The Cure for Death by Lightning (13 page)

“What does he care what Bertha says?”

Dan shrugged. “Why don’t you go get yourself one of those factory jobs,” he said. “Government’s begging for girls.”

I took aim again, fired, and missed. The fool hen only ducked her head, then sat up again.

“Can’t even hit a fool hen,” he said.

“Shut up.” I tossed him the gun. He grinned at me, took aim, fired, and also missed. He swore and spit on the ground.

“Well,” he said. “We don’t need no fool hen. We got fish.”

When we got back to the house it was early evening and my mother was out in the garden. “You went fishing!” she said.

I looked at my brother. “We went up to Mystic Lake,” he said.

My mother touched my arm, pulling a spark that snapped us both. “Shock! Your arm feels like fire.”

I laid my hand on my arm where she’d touched me, at the crook of my arm. I shrugged. She tentatively put her hand to me again, and when she felt no shock, she gave my arm a squeeze.

“Storm again tonight,” she said. “You can feel the lightning in the air. Look!”

She ran her hand an inch above my brother’s head. Fine strands of hair reached up to touch her hand. I put my hand above Dan’s head and watched the hairs jump up to meet my hand. They crackled. I laughed.

“Time to get those cows down,” said my mother. “Wear a coat. You’re going to get rained on.”

I went inside and threw on my brother’s old tin coat — logger’s gear that went so stiff when it was wet and cold that it stood up by itself — and took down my .22 from the gun rack. I cut through the fields of flax, corn, and alfalfa, which my father forbade me to do, and hiked up to the benchland. The sky above the bald spot had a greenish cast to it and thunderheads were growing. The air smelled of lightning, a smell that always got the cows dancing. I watched the storm as I followed the sound of the lead cow’s bell. When I reached the cows, they spread off in all directions, kicking up their heels as if they were heifers, and attempting to mount the cows in heat as they ran. They were senseless, possessed. I started to turn back, to get help from Dan, and the storm seemed suddenly upon me. Lightning zigzagged across the sky and boomed immediately over my head. The hairs on my arms stood on end and my scalp tingled. The bell on the lead cow glowed blue. I looked to see that none of the cows had been struck, and lightning hit
again, in the space of pasture between myself and the cows. In the fraction of a second that stretched on as if it were hours, the lightning rolled towards me in a series of loops, pinkish and sparked bluish white, like a snake all knotted up, evolving and transforming as I watched, straightening itself out and coming right for me, as if meant for me. Some of its power must have been discharged into the ground, because when it hit I didn’t go black. I felt it, shooting through my right arm. Then it was gone. My arm was numb and tingling. I shook, my whole body shook.

I slapped my right arm as I ran home, trying to awaken it, comforting myself with the myth that lightning never hits twice. My whole body vibrated like a train. When I reached home, my brother was on the back steps cleaning fish. He sat on the dry steps, but the rain dribbled off the porch roof onto his boots.

“I can’t get the cows home,” I said. “They’ve gone stupid. The storm’s making them crazy. I think I got hit by lightning. It came at me on the ground and hit me. My arm’s gone numb.”

“Yeah? You’d be dead if you got hit. I never heard anybody tell how they got hit by lightning.”

“Cows get hit all the time.”

“They’re dead too.”

“I got hit. Look, my arm’s gone on me. Look!”

I held out my shaking arm. I had no feeling in it, and I couldn’t make a fist.

“Yeah, yeah,” said my brother, without looking.

I plunked myself down beside him on the steps and started crying. Until then he hadn’t looked up from the fish; he hadn’t even looked at my arm when I told him to. But he looked at me now and grinned, and I realized the mess I looked: hair flat to my head and misery all over me, holding that lightning arm like a martyr.

“I’ll bring the cows home,” he said, and pushed the wet hair out of my eyes.

I stayed out in the rain a few minutes longer, dragging my arm and pulling the small carrots with my left hand, digging new potatoes, washing them under the pump before taking them into the house in a sling I created with my coattails. If you don’t grow your own, you don’t know what a new potato is. The first potatoes of the year, the tiny
white balls of perfection you can steal from the roots of a living plant with your fingers, no need for a shovel — now, that’s spring. They take no time at all to cook and you need no butter to wake up their taste. They are like nothing you buy now in a grocery store, and when you put them whole in your mouth, you know they’re something to celebrate.

