The Handbook for Lightning Strike Survivors by Michele Young-Stone Read Free Book Online

mouth.”
    Ida said, “Very nice. What’s the occasion?” She brushed her hand against the lapel of Joe Pitank’s suit.
    “We’re sharp, ain’t we?” he said.
    “I’ll say.”
    “Abigail got new threads.” In her white gloves, Abigail twirled for Ida to admire her outfit.
    “You look very pretty.”
    She blushed. “Thank you!”
    “Two limeades and two slices of pie coming right up.”
    Winter was home doing other people’s laundry.
    Winter was always doing laundry, and she was always nagging Joe: “You need to get a job. You need to get off your behind and put a decent meal on the table. You need to stop babying that girl. You need to teach her to respect her elders.”
    Abigail didn’t know that there was anything wrong with her father until after he died, when Winter confessed to the town of Mont Blanc that Joe had been a shell and not a man. “Why do you think there’s just Abigail? The man lived with demons. He got up with them and he went to bed with them. He couldn’t hold a job, and he wasn’t a proper husband to me.”
    Until her father died, when his burial was paid for by the county and there was no proper funeral, just a gathering on the scarce brown lawn outside their cinder-block house, Abigail didn’t know that a man could go to war for his country and come home but still have the war with him. She heard her neighbors say that he was addicted to painkillers. She heard them say that he was depressed. He’d never recovered from his demons. Abigail imagined monsters walking the earth. The neighbors said, “Joe Pitank mistreated his family.”
    This awful man was not the man Abigail knew.
    No one seemed to notice her that hot June day, watching her mother tug at the breast of her black sleeveless shirt. She was sweating. They were all sweating. Despite the occasion, only a few women wore stockings. It was just too hot. Abigail was thirteen. She sat in the dirt, waiting for the day to end. When it was dark it’d be cooler, and maybe her dad would come see her. Maybe she’d wake up tomorrow and he’d be home, and her mother would be dead in his place.
Don’t ever think such things
. Her father would be disappointed.
    Normally someone would’ve told her to get out of the dirt. Not today. Except for when her mom’s friend Violet offered her a piece of cake, Abigail was invisible. They all said his death was unbearable for poor Winter—left practically penniless with a child. If it weren’t for the army check, the Pitanks would be on welfare like the Negroes. Other mourners, including Abigail’smother, whispered that as awful as it was, it might be for the best. Joe Pitank was a sick man. Now he could rest.
    Abigail needed reassurance from her dad. Days and weeks passed slowly, miserably, and then years. Abigail’s father sent no word from his grave. She often thought that if it weren’t for Buckley, she’d get herself addicted to some kind of painkiller. She remembered her father as happy and soft-spoken. She remembered his kisses. She was lucky to have known him.
    Buckley slept, his head on his mother’s lap. Abigail, hearing the Reverend Whitehouse at the front door speaking to Winter, set down her hairbrush and shifted to rise from the bed. There was something unsettling about that man. He was certainly no Joe Pitank. And what did he want with her family?

Excerpt from
THE HANDBOOK FOR LIGHTNING STRIKE SURVIVORS
    Victims may suffer symptoms similar to shell-shock, recently named post-traumatic stress disorder, turning to narcotics and other drugs to cope with their fears.
    This disorder is most likely due to the trauma of being struck, but there is also a suggestion that the brain has been altered by exposure to high volts of electricity, rewiring the body to reexperience the event through flashbacks and irrational fears.

[7]
Ashes to ashes, 1978
    Grandma Edna told bizarre stories with punch lines only Grandma Edna understood. Becca thought she might be senile, but Becca’s mom