The Handbook for Lightning Strike Survivors (4 page)

Mary folded her arms at her waist, studying the pictures. Becca’s toes were pointed, her hands in arabesque. She was a beautiful girl.

Mrs. Hogg opened the squeaking file cabinet. “My masseuse says it could be her aura. I don’t know that I believe in such mumbo jumbo.”

“I’m not paying for these.” Mary tossed the envelope on Mrs. Hogg’s desk and grabbed her keys.

“You’ve already paid for them, Mrs. Burke.”

Mary crammed the envelope in her purse.

Mrs. Hogg said, “At least the orange light kind of matches her hair.”

Mary drove home, the envelope in the passenger’s seat, remembering Becca’s assertion: “I was struck by lightning.” She remembered Rowan countering, “If you were struck by lightning, you’d be dead.” This disagreement had continued for weeks, with Rowan finally telling Becca, “Do not go around saying that you were hit by lightning or you’re going to end up on a couch with a funny head doctor asking you how many times a day you go to the bathroom.”

Mary tended to believe Becca’s lightning story. What reason did she have to lie? Rowan asserted, “Giving credence to a preposterous
story will only encourage further fabrication. Like you, she’ll want to be a victim.”

Mary reached into her purse, gripping the envelope. The strange light Wallace had photographed must be a result of the lightning strike. Maybe it was some sort of residual energy. Rowan would disagree. He’d say something like
You can take the girl (referring to Mary) out of Podunk, but you can’t take the Podunk out of the girl
. He’d laugh at Mary’s suggestion.

Driving home, she decided she’d keep the pictures in the bottom of her underwear drawer. Whenever Becca doubted herself, whether it was about the lightning or something else, she’d show them to her.
There’s something very special about you
, she’d say. There was no reason for Rowan to see these photographs.

The reverend leaned forward, his black boot on the sill of the Pitank’s front door. “Reverend John Whitehouse.” He shook Winter’s hand.

“Evening.”

Behind his grandmother, Buckley held an empty brown bowl cupped to his chest, a bent spoon protruding from his mouth.

“Good evening,” said Abigail. The three Pitanks squeezed in the front hall. “Can we help you? Buckley, take the spoon out of your mouth.”

Buckley bounced the spoon off his hip. “This is the reverend from that revival on Mrs. Catawall’s land.”

“Nice to meet you, Reverend.”

“Call me John.”

“Nice to meet you, John.”

“I’m Buckley’s grandmother, Winter Pitank.”

He took her right hand, cupping it between his own two. “Buckley was helping me out tonight, and I got to thinking I should pay y’all a visit and see personally if you wouldn’t be interested in joining us next Saturday. I hope I’m not calling too late. I saw the light on.” He gestured to nothing in particular. “The flock’s trying to build a church here in Mont Blanc. The tents get right drafty. I’m hoping the good Mrs. Catawall is going to donate a parcel of land. I told her that the Lord appreciates when those who can give, give generously.” He handed a postcard-sized
pamphlet to each woman that read,
The Holy Redeemer, a place where all are welcome regardless of denomination. Come and worshipp in the name of the Lord. Come All. Be Filled With the Spirit
.

“
Worship
’s misspelled,” Abigail said.

“Where?”

She held the pamphlet out for him to see.

“You’re right. Awful glad you caught that.” He laughed. “It looks to me like Buck’s got two sisters.”

“I don’t go in for that kind of talk, Reverend,” Winter said. “I’m an old woman.”

“I don’t lie.”

“You most certainly do.”

“All God’s children are beautiful.” He bowed his head, looking up, his eyes dark and piercing. “As you are eternally young to the Lord, you are the same to me.”

Winter said, “That’s a nice thought.”

Buckley feared the reverend was going to mention the two dollars he’d rightfully earned, but instead the man pulled three gold foiled chocolates from his coat pocket and held them in his palm. He bowed his head once more. “I’m sure I’ve seen you ladies at services before, but I certainly do hope to see you again Saturday with Buck.”

Winter said, “Thank you for the invitation, but we’re terribly busy.”

