by Robert Elmer
He went to the boat where he’d tied it to an outcrop of logs a few feet offshore. He waded out and performed a quick search. No radio.
“Oh well,” he called back. “We wanted to be castaways, didn’t we?”
“Looks like we are, whether we wanted to be or not.”
The only signs of life Will could see were a couple lights in cabins on the other side of the lake and the dim outline of a small boat headed north along the western shore, miles distant. A soft chorus of goose music wafted across the water as their local flock of Canadas discussed the possibilities of heading south.
Will cleaned up their dinner dishes and then built their bed in a smooth spot of gravel next to the tent, just under a canopy of firs. With two double sleeping mattresses, his princess would be quite comfy.
“I feel like such an invalid,” Merit said. She still huddled under her sleeping bag, though the evening breeze had turned oddly warm. Maybe they would be able to sleep under the stars after all.
“Well, you are an invalid,” Will said, “but what are we supposed to do about it?”
They exchanged a look, trying to decide how funny life had a right to be at this point. And as it turned out, it didn’t matter. They laughed anyway. Later, they laughed at a pair of mallards that splashed down at the shore in front of them, investigating the likelihood of a handout. After that, they laughed at the way they couldn’t escape the smoke following them and making them cough. Will added a couple of tamarack logs to coax more flames from the fire, hot and high.
“The rescuers will come now for sure,” Will said. He sipped a steaming mug of coffee, maybe the best cup he’d tasted in a long time, even if it was from the stash of decaf he shared with his pregnant wife.
“What if we don’t want to be rescued?” She rubbed her nose against his cheek, making him shiver.
“I wish we’d come here twenty years ago.”
“Me too. But if wishes were fishes…” She tossed a pebble into the water, and they watched the rings spread before fading. The first stars had already made an appearance, each sparkling brighter than the last. So bright that Will almost expected singing from heaven, and he felt himself straining to hear.
“I’m going to learn the names of those stars.” He pointed up at a particularly bright cluster that had just appeared. Were they planets? He couldn’t even find the North Star, but not knowing didn’t diminish the raw beauty that made him shake his head in wonder. The same kind of wonder that filled him when he looked at Merit’s profile. “All their names. And then I’m going to teach them to the girls…and him.” He laid a hand on her stomach.
Merit snuggled closer under the sleeping bag, and he felt her arms circle his waist in answer. The ducks had left them alone, and the water lapped at their feet. Another warm breeze drifted across the lake, and a cloud covered some of the stars like the blanket covered Merit’s shoulders.
“Lots of things he has to learn.” She buried her face in his shoulder, and he felt the warm rain of her tears soak through his T-shirt. “But I’ll be happy as long as he learns to just be like his daddy.”
“His mom too. I’m not going to do this alone.”
The words slipped out before he could catch them, and then he could not reel them back in. But they also brought up the question he knew had to be asked: How do we address this elephant on our doorstep? Pretend he’s not there, or rush out with shouts and threats, daring the beast to come inside… or go? Was this where his faith was supposed to come in? the faith that, if he was being honest, he wasn’t sure he’d ever possessed?
“You know the girls have been praying all summer,” Merit said. Her voice sounded steadier than Will felt and lacked the edge of hurt accusation she could have tossed back at him for bringing up the dilemma.
“I know,” he answered. “And I want to believe the way they do. I wish I could. I’m just afraid, Merit. I’m afraid.
He wasn’t sure how to finish. Afraid of what? afraid that Merit would die the way their first doctor had predicted? or afraid that somehow she might be healed, that God would do something special in their lives? afraid that God would honor their commitment to doing the right thing but might require something back in the bargain? something major? Will couldn’t think of anything wrong with the terms of such an arrangement and would have signed on the dotted line without hesitating if he’d been given an opportunity to do so. It even seemed logical, in a God sort of way.
“I know.” She held him as though she’d never let go.
