The Truth About Love and Lightning (22 page)

“Her mom’s a crackpot,” one of the boys blurted out, the one called Bobby with red hair and freckles whose own mother always made him wear a bow tie.

“Now, Bobby, that isn’t nice at all,” Mrs. Macabee said in a feeble attempt to shush him.

“Well, the Bible says we shouldn’t lie, doesn’t it?” Bobby remarked with a smirk. “And everyone knows her mom’s a nut.”

Gretchen Brink screwed up her face, rosebud mouth puckered like she’d sucked on a very tart lemon. For an instant, Sam imagined she was going to walk over to bow-tied Bobby and punch his lights out. Instead, she quietly sat back down and placed her hands in her lap, crossing her feet at the ankles.

Sam was impressed. There weren’t too many folks he knew who could take their anger and switch it off like that. But he wasn’t surprised either. Just as he’d arrived at the church that morning, he’d witnessed her saving the life of a daddy longlegs from the ill-tempered Bobby, who’d decided to poke the creature with a stick. Gretchen had walked straight up to him, ordered him to “cut it out,” then had picked up the spider with her bare hands, taking it away a safe distance. If Sam had stood openmouthed, it was only because he’d never seen a girl touch a bug before, not in all his seven years.

“Mrs. Mac, is there a commandment that says something about ‘Thou shall not be a fruitcake’?” Bobby asked, unwilling to let it go and obviously enjoying the cackles from his buddies.

Still, Gretchen stared at her lap, saying nothing.

But Sam wasn’t about to let it be.

He rose to his feet and turned his steely gaze on Bobby. “You take that back,” he said. “You apologize to her or else.”

“Or else what?” Bobby replied, and his comrades nudged him, egging him on until he stood up to Sam. His freckles seemed suddenly dark against pale skin though he raised his chin, clearly wanting to save face in front of his friends. “Are you going to scalp me?” he remarked, his voice starting off squeaky until the other boys’ laughter emboldened him. “I’m not afraid of you, Winston, not even if your grandfather really was an Indian medicine man.”

Sam knew an ignorant remark when he heard it, and Bobby’s stupidity wasn’t worth the consequences of fighting in Sunday school, he told himself. But logic didn’t keep the anger from rising inside him, swirling in his chest and thundering in his brain. Within moments, the still air began to move, wind blustering through the opened windows and stirring up the coloring books on a nearby table, tearing the paper fan out of Mrs. Macabee’s hand.

“Heavens to Betsy! I think a tornado’s brewing!” Mrs. Mac declared as her voice trembled and the wind tugged at her bird’s nest hat. But she pulled herself together to hop to her feet, clap her hands, and shout, “Children, hurry, get beneath the tables, hands clasped above your heads, just like during the drills!”

The girls in the class squealed, scrambling from their chairs as their hair bows were tugged into disarray. Bobby stumbled backward into his seat, pinned there by an unseen hand, even as his friends leaped up and deserted him, diving under the nearest wooden table.

“Take it back,” Sam said, holding his ground, even as Bible pages flapped and papers swirled about him. “Say you’re sorry for everything.”

Bobby shouted, “Okay, okay, I’m sorry!”

“Did you get that?” Sam asked Gretchen, who had come up beside him and tugged at his arm.

“Yes, I heard,” she said. “Now, c’mon!”

Sam took a deep breath, slowing down his pounding heart, giving in and allowing himself to be pulled to a spot beneath a desk where a handful of girls huddled. As his anger eased, the winds began to die down along with it, until the room was still again and the stifling heat resumed.

“Is it over? Is it gone?” the children asked, one girl sniffling back sobs.

“It seems so.” Mrs. Macabee crawled out from her hidey-hole, and the kids followed suit.

Beyond the basement windows set high up in the walls, the sky appeared calm but overcast, much as it had looked when Sam and his dad had arrived at church a half hour earlier.

The Sunday school teacher straightened her cockeyed hat and asked, “Is everyone all right?”

After a chorus of, “Yes, Mrs. Macabee,” she nodded, remarking, “I do believe we’re safe now.”

“I think we always were,” Gretchen whispered so that only Sam could hear.

He blushed but said nothing.

Gretchen smiled at him knowingly—as if they shared some deep, dark secret—then she dusted off her pink dress before joining Mrs. Macabee in righting the chairs that had toppled. Sam peeled his eyes off Gretchen long enough to assist the others in picking up papers from the floor. When the room seemed put together again, she beckoned Sam to take the empty seat beside hers.

From the center of the circle, Mrs. Macabee cleared her throat and trilled, “Now, where were we? Ah, yes, Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden . . .”

