The Handbook for Lightning Strike Survivors (26 page)

He left his courses, the dull professors, the chipper cheerleaders, the jocks, the social workers, the psychiatrist, and his lightning experiments. He left poor Martin Merriwether still suffering amnesia.

He wrote to Joan Holt, who passed the news on to Paddy John, who was doing well with his own charter fishing business in Wanchese, North Carolina, and Paddy John sent Buckley five hundred dollars to get him started.

Paddy John wrote,

His first day in New York, Buckley got a job working as a dishwasher for an Italian restaurant, Damici’s. During the interview, Frank Damici, the owner, asked Buckley if he had family in New York. “No, sir,” Buckley said.

“What brings you here?”

Buckley shrugged. “Seemed as good a place as any.”

“Do you want to be an actor?” This was a question Buckley would repeatedly be asked.

“No, sir. I want to work. I want to wash dishes.”

“Where’s your family?”

“Galveston.”

“Why don’t you go there?”

“I’ve been there.”

Frank Damici could no more understand how a person could live in a city, or anywhere for that matter, without family than he could understand this crap with people not believing in God or Pope John Paul II’s infallibility, or these lesbo women’s-libbers moaning about their failing Equal Rights Amendment.

He had thirty-six grandchildren, all of whom crowded the
Damici restaurant at some point during the week. “Family is everything,” he said to Buckley, who once more shrugged.

Right away, Frank Damici suspected Buckley was some kind of atheist because he never mentioned church. Then he suspected Buckley was Baptist or Pentecostal because he said he was from Arkansas. Then he suspected Buckley was homosexual because he was never with a woman and he kept the kitchen immaculate. But Frank Damici knew that Buckley couldn’t be a Baptist or Pentecostal or any type of Christian and be a homosexual, so he figured Buckley was just strange. At least the boy was a hard worker.

Smelling of grease and garlic, Buckley was tired from a ten-hour shift washing dishes and working the grill. The sidewalk outside his walk-up on 172nd Street smelled like sweet-and-sour sauce.

He’d recently begun researching lightning at the midtown branch library, and he had an idea for an introductory section of his work-in-progress, The Handbook for Lightning Strike Survivors. It was a project Buckley initiated to match the aspirations of the waiters and waitresses, the would-be actors and actresses, he worked with at Damici’s. He was a writer. In 1981, he kept a spiral notebook scribbled with lightning victims’ stories and statistics.

He started the project after one of the prettier waitresses, Carol, asked Buckley, “Are you an actor or a singer?”

“Neither.”

“What do you do?”

“I wash dishes.”

“Be serious. Are you an artist?”

Buckley didn’t say anything. He thought of Clementine. Carol could be Clementine if Clementine had lived. Buckley dunked another plate in the soapy water.

Two weeks later, having not spoken to Carol since their initial conversation, he stopped her, her hands full, carrying a tray of
outgoing orders, and Buckley blurted, “I’m a writer. I’m writing a book about lightning.”

“I’m kind of busy right now, but good for you.”

Buckley could sense when people thought he was retarded. Carol probably thought that about him. In his head, he rehearsed,
I’m a writer. I’m writing a book about lightning strikes. About people who survive. It’ll be a handbook for them. Something easy to understand
.

Buckley, remembering his first weeks at Damici’s, dug for his keys. Carol didn’t work there anymore. She actually landed some off-Broadway role playing a woman named Purple. He’d been to see the show, leaving during intermission. It was a strange sort of performance piece lacking a story line.

Buckley carried a large ring of keys. Oftentimes he was in charge of locking up the restaurant and the walk-in freezer where Damici kept his meats. Flipping through the ring, Buckley came up with a line for his book:
When lightning strikes, treat the apparently dead first
. He’d always believed that his mother could’ve survived, if she hadn’t been directly struck, if she hadn’t fallen off the dock, if she hadn’t been burned. Too many
if
s. In Arkansas, Dr. Jack had said, “You said that her brain was showing.” Buckley remembered Dr. Jack pointing at him, his face stern. “There was nothing you could do. Nothing.” Buckley knew from research that others had survived. The majority of people struck
survived
, even after “appearing” dead, even after their hearts had stopped. He couldn’t save his mother, but maybe his book could save someone else. It was possible.
Treat the apparently dead first
.

Treat the apparently dead first. Write that down
.

Finding his key, he raced upstairs to his apartment. He felt fortunate that most of the other tenants were quiet, keeping to themselves. He unlocked his door, dropped his knapsack on the floor, and finding a grease-stained paper bag, wrote in red marker,
Treat the apparently dead first
. It was important. His book would be important.

Before Becca takes an Amtrak one way from Chapel Hill to Penn Station, by way of Greensboro, Charlottesville, and Washington, D.C., she writes a letter to Buckley Pitank.

It’s short, to the point. She doesn’t tell him that she once believed the lightning gave her special powers: the watch hands, the fireflies, the halos. She had a wild imagination as a child. Believing the dead walked the earth. Believing she saw Grandma Edna and Bo after they died. Believing she saved that fish.

The past is gone.

