by Tucker, Todd
We came to a small clearing in the woods, a recently cut patch of forest peppered with low, fresh stumps. Tom saw something and grabbed my arm. I skidded to a halt with him.
In the middle of the field in front of us, four yellow balls of light rolled erratically along the ground. Each was roughly the size of a grapefruit. They weren’t rolling with the light wind—they zigzagged in random directions, sometimes jumping a few feet into the air before dropping back to the ground.
“What the hell?” whispered Tom. I won’t lie—I was a little afraid. More than that, I felt a real sense of wonder, even when one of the balls began rolling directly toward us.
It rolled almost to our feet, and then floated up to eye level. It was not blindingly bright, only about as intense as a sixty-watt lightbulb. A low buzzing sound came from inside it. All around us I smelled ozone, the smell of electrical failure, a Lionel train set gone bad. As that ball hovered directly in front of our eyes, I was afraid, but I also wanted to feel it. Somehow I knew it would be cool to the touch. As I started to reach out, the ball fizzled and disappeared with a pop.
That snapped us out of our trance. It also announced the onset, finally, of a raging, severe, dangerous storm. We resumed our headlong run, now through the driving rain and constant flashes of lightning that illuminated trees bent over at impossible angles. Occasionally the rain paused to give way to hail, which made a sound like popping popcorn as thousands of icy beads pelted the muddy ground. Thunder crashed, and then echoed a dozen times as the sound bounced from one side of the valley to the other and back. Once or twice I thought I saw more of the light balls bouncing along with us through the woods, but we didn’t stop to investigate. When we got to my house, Tom kept running without a word, and I felt bad that he had to continue on by himself even though that sort of thing didn’t seem to bother him. I shot up my front porch, through my window, tossed my soaking wet clothes in a pile on the floor, and jumped into bed.
Even as I got between my blankets, I heard the bleating weather radio alarm in my parents’ room—a not uncommon occurrence during the spring tornado season. What happened next, however, was unusual.
Dad burst into my bedroom, wearing just his pajama bottoms, his eyes wild. “Get to the basement!” he yelled, making no attempt to hide his own fear. I ran down the steps with Dad so close behind that I worried he might trample me. Mother was waiting there with a flashlight and a portable radio tuned to 840 WHAS.
The state police had confirmed the touchdown of a powerful tornado in Henryville. It was heading our way. The frantic late-shift weatherman counted down the minutes until the twister reached Borden, his words disappearing into static with each burst of lightning. Suddenly it was there, and the screaming wind all around us really did sound like a train, just like people always say. We had an old Buck stove in the basement, and at the wind’s peak, the stove’s little iron doors flew open and a blast of cold, wet ash shot across the floor. Then, just as quickly, the storm was gone. The exhausted weatherman began a new countdown, the minutes until the tornado reached Pekin. I peeked inside the stove. It was pristine, sandblasted clean by the ash and the freak wind.
After things quieted down in the basement, and we all caught our breath, Dad led me back up to my bedroom with his hand on my shoulder. I think he felt bad about not keeping his cool when he woke me up. “Good night,” he said softly as we reached my room. Just as he was getting ready to step out, he saw the soaking wet pile of clothes in the middle of my room. A puddle had formed around them. He looked at me, then back at the clothes. He shook his head, shut my door, and never said a word about it.
Neither the news nor my junior Britannica said anything about the strange glowing spheres. I learned from old-timers and other less authoritative sources that it was a natural phenomenon called “ball lightning.” Some books said that ball lightning was a myth, but I’m here to tell you that it’s not. After scouring the library, I did manage to find one other reliable eyewitness account: On the Banks of Plum Creek, by Laura Ingalls Wilder. During a raging blizzard, three balls of light rolled down the In-gallses’ stovepipe. Ma chased them around the house with a broom before they disappeared. It’s one of the more dramatic episodes in the whole Ingalls saga not depicted by a Garth Williams sketch. I presume that’s because he had no earthly idea how to draw such a thing.
