The Handbook for Lightning Strike Survivors

by Michele Young-Stone

  Excerpt from

  THE HANDBOOK FOR LIGHTNING STRIKE SURVIVORS

  When moisture is present, victims are visibly burned. Oftentimes, a strike will occur before it starts raining, in which case the current travels through the victim’s cardiovascular system. In these occurrences, there may be entry and exit wounds without severe burns.

  Because lightning seeks the path of least resistance, the worst place to seek shelter during a thunderstorm is under a tree. If you can’t find adequate shelter, like a house or car, crouch close to the ground, covering your head with your hands, allowing only your feet to touch the ground. You’re less likely to suffer a direct hit, and if the current spreads and travels through your body, it may be less devastating by entering through the feet.

  Farm animals tend to gather under trees to avoid the pelting rain. If the tree is struck, the animals fall like dominoes. I’ve never witnessed this event, but I’ve heard accounts from farmers. One man, Jackie Garlad, lost ten cows and three sheep from one strike.

  [8]

  Funk to funky, 1970

  A tiger-striped butterfly flew through the magistrate’s open window, alighting on the corner of his mahogany desk. Buckley watched the butterfly, her wings closed, throwing a dandelion hue on the leather desk pad. He watched her wings open and close again, and for the life of him, he didn’t hear his mother and the reverend say “I do.” He was their witness, but he’d missed it. He was eleven years old. It was August 1970. It’d taken the reverend three years to talk his mother into marriage. Buckley didn’t understand his mother’s decision. They’d been fine without Reverend John Whitehouse sharing their home, sharing his mother’s bed.

  After the marriage license was signed and dated, his new stepfather drove them to Shoney’s Big Boy on Route 54. Buckley ate a hot fudge sundae while the reverend took advantage of the “sweet buffet deal,” filling four scratched and sweaty plates.

  Buckley never remembered his mother being there. He wasn’t much of a witness.

  No one in middle school chased or hit Buckley. Coach Flanagan warned from the start that physical contact belonged in physical sports. “Energy expended outside practice is wasteful.” He also said many less practical things like, “When you boys grow into men, the girls will squeeze your balls in a vise.”

  No one hit Buckley and no one squeezed his balls.

  Between September and Christmas break, someone stole his gym shoes and science report, but no one cared. Then someone urinated in Buckley’s locker. Buckley imagined this someone laughing as he zipped his pants, pulling a can of spray paint from his back pocket and tagging the locker BASTARD. The incident was not easy for Mont Blanc middle to ignore, especially since Buckley now had a father—a reverend, no less. Principal Clark called Buckley to his office. “Was the locker locked? Do you have a lock? Did you lose your lock?” Principal Clark was frustrated by Buckley’s apathy.

  “It was my third lock this year,” Buckley said.

  “Do you know who’s pulling this nonsense?”

  “No, sir.”

  “Me either, and I wouldn’t particularly give a crap, except that it needs to stop, and it needs to stop today. The Women’s Auxiliary has already gotten word of this. It’s an embarrassment.”

  Buckley had no idea who disliked him so much that they’d go to this trouble. No one knew him well enough to hate him.

  Janitor Jackson, like Buckley, stood before the principal. Principal Clark continued: “This kind of vandalism won’t be tolerated. I’ve told J.J. here to clean up the urine and to let the librarian know if any of your books need replacing. If J.J. can’t read the titles, he’s to ask you or the nurse to write them down.” Buckley rolled his eyes. He knew that Janitor Jackson was a smart man. He’d fought in World War II. He’d been a reporter for a black newspaper somewhere up north. According to Janitor Jackson, he’d fallen on hard times. It was “women and drink.” He told Buckley, “Show me a good-looking woman and I’ll show you a heap of sad men. There’s a big difference between a good woman and a good-looking one. I seem to prefer the latter.” Buckley knew Janitor Jackson fairly well, as Buckley had a tendency to hide in the bathrooms that J.J. cleaned between classes.

  After school, Buckley preferred helping Janitor Jackson lug trash to the dumpsters to going home to Reverend Whitehouse, who was always picking at him: “Do you think you’re smarter than me? You’ll never be smarter than me, boy.” Hell, his stepfather hated Buckley more than anyone. Maybe Reverend Whitehouse had pissed in his locker.

