter liked his mom fat. Even if she said different, it gave her an advantage.

  “You can drop me here.”

  “Is that your house?”

  “It’s not far.”

  “Nonsense, son. I’ll drive you home.” The Reverend Whitehouse tousled Buckley’s coarse locks. His hair was dark like his mother’s.