Our close call with the Daisy Hill tornado kept Tom and me content and safe in our bedrooms at night for almost the entire summer. This August night looked clear, however, and Tom had reason to give covert operations another try.
I slipped out of bed, trying to avoid floor creaks that would give me away. I pushed open the window.
“Hey,” I whispered.
“Hey,” he whispered back. “Come on, there’s something going on down at the picket line tonight.” I quickly slid on my shoes, which Mom had arranged by my bed.
I climbed out the window, closed it behind me, and followed Tom silently down the porch roof. The porch light put the front yard in a yellow oval. From the porch, everything beyond that arc seemed invisible in the darkness. I had learned, however, in our past expeditions, that once beyond the reach of the porch light, my eyes adjusted so that I could see pretty well. In that weird way, the electric light actually blinded us, and I was eager to get beyond it and into the dark woods where I could see again.
“What time is it?” I asked once we were safely in the trees. There was always a feeling of relief when we could talk normally and not worry about waking a parent. The moon was bright and the sky unusually clear. The humidity that could press down on Borden for weeks at a time in the summer had lifted, leaving the night crisp and beautiful, a preview of the rapidly approaching fall.
“I think it’s about one in the morning,” he said.
“What’s going on?”
“I don’t know,” he said, his eyes glowing with excitement. “I went down to eat a burger during my dad’s shift on the picket line, and he sent me right back home—wouldn’t let me listen to anything anybody was saying. When he got home, I heard him mumbling something to my mother, and the way she acted, it must have been pretty bad, whatever it was.”
I could tell there was something else. “And?”
“And …” he said, pausing to build the suspense. “I’m not the only one who snuck out of the house tonight.”
“What?”
“I heard my dad start his truck and drive away about a half hour ago.”
We cleared the deep gorge that marked our property line, taking turns to briskly walk across a large fallen ash that spanned it, our arms extended for balance. We then picked up the Buffalo Trace, walking side by side again. We remained silent for the next half mile down into the bottom of the valley.
We came off the Buffalo Trace and fought our way through a few feet of undergrowth, and then carefully stepped over an old barbed-wire fence into a well-tended field of soybeans, a carpet of the bushy low plants stretching into the darkness. Across the field loomed the back wall of the factory, well-illuminated by the moonlight, but still forbidding with all the big sodium arc lights turned off. Tom and I knew that the graveyard shift was normally the most hectic time in the big back parking lot, as the eighteen-wheelers were loaded and unloaded in a chaotic scene that resembled some kind of military evacuation. At the eastern end of the lot during happier times, empty trucks with the Borden Casket Company logo (“dedicated to the dignity of life”) backed up to the loading docks to the tune of their grumbling engines and unintelligible amplified announcements. When the light above each bay turned from red to green, the trucks were loaded with expensive wooden caskets swaddled in elaborate shipping containers. At the other end of the lot the lumber trucks maneuvered, flatbeds weighed down with tree trunks, one type of wood per truck. In the middle of the lot the drivers met in small, jovial groups, drank coffee, smoked cigarettes, and laughed their asses off, enjoying what I was sure was the coolest job in the world. I knew from Dad that the coffins they manufactured went all
over the world. It amazed me to think that those drivers, neighbors of ours when they weren’t on the road, might finish their coffee, rub out the butts of their Kools on the ground, and then drive to Los Angeles, New York, or any of those other large cities I knew from TV.
On that night, though, because of the strike, the place was dark. Tom started walking toward the plant, carefully stepping between the soybean plants to avoid crushing them.
“What are we doing?”
“I want to sneak up on the picket line to see what’s going on.” He pointed toward the back of the plant.
I processed what he was saying, and understood right away. Sneaking up on the picket line from the front of the plant would be impossible—we’d have to cross Highway 60 and another soybean field, which offered little natural cover, especially in the bright moonlight, and especially a hundred yards away from a group of bored men whose eyes had thoroughly adjusted to the dark. The logical alternative was to sneak through plant property and approach the picket line from behind, from inside the plant’s gates. I knew how Tom meant to do it. He was already in motion by the time I realized it.
