Bolt
James W. Morris
Lightning strikes kill about two thousand people per year. The bolt itself is only the width of your thumb, yet it carries 100 million volts of electricity, and runs hot—around 54,000 degrees, which, by the way, is five times greater than the temperature of the sun.
***
Why burden you with these unasked-for facts? Because this story is about what happened when I got struck by a bolt. Lightning, by its nature, is sudden and surreptitious, life-ending or at least life-changing—but I didn’t want to clap a lightning strike down in the middle of an ordinary-seeming story without preparing you. Seemed wrong, a cheat. So, fair warning: in a couple of pages, I am going to get lit up.
***
By the way, I’m not dead. I hate stories narrated by dead people. Also wrong, also a cheat. Sunset Boulevard, for example. Great movie, but William Holden apparently knows what happens in the afterlife. Don’t you think he should speak more about that, maybe answer mankind’s eternal epistemological questions, rather than rambling on for two hours about how he once shagged a has-been movie star?
Tell us, Bill: Is there a God? If so, is He all judge-y?
***
Anyhow—1971. I was fifteen years old, tall for my age, but skinny. So skinny there was a somewhat-amusing, somewhat-moronic, escalating contest between two of my immigrant grandparents—my paternal grandmother (Jewish) and my maternal grandmother (Irish Catholic)—over which would be able to take credit for finally managing to fatten me up. Apparently, a grandmother in any culture perceives the trait of natural slimness in a grandchild as an actionable personal affront. So throughout my teens it was latkes vs. boxty, kugel vs. colcannon. When this story takes place, the contest was still a frustrating draw, no significant weight gained by me despite the constant onslaught of home-delivered calories.
It was early summertime, the beginning of a series of long languid humid days between my freshman and sophomore years in high school. I had been a bit of a star in elementary, some would say a teacher’s pet, but quickly proved to be an ignored nobody, a schlub, in the more competitive classrooms and hallways of high school. Therefore, I was feeling defeated, mentally exhausted, from the term just concluded. Never before, it seemed to me, had a year’s worth of academic mediocrity been achieved at such a high spiritual cost to the student. As a consequence, my preferred mode for living that summer was an open-ended program of rest, recovery, and strength-gathering. In other words, I wanted to lie around the house doing not a damn thing all damn day. Yes, I was kind of a spoiled, dramatic kid, and would have flopped down, Camille-like, on a chaise lounge if we’d had one.
My parents, normally supportive, indulgent—I was an only child—did not share my considered view on the manner in which I intended to spend my summer. They said they thought a “bright young man” such as myself might want to get something. A job, for example. Note the false flattery re supposed brightness, and the “young man” description, invariably employed when they wanted me to do something I wasn’t so sure about. Otherwise, I was still considered a boy, as proven by my ridiculously early curfew, and lack of cool clothes. I argued with them past the point when in previous arguments they would have given in. Instead, Mom and Dad proved to be quite unmoved, entrenched in their position.
Okay, so I got a job.
***
Not what they expected, though. Dad managed an office furniture store, probably thought I’d take the easy way, ask him for something. Instead I secured an entry-level position making deliveries on a beer truck.
In those days, even a dopey awkward kid such as myself could just walk into a business, ask for work, be hired, and get paid in cash. No resumes, working papers, W-4 forms.
The driver of the beer truck—an ancient, rattling contraption—was named Jimmy. He was one of those short, wiry, energetic types, a dark-skinned dynamo of indeterminate age and ethnicity. He mentioned he was a second-generation American, but I don’t think he mentioned where his parents came from. He was either African, Portuguese, Iranian, or maybe Samoan. Or something else. Aleutian? Mongolian? Never did figure it out, not that it mattered. I liked him immediately.