The fire eventually faded to embers, and the wind gusted warm around them, laden now with the scent of stubble from far-off wheat fields and ice packs from snow-peaked mountain ranges. Perhaps even the faint signature of brine from a distant ocean.
“Smell that?” He knew then that a storm was coming.
A freight train of thunder rumbled far off then flashed it’s piercing lights as jagged white raked from heaven to earth. The lightning drew closer with each chest-rumbling clap of mountain thunder.
“I smell it now,” Merit replied. “I wonder if we’re okay here.”
“Too late.” He knew he should get up and tie down a few things, but he didn’t want to let her go just yet, didn’t want to feel anything but the warmth of her nearness. “I don’t think we want to be out in an aluminum boat in the middle of a storm.”
That meant they had to retreat to their shelter, so Will threw their dinner things back into a Tupperware container before helping Merit with the sleeping bag. An extra tarp over the tent would help shed heavy rain if it got to that.
It did. They stopped for a second at the hissing sound, faint at first, then louder—the first sheet of rain rolling toward them from the southwest.
“Here it comes.” Will tossed the bag inside their tent and crawled in next to Merit. They zipped the door closed, leaving just enough open to watch the mighty power display.
“Goodness!” Merit shrank back at a particularly close flash and immediate boom, as if a bomb had been detonated directly overhead.
“One thousand nothing!” Will grinned as lightning illuminated Merit’s beautiful face, flushed with excitement. She held her fingers to her ears at the monstrous thunderclaps.
The wind rattled the treetops and shook their tent, sending sheets of horizontal rain to pelt their campsite. They laughed at the sheer force of the thunderstorm, and they had to believe it had been planted over their heads to inspire and entertain them—God’s version of a Fourth of July fireworks show. Between flashes, Will leaned closer and kissed the nape of Merit’s neck.
Merit entwined her arms around him, and he looked into her eyes as another series of flashes lit up their tent. She leaned closer and her lips met his.
“Shh.” She kissed him again and again, and he could not refuse her.
The pounding rain and howling wind made it nearly impossible to speak in normal voices, so he leaned his face next to hers.
“My wife once said she didn’t like camping.”
“Your wife once said she didn’t want to move away from California. A girls got a right to change her mind.”
“And we never had thunderstorms like this in the Bay Area.”
“You can say that again. But Will…” Another flash lit up their tent, and he could see the pleading look in Merit’s expression. “You said you were afraid.”
“I remember.”
She paused for a moment, and the old fear caught up to him. This time it was his turn to wet her shoulder with his tears. They held each other through the storm, as it sent wave after wave of thunder and lightning rolling over their refuge. What else could they do but cling to the life God loaned them tonight? It could be their last time to do so.
Will recognized in Merit’s face a different kind of fear, a fear he knew she tried to deny, especially in front of the kids or their new friends in Kokanee Cove. Out here, though, the wind and the rain had carried away her mask, unveiling the vulnerable Merit, cuddled up in a sleeping bag with her husband, prete
nding the past didn’t exist and the future might never arrive.
After all, hadn’t he told her this summer would never end? Now he was afraid of being right.
Fear? Yes, but with her soul opened only to him and to God, Will knew it had nothing to do with thunder and lightning.
She looked into his eyes as another jagged flash lit up their protected space.
“I’m afraid too,” she whispered.
The thunder clapped.
thirty
Thunder is good, thunder is impressive; but it is the lightning
that does the work
MARK TWAIN
Oh come on, you guys.” Michael poked his head in the bedroom door. “No more screaming. It’s just a little thunder. You’re acting like a couple of sissies.”
To punctuate his sentence, another flash lit up the girls’ bedroom. Two shapes hid under Abby’s covers, and he could hear their screams over the clap of thunder, which was saying something. Michael groaned.
“It’s not just a little thunder,” came a shaky voice as the thunder echoed off the mountains. “And so what if we are a couple of sissies?”