  Principal Clark continued: “When the piss is gone, J.J. is gonna scrub bastard off the locker. If it won’t come off, he’ll paint the locker brown. We’re out of yellow paint.”

  Buckley and Janitor Jackson stood side by side. Principal Clark said, “What’s the problem, Buckley? What do you expect me to do?”

  Buckley didn’t answer.

  Principal Clark looked at Janitor Jackson and back at Buckley. “Don’t worry, son: J.J.’s used to cleaning up piss. He’s good at what he does.”

  Buckley didn’t like Principal Clark. It was no secret that he was in the Ku Klux Klan, annually parading, his white hood starched, down Main Street. Some educated people, Buckley had come to understand, were still ignorant.

  By the sixth grade, Buckley was trying to survive—nothing more. With the reverend living in his house, sleeping with his mother, Buckley understood that Reginald Jackson, just like him, was trying to survive. There were those who endured and those who thrived. He and Janitor Jackson would probably never thrive. Some men are born to eke by, and Buckley, having no interest in good-looking women or whiskey, had no one and nothing to blame for his predicament.

  Class was in session. Buckley, a foot shorter than Janitor Jackson, stood outside his locker. Janitor Jackson plunged his mop into a rolling bucket of gray water. Buckley said, “I can clean up my own piss.”

  “Suit yourself.”

  Fortunately, finding solace in cleanliness and organization, Buckley kept things tidy. His books were neatly arranged on the top shelf, unmarred by the urine, nearly dry, that formed a yellow ring in the bottom of his locker.

  Buckley handed one of the textbooks, The Earth and You, to Janitor Jackson. “Sorry,” Buckley said, “that you can’t read the important works of this century.”

  Janitor Jackson said, “Maybe I should take this to Miss Beverly in the infirmary and ask her what it says.”

  Buckley laughed. “I think you ought to.”

  “It’s a shame us black folks can’t read good. It’s why we is always using the whites-only bathrooms and water fountains. You can’t blame us for being dumb.”

  “Of course not.”

  Buckley dunked the mop into the gray water.

  “I’ll spray some bleach in there later,” Janitor Jackson said, “and I’ll get you a new lock—one that James Bond couldn’t bust.”

  When the bell rang, the hall filled with onlookers, girls and boys snickering, concealing their smiles behind books such as Mathematics Today and Grammar for Girls. Ignoring the jeers, Buckley asked Janitor Jackson, “Anybody ever piss in your locker?”

  “We didn’t have lockers where I went to school. All we had were desks.”

  “And I bet you walked ten miles to school in the snow.”

  Janitor Jackson said, “I like you.” He took the mop from Buckley. “Clark is an idiot, but I am good at my job. Don’t attempt to get rid of the spray paint. It’s not going anywhere. I’ve got a can of yellow paint stashed in the closet. I’ll take care of it.” As the hallway emptied, students rushing to their respective classes, Buckley felt fortunate to know Janitor Jackson. It was rare that he got to know someone.

  Buckley said, “Are the women and the drink still hounding you?”

  Janitor Jackson laughed. “We need more boys like you, boys who listen. And as a matter of fact, those good-looking women won’t ever let me be. Day and night they hound me—a curse and a blessing. How can I live without them?”

 
“Wisely.”

  “Your father’s done a good job raising you.”

  “You can read, Mr. Jackson. It says ‘bastard.’ It’s no lie. I don’t have a father.”

  When he got home from school, the reverend said, “You need to wise up and stop being a pantywaist.”

  His mother, looking heavy and sad in her recliner, beckoned, “Come here.” Buckley was almost as tall as she was now. He leaned down. She pressed his head against her shoulder. Gangly and disheveled with unmanageable hair, he was uncomfortable in his own skin.

  She said, “How was school today?”

  The reverend said to Abigail, “Don’t baby the boy.”

  Winter smiled. Her thoughts exactly.

  Abigail said to Buckley, “Tell me what happened.”

  “Nothing.” He pulled away.

  “We need to talk about it.”

  The reverend added, “And we’re going to talk about it.”