Jimmy lived to talk, his daily monologue commencing when our shift did at eight a.m. and ending when it was time to go home at four p.m. At first, for a few days only, I attempted to have a back-and-forth conversation with the man, interject my moronic teenaged thoughts and opinions, but quickly learned this polite effort on my part was unnecessary and unwanted. Jimmy—who worked alone before I showed up—didn’t really want to have the flow of his stream-of-consciousness impeded. He had two main topics—first, he liked to express in detail the myriad ways in which his wife Sue was demonstratively better—kinder, smarter, more beautiful—than the average person, and how lucky he was to have found such a wonderful woman to love him. This topic embarrassed me a bit. In my family, we loved each other all right, but didn’t talk about it much. Not sure if this was the Jewish or Irish influence. Anyhow, Jimmy’s other topic concerned two syndicated, re-running TV shows about which he was obsessed—I Dream of Jeannie and Bewitched. He simply could not decide which of the enticing female conjurers of magic was ultimately more attractive, and importantly—at least, it seemed important to him—which would win in a fight between them. He spent a lot of time speculating, but never came to a firm conclusion.
***
My job consisted of wrangling beer kegs and cornies (cylinders of pressurized gas) for deliveries to taprooms in the narrow streets of neighborhoods throughout inner-city Philadelphia. Some of these taverns were so old they still had troughs for urination in front of the bar. They all smelled the same, however. Stale yeast.
I realized quickly that the cash I was being paid was coming not from the beer delivery business but from Jimmy himself, who was (though he never mentioned it) clearly struggling with chronic back pain. I could understand why: the job was a physically demanding activity involving repeatedly moving numerous heavy weights around in an awkward way. I endeavored to give value for money.
When I came home at night, I was exhausted and ravenous, eating any food placed in front of me. This seemed to engender much trans-generational happiness.
***
The day was July 6th, 1971. A Tuesday. It rained hard early in the morning, then stopped, although the ground stayed wet, the air stayed humid, and the sky stayed streaked with orange and gray. At eleven o’clock it was already ninety-one degrees, at least according to a “time and temperature” sign at a bank branch we drove past.
We pulled the chugging truck up to a dismal corner bar at Ninth and Nedro, and as usual, double parked—there was never any good place to leave the truck on those narrow streets. Jimmy switched off the vehicle, which wheezed out a cancerous cloud of acrid blue smoke from the tailpipe as the engine sputtered and died. Then I climbed up into the back of the truck and started to wrangle the beer kegs for delivery while Jimmy turned on the moaning hydraulics that unfolded the screechy iron liftgate at the back. Jimmy stood on the tailgate, then raised it to join me inside the truck and assemble the items ordered.
Soon a sweaty heavyset man approached, waggling a fistful of keys; we had blocked his car in and he wasn’t too happy about it. He and Jimmy enjoyed a mild, time-wasting disputation. If the man thought he was going to out-talk Jimmy he was surely mistaken.
I stood mid-air, on the raised tailgate, and leaned on the three-high stack of kegs I’d wheeled there, enjoying the profane, but somehow unserious give-and-take of the two men. After a moment, I wiped my forehead on the sleeve of my T-shirt and as I did, I happened to look up and glimpsed the newly blackened sky. It had a hole in it.
***
In eighteenth century France, it was widely believed that the vigorous ringing of the holy bells in church towers would avert lightning strikes from impending storms. In fact, many bells cast in that period featured an engraved motto: “fulgura frango,” which means “I repel lightning.” During one thirteen-year period, one hundred and three French bell-ringers were struck and killed.
***
The only person killed outright that day was the parked-in man. Perhaps God mistook the fistful of keys he was waving at Jimmy as a heaven-directed gesture of defiance.
No, I don’t really believe that.
***
When lightning strikes a person directly, it seeks the body’s openings. The flow of electricity splits and enters a person’s head through the ears, eyes, nose, and mouth simultaneously, the white-hot branches meeting up again at the brain. It also evaporates the natural film of sweat everybody wears, and transforms it instantly into a shroud of scalding steam.
***
Me?
I experienced nothing, neither bolt nor flash, crack nor bang. Feeling nothing, I became nothing.
