The Truth About Love and Lightning

by Susan McBride

  When he began to speak, it was hardly the unintelligible babbling of most children his age. Sam parceled out his words, using them only when he had to, mainly when he needed assistance. “Cookies,” he would say to his mother and point to the green glass jar on the counter. Or, “Pencils, please,” when Lily had put them away in a drawer too high for him to reach.

  When Sam was four years old, he would often slip out of the house unnoticed, and Lily would go on a mad hunt for him, afraid he’d gotten into a pen with the pigs or fallen into the pond, chasing after the ducks.

  Soon she realized what he liked most to do was visit the walnut grove and sit beneath the trees. Sometimes he would fall asleep leaning against a trunk. When she found him curled up amidst the roots, she would gently shake him awake and ask, “What’re you doing out here, baby?”

  He’d say simply, “I was talking to them, Mama.”

  Lily would ask, “Who?”

  Sam would inevitably answer, “The birds,” or occasionally, “The trees.”

  “And do they ever talk back?” she would inquire.

  He would bob his dark head, his gray eyes so earnest. “Yes,” he would answer as Lily brushed dirt from his knees and bits of bark from his hair. “They tell me how happy they are that I’m here.”

  “They do?”

  “Yes, and they give me things.”

  “What things?” Lily had wondered. That was when she had learned about Sam’s secret hiding place. He had apparently been stashing his treasures in the burned-out hollow at the base of the walnut split by lightning years ago after Hank and Nadya had first moved to the farm.

  “See,” Sam said as he stuck his hand into the hollow, withdrawing the bright blue shell of a robin’s egg, a slightly battered but intact cardinal’s nest, and a large white feather that surely had come from a hawk or an eagle.

  Lily felt a catch in her throat as she held the feather. “Which of your friends gave you this?” she asked.

  “The wind,” he replied before he took it from her and tucked it away. “Sometimes it even whispers my name.”

  “I see.”

  Had Lily been any other woman—had she been raised by any father other than Hank Littlefoot—she might have merely believed her son had a fanciful mind and liked to tell tales. But Sam had no ordinary lineage. Maybe the gift Hank had mentioned in her vision was an ability to communicate with nature. Whatever it was, Lily wasn’t about to pooh-pooh it.

  “Do you ever notice, Mama,” he went on as she took his hand and led him toward the house, “that if you’re sad, the sky will turn gray?”

  “No,” Lily said, surprised that a boy of four could utter such a statement. “Does that happen to you?”

  “Sometimes,” he said solemnly, squishing up his face. “Like when Toad got run over by Daddy’s truck. I cried and cried and so did the sky.”

  Lily blinked, recalling the morning several weeks before when the big toad that lived in their front yard—and which Sam had adopted and named—had met his untimely demise. And, yes, Sam was right. It had rained that day. She had consoled her son with a Popsicle on the back porch, and as he’d sadly licked the icy treat, the sun had disappeared behind a bank of gray and a soft drizzle had fallen, strumming on the roof and plopping into puddles near the railing.

  He squeezed her hand, having noticed the frown on her face. “Don’t worry, Mama. The sun always comes back out when I find something else to be happy about,” he professed and let go of her to race toward the house, leaving Lily to stare after him, wondering just how much of his grandfather’s and great-great-grandfather’s blood he had flowing through his veins.

  Seventeen

  1960–1965

  The first time young Sam Winston laid eyes on Gretchen Brink was during Sunday school at the Presbyterian Church in Walnut Ridge on a sticky and overcast summer morning, though he had been made aware of her existence well before that. Her father, Dr. Brink, was the only farm veterinarian within a fifty-mile radius and came out to the Winstons’ place whenever they needed help delivering a calf or inspecting a sickly hen. Sam genuinely liked the doc, who always patted his head and acted amazed at how tall he was getting. He also knew that Gretchen had two blind baby sisters and that her mother was, according to gossip, “a sharp-tongued harpy.” Sam’s own mom would sometimes come home from town and mention to his dad that she’d bumped into “that awful Annika Brink. She’s so brusque with those poor little girls. How does her husband stand her?”