  Buckley walked toward his bedroom, hearing the reverend’s boots at his heels. Tired of running, he waited for the reverend to take him from behind—which he did, being a reliable sort—grabbing Buckley’s T-shirt and pinning his head against the cream-colored cinder blocks. “What’s the matter with you?” the reverend demanded.

  “Everything.” Buckley’s head hurt. He’d been through enough today. When he was older and taller, he’d hold the reverend’s head with his feeble brain against this block and see how he liked it. Or would he? Men like the reverend aren’t pinned. They don’t eke by or survive. They thrive. The reverend had wanted Abigail and he got her. The reverend had wanted to rule Buckley and that’s what he was doing. Buckley said, “I’m worthless.”

  The reverend said, “Pray through the night. When I come in your room at two o’clock, I want to see you on your knees; three o’clock, prostrate before our Lord; four o’clock, praying to Jesus for strength.” The reverend stepped back. Buckley heard his mother breathing. She’d risen, but only in time to see the reverend’s retreat.

  This same year, Buckley’s mom got a job at Roger’s Gourmet Pork ’n’ Beans.

  On her first official day, Tarry Quince, a coworker, showed Abigail where their boss’s office was located. She said, “The best thing about the man is we don’t never see his ugly face.” Mr. Peebles had hired Abigail. He’d seemed like a nice man, but it made no difference. She needed the money. “Drop your time card here on Friday,” Tarry instructed.

  Downstairs, Tarry pointed to the women on the steel ladders, working the vats. The vats seemed larger today than last Tuesday when Mr. Peebles had asked, “When can you start?” Tarry shouted over the noisy compressors and vacuum sealers, “Sheila, Laurie, Katrina, and Tracie.” Sheila and Katrina noticed Tarry and Abigail over the rumble of the machines and waved, and one woman, Sandy Burkhaulter, who worked at the end of the line, climbed down. She wiped one hand on her tomato-and-bean-spotted smock before taking off her glove. She mouthed the phrase good to meet you and extended her hand to Abigail, who felt so overwhelmed, she left Sandy’s hand where it was. Sandy climbed back up the silver ladder to her vat.

  Abigail was hired to work the line inspecting cans of Roger’s Gourmet Pork ’n’ Beans, an Arkansas favorite, and according to Mr. Peebles, a soon-to-be national favorite. “We’re going to put Hormel out of business.”

  Standing at the conveyor belt, Abigail wore a clean but orange-stained smock and a hairnet, as did the other two women who worked the line alongside her. The three inspectors were to ensure that cans of Roger’s Gourmet Pork ’n’ Beans were filled to the third line (counting down from the top of the can, Mr. Peebles explained, as if she were an idiot), no more and no less, before they entered the sealer. “It’s the most important job,” Mr. Peebles had stressed. “Imagine: You’re about to feed your family dinner. You open up the can and there’s a white sticky mold because there was too much air in the can. It’s about consistency and quality. You work quality control.”

  In the last year, Abigail had lost one hundred and twenty pounds. One year married, she was miserable. She wore long-sleeved shirts and long pants despite the Arkansas heat to hide her sagging skin, and she was determined more than ever to save enough money to leave John Whitehouse and her mother, Winter Pitank, behind. She was going to take Buckley and move away from Mont Blanc, Arkansas. She wanted to see the ocean.

  When her mother asked her why she wouldn’t eat, why she’d lost so much weight so quickly—“Are you sick? Do you have a tapeworm?”—Abigail didn’t have the courage to tell her that it was John, that she had made a huge mistake—that watching him hoard tuna-noodle casserole, the noodles sopping and dripping down his chin, had made her nauseated. It just happened one day: She sat across from him at the kitchen table, and she lost her appetite. She looked down at her own plate of casserole, the noodles like fat white worms, and felt sick.

  Working the inspection line at Roger’s, there was a lot of time to think about the mistakes she’d made, what she might have done differently. The past, like the slop she inspected, sped by, can after can and memory after memory, making her wonder if forgetfulness wasn’t a blessing. She remembered her wedding night, John saying, “Tell me you like it. Tell me you like it,” and she whispered back, “I like it,” wishing the mattress springs wouldn’t creak so. He said, “I know your fat ass does. I know it.” Later, he said he’d been in the throes. He hadn’t meant nothing hateful by what he said. She hadn’t always had a fat ass, as John would say. She’d been slim before Buckley. Before Richard, Buckley’s biological father, went away to the University of Florida to play football and study medicine.