I washed the new potatoes — there was no need to skin them — and snipped off the tops and scraped away the little whiskers on the tiny carrots. I coated the fish in flour and fried them in bacon fat and put the kettle on the fire for tea. My lightning arm came back to me slowly, tingling at first, then growing painful. But it stayed weak, making me clumsy. My grip gave out, and I slopped boiling water over my shoe, spread flour over my dress, dropped a cup on the floor.

My mother’s scrapbook was there as always, on the rocking chair; its red cover was the only bit of real color in the kitchen. Once the fish was frying, I reached for the scrapbook with my good arm, but as I did I heard my father’s heavy footsteps on the porch. I slipped back to the stove and kept my back to the kitchen door, turning the fish and feeling the hot tightness spreading up my neck and over my cheeks. My father sat on the bench, took off his boots, and dropped them on the floor with a bang that made me jump. He coughed.

“Where’s your mother?”

“I don’t know,” I said. “The barn, likely.”

He poured himself a cup of water, drank it, and poured another.

“Dan?” he said.

“Bringing in the cows.”

He finished off the last of the water in the jug and poured himself a cup of lukewarm coffee from the pot and drank that too.

“Go to your room,” he said.

“Dennis and Filthy Billy. They’ll be in soon.”

“They’re still out in the alfalfa field,” said my father. “They’ll be late. Go to your room.”

“I think I got hit by lightning,” I said. “It rolled at me across the field. Got my arm. I can’t hold anything. It hurts.”

“Go to your room,” he said.

“No,” I said to the fish.

“Go to your room!” he yelled, and threw his empty cup across the kitchen.

I walked through the parlor and into my room with the blood thundering into my head. My father followed and closed my bedroom window.

“Lay on the bed,” he said. “Pull up your dress.”

I did as I was told and stared up at the forget-me-nots painted on the headboard, willing myself into them. My father started towards the bed, but the screen door slapped shut and my father flinched. I yanked my dress down. Dan looked at my father through the parlor, looked at me on the bed and looked away. I heard him flip the fish in the pan, turn them onto a plate, and put them on the table.

“Cows walked themselves home,” said Dan. “Guess they got sick of the rain and followed you back.”

“Clean your hands for supper,” my father said to me. He sat in the parlor with his eyes closed until supper was ready.

Dan washed himself up and didn’t try to talk or catch my eye, and I was thankful for that. I kept my mind on serving dinner and avoided looking at my father. My mother came in from milking, washed, and changed her clothes. A little while later, as I set plates on the table, Billy and Dennis shuffled in, slapping their wet hats on their coats. I filled my father’s jug of water and served the men the bigger fish. My mother and I took the small ones. Dennis slid his hand along mine as I handed him his plate and he gave me a long look. When he saw me eating with my left hand, he asked, “You go hurt yourself?”

“Beth got hit by lightning,” said Dan.

Billy looked up at me, and at my arm. I pulled it off the table and cradled it in my lap.

“Rubbish,” said my father.

“She did!” He turned to me. “Tell them.”

I didn’t answer and, except for Billy’s whispered swearing, the room went quiet for a while.

“Where did you catch this fish?” asked my father.

“Mystic Lake,” said my brother.

My father pushed his plate away from him. “I won’t eat fish from that lake,” he said.

My brother immediately pushed his plate angrily across the table and stood up over my father. “My fish isn’t good enough for you, eh?”

My mother and I stiffened for the confrontation, but it didn’t come. My father took his pipe from his pocket and concentrated on lighting
it; my brother stood frozen in his provocation, staring at my father, his big jaw moving back and forth. The fish was a ball in my throat. I saw that I held my fork in midair, and lowered it to my plate. My mother moved her fork from side to side on the oilcloth. When I thought the room might explode, my father said, “There’s bodies in that lake.”

His voice punctured my brother’s anger, and my brother sank back into his chair.

“There was a ferry lost in ’twenty-one,” he said. “Twenty bodies went to the bottom of Mystic Lake. Storm came up out of nowhere, drowned them all. We went out with poles and nets, tried to drag the lake, but of course we found nothing. A week or so later a lightning storm brought up a corpse, that’s all. Found it floating in the middle of the lake the next day. For a long time after, the fish caught in that lake had rings and jewelry in their guts. Other things too, coins, buckles, buttons, anything shiny. Made me sick. I won’t eat fish out of that lake.”

