Footprints of Thunder

by James F. David

  Kenny found himself absorbed. Soon he realized he was beginning to feel the same way about the hippopotami as he had when the corn fell out of the sky.

  The lecture was followed by a debate between Dr. Coombs and Dr. Piltcher, Dr. Coombs argued that the presence of hippopotami remains could be explained by a migration of hippos leaving North Africa, perhaps by the Nile. Dr. Coombs argued the animals could have swum ever northward, pausing in their migrations in the winter, swimming north only during the warm summer months. Eventually they would have reached England and worked their way to the places in England where they were found.

  But Dr. Piltcher immediately and vehemently disagreed. “What would motivate the hippopotami to move from warm equatorial waters to the frigid waters of the North Atlantic?” he thundered. “How could a hippo survive in such a radically different climate?”

  “They did not survive,” responded Dr. Coombs. “Isn’t that the point? The hippos could not survive in the climate they had migrated to.”

  “But what motivation? What instinct would drive them north? And when they reached the north, what would drive them inland and up the hills and mountains to die?”

  “Why do whales beach themselves?” Dr. Coombs challenged him. “Perhaps if they had legs they would not only beach themselves but crawl up the nearest mountain.”

  “So why do we not see hippopotami migrating today?” came Dr. Piltcher’s reply.

  The debate went back and forth for twenty minutes. As Kenny listened he realized it held no acrimony. Rather, it seemed like a well-orchestrated performance, with Dr. Piltcher given the more dramatic role. Dr. Coombs responded reasonably but without Dr. Piltcher’s passion and volume.

  Afterward a few people went up to talk with Dr. Piltcher and Dr. Coombs, but Kenny held back, embarrassed to speak of his experience in front of strangers. Most of the people had gone except Mrs. Wayne, Petra, and Dr. Coombs, who seemed to be preparing to leave with Dr. Piltcher, Kenny swallowed his embarrassment and called out Dr. Piltcher’s name when he passed.

  “What is it?” Dr. Piltcher replied.

  “Something happened that I wanted to tell you about … this corn just started falling out of the sky… I mean it was strange … right out of the blue. I’m not making this up. It really happened! And I have a theory of why it happened … only an idea, really. I thought you might be able to help me understand it better.”

  Kenny paused, wishing he had thought out ahead of time what he was going to say. It sounded so lame to him, so vague. Kenny paused, waiting to get brushed off again, or worse. He expected a blank look or exasperation from Dr. Piltcher and amusement from Dr. Piltcher’s followers. To his amazement he found interest in their eyes and welcome from Dr. Piltcher.

  “That’s a story I’d like to hear, but not here. I need my coffee.”

  Kenny followed the chiropractor’s minivan to the edge of Klamath Falls. Down a long drive, a two-story frame house sat in an unkempt cluttered yard. Inside Dr. Piltcher’s home every wall was covered with floor-to-ceiling bookshelves. More books and boxes filled with papers and journals were stacked on the floor, almost concealing a soiled flowered carpet. The others in the group, experienced visitors, picked up stacks of books and papers off the overstuffed furniture and added them to the piles on the floor. Kenny followed their lead and made space in a lumpy armchair. While Mrs. Wayne and Dr. Piltcher disappeared from the room to make coffee, the others discussed the debate over the hippo fossils. Kenny listened, but felt uncomfortable and ignored. When Dr. Piltcher and Mrs. Wayne returned, Dr. Piltcher turned immediately to Kenny.

  “Well, Kenny. Tell us about what happened to you,” he urged encouragingly.

  Feeling more at ease, Kenny started into his story slowly, describing the hunting trip and the strange corn shower, how he was led to research other strange events through books and articles. As he talked they listened with rapt attention, no disbelief on their faces, until he found himself not only describing the event but also his feelings. He shared his awe and fear when the corn fell. He described his estrangement from his father, friends, and finally his sister.

  He could tell by their eyes that almost everyone in this cluttered room had shared his experience; they all actively listened. When he was done there was silence. He watched for reactions from the group, but they all turned to Dr. Piltcher, who sat combing his thinning hair with his fingers. Then he spoke.

  “Sound familiar to you, George?”