“Well, you don’t want me to tell Mom and Dad you were having a panic attack, do you?”
No answer. Lightning flashed, and he plugged his ears against the screams.
“All right.” He sighed. “Bring your blankets into the living room. We’ll make some popcorn and tell ghost stories. How’s that?”
A pair of eyes peeked out from beneath the blankets, then another.
“Really?” asked Abby. “Mom says we shouldn’t talk about ghosts.”
“All right, then just stories.”
They nearly knocked him over on their way out.
“But just for a little while!” He didn’t think they heard him over the next crack of thunder. The girls were right about one thing: they never had anything like this back in California.
In Iraq? Well, that was a completely different story, one he wished he could forget, only this thunder wouldn’t let him. The key was to keep his eyes open and focus on now, focus on making microwave popcorn and grabbing sodas out of the refrigerator.
Five minutes later, all three of them snuggled under a blanket, munching popcorn and slurping Cokes.
“This was a good—” Olivia flinched at the next roll of thunder but didn’t scream.
“Good idea,” Abby finished her sister’s sentence. “But you have to tell us some stories, Michael. True ones.”
“True ones? That’s not part of the deal.”
Another flash, and Olivia started counting one thousand one, one thousand two…
“We’ll start screaming again,” Abby promised as the thunder rattled the windows. Even Michael ducked.
“All right, all right.” When their parents asked how things went, he would not include how his two little sisters wrapped him around their little fingers. “What kind of story?”
“About what you did in the Air Force,” Abby said without hesitation. She knew what she wanted.
“No.” They weren’t going there.
Abby didn’t give up that easily. “But you’ve never told us what you did when you were gone. Like, did you save anybody’s life?”
“And, and…,” Olivia added, “were there any kids over there?”
“Well, sure, but…” Michael swallowed and tried to find a graceful way out of his predicament.
“So do they ride camels and stuff?” Abby asked. “Do they live in tents?”
Michael surrendered to the constant barrage of questions and the racking attack of thunderclaps. Only now he was the one flinching, and his little sisters acted as though nothing bothered them. What was up with that?
“No.” He would give them the Reader’s Digest condensed and sanitized version. Not all the details, just the bare bones. And then they would never ask again. “The ones we saw lived in houses, like in the cities in the northern part of the country where I worked.”
“Houses like we live in?” Where did Abby’s curiosity come from?
Another strike of thunder shook Michael to the bone, and he shivered.
“More like stucco houses. Flat roofs. Dusty streets. The kids would come out and yell things at us. Dumb things they heard somewhere on TV, I think, like ‘Show me the money, American!’ “
The girls laughed until another flash silenced them. This thunderstorm wasn’t giving up without a fight.
“So is that all they did?” asked Abby.
“Once they had an old soccer ball, totally flat but they didn’t care. And one of the guys in the convoy, his name was Williams, he tried to give their ball back after it… Well, he shouldn’t have done that, I guess.”
“Why not?” Olivia stuffed another handful of popcorn into her mouth. No one-at-a-time dainty bites for her. “What’s wrong with playing soccer?”
“Nothing’s wrong. It’s just that…” He knew from the start he would paint himself into a corner, but he hadn’t guessed it would hurt this much. He wrestled to find a safe way to finish the story without telling them what had actually happened to Murphy, or to the kid who played with him just moments before the attack.
Why had he let them talk him into this? He should have known better.
“That’s all the stories I can tell you.” Michael stood, spilling popcorn all over the floor. “That’s it.”
No more war stories, no more thinking about it, no more letting the junk in his past hijack his future. Period. He’d probably already wrecked his chances with Stephanie, if he’d ever had any. Maybe the only thing that mattered now was that his mom needed more help than he—or anyone else— had been giving.
“Hey!” Abby disapproved, but she had no idea what she was asking.