We crossed the soybean field quickly, very aware of how exposed we were in the bright moonlight. At the back of the plant a railroad spur entered through a massive sliding chain-link gate. It was shut and locked.
“Pull on it,” said Tom. I pulled at the gate as hard as I could, and Tom tried to slide through the tiny gap I created, but couldn’t. There were two sets of chain wrapped tightly around it, and judging by the shininess of the chain, I guessed that it was a new security measure in place because of the strike.
Tom lowered himself to the ground and tried to slide under the gate between the rails of the tracks. He could almost make it, but not quite. I saw the bottom wires of the fence dig into his belly as he tried to slide by. He pulled himself back, bleeding and frustrated.
We trotted around the fence looking for other ways inside. Climbing over it was impossible—the fence was topped with a swirl of razor wire. Tom looked thoughtfully at a drainage pipe that penetrated the berm beneath the fence. I saw where it came through on the other side, a distance of about twenty feet. Without hesitating, Tom dove into the pipe. I followed.
Although it hadn’t rained in weeks, there was about two inches of stagnant water in the bottom of the pipe. It smelled like an old basement, with an underlying chemical sourness that made me wonder what this pipe might be carrying away from the factory besides rainwater. Small, sharp gravel covered the bottom, like rocks in a creek bed. The pipe itself was corrugated, and the hard ridges also made it painful to crawl along. Because of the small diameter, I could only move my elbows and knees a few inches forward with each step, falling on an elbow when I raised a knee and vice versa as I made slow, uncomfortable progress. There was no way to hurry. It was completely dark. Halfway into the pipe, I couldn’t see anything. I just kept telling myself that if I crawled forward long enough, I would eventually come out the other side.
Finally, I did, rolling out of the pipe and unfurling my cramped limbs. Tom was waiting for me patiently, pulling some tiny rocks out of his elbow. With that, we were officially trespassing on Borden Casket Company property.
I had been to the plant many times, and was vaguely aware of the major functional areas: mill room, assembly, trim, and finish. Inside the fence, though, I was as confused and disoriented as I had been in the cave—and Tom was just as sure-footed. I followed him around two buildings, stopping when he stopped, listening when he listened, until we turned a final corner and saw the picket line, across the asphalt expanse of the front lot. The strikers were just outside of the fence.
There were four men standing around a dwindling fire in a fifty-five-gallon drum. We were too far away to hear the conversation, but something in their stances made it clear that two of the men were arguing. In profile, all four men had the same lean build, and a ball cap pulled down low. The two antagonists were standing rigidly, facing each other directly across the barrel. The lawn chairs were pushed back out of the way. One man pointed his finger with a jabbing motion at the other, who stood unflinching with his hands on his hips. The two noncombatants stayed silent and took turns taking off their ball caps and rubbing their heads with concern. An upside-down picket sign leaned untended against a chair and in the firelight I read 1096: LOUD AND PROUD! A knot popped in the barrel and sent a covey of orange sparks into the air.
Tom ran across the parking lot until he reached a stack of steel drums organized neatly under a sheet-metal roof. I followed him. In our new location, we were close enough to hear the men but well hidden by the barrels.
“So help me, those crazy assholes are going to get themselves killed,” said the man pointing his finger. “Those boys don’t have a lick of sense between ’em.”
“No one thinks it’s a good idea, Ray,” said the other. That was him—the man with his hands on his hips was Tom’s dad. He was speaking slowly to Ray Arnold, trying to calm him down. Arnold was a well-known hothead; a skinny, nervous guy who was always ready to start a fight, no matter how many times he got his ass kicked.
“That’s a crock of shit, Kruer. Lots of people thought it was a good idea, all that tough talk. People loved it. Ate… it…up! Funny how none of those pussies managed to show up here tonight.”
“Let’s all settle down,” said Tom’s dad quietly.
“Why’s that?” said Ray, leaning toward the drum. “You think it’s a good idea, too? Tear up some company shit? Break the law? You want to help those dumb-asses shut this factory down forever?”
Tom’s dad didn’t say anything, but I felt the two of them glaring at each other. Ray’s blood was up.