  Dr. Coombs was rocking in his chair, with his arms folded behind his head, studying the ceiling. Ten years younger than Dr. Piltcher, balding and gray-templed, Dr. Coombs stopped rocking long enough to answer. “That it does, Chester.”

  “Let’s start with the easy one, shall we?” Dr. Piltcher suggested. “Burning sulfur falling on Sodom and Gomorrah. Destroyed the whole damned city—pun intended. Your turn, George.”

  “Frogs falling on Egypt, as recorded in the Bible and Midrash.” Dr. Coombs said it without taking his eyes off of the ceiling.

  “The biblical plagues are too easy. Locusts and flies also came out of nowhere. Too easy! How about the hail of hot stones as recorded in the Mexican Annals of Cuauhtitlan?”

  “Could have been meteorites,” Dr. Coombs countered.

  “Nonsense. Thousands of hot stones falling like hail and bouncing around setting things on fire? Meteorites burn up in the atmosphere more often than not, and even if they reach the ground they most assuredly don’t fall in groups like hail. Your turn, George.”

  “Manna from heaven,” Coombs suggested, then leaned forward and spoke to the group. “Manna was described by the Israelites as a yellowish seed that tasted like oily honeycomb. Most likely it was the seed of a plant, but no one has been able to explain why it fell from the sky. Come to think of it there’s no reason it couldn’t have been corn.”

  Dr. Coombs turned, his pale eyes gleaming in his well-tanned face, looking straight at Kenny and disconcerting him. “They did grind it and bake bread with it just like corn,” Coombs added. “And they certainly wouldn’t have seen corn before.”

  “Not bad,” Dr. Piltcher said. “You’re still pulling from the Bible and the Talmud, but it’s creative. Let me take ambrosia from you. Homer and Hesiod both refer to honey from heaven.”

  “The hymns of Rig-Veda refer to madhu falling from clouds.”

  Dr. Piltcher cleared his throat derisively. “That’s just another name for ambrosia.”

  “Maybe. But if you won’t give me credit for it I’ll take the red dust that fell on the Mayas.”

  “Let’s stretch this a bit. Kenny said something about fish falling from the sky. What if bigger things fell? What about that, George? Suggest anything to you?” Dr. Piltcher paused and turned to the rest of the group. “Remember back to our debate over the presence of hippos in Europe.” Dr. Piltcher looked first at Petra and then Mrs. Wayne. “Is there another way the hippopotami could get to England?”

  Mrs. Wayne cleared her throat and then suggested in a high-pitched voice, “They fell from the sky?”

  “Possibly. Possibly. If corn can fall, if fish can fall, why not a hippo?”

  Kenny was surprised. Dr. Piltcher was now willing to abandon the cosmic cataclysm theory he’d espoused only an hour earlier, a thesis that had cost him much time and effort. Kenny had always agreed that new theories were accepted only when those defending the old theories died off. But Dr. Piltcher showed surprising flexibility for a scientist.

  Dr. Coombs rocked forward again, stretching out his feet and knocking over a pile of books. “It might explain some other mysteries. Did you know they found the skeletons of two whales in Michigan? Michigan! Awfully far from the sea, wouldn’t you say?” Dr. Coombs said to the group while looking mostly at Kenny. Not to be outdone, Dr. Piltcher added to the whale stories.

  “Found a whale skeleton in Quebec too. Six hundred feet above sea level. Oh, now that I think about it, they’ve found whales, hippopotami, rhinoceroses, and elephants in the most unlik
ely places. Even in Antarctica. Not to mention the coniferous trees found in both the arctic and antarctic—”

  “And, of course, the most famous of all,” Dr. Coombs cut in, “the leopard on Mount Kilimanjaro.”

  “George, what’s the name of that Babylonian prophet, the one who was stoned for knowing too much?”

  “Zorastrus, I believe.”

  “Yes, yes. Quite brilliant, he collected events like Kenny has been describing too. No one believed him either, of course.”

  Dr. Coombs rubbed his chin with his hand and looked concerned for a minute and then said, “This Zorastrus might be worth looking up, I seem to remember he had quite a lot to say about the future.”

