Lucky Strike

by Bobbie Pyron

  “But I’ve got to see her,” he said.

  Miss Trundle gathered up the plates. “You’re in no shape to go over there, Nate. Besides, your grandfather’s there right now, probably praying with Reverend Beam. Not much else anybody can do.” She covered the skillet of corn bread with foil. “They say it could take a miracle for her to come out of that coma unscathed. But you never know…. I mean, look at that hurricane.”

  “What do you mean?” Nate asked.

  She turned to him. “Well, it was the strangest thing: It hit Paradise Beach head-on, just like they’d predicted. But then it just left. Hardly did any damage at all. Few trees down here and there, and your grandpa’s new truck is Lord knows where — probably Sopchoppy.” She shook her head in wonderment. “But not a single soul hurt. Except Gen.”

  The next morning, Nate felt a bit stronger. His body no longer felt hot all over, just kind of tingly. “I’ve got to get to Gen,” he said to the mockingbird and the magnolia tree and the singed photograph of his parents.

  His grandpa was just finishing off his third cup of coffee and a plate of Miss Trundle’s buttermilk corn bread.

  “Morning, boy. How you feeling?” he asked with worried eyes.

  “Good,” Nate said. “Better.”

  Grandpa plopped the blue sombrero on his head. “That’s good. I got to head down to the docks to help Big Jim with some repairs. His boat slip took the biggest hit. The rest of us were pretty darned lucky. We’re all pitching in to give him a hand.” He rubbed his hand over his stubbly face. “Funny how a hurricane can bring out the best in folks.”

  “Grandpa, how’s Gen? Did she wake up yet?”

  Grandpa sighed. “Not yet.”

  “Dang,” Nate said. “That’s not good, is it?”

  His grandpa shook his head, his eyes full of sorrow. “No, son, it isn’t. The doctors say every hour she stays in that coma, she’s less likely to come out of it.”

  Nate grasped the old man’s arm. “Grandpa, I just got to get over to the hospital to see her. Can’t you take me?”

  Grandpa smoothed the boy’s troubled hair away from his face. “I have to go down to the docks to help. We’ll go over there first thing tomorrow morning, okay?” Before Nate could answer, his grandpa gave him a pat on the shoulder and headed out.

  It surely was not okay. “I got to get to Gen now, not tomorrow,” Nate said to the toaster. “But how?”

  A half hour later, the answer knocked on the trailer door. It came in the form of a large boy with a smile as warm and sweet as a puppy.

  “Hey, Nate,” Chum Bailey said. In his arms he held the seagoing cat, Mr. Bowditch. “We thought you might like some company.”

  “Yeah, Sparky.”

  Nate looked from Chum to the cat and blinked.

  Chum stepped into the trailer. Ricky Sands followed in his wake.

  Nate’s mouth dropped open. Ricky Sands in his trailer, looking like he dropped by all the time, which he surely did not.

  Ricky smiled a crooked smile. “Better shut your mouth, Sparky, or a fly’ll get in.”

  “But what are you doing here?” Nate asked. “Why aren’t you in school?”

  “They cancelled school this week,” Ricky said. “I had to come see for myself what a person who’s been struck by lightning twice looks like.”

  “I wonder what the odds of that are? We should ask Gen,” Chum said.

  Nate said all in a rush, “Yeah, but she’s all the way over at the hospital in Panama City and she’s in a coma and she won’t wake up and the doctors say if she doesn’t wake up soon she probably never will and I don’t have any way of getting over there and I have to try to wake her up.” He slumped down onto the couch like a deflated balloon.

  Ricky held up a shiny silver key and smiled. “Then let’s go.”

  Nate sat in between Ricky Sands and Chum Bailey on the fine leather seats of a slightly used pickup truck, Mr. Bowditch purring in his lap.

  “Um, you got a driver’s license, Ricky?” he asked as they crossed the bridge to Apalachicola.

  Ricky shrugged. “Nah, I’m too young to have a driver’s license. I know how to drive, though. My grandpa taught me how to drive his boat when I was nine, and I’ve been driving cars around my dad’s dealership for almost that long.” He leaned forward and peered through the windshield. “Course, I’ve never driven this far before.”