Her mother teaches poetry to old people now. Her father lives on Cedar Island. He takes photographs. The Yeatesville picture of her standing beside the watermelon truck is on display at the Belle Tara Gallery in downtown Chapel Hill. She doesn’t want to see it. It reminds her of that trip to the beach—when she still had hope. Her father’s photographs have been widely and
enthusiastically critiqued. He claims to only “dabble” in photography.
He’s a liar
.

It strikes Becca as strange that someone who seems heartless can take an emotionally compelling picture.

Her latest painting received an honorable mention at the Carrboro County Fair. No one cares.

Carrie no longer speaks to Becca.

The tone has changed. The colors are brighter. The windows are open. The curtains are red. The rain has ceased. The landscape altered.

Becca’s life is no longer a still life—a bowl of fruit, static and boring, making turkey and bologna sandwiches for her mother, spraying Pledge, rubbing at the furniture that won’t come clean, licking dust from her fingertips—but it’s a life, still.

Many of the train’s passengers disembark in Baltimore. Becca hopes to make friends at the School of Visual Arts. Her dad has arranged for a loft in the Village. Her possessions are already there. She’s excited. She’s sad. She’s leaving Whiskers behind. Mary said, “He’s not a city dog.”

“But he’s my dog.”

“He won’t be happy.”

Becca wants him to be happy.

She’s not happy.

There is a reason that Carrie no longer speaks to Becca. It has to do with lies. Becca is all too familiar not only with death but with liars. Her father lied. Kevin lied. Carrie’s boyfriend, Mike, lied.

Carrie was in Texas visiting her grandmother.

Becca telephoned Mike. She needed an ear.

They met on the lawn of Coker Arboretum just shy of midnight. “How can I get Kevin to like me again?”

“You can’t.” Mike yanked a patch of grass from the ground, dropping the blades on his jeans. “Plus, you can do a lot better than him. You’re so pretty.”

“I thought we were meant to be—you know, like with you and Carrie.”

Mike was blond, like Kevin, but with a wider nose and his face pocked with acne. He dropped a few blades of grass on Becca’s calf.

Mike said, “I like you.”

“I like you too. You make Carrie happy.”

“No, I
really
like you.” Mike leaned in, attempting to kiss Becca, the blades of grass on his jeans spilling to the dirt.

“What are you doing?”

He climbed on top of Becca.

“Stop it!” She pushed him off—which wasn’t easy.

“We could do it. Carrie won’t find out. What’s the harm?”

Becca ran from the arboretum.

That same night, Mike called Carrie in Texas: “Becca hit on me. I guess she’s so upset about this Kevin thing, she’ll try and do anybody.”

Carrie planned to marry Mike.

Carrie knew Becca’s history with and feelings about sex.

Becca and Carrie Drinkwater, best friends since third grade, no longer.

On her way to New York,
The Handbook for Lightning Strike Survivors
open on her lap, Becca reads that victims often suffer sleeplessness, listlessness, and pain in different regions, depending
on where the lightning entered the body. Becca thinks,
I have every one of these symptoms. Even my soul hurts
.

Before she left Chapel Hill, Buckley Pitank responded to Becca’s letter. She keeps the letter nearby, rereading it now:

Becca muses on “Do your part.” Buckley R. Pitank sounds like Smokey the Bear.

The loft is on the southwest corner of Washington Square Park. There are high ceilings and exposed brick. It’s more than she needs. The four windows that face the park are thick-paned, long, and full of light before noon. She takes morning classes and paints late into the night. She doesn’t know what she’s doing at four in the morning, her hands permanently stained, a palette of browns and reds slopped onto another layer of paint not fully dry, but she can’t stop. Before dawn, she remembers Grandma Edna asking, “Can I keep it? Can I keep the sketch?” It had meant so much to Becca. Going to the kitchen for coffee, she sees Grandma Edna leaning against the counter, those long freckled arms crossed, smiling at Becca. Becca rubs her eyes, and Grandma Edna is gone.

Paintings that aren’t good enough (and none of them is good enough) are mishandled and chucked into the unused pantry. She thinks the second-year professor Christopher Lord is talented and cute. Some of his paintings have been on display in the main hall. His eyes remind her of Kevin Richfield’s.

It took Buckley five years to write
The Handbook for Lightning Strike Survivors
. He did most of his research at the midtown library. He took the 6-train before and after work. When he forgot his legal pad, he jotted notes on Damici’s take-out menus, paper bags, anything at hand. He spent his days off reading NASA publications at the library. Arriving home late, he typed his notes on a Remington portable he bought secondhand in Chelsea.

Engrossed in research, Buckley quickly learned that NASA knew more about lightning than any person or organization, because the space program, from its inception, was plagued by lightning hazards. NASA needed their meteorologists to accurately forecast and predict strikes. During
Apollo 12
’s 1969 launch, lightning briefly knocked out vital electronics. Fortunately, the astronauts were able to regain control of their ship.

At Damici’s, Buckley talked about his research. He talked more than ever. The waitresses told him that his next book should be about something less technical. “Write a romance, or if you really like nonfiction, write about abortion. That’s really controversial. Or you could write about the Reagans’ astrologer. It’s good to know that even stiffs like those two believe in astrology.”