“So help me,” pronounced Ray, “if they show up down here for any goddamn reason, I will use that thing.” He pointed to an object beneath his lawn chair, something Tom and I couldn’t see from our hiding place. “Union or no union, I will use that thing. Then I will get on that CB in my truck, I will call the cops, and I will tell the whole damn world who thought this bullshit up, and who thought it was a good idea.”
“We don’t know if they’re going to do anything,” said George Kruer. “It just sounded like a lot of big talk to me…”
“They sounded pretty serious to me,” interrupted Ray.
“Let George talk, Ray,” said one of the men who had mostly been quiet.
Tom’s dad continued. “It’s just a lot of big talk from some pissed off kids.”
“What if it wasn’t just talk?” said Ray. “What if you’re wrong? Maybe I should call the sheriff right now and tell him who’s saying what at the union hall these days.”
There was a long silence before George Kruer spoke again. “Ray, I’m going to strongly recommend you don’t say a goddamn word.”
Tom and I turned to face each other. Neither of us had ever heard his dad speak that way before. He had done two tours in the army, we knew, and he would have looked tough, with his muscled arms and their smeared, indecipherable tattoos. It was all mitigated normally by his perpetual smile and the somewhat girly Bruce Jenner haircut that Tom’s mom gave him on the front porch. From here, though, behind the drums, we heard a different George Kruer, the Kruer we’d seen in yellowing Polaroids with bandoliers of ammo crossing his chest and jungle foliage in the background. He sounded like a pure badass. I once again felt myself getting jealous over our fathers’ relative positions in the strike.
Unfortunately, as I turned back to face the picket line, hunched over as I was, I lost my balance slightly and put my hand out to brace myself, as if I unconsciously thought the drum in my face was as solid and immovable as a tree of the same diameter. The fifty-five-gallon drum in front of me, however, was completely empty, nearly weightless, and I pushed it firmly into the empty drum in front of it. The two drums banged together with a sound as loud and resonant as a church bell.
“Shit!” said Ray. “That’s them!” He ran over to his chair and grabbed what was beneath it. For a split second,
as he aimed it at us, I was certain it was a gun. Then he turned it on.
It was a spotlight, the kind of million-candlepower thing that hooked to a car battery and was used by poachers to stun deer. It sure as hell stunned us. Tom and I ducked back down behind the drums, temporarily blinded. I knew we couldn’t be seen, shielded by the drums, but as my night vision slowly returned, I saw we were trapped by two impossibly bright bands of white light streaming by each side of the shelter. If we moved, we’d be spotted immediately.
“It’s them!” screamed Ray. “Stop! I’m calling the police!” The light jerked as he shouted, the shadows cast by it dodging and weaving crazily. I heard a rattle as he banged against the chain-link fence. The light was so bright individual pebbles cast long shadows in the parking lot. We were pinned.
And then suddenly we were free. Ray briefly turned the light on Tom’s dad, either in his excitement or in an unwise act of aggression, giggling as he did it. Tom’s dad promptly smashed it to the ground, where it shattered and extinguished with a loud pop. He and Ray Arnold immediately began the fistfight they had both been preparing for all night, and the other two men began their equally anticipated pulling of the men apart. As much as we both wanted to watch George Kruer kick somebody’s ass, Tom and I took the opportunity to skedaddle.
I was sure the whole time we ran that murderous guards were following us, running right behind me with guns drawn. I was paranoid, out of my element on the treeless asphalt instead of in the woods where I knew what the hell I was doing. In the woods, we had to evade pissed off people on occasion: farmers from whom we borrowed watermelons, an occasional Department of Natural Resources ranger, and, of course, angry Squire Boone Caverns tour guides. That was fun, and it even felt slightly heroic, just a more exciting form of the escape-and-evade games we had always played in the woods, whether we called it Capture the Flag, Cowboys and Indians, or Outsmart the Commie Invaders. Running with Tom across the company parking lot felt radically different. As the chain-link fence raced by in my peripheral vision, I felt like a juvenile delinquent, and that made me feel vulnerable.