  Chum rubbed Mr. Bowditch on the top of his head, just where he liked it. “When my mama finds out about me being in on this, she’ll most likely skin me alive.”

  “I don’t want you to get skinned alive — either of you,” Nate said.

  “I don’t care,” Chum said. “You and Gen are my best friends.” Still, he ducked down out of sight as they drove past the Piggly Wiggly where his mother worked.

  “Chum, how did you know I was out looking for Gen that night?” Nate asked.

  “Ricky,” he said, sitting back up. “He came and got me after he talked to you outside. Then I noticed Gen wasn’t there.”

  Nate nodded. “But how did you know to find us at the beach?”

  “The mayor,” Chum simply said.

  Nate watched the signs for Port Saint Joe, Beacon Hill, and Mexico Beach come and go. He had no idea what they’d do once they got to the hospital. How would he know what room she was in? And would her parents let him see her? Oh, they could be in for a whole boatload of trouble, he knew. He broke out into a cold sweat.

  An hour after leaving Paradise Beach, Ricky whipped the truck into a parking space at the Panama City Hospital. He grinned at Nate and Chum. “We made it!” High fives all around.

  “You go on in. We’ll be right behind you.”

  It was then Nate noticed Ricky’s knuckles were white as the sand. He touched Ricky’s arm. “You did real good, Ricky. Your daddy would be proud of how well you drove.”

  The bright fluorescent lights and antiseptic smell of the hospital brought back a storm of memories — not good memories — to Nate. His lightning scars burned. His head throbbed. Right at that very moment, he wanted nothing more than to walk back outside and go home. But Gen was somewhere here in this place, and he meant to find her.

  Nate gathered up twice-struck courage, squared his hunched shoulders, and walked up to the nurses’ station. A woman with little glasses perched on the end of her long nose looked up as he cleared his throat. “I’m here to see a patient,” Nate said with all the authority he could muster.

  The nurse surveyed him through narrowed eyes. “You are, huh? And who might that patient be?”

  “Gen. I mean, Genesis Beam. I believe she was brought in three days ago.”

  The woman tapped the keys on her computer. “Beam, Beam …” she muttered under her breath.

  Nate drummed his fingers on the desk. He wondered just how many Genesis Beams there could be in the computer. Especially ones struck by lightning.

  “Genesis Beam,” the nurse declared, as if she had just made up the whole notion of a Genesis Beam. “Right here. The kid struck by lightning, poor thing.”

  “Yes ma’am,” he agreed. “I’m here to see her, I just don’t know what room she’s in.”

  The nurse looked at Nate, then to the left and right of him and behind him. “Where are your parents? Minors aren’t allowed to visit patients without an adult.” She crossed her arms over her chest with finality.

  Nate licked his lips. “Well, um, my parents are already up there visiting. I just don’t know the room number.” He tried to get a peek at the computer screen.

  “If your parents are already up there, how did you get here?”

  Nate gulped. This was not going well. Not well at all. “Well, you see, I —”

  Just then, Chum Bailey and Ricky Sands jogged into the hospital. “Sorry we took so long, Nate,” Ricky said.

  The nurse narrowed her eyes to slits. “And who might you be?”

  Ricky stood as tall as his five-foot-two inch frame would carry him, leaned in confidently to the nurse
behind the desk, and said, “I’m Ricky Sands. My dad owns Crystal Sands New and Used Cars in Paradise Beach. I’m sure you’ve heard of it.”

  The nurse frowned and shot a look at Chum. “And you?”

  Chum smiled. “I’m Charles Bailey, ma’am, and this here’s Mr. Bowditch.” At the sound of his name, the cat’s head popped out of the top of the big boy’s shirt.

  The nurse’s eyes widened. “Is that a cat?” she asked in a way that led the boys to believe she might be none too fond of cats.

  Chum looked down at the small, furry head and paws sticking out the top of his shirt. He frowned. “Why, yes ma’am, that’s just what Mr. Bowditch is.” Mr. Bowditch twitched his pink little nose and whiskers.

  “Young man, animals are expressly forbidden in the hospital.” She pointed her finger at the sliding glass doors. “You must take it out this instant.”