Though I knew where the fish had really come from, I didn’t want it now either. It smelled of death and discord.

“I got a story,” said Dennis. “Jimmy George was down in Horse Meadows last week with my uncle, working on the fence near Jimmy’s place, when they come across this bear eating on one of Jimmy’s sheep. Neither of them got guns on them. The bear doesn’t take off. Just goes on eating the sheep. So Jimmy picks up a fence post and hits him over the head with it. The bear goes on eating and both Jimmy and my uncle hit him with fence posts. That bear didn’t stop eating on that sheep until they conked him out.”

“That’s the biggest load of rubbish I ever heard come out of your mouth,” said Dan. “And I heard lots.”

“It’s in the paper this week and everything.”

“Still rubbish.”

“We’re going to operate on that brindle tonight,” my father said.

My stomach knotted up to nothing. I’d named that brindled cow Gertrude. Gertrude hadn’t caught, that is, she hadn’t become pregnant, so she was no good as a milk cow. She’d be sold as beef. My father’s notion was to remove her ovaries so she’d gain weight, in the way a steer puts on fat much faster than an uncastrated bull. It was a foolish idea, and my father should have known it.

Filthy Billy and Dennis looked at each other.

“I pay you to work and you’ll work,” said my father.

“Not tonight,” said Dennis. “I put in a full day already. You got to pay me better if you want me to work nights.”

“Fine then, Billy will.”

Dennis looked over at Filthy Billy and Filthy Billy looked at his plate. “Nope,” said Dennis. “Granny’s right. You got to pay us better.”

My father stood up and flung his arms up. “Then get out. You won’t eat at my table.”

Dennis shrugged and stood up. He picked up his plate to take with him and tried to pass me a look, but I kept my head down. Filthy Billy played with his food for a moment, then grabbed a bread bun and ran out of the house so quick he upset his chair and it fell crashing to the floor. My father kicked the chair and sat heavily on his own. He rubbed his face, and looked over at my brother.

“Oh, no,” said Dan. “I told you I’m having no part of it. It’s a dumb idea.”

My father slammed his fist on the table. My mother and I both jumped. “You’ll do as I say!”

“Forget it,” said Dan.

My father stood up. “I’ll whip you good.”

“You don’t scare me,” said my brother. “You’re nothing.”

Dan grabbed the .22 from the wall rack and marched out the door. My mother and I sat frozen, our forks in the air. Finally my father sat again.

“Then you and the girl will help me tonight.”

“Oh, I don’t think so,” said my mother. “I have some things to catch up on. Beth has school in the morning.”

“You’ll do it! Christ, why doesn’t anybody listen to me around here?”

My mother poured my father coffee and set it down in front of him.

“We’ll do it now!” my father said.

He stood quickly, grabbed his jacket from the hook by the door, and went outside. My mother hurriedly put on her coat and she gathered up a bowl of water, some towels, the curved needles, and linen thread. I put a pair of my brother’s pants on under my skirt, lit the kerosene lantern, and followed my mother outside. My father had brought the
cow in from the pasture. Her head was held in a stanchion, and her legs were roped together and tied to posts, so if she struggled she would only bind herself tighter. My father pulled up the empty stumping powder box my mother sat on when she milked the cows, and my mother placed the bowl of water, the towels, needles, and thread on the box. My father took a whetstone and his jackknife from his pocket, and sharpened the knife. He told me to hold Gertrude’s head by her halter, and to hold the light up higher. My mother pushed her weight against the shoulder of the cow, and my father cut into the cow’s hide just before the hipbone; he made sawing motions, as if he were carving the Sunday roast, and the cow struggled violently against her ties and the weight of my mother. A jet of blood spurted up from the muscle at the incision. The cow bawled and kicked out but only managed to tie her legs tighter. My father rocked with the struggles of the cow and kept cutting into her until he’d made an incision about six inches long in the dip before the hipbone.

“There!” he said.

His face shone and he sweated in excitement. The cow bawled and bawled. I wanted to stroke her, to offer her some comfort, but I had to keep her head straight, as my father had instructed, and keep the lantern up.