Michael didn’t stop until he reached the bathroom door at the end of the hall, where he stood with his back to his sisters, trying to fend off the tsunami of emotion that had suddenly crashed on the shore of his soul.
“I’m sorry, you guys.” He fought to keep his voice steady. Had he really been wallowing in the past all this time? “Take the popcorn to bed with you, if you want.”
“But Michael…,” Abby whined.
“Just…don’t worry about the thunder, okay?” He used his babysitter voice. “It’s going away now.” He wiped the back of his hand across his face so they wouldn’t notice the beads of sweat on his forehead.
Instead of returning directly to their room, Abby stopped behind him and Olivia tugged at his shirt.
“I have to use the bathroom,” Olivia announced. He stepped away from the door, and she shut it in their faces. Abby held a handful of popcorn, nibbled on a couple of pieces, and looked up at him curiously.
“Are you okay?” she asked. “‘ Cause all of a sudden, you’re acting really weird.”
He looked away as she continued her interrogation.
“You’re not scared of the thunder, are you?”
“Listen, I’m just tired, okay? I really shouldn’t have let you girls get out of bed in the first place.”
He could hear the water in the bathroom running…and running.
“Hey, Livvy!” He pounded on the door. “Are you done in there or what?”
“I’m supposed to brush my teeth after drinking soda,” came her little voice, “because soft drinks can cause bacteria which can lead to tooth decay.”
“Who told you all that? Okay, just hurry it up, huh?” He steered Abby down the hallway by her shoulders, back to their room. “And no more getting up.”
He waited in the doorway until Olivia came out of the bathroom. She grabbed his hand as she slipped by.
“Do you like Stephanie?” she asked in her most innocent voice.
Michael groaned and tickled her under the arm. “Not as much as I like you, little sister. Head to bed.”
She squirmed away and Abby took the baton.
“But that means you like her, Michael. You just won’t tell us. Why won’t you tell us?”
Oh wow. If it was obviou
s to these two…
“Look, even if I did like her, I’m an ex-military gearhead, and she’s a nice birdwatching girl who doesn’t have anything in common with ex-military gearheads. Okay? The princess and the toad. And they all lived unhappily ever after, the end.”
The girls stared at him.
“You’re not a toad, Michael,” Olivia assured him. “I think you’re more like a lizard.”
The two girls dissolved into giggles, and Michael roared and chased them into their beds, then turned off the bedside lamp.
“That’s it!” he told them. “I’m going to strangle you two if you don’t—”
“You never prayed with us,” Olivia interrupted, and he sighed at yet one more delay tactic. But what could he say?
“All right, Liwy. Your idea—you pray. Keep it short.”
“Can I get a drink of water?” asked Abby.
“No!” He wasn’t going to fall for that one. “You’re in bed now, and you’re going to stay there. Pee in a bucket if you have to, but—”
“Don’t say that, Michael,” Olivia chirped at him, and he could hear their mother’s voice in hers, just enough to shut him up. “I’m going to pray now. Are you folding your hands and closing your eyes?”
“Just pray,” he told her, “before I turn out the light and close the door.”
She talked to God in her clear, tiny voice. By this time, the thunder didn’t rattle the windows much, and their room was lit only by the occasional blink of far-off lightning. Olivia prayed for Stephanie and the hurt birds in the back of Mr. Mooney‧s shop, for Aunt Sydney, for Mom and Dad out camping, and that He would protect them from the thunderstorm.
“And dear God,” she finished, “please help Michael not to be scared of the lightning, or whatever he’s scared of. In Jesus’ name, amen.”
Michael closed his eyes. He would have to plead the Fifth if they asked him anything else.
“Okay,” he told them, standing. “Now go to sleep. Mom and Dad will be back tomorrow.”
“Michael?” Olivia again.
He paused. “What?”
“I want you to have this.”
He squinted into the darkness and saw his younger sister pull something off the wall. She padded over to the door and held it out to him. A feather softly stroked his hand. Her dreamcatcher.