The rain had been falling on and off all night. I was at my childhood house again, living in the same room where just 10 years earlier, I had stared at a picture of a naked woman for the first time. Electricity hung in the humid air. I put on my shoes and a jacket and set out into the night.
I walked the mile long residential circle, droplets of water tapping on my head and shoulders. Lightning struck somewhere in the distance. I began to count out loud.
“1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11″
Thunder rolled over me.
“Five and a half miles,” I shouted. “You can do better than that.”
I kept walking. I reached into my pocket and found a crumpled Camel cigarette and a Bic lighter. Cupping my hands around my face, I rolled my finger over the striker. I breathed in and kept walking.
The half way point of the circuit was 20 yards ahead when the second flash of lightning came. I counted.
“1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6″
The low roar of God’s fury shuttered the suburban land.
“You’re getting closer, keep it up,” I said, both hoping that someone would hear and that everyone was in bed. The rain kept falling. My old green jacket was getting darker and darker with rain water. Even the golden thread embroidery that spelled out my name had turned to a sullen amber. I tossed the wet cigarette butt on the ground.
Still the rain fell — harder and harder as the anvil shaped behemoth clouds stormed closer. I looked to the left and right. The dark houses of my middle school principal and my third grade art teacher watched me, uninterested in what I had become.
I imagined that God’s own wrath was upon me, though I wasn’t sure if I believed in him. Another flash.
“1, 2, 3, 4,” I yelled, now just trying to hear my own voice above the crashing rain. Thunder.
“Two miles, north east. You’ve almost got me.”
The last quarter mile. I started to run. I was Orpheus and Lot, I thought, soaked to the bone, escaping hell on earth.
The road was flooded. My waterproof hiking boots sunk one after the other into the puddles on the street. They did little to protect the old cotton socks on my feet.
I reached the driveway of my parents house. Another flash of light came. There was no time to count. The bolt didn’t fly down from the heavens, it just touched the world. My neighbor’s chimney was there, and then it wasn’t. Bricks lay smoldering on the lawn.
Wrapped up in the surreality of it all, I shouted: “I’m still here, and there’s nothing you can do about it.”
Lights turned on in the house and I whispered: “I’m going to be here for a long goddamn time.”