  “Something to pursue later, eh George? But you do see what I’m getting at,” Dr. Piltcher mused. “Until tonight, finding animals in unlikely locations was explained either through migration, which is highly unlikely, or cataclysm, like the shifting of the earth on its axis, which is also unlikely. Having them fall from the sky is beautiful in its simplicity. But the sky-fall theory lacks a cause … a source for the effect.”

  Dr. Piltcher paused and turned to Kenny; the others in the group all did too. Now more comfortable he told them about the flower fall, and the mother and the daughter, and his theory. As he spoke he watched their faces light up. They began to add to it. They brainstormed. And the theory began to grow.

  Kenny became part of the group that night. He knew other people would call the members of that group kooks, or weirdos, and Kenny would have too a few months ago. But he saw things from the inside now. It was an odd group of people, but receptive and even warm.

  After that Kenny spent every Saturday night with the group. He got to know Mrs. Wayne and witnessed her contacts with Shontel, the spirit guide. He became friends with Petra. He met others too. An elderly couple who ran a local convenience store alternated coming on Saturday nights. They only listened, though, and never participated. Others, like Bonnie Smith, came occasionally but were never part of the core. Bonnie showed up one night with another student, Colter Swenson, who listened attentively but kept glancing at Petra. The next Saturday Colter showed up without Bonnie and sat by Petra. Colter became a regular after that. There were others who came occasionally but were never part of the core.

  Two weeks later Dr. Coombs arrived at the meeting all excited. He had managed to track down a translation of some of the writings of Zorastrus. He did indeed live in ancient Babylon and was called a prophet right up until they stoned him to death. Dr. Coombs was particularly excited by the discovery of, something called the Apocrypha of Zorastrus. Some scholar had separated out Zorastrus’s collection of stories of things falling from the sky and other bizarre phenomenon from his “serious” works. Confirming Kenny’s corn fall in an ancient document was reassuring to Kenny. They also found Zorastrus had his own theory, a theory disconcertingly similar to Kenny’s.

  With the discovery of the Apocrypha of Zorastrus the group began to meet more often. Now the group spent Saturday nights trying to understand the events Kenny had researched and those in the Zorastrus manuscript. They considered other theories besides Kenny’s and that of Zorastrus, including those contributed by Shontel, but always returned to Kenny’s explanation.

  Phat Nyang showed up one night, recruited by Dr. Piltcher to work with Kenny on computer modeling the theory. Kenny and Phat worked out a crude computer model suggesting possible causes. The group critiqued it, and the model was refined, again and again. As summer approached they made plans to utilize the model. Dr. Coombs offered to provide financial support for the summer project.

  Kenny now found himself walking around the geyser basin at Old Faithful for the tenth time. It was more than a mile out to Morning Glory Pool, and he could make the circuit and be back before his pickup time. It was the third day of the eight-day watch, and he had walked to the pool four times a day, looking at the skies and meadows surrounding the geysers. A small herd of elk were grazing near Castle Geyser and Kenny paused to watch them before continuing to Morning Glory Pool.

  That had been a disappointment to Kenny. It was only pale blue, not the bright blue-green of the pictures on the postcards. His trail guide explained tons of coins thrown by tourists had changed the temperature of the pool, causing the colors to fade. The trail guide referred to the penny-tossing tourists as vandals. Kenny felt disgust and loss.

  Kenny started up the boardwalk to the viewpoint. Ahead of him he heard loud laughter and looked to see two well-muscled men about his own age leaning over the steaming water. As he approached one of them spat a big wad of gum into the center of the pool. The other one laughed uproariously and then flipped a coin in after the gum. Kenny’s temper flared as the man prepared to flip another. Grabbing the hand with the coins, Kenny slapped it down onto the wooden railing. Money clattered onto the boardwalk and the man yelped from pain.

  “Whatcha doing, man?” he yelled.

  Now the other one stepped forward, his face contorted in menace.

  “You’ll ruin the pool doing that.” Kenny explained. “I didn’t mean to hurt him, but really, that will change the color of the pool. Maybe plug it up.”

  “That’s our business,” the big one responded, and punched Kenny in the solar plexus. Kenny’s breath exploded from his body and he bent in half. Then he felt his head jerked up by the hair and he found himself staring in the angry face of the man. “You got something to say, you say it to me, not my friend. You understand?”