  Chum’s frown deepened. “Ma’am, Mr. Bowditch is a him, not an it. And —”

  The nurse stood, her face a fury, her fists balled on her hips. “I don’t care what it is, take that cat —”

  Clearly, the nurse had forgotten all about Nate. He peered around the computer screen. He could just make out 317.

  The nurse turned back to Nate and was just about to tell him she’d had enough of all this nonsense when Mr. Bowditch decided he’d had quite enough of the all-too-warm confines of Chum’s shirt. With one graceful leap, he pushed himself out of the boy’s shirt and leapt onto the desk.

  The nurse gasped. “Get that cat off my desk!” She flapped her hands at Mr. Bowditch. “Shoo! Shoo! Get away from here!”

  Office doors flew open. Heads popped out of cubicles to see what all the ruckus was about.

  “Go Nate!” Ricky hissed.

  Under the cover of chaos, Nate dashed to the elevator and slid in. As the elevator doors closed, he heard Chum calling, “Come back, Mr. Bowditch! Come back!”

  He looked at all the different buttons. On a hunch, he punched the button for the third floor and prayed, once he got there, he’d be able to find her room.

  He stepped out onto the third floor. The nurse sitting behind the desk was on the phone. “There’s a what loose downstairs?” he heard her ask.

  He trotted down the hallway looking for room 317. Three-one-one, three-one-three. Three-one-four, three-one-five.

  And then he saw it: room 317. He pushed the door open.

  The sight that greeted him was this: The room was dark, the shades pulled. A monitor with lots of lights and bright lines and beeps lit one corner of the room. A small figure lay still as still could be beneath the crisp hospital bedsheets. And beside that figure, sitting hunched over in a chair, hunched from the weight of grief with his head in his hands, was Reverend Beam.

  Nate eased the door closed and walked over to the grieving man. He touched his shoulder. “Hey,” he whispered.

  The reverend looked up, his eyes wide and wet.

  If Nate hadn’t known this was Reverend Beam, he’d never have recognized him. This face looking up at him was not the face of the man he knew. This face was not the shining beacon of hope and light and absolute certainty he counted on. This was not the face full of humor and kindness he loved almost as well as he loved the seaworn face of his grandfather. This was the face of a man utterly broken.

  “Nate,” the reverend said. “You’re here?”

  Nate tried to smile, but the muscles in his face didn’t cooperate. “Yes sir, I’m here.” He squeezed the man’s shoulder.

  The reverend blinked like he’d just woken up. He ran his hand across his face and looked around the room. “It’s a nice room. Folks have been very kind,” he said, nodding.

  “Yes sir,” Nate said. “Where’s Mrs. Beam?”

  The reverend looked around the room as if wondering that himself. Then he said, “Ah, she went down to the cafeteria to see if they had liverwurst on rye. She thought maybe if Gen smelled her favorite food, she’d wake up and …” His face crumbled.

  “I’m here now, sir. Why don’t you take a little break — go get some coffee or something?”

  The reverend stood, a tiny light flickering in his eyes. “I’ll go find Mrs. Beam. Would it be okay with you if I left for just a minute?” He reached down and touched his daughter’s cheek. “I’ll be right back, I promise.”

  The door whispered closed. The monitor beeped.

  For the first time, Nate took a good look at Gen. Without her glasses, her face looked so very small and vulnerable. Spiderlike burns sprawled across her jaw. Her right arm and hand were wrapped in bandages.

  But the thing that almost brought Nate to his knees was her missing eyebrows. They were completely and utterly gone. The eyebrows Mrs. Beam had worked so hard to preserve from Gen’s worrying had been vaporized by the lightning.

  “Oh, Gen,” he said.

  He sat in the chair next to his very best friend. He told her all he could remember of that night — how the lightning had struck just as he’d grabbed her hand and how the force of it had thrown him a good six feet away. How the mayor had found him there on the beach and brought him back to the world. How he’d tried his very best to do CPR on Gen just like she’d done on him.

  Nate told Gen how he’d woken up in his own bed the next day, purely and totally amazed to still be alive. And how miraculous he’d thought it was — a true miracle — that it was the framed photograph of his long-dead parents that’d saved him.