Such ease, my friends. No left-over part of me felt a need to fight.
***
Having no recall of the lightning strike itself, I have, over the years, ventured to reconstruct the consequences as best as I am able. I surmise the bolt contacted the parked-in man’s body directly, as described above, and murdered him forthwith. Nearly removed the top of his head, truth be told. The pressure of a rapidly swelling brain—its moisture boiling—can pop the eyes and rend the skull.
Sorry if that’s overly graphic.
Jimmy and I, standing a few feet apart on the tailgate nearby, were probably caught in the “proximate aura” of the bolt, and this accidental placement relative to the main shaft is what undoubtedly allowed both of us to survive.
Jimmy’s body was violently flung back into the truck, apparently traveled air-borne the length of its interior, and was found casually arrayed in a corner like a discarded doll.
My body, I am told, was located outside the truck, across the sidewalk, upside-down, embedded in a nearby hedge. A bar patron rushing out to the scene happened to notice one of my black Chucks protruding from the greenery.
***
I was in the hospital, unconscious, for three days. I recall no dreams.
When I first awoke—really, I was only about half-awake—I was pretty mad about it. For one thing, I was plagued by an ugly creature that constantly loomed over me, looking down and shrieking out a string of gibbering nonsense noises. I later learned that this intimidating creature was my mother; the primitive parts of my brain that recognized human faces and speech were still disordered, not completely reset yet.
Since I have this opportunity, let me state for the record that my mother’s face is both objectively lovely and very much beloved by me. At the time, however, I did not know who—or what—the hell she was.
***
So, since I was hard on Bill Holden earlier for keeping the universe’s secrets, I suppose I would be leaving myself vulnerable for some criticism re hypocrisy if I did not tell you exactly what it is like to die, or nearly die. Which is all anyone can know.
It’s great. Really.
All the problems you have, or think you have, or think you might have someday, are solved instantly. That tall, dark-hired girl in American History 102 you had a hopeless crush on? She was never going to go out with you anyway. Worried about what profession you’re supposed to choose? Hey, you’re a fully-qualified corpse, and they’re always hiring.
Geez. I guess that came out a bit glib, huh?
Truth: I don’t have any answers. I remember only nothingness, and did not experience the passage of time.
Maybe I wasn’t dead enough.
Some writer whose name I won’t bother to look up said that the very best feeling in the world is to be shot at and missed, and I suppose when I recovered (which I did, except for some lingering fatigue, after a couple of weeks), I managed to feel some mild psychological and philosophical relief along those lines, even as daily life started settling its standard burdens upon me anew.
***
There was quit a bit of fuss made over me when I was released from the hospital and sent home at last, as you might imagine. My four grandparents spent so much time at my parents’ house they might as well have moved in. The loving attention was kind of pleasant, in a way, though the constantly helicoptering presence of the six of them became somewhat irritating after a while.
My curfew was moved back an hour. (Despite my previous protests, this wasn’t truly necessary, as my dweeby friends and I were not exactly party animals, but there was a principle involved.) Additionally, a series of gifts were given to me for no good reason, including some cool clothes. And yes, in 1971 striped bell-bottoms were cool.
Could I have milked the situation for more gifts, more privileges, more love? Yeah, I think I could have. I’m human. Did I ever blow my new curfew and consider blaming it on forgetfulness from my lightning-scrambled brain? Yes, but ultimately I just couldn’t do it. They were so sweet, the six of them, taking turns facing me with only partially-disguised unquiet looks.
I suppose the thing I wanted most was for those looks to go away.
***
When I emerged from my stay at the hospital on another hot day at the end of July, it was gently suggested to me that I visit Jimmy, who it was said did not recover from the lightning strike as well as I did. I demurred, not because I didn’t like Jimmy, but because (like any fifteen-year-old) I preferred to avoid emotional, potentially embarrassing situations.
The topic was not brought up again until mid-August. I awoke one morning to find my father sitting at the foot of my bed.