“No one’s too busy to know God.” He pointed to the candies in his palm. “It’s chocolate and toffee from Hershey, Pennsylvania, where I spent time spreading His word. It’s an indulgence of mine, this sweet tooth.”

Abigail and Winter took their toffees, but Buckley left his gold foiled candy in the reverend’s palm. Reverend Whitehouse slipped it back in his suit pocket. “It was a pleasure,” he said. Winter held the screen door open and the reverend descended the steps. “I’m sure you know already, but five o’clock on Saturday, and nine on Sunday.”

“Thank you,” Abigail said. She unwrapped the gold foil.

Winter said, “We’ll try.”

“Bye, Buck.”

“Bye, sir.”

The screen door clacked shut. “What’s wrong with you?” Winter said to Buckley. “That man offered you a candy. You say no thank you if you don’t want it. You don’t just leave it in his hand. You’re ungrateful.”

As the reverend drove away from the Pitanks’, Buckley set his empty bowl on the kitchen counter. He wasn’t hungry anymore. He was mad. He pulled one of his Sears and Roebuck cowboy boots off and flung it against a bottom kitchen cabinet. He threw the other one thumping against the cabinet and waited for his grandmother to shout at him. Instead, the metallic pipes shuddered and squeaked. She was already running water for her bath.

That same night, he asked his mother, “Why are there blind people and deaf people if there’s a god? Why would God do that to someone?”

His mother said, “I think
Perry Mason
is on.”

Buckley changed the TV station.

Abigail said, “If you read Job, it’s to test a person’s faith, but that’s Old Testament. I think more likely it’s to work miracles through people, to show what they can do in spite of their setbacks.” She clicked on her table lamp. “We’ve got a Bible, Buckley.” She pivoted in the recliner. “Somewhere.”

That night, Buckley found the King James Bible stacked under a pile of old phone books. He took the Bible to bed and read the book of Job, but he still didn’t understand. There was something very wrong with this god and with Job. This god was petty. This god wagered on a man’s life as if it didn’t matter. Buckley didn’t think the reverend’s and Job’s god was his god. He placed his two dollars in the Bible and slid the book under his bed.

The Pitanks did not go to the Holy Redeemer revival on Saturday or on Sunday, but in a month’s time the reverend came
back to them to tell them that work was under way to erect God’s own house.

Abigail, who had always been leery of preachers, instinctually thought to turn this preacher man away, but she had recently been to see Buckley’s teacher. At the teacher’s request, she had gone to the five-room clapboard school, where she could not sit down because the chairs were too small. She had heard her own heavy breathing trapped within the thin walls, the concrete floor, and the low ceiling.

The skinny Miss Johnson was holding detention. Two boys, both Buckley’s age, but neither of them resembling her pale, wide-hipped son, were washing Miss Johnson’s faded chalkboard. They dipped their foamy yellow sponges in a bucket of gray water as Miss Johnson, sitting in a student’s desk, insisted that a male influence was what Buckley needed. She said, “He needs a father figure. Plain and simple.” Abigail did not agree, but she didn’t speak up either. She would do what ever was necessary to help Buckley grow up to be a good man.
Teacher knows best
.

Of course, Miss Johnson had no children of her own and only one degree in home economics with a minor in art history from a rural women’s college in Mississippi. Abigail did not know that Miss Johnson had every intention of leaving teaching after she was married.

So, at his mother’s urging, Buckley helped the reverend pick up trash on Saturday nights and Sunday afternoons, and Abigail promised herself and Reverend Whitehouse that she would attend the Holy Redeemer services after the real church was finished, and thus, Abigail, Winter, and Buckley got to know the reverend.

Part of getting to know Reverend John Whitehouse was getting to know what he liked to eat, which included pork chops and buttered corn on the cob, fried chicken and macaroni and cheese, deviled eggs sprinkled with paprika, cornbread, biscuits with thick, heavily salted slabs of ham, Vienna sausages, iced oatmeal cookies, cherry Kool-Aid, white rolls, the number-five-dyed red sausages
you fish from a jar with your fingers, fried bologna, meat loaf made with six eggs and a half a bottle of ketchup, tuna fish sandwiches with Miracle Whip and relish, homemade apple pie, and green bean casserole made with Campbell’s cream of mushroom soup. He didn’t care for lettuce or fresh vegetables or any other kind of pie but apple.