  “I figured I was the luckiest boy in the whole world,” he said. “Until Grandpa told me you were in the hospital and wouldn’t wake up.”

  He took a deep, watery breath. “I knew I had to get over here to try to fix you like I fixed the Bay Leaf and Grandpa’s truck.” He wiped at his nose. “Well, maybe I did. Or maybe it was all coincidence like you always said.”

  The girl lay silent as the moon.

  Nate sighed. “So here I am, Gen, and I sure as heck hope that lightning didn’t take my luck away.” He took a deep breath, closed his eyes, and laid his hands on her good arm.

  Nothing.

  “Come on, Gen,” he pleaded, pressing harder.

  The only movement was the rising and falling of her chest.

  “Dang it,” Nate said in despair. He felt the burnt toast making its way up his throat. “I’ve run out of luck after all.”

  He gripped her bandaged hand in his scarred one and said into her ear, “I know exactly where you were, Genesis Magnolia Beam, and I know how wonderful it feels. I’m sorry I brought you back, but …” His voice cracked and then trailed off. “Maybe you’re still there and you don’t want to come back, but, Gen, I need you. And the turtles need you too. You’re our best friend.”

  One of the green ziggity lines on the monitor blipped and jumped.

  “I need the smartest girl in all of Franklin County to tell me how stupid it is to believe in luck. I need you to tell me what the odds are of a hurricane coming in the spring, and what the odds are of two people getting struck by lightning at the same time.”

  Silence.

  Nate pressed his face into his arm. “Come on, Gen. Come back. Weirdos and losers stick together through thick and through thin.”

  “Amen,” a smoky voice said.

  Nate’s eyes flew open. There, gazing back at him as if from some great height, were the eyes of his best friend, Genesis Beam.

  She smiled with just the tiniest corner of her mouth.

  “Hey, Gen,” he said with a grin that about split his face in two.

  “Hey, Nathaniel,” she said. The fingertips on her bandaged hand wiggled against his hand. Her fingers felt like little live coals.

  The door flew open. Reverend Beam dashed in, followed by Mrs. Beam. “I’m sorry it took so long, Nate. There was some crazy fool cat loose in the cafeteria and —”

  “Hey, Daddy,” Gen said.

  For the first time in the known history of heaven and earth, the good Reverend Beam was rendered completely speechless. Mrs. Beam dropped the plate of liverwurst on ry
e.

  “Dear, dear God,” Mrs. Beam whispered, pressing her hands to her mouth. “My baby’s awake.”

  Nate let go of Gen’s hand and stepped aside. Reverend and Mrs. Beam gathered their daughter in their arms and wept.

  And for the first time in all the many years Nate had known Genesis Beam, he saw tears flow from her eyes.

  Eyes unaccountably, and forever after, silver.

  Several nights later, Nate sat next to Gen’s bed at the Panama City Hospital. This time the ride over from Paradise Beach had been much less exciting, with his grandpa in old Alfred.

  Only he came along this time. Ricky’s father had grounded him until he was thirty, and Chum’s mama had, in fact, skinned him alive. Well, nearly.

  “Is it true you get to go home tomorrow?” Nate asked.

  “Yes,” she said with a smile. “I can’t wait.”

  He nodded, remembering how wonderful it was to get home to their little trailer and his own room, his own bed.

  “Of course, there won’t be any climbing on the roof to monitor my weather station, at least not for a while.” She nodded toward the wheelchair waiting in the corner.

  Nate flinched every time he looked at it. He really had been lucky he hadn’t been hit directly by lightning like she had.

  As if reading his mind, Gen said, “I only have to use it for a few weeks. It’s not that big a deal.” Changing the subject, she asked, “Any signs of the turtles?”

  He grinned. “Lots! They’re coming in like crazy now and laying eggs too.”

  She twisted and untwisted her blanket with her good hand. “And I’m not there to look after them. What’s going to happen to them, Nathaniel?”

  He smiled again and handed her the latest issue of the Paradise Beach Herald. The headline announced MIRACLE SAVES KIDS FROM LIGHTNING AND TOWN FROM HURRICANE!

  And just below that, he pointed to a smaller headline that read TOWN HONORS LOCAL LIGHTNING GIRL BY PROTECTING TURTLES.