“Son,” he said. “I think you should consider visiting Jimmy. He’s not doing well—he’s back in the hospital. His wife, Sue, called. Says he might not make it. Something about his body chemistry never returning to normal.”
I frowned.
“We won’t make you go. We know a traumatic thing happened when you were together, and we all want to put it behind us. But Sue—by the way, she sounds like a lovely woman—she thinks a visit from you might cheer Jimmy up. What do you think?”
***
So, of course, I went. I was basically a good kid.
My parents offered to accompany me, but I rode there by myself, on my bike.
In the hallway outside the room, I met Sue. She seemed pretty and nice, but kind of ordinary, though. Not Raquel Welch, or anything—certainly not the adorable goddess Jimmy had implied he was married to.
Yes, I’m letting you see how shallow and stupid I was then. A fifteen-year-old boy cannot fathom the ennobling revelatory joy a man can feel being loved by an “ordinary” woman.
Anyway, I went into the room. Jimmy looked shrunken, impossibly small in the bed. He was all wired up. Grinned when he saw me.
“How are you doing, Jimmy?” I asked.
By way of answering, he used one hand to raise the hem of his hospital gown and bare his torso. I saw that his normally dark skin had been grossly de-pigmented by the lightning. There was actually a pattern to it. Looked like the silhouettes of dozens of tiny white spiders holding hands.
Sue, who had silently followed me into the room, whispered over my shoulder. “He probably won’t speak. He has what they call aphasia. Lost his voice.”
***
Jimmy died about two weeks later. Even the ignorant dope I was at the time knew that he did not die from kidney failure, or whatever it was they said back then. The lightning had removed his essential attribute—his fluent loquaciousness—and I don’t think he could survive without that.
***
So, for a while, I made out that the lightning bolt was something bad that had happened to me, something I was better off not thinking about.
Now I’m going to tell you the truth.
Getting stuck by lightning was the best thing that ever happened to me. I’ve been extraordinarily lucky ever since.
***
Yes, two men died, one of them a friend of mine. But in fact, if you think about it another way, the bolt gave selfish fifteen-year-old me everything I wanted. Loving attention, cool clothes, and permission—in fact, encouragement—to spend the rest of that summer lying around the house doing nothing.
When I got back to high school a few weeks later, in September, word had obviously spread about my experience, and people who never previously knew my name eyed me curiously in the hallway as I walked by. Okay, maybe they just wanted to see if I glowed. But lightning had rescued me from the high school-hell known as anonymity.
My new second period class that year was World History 202. On the first day, I watched the tall, dark-haired girl sit down next to me.
We have been married thirty-eight years.
***
That other writer was wrong: there are many, many pleasures greater than being shot at and missed.
*
But my randomly bestowed illicit good fortune goes beyond ordinary happiness-inducing things like love, family, and a comfortable standard of living, which, God knows, are hard enough for most people to attain in life.
I am in my mid-sixties now, and my hair is thick and ungrayed. I have never been sick—never broken a bone, needed a stitch, had a stomach flu, or even a cold. My blood tests are, well, textbook perfect.
A healthy, careful lifestyle? Yes.
Good genetics? Maybe.
But I think it might be the lightning.
***
At night, I fall asleep easily, eager for my warm bed, my warm wife.
Lately, however—and with increasing frequency—I find myself coming awake suddenly after only a few hours of rest.
Again and again I see the black sky with a hole in it.
***
Sometimes on these nights I will trudge to the bathroom for something to do. I stop at the mirror over the sink. I believe the expression I wear is the same as a person cursed.
So, like they would, I have to ask.
Why me?
James W. Morris is a graduate of LaSalle University in Philadelphia, where he was awarded a scholarship for creative writing. He has published dozens of short stories, humor pieces, essays, and poems in various literary magazines, including PHILADELPHIA STORIES and ZAHIR. He has also written one play, RUDE BABY, which was recently produced, and worked for a time as a joke writer for Jay Leno.