  Sometimes when Dr. Brink visited the farm, Sam tagged along so he could hold the vet’s black bag or, if he was lucky, watch him check a horse’s teeth or rub salve on a cracked hoof. “You remind me of my Gretchen,” the vet had told him one day. “She’s an observer, too, and quite compassionate.”

  Sam was older than Gretchen by a year, seven to her six. Though there were a dozen children in the Sunday school class that mixed first and second graders—four boys and eight girls—Sam spotted Gretchen right off the bat. She had the brightest blue eyes he’d ever seen and a riotous tangle of golden curls, but that wasn’t what made him pay attention.

  When she turned her smile upon him, even in passing, it was like bathing in the brightest light. And just the way she said, “Hello, how are you?” seemed less akin to lip service than actual kindness. She even inspired apparent politeness from the rowdiest boys in class, the ringmaster of them being a kid named Frank Tilby, whose dad was the town’s sheriff. While Frank unmercifully tugged the other girls’ pigtails and untied neat bows on the backs of their dresses, he curiously left Gretchen Brink alone.

  Sam wondered if it was Gretchen’s sweet demeanor that kept her untouched by the cadre of unruly boys, or if the other kids were just giving her a chance to blend in. Perhaps she’d get her pigtails tugged once the newness had worn off.

  On the first day that Gretchen appeared, their teacher, Mrs. Macabee, whom they all called Mrs. Mac, strolled into the church’s basement wearing the most hideous bird’s nest hat, causing the other kids to titter. Gretchen merely smiled angelically and offered up, “Why, that’s the prettiest hat I’ve ever seen.”

  Normally, Sam would have pegged such a remark as a lie but it wasn’t, not the way that Gretchen said it. He could tell that she meant the feeling behind the words, if not the words themselves. When Mrs. Mac beamed and said, “Why, thank you, sweetheart,” Gretchen looked as pleased as if she’d won a prize at the county fair.

  Sam usually avoided making friends. He liked being alone. But he was magnetically drawn to the soft-spoken girl with the magical smile. After several Sundays of observing her, he’d hoped to find a way to casually sit beside her. But Mrs. Macabee insisted on arranging them in half circles around the chair from which she read them Bible stories, and the boys never settled on the same side as the girls. Though he was hardly a chicken, Sam’s palms got clammy at the thought of being the only male seated somewhere between all those ruffles and bows.

  Sam did pick a wooden chair as far away from the other boys as he could. He didn’t like how they acted like clowns the moment the teacher left the room. They would gang up on each other, punching arms until one of them turned red-faced and teary-eyed and cried, “Uncle!”

  Though they rarely, if ever, picked on Sam. It was more like they avoided him altogether. He figured it was because he was taller by half a foot and unflinching. There wasn’t much that scared him, not loud noises like fireworks or thunder and lightning. Not even the snakes or spiders that made his usually composed mother shriek, “Cooper! Come get this thing out of here!” No one really talked to him unless they had to, and he didn’t worry about that.

  Sam actually liked listening to Mrs. Macabee when she read them the fantastical tales that sounded less like truth and more like fiction. It reminded him of the stories his mother shared before his bedtime, most of them involving animals, like wolves, eagles, and bears, many with human characteristics. But then, they were mystical spirits.

  When Mrs. Mac began describing t
he Garden of Eden, Sam closed his eyes, picturing Adam and Eve with the snake slithering down from the tree, whispering to Eve that she should eat the forbidden fruit.

  “Why didn’t the snake talk to Adam?” Sam asked when Mrs. Macabee paused for a breath, causing all the children but Gretchen to snicker.

  Mrs. Mac gazed at him slightly cross-eyed through her rhinestone-studded horn-rims. “Because it was Eve the devil wanted to tempt,” she explained, hands clasped above her ample bosom. “After all, she was the weaker sex, born of Adam’s rib.”

  “What if she was just hungry?” he suggested.

  Mrs. Macabee opened her mouth to respond, but Gretchen shot up out of her seat, making a statement of her own.