  Buckley R. Pitank is Buckley Richard Pitank.

  Watching the cans rush past, she thought, John is not a bad man, not as far as I can tell, and I can stomach him on top of me, inside me, calling me “fat ass” and “big girl” in the bed, and he treats Buckley like a son. But therein lay the problem: That first week after they married, John taught Buckley to shoot. He taught Buckley to drive his truck and to lay brick and to hang drywall. He told him that Job had betrayed God, that he got what he deserved. John had even thrown a football with Buckley in the Holy Redeemer churchyard. The churchgoers were watching the stepfather and son, and John was encouraging Buckley, saying, “You got a good arm, Buck.” When Buckley fumbled and dropped the ball, John said, “The boy’s hands are greasy from the chicken.” John’s face had turned red. Buckley had embarrassed him, and John carried the football away, tossing it in his truck.

  Shifting her weight from left to right, her back hurting, Abigail remembered her mother’s face, pleased as punch, when Abigail told her that she was marrying the reverend. She would finally be somewhat respectable, a little less white trash. But now Abigail didn’t want the husband. She never had wanted him, but now she didn’t want the father for her son either. She had married John for Buckley and because John had proposed. He liked her cooking. He liked her fat ass, and he was quickly turning her only son into a young man doomed to lay bricks, hang drywall, shoot guns, drive pickup trucks, and probably pick up whores and gamble. She didn’t know where it would lead, but shooting and whoring was not what she’d intended for her only son. She wanted him to go to college and read books and be a professional. She knew what John was about, and it wasn’t about God. It was about scheming and living lazy. Despite all his promises, they still lived in Winter’s pea green cinder-block house, and John’s congregation was fewer than thirty. She had hoped John might just up and leave, but he licked his fingers at the dinner table, put his boots on the furniture, and smacked her on the behind in front of Buckley and Winter. He wasn’t leaving any time soon.

  The conveyor belt jerked and stopped. Pork ’n’ beans slopped the belt and Abigail’s smock. “Wake up,” said Linda, who worked the line, and who for some reason didn’t like Abigail. “I’ll get Horace. Clean that up.” Abigail tossed the nine slopped cans and wiped the belt with her rag. She wiped the sauce from her cheek with the back of her hand. Samantha, the other inspector,
said, “I’ll be back.” She was going for a smoke.

  Abigail’s own daddy had taught her that a man or woman doesn’t have anything if they don’t have their word. If you can’t keep your word, you can’t keep nothing. And she had certainly kept her word. Maybe that was a mistake. The line started moving again, and she was alone at the conveyor belt. Samantha took long smoke breaks, and Linda was always looking for an excuse to leave the line. Abigail knew from experience that Linda wouldn’t be back for at least twenty minutes. The balls of Abigail’s feet ached. She wished she smoked or had some reason to leave the line, but she couldn’t go anywhere with those two gone. It was two o’clock. She had three more hours to go. Mr. Peebles had reminded her this morning, “No break this afternoon. I let you leave early yesterday.”

  “My son was sick. It was a half hour.”

  He hadn’t answered.

  It was a mindless job and so her mind wandered. She thought on Richard and the promise she’d kept, not even telling her own mother his name. When Richard had said, “You tricked me. My daddy’s right about you. You’re a whore,” she had said, “I would never trick you. Never. I love you. I won’t ever tell anybody this is your baby if you don’t want me to.”

  “How do I know it is?” He was handsome, with a golden crew cut. At his hairline, he had fine tufts of hair like a baby’s first hairs, and he had the shiniest green eyes. In one more year he was leaving for the University of Florida to play football. She remembered him saying something like I should’ve known you’d try something like this. In another year, I’m getting out of here. Nothing you can say will change that. That’s what she remembered, and she’d thought then, at three months pregnant, that despite what he said, he wouldn’t really leave. That if he did leave, his conscience would bring him back. He would want to know his child.