  With that Kenny’s head was slammed down into the railing. Kenny put his hands on the rail, protecting his face from the second blow.

  “Stay out of our way!” the man yelled and then slapped Kenny’s head.

  Kenny leaned on the rail, smarting from the slap and gasping for breath, and watched the two men walk down the boardwalk and out of sight. A family with two kids came down the walk and Kenny turned toward the geyser, trying to hide his face. A few seconds later he felt a touch on his arm and turned to see the mother looking concerned. “You’re bleeding. Are you okay?”

  “Yeah, fine. I just slipped. Hit my head.” Kenny put his hand to his forehead and a trickle of blood ran down into his eyebrow. He dabbed his forehead with tissues the woman offered and found them soaked with blood. Then he felt something in the wound. Kenny accepted a couple more tissues and then thanked the woman and excused himself. He would need to clean the wound.

  As he approached the lodge, an attractive young woman in a ranger uniform watched him closely and then turned and fell in beside him.

  “You better let me take a look at that,” she said. “I’m all right, really.”

  “No, you’re not, and if you think you are, you’re delirious. You see, I’ve got you coming and going.”

  Kenny turned to look at her. She looked determined, so he let her guide him into the lodge, down stairs marked EMPLOYEES ONLY, to a small first aid station. The ranger opened a cabinet and began dabbing Kenny’s wound with an alcohol-soaked wad of cotton.

  “You’ve got something in this wound.”

  “It’s probably splinters.”

  “How did this happen?” As she talked she searched through the cabinets.

  “I slipped, tried to catch myself and ended up banging my head on the railing.”

  “Uh-huh. Here they are.”

  She turned with a pair of tweezers and went right to work on Kenny’s forehead. The first two splinters came out easily with little pain. The next two were a different story.

  “This might hurt a little,” she warned after Kenny winced.

  She was on her third probe when another ranger led a woman of about thirty into the room, followed by two women about the same age. All of them were wearing cycling clothes.

  “Good, you’re here already, Leslie. I’ve got another customer for you.”

  When Leslie turned to look at the newcomers Kenny got a clear look at the injured woman. She was holding a blood-soaked handkerchief to her head, just above the ear.

  Le
slie acted surprised. “Two head wounds in one day? I’m usually treating scraped knees and bee stings.”

  “And occasional buffalo gorings,” the second ranger added.

  “Steve, you didn’t need to say that. I’ll be finished here in a second.”

  Leslie dug the last splinter out, dabbed the wound with peroxide, then covered it with a bandage. Before he left, Leslie was talking to the new patient.

  “How’d this happen?” she asked as she guided the woman into the chair Kenny had vacated.

  “Some sort of freak hailstorm, I guess. We biked over to Black Sand Basin and were walking the trail when these huge hailstones started pounding us.”

  “Those weren’t hailstones,” one of her friends corrected. “They were chunks of ice. The chunk that got Gayle was six inches across and it was a small one. I swear some of those that hit the geyser pool were two feet at least.”

  Kenny remained frozen in the doorway. He realized he had just missed the event they had been waiting for. He listened intently to the narrative, becoming more convinced with every word. Then he sprinted back to the pickup point. They were close this time. Closer than they had ever been.

  The others were excited by the news. Kenny, Phat, and Dr. Piltcher immediately returned to the campsite and began modifying the model to make it fit the new data. The others fanned out, looking for other witnesses, who gave descriptions nearly identical to those of the women? Phat and Kenny ran the computer simulation again two days later and they traveled to a spot near Provo, Utah. After seven days there, nothing had happened. Then Mrs. Wayne turned up an article about a house that burned up two days before they arrived when the linen closet suddenly burst into flames. Dr. Piltcher combed his hair a couple of times before agreeing to count it as an event. The model next sent them to Las Cruces, New Mexico. They were still setting up camp when they heard of a backyard swimming pool suddenly overflowing with saltwater and drowning a family dog. They chased the next events to Colorado and then to Idaho, where they arrived the day after the campground had been showered with gravel. That’s when Dr. Piltcher called a halt to the chase.