  “My mother says that men are the weak ones,” Gretchen announced with a shake of pale curls as the rest of the class grew hushed. “They don’t like hearing the truth, and they’re never satisfied with what they’ve got. You know the commandment that says, ‘Don’t want what your neighbor has’?” she asked, and Mrs. Macabee nodded, big hat bobbing like a boat caught in riptide. “Well, my mama says that men do it anyway, especially if the neighbor has a car that’s extra nice or a wife with very large bosoms—”

  “That’s quite enough, Gretchen,” Mrs. Macabee interrupted, and she waved a paper fan across her bright red face. “Your mother certainly has an interesting take on the Lord’s word.”

  “Her mom’s a crackpot,” one of the boys blurted out, the one called Bobby with red hair and freckles whose own mother always made him wear a bow tie.

  “Now, Bobby, that isn’t nice at all,” Mrs. Macabee said in a feeble attempt to shush him.

  “Well, the Bible says we shouldn’t lie, doesn’t it?” Bobby remarked with a smirk. “And everyone knows her mom’s a nut.”

  Gretchen Brink screwed up her face, rosebud mouth puckered like she’d sucked on a very tart lemon. For an instant, Sam imagined she was going to walk over to bow-tied Bobby and punch his lights out. Instead, she quietly sat back down and placed her hands in her lap, crossing her feet at the ankles.

  Sam was impressed. There weren’t too many folks he knew who could take their anger and switch it off like that. But he wasn’t surprised either. Just as he’d arrived at the church that morning, he’d witnessed her saving the life of a daddy longlegs from the ill-tempered Bobby, who’d decided to poke the creature with a stick. Gretchen had walked straight up to him, ordered him to “cut it out,” then had picked up the spider with her bare hands, taking it away a safe distance. If Sam had stood openmouthed, it was only because he’d never seen a girl touch a bug before, not in all his seven years.

  “Mrs. Mac, is there a commandment that says something about ‘Thou shall not be a fruitcake’?” Bobby asked, unwilling to let it go and obviously enjoying the cackles from his buddies.

  Still, Gretchen stared at her lap, saying nothing.

  But Sam wasn’t about to let it be.

  He rose to his feet and turned his steely gaze on Bobby. “You take that back,” he said. “You apologize to her or else.”

  “Or else what?” Bobby replied, and his comrades nudged him, egging him on until he stood up to Sam. His freckles seemed suddenly dark against pale skin though he raised his chin, clearly wanting to save face in front of his friends. “Are you going to scalp me?” he remarked, his voice starting off squeaky until the other boys’ laughter emboldened him. “I’m not afraid of you, Winston, not even if your grandfather really was an Indian medicine man.”

  Sam knew an ignorant remark when he heard it, and Bobby’s stupidity wasn’t worth the consequences of fighting in Sunday school, he told himself. But logic didn’t keep the anger from rising inside him, swirling in his chest and thundering in his brain. Within moments, the still air began to move, wind blustering through the opened windows and stirring up the coloring books on a nearby table, tearing the paper fan out of Mrs. Macabee’s hand.

  “Heavens to Betsy! I think a tornado’s brewing!” Mrs. Mac declared as her voice trembled and the wind tugged at her bird’s nest hat. But she pulled herself together to hop to her feet, clap her hands, and shout, “Children, hurry, get beneath the tables, hands clasped above your heads, just like during the drills!”

  The girls in the class squealed, scrambling from their chairs as their hair bows were tugged into disarray. Bobby stumbled backward into his seat, pinned there by an unseen hand, even as his friends leaped up and deserted him, diving under the nearest wooden table.

  “Take it back,” Sam said, holding his ground, even as Bible pages flapped and papers swirled about him. “Say you’re sorry for everything.”

  Bobby shouted, “Okay, okay, I’m sorry!”

  “Did you get that?” Sam asked Gretchen, who had come up beside him and tugged at his arm.

  “Yes, I heard,” she said. “Now, c’mon!”

  Sam took a deep breath, slowing down his pounding heart, giving in and allowing himself to be pulled to a spot beneath a desk where a handful of girls huddled. As his anger eased, the winds began to die down along with it, until the room was still again and the stifling heat resumed.

  “Is it over? Is it gone?” the children asked, one girl sniffling back sobs.

  “It seems so.” Mrs. Macabee crawled out from her hidey-hole, and the kids followed suit.

  Beyond the basement windows set high up in the walls, the sky appeared calm but overcast, much as it had looked when Sam and his dad had arrived at church a half hour earlier.