The reverend slept, snoring, his right foot in spasm, on the Pitanks’ sofa after Sunday dinner. Buckley saw his bumpy zucchini nose growing bigger and bumpier with each Sunday meal. There had been four in a row now. The reverend’s right foot jerked and fell, jerked and fell on the arm of the sofa.

Becca’s mother, Mary, drummed her fingers on the table. She didn’t like fried chicken, so of course her mother, Edna Wickle, had fried chicken for dinner. Mary didn’t want to be here, but Edna had telephoned and said, “I’d like you to come home. I think if you talk to your sister, it’ll make a difference. Plus, I’m getting up there in years. I’d like to see my granddaughter.”

Mary’s younger sister, Claire, was depressed and fat.

Her father used to say, “You’re lucky, Mary. You have a nice figure. Not like Claire.” He somehow thought things between them were good and normal, while every day Mary imagined the horses trampling him, an accidental shooting, a tractor mishap.

There was a scar on her lower back—the imprint of his belt buckle.

“I think if you talk to Claire, she’ll listen. She admires you.”

He lost his head. He didn’t mean it
. That’s what her mother had said.

Now Edna wiped the countertop with a dishrag and opened the freezer. “Do you think Becca will want strawberry or vanilla?”

Mary brushed a few crumbs from the table into her palm.

“I’ve always liked strawberry,” Edna said.

“Are you even going to ask how I’m doing?”

“How are you?”

“Rowe’s in the garage most nights.” Mary tossed the crumbs in the trash.

“Becca’s not allergic to strawberry, is she? My aunt Lucille was allergic. It could run in the family. I hear a good many people have strawberry allergies. I can’t imagine.”

“You’re not listening.”

“No, Mary. I hear you. Your husband spends a lot of time in the garage.” Edna shut the freezer. “He likes cars, right? Fancy cars?”

“Right.”

“And I asked you: What do you think I should do about Claire? She’s my daughter who lives here with me, and she’s very sad.”

“I think Claire’s depressed because you let Dad treat us like dogs. She fell in love with that idiot Tom because he’s worthless like Dad was.”

Edna opened the freezer again. “I guess Becca could have strawberry
and
vanilla.”

“Mom!”

Edna thought that Mary’s confrontations were annoying. “And your husband spends his time in the garage because of your father? Why do you do this, Mary?”

“Because he was a bastard and you didn’t do anything.”

“Your father wasn’t perfect, but he never claimed to be. Is Rowan? Men aren’t angels, Mary. Strawberry or vanilla?” Edna set two half-gallons of ice cream on the table. “I don’t have chocolate. I can’t stand it. You ought to try talking to Claire in the morning. Be subtle, I think. She’s better-spirited in the morning.”

“Why didn’t you stop Dad?”

Edna put her hands on her hips and faced Mary. “I didn’t know you were coming home for this. Your father’s buried. You can’t blame him for
your
life. You’d think with all that schooling you’d know that.”

“Dad was a bastard. That’s what’s wrong with Claire.”

“How long has your father been dead? I haven’t seen you in four years!”

“Six!”

Edna put the vanilla and strawberry back in the freezer. “See that Becca gets some ice cream. I’m going to bed.” She was tired, and there wasn’t time for regret. Since her husband passed, her story had changed. She prayed every morning and played the organ at church. She believed that a kitchen should be the center of things, and kept busy canning and cooking for church dinners and invalids. She’d long ago left the bigger upstairs kitchen to the cobwebs.
It’s not functional
. She slept in a room adjoining the basement kitchen. There was hardly reason to go upstairs these days. Too many rooms to clean.

On his deathbed, fearing God, her husband, Clayton Wickle, had said, “I was tough on the girls because I wanted them to be tough. The world’s not an easy place.” He’d had good intentions. Still, he’d been wrong—the way he treated them was wrong. Flinging that stupid belt around. Bullying Mary. Neither of his daughters was tough. If anything, they were weak. Always desperate and pleading, the two of them. Poor Mary couldn’t let the past go. If only she understood how short life is.