When Sunday school ended that day, Gretchen dashed out of the basement room before Sam could follow. Ignoring Bobby’s hissed “You’re a sideshow freak, Winston,” he headed outside to the usual spot to meet his dad at the bottom of the church steps.

As it so happened, Cooper Winston was chatting with Dr. Brink. Sam appeared in time to overhear Gretchen’s dad remark, “If you wouldn’t mind, I’d like to bring her out to the farm one of these days. She needs to be around a woman like Lily, one who’s strong but sensitive. Anni can be so harsh sometimes.”

“Hello,” Sam said as he shuffled down the steps, his hand on the slab of stone at the base of the railing.

“Ah, good timing,” his dad said, gesturing him nearer so he could sling an arm about his shoulders. “What would you think of having a friend to play with now and then? Dr. Brink has a daughter who’d like to spend some time on the farm. You could show her the walnut grove and the barn and the pond.”

Sam tried to act nonchalant. He shoved his hands in his trouser pockets, glancing up at the cloud-draped sky, fighting to contain his excitement. “Yes,” he said carefully. “I guess that would be all right.”

Moments after, Gretchen emerged from around the stone building, her golden curls in their usual chaotic state, a smudge of dirt on her cheek and hands behind her back.

At the sight of her, Sam’s heart swelled until it felt too big for his chest.

“This is for you,” she said, approaching him, and pressed a large orange day lily into his hands. It looked like the ones that grew at the back of the church, and it still had a bit of its roots attached. “You didn’t have to stick up for me, you know, but I’m glad you did.” She smiled at him, and he tried his best to smile back.

“I would do it again,” he murmured, holding the green stalk of the flower against his chest and feeling his cheeks heat.

She cocked her head. “You know what?” she said. “I like you, Sammy. You’re different from everyone else, and, even better, you don’t seem to care that you are.”

She likes me?
Sam thought and his toes began to tingle, a warmth spreading upward to the rest of him.

Then as had transpired so many times before when happiness overcame doubt or sadness within Sam’s head and heart, the sun began to wink through the clouds, melting them away until the heavens turned a blue as cheerful as a robin’s egg.

“See you later, Sam,” Gretchen said, waving at him as her daddy took her hand and led her off to their car.

“That’s my boy,” his dad leaned down to whisper, nudging him, and Sam suddenly felt a foot taller.

He knew somehow that having Gretchen Brink in his life would change it forever. The boy who liked to be alone had made his first true friend.

That next weekend, Dr. Brink brought Gretchen out to the farm, and then she came again with him several weekends after. It wasn’t long before he was dropping her off every Saturday morning even if he didn’t stay, which pleased Sam to no end.

He could hardly sleep Friday nights, he was so bottled up with excitement at the prospect of spending hours and hours alone with Gretchen, collecting geodes and arrowheads from the creek that ran through the farm; catching frogs and butterflies just to view them up close and then letting them go again; climbing the walnut trees and seeing who could get the closest to the sky.

“You are more than my friend,” she told him one day when they’d taken a break in the pasture, picking clover and making long strands of it, which Gretchen wrapped around her neck like they were pearls. “I have Trudy and Bennie, but they’re sisters. So I imagine this is exactly what having a brother should feel like.”

Sam beamed as brilliantly as the sun overhead, secure in the notion that they were as close as family, and family meant forever, didn’t it? “Blood is thicker than water,” his mother had told him.

Until the years slipped past, and Gretchen turned eleven. Without explanation, her regular visits became more sporadic. When she didn’t show up with Dr. Brink for a third Saturday morning in a row, Sam frantically asked Gretchen’s dad, “Is she okay? Is she sick?”

Dr. Brink put a hand on his shoulder. “She’s not sick, son.” He shook his head, sounding as unhappy as Sam when he explained, “It’s just that her mother decided that she’s a young woman now, and it doesn’t become her to run around a farm all day, getting dirty britches.”

“Doesn’t Mrs. Brink like me?” Sam asked, because he sensed in his heart there was more to it than that.

“You shouldn’t worry about what Mrs. Brink thinks.” The vet ruffled his hair. “You’re a great kid, Sam, and anyone who can’t see that has rocks in her head.”

But Sam did worry, and he pined for Gretchen. He missed having her around so much that it hurt. He even went so far as to take his pocketknife to the back of the walnut tree in the grove’s center, the one split at the trunk by lightning. He carved something deeply into its old bark, something that made him feel at least a little bit better. It was a heart with “S + G” inside it.

Maybe he didn’t know what real love was at that point, but Sam did know for sure that he had a deep and abiding affection for Gretchen.