  The Sunday school teacher straightened her cockeyed hat and asked, “Is everyone all right?”

  After a chorus of, “Yes, Mrs. Macabee,” she nodded, remarking, “I do believe we’re safe now.”

  “I think we always were,” Gretchen whispered so that only Sam could hear.

  He blushed but said nothing.

  Gretchen smiled at him knowingly—as if they shared some deep, dark secret—then she dusted off her pink dress before joining Mrs. Macabee in righting the chairs that had toppled. Sam peeled his eyes off Gretchen long enough to assist the others in picking up papers from the floor. When the room seemed put together again, she beckoned Sam to take the empty seat beside hers.

  From the center of the circle, Mrs. Macabee cleared her throat and trilled, “Now, where were we? Ah, yes, Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden . . .”

  When Sunday school ended that day, Gretchen dashed out of the basement room before Sam could follow. Ignoring Bobby’s hissed “You’re a sideshow freak, Winston,” he headed outside to the usual spot to meet his dad at the bottom of the church steps.

  As it so happened, Cooper Winston was chatting with Dr. Brink. Sam appeared in time to overhear Gretchen’s dad remark, “If you wouldn’t mind, I’d like to bring her out to the farm one of these days. She needs to be around a woman like Lily, one who’s strong but sensitive. Anni can be so harsh sometimes.”

  “Hello,” Sam said as he shuffled down the steps, his hand on the slab of stone at the base of the railing.

  “Ah, good timing,” his dad said, gesturing him nearer so he could sling an arm about his shoulders. “What would you think of having a friend to play with now and then? Dr. Brink has a daughter who’d like to spend some time on the farm. You could show her the walnut grove and the barn and the pond.”

  Sam tried to act nonchalant. He shoved his hands in his trouser pockets, glancing up at the cloud-draped sky, fighting to contain his excitement. “Yes,” he said carefully. “I guess that would be all right.”

  Moments after, Gretchen emerged from around the stone building, her golden curls in their usual chaotic state, a smudge of dirt on her cheek and hands behind her back.

  At the sight of her, Sam’s heart swelled until it felt too big for his chest.

  “This is for you,” she said, approaching him, and pressed a large orange day lily into his hands. It looked like the ones that grew at the back of the church, and it still had a bit of its roots attached. “You didn’t have to stick up for me, you know, but I’m glad you di
d.” She smiled at him, and he tried his best to smile back.

  “I would do it again,” he murmured, holding the green stalk of the flower against his chest and feeling his cheeks heat.

  She cocked her head. “You know what?” she said. “I like you, Sammy. You’re different from everyone else, and, even better, you don’t seem to care that you are.”

  She likes me? Sam thought and his toes began to tingle, a warmth spreading upward to the rest of him.

  Then as had transpired so many times before when happiness overcame doubt or sadness within Sam’s head and heart, the sun began to wink through the clouds, melting them away until the heavens turned a blue as cheerful as a robin’s egg.

  “See you later, Sam,” Gretchen said, waving at him as her daddy took her hand and led her off to their car.

  “That’s my boy,” his dad leaned down to whisper, nudging him, and Sam suddenly felt a foot taller.

  He knew somehow that having Gretchen Brink in his life would change it forever. The boy who liked to be alone had made his first true friend.

  That next weekend, Dr. Brink brought Gretchen out to the farm, and then she came again with him several weekends after. It wasn’t long before he was dropping her off every Saturday morning even if he didn’t stay, which pleased Sam to no end.

  He could hardly sleep Friday nights, he was so bottled up with excitement at the prospect of spending hours and hours alone with Gretchen, collecting geodes and arrowheads from the creek that ran through the farm; catching frogs and butterflies just to view them up close and then letting them go again; climbing the walnut trees and seeing who could get the closest to the sky.

  “You are more than my friend,” she told him one day when they’d taken a break in the pasture, picking clover and making long strands of it, which Gretchen wrapped around her neck like they were pearls. “I have Trudy and Bennie, but they’re sisters. So I imagine this is exactly what having a brother should feel like.”

  Sam beamed as brilliantly as the sun overhead, secure in the notion that they were as close as family, and family meant forever, didn’t it? “Blood is thicker than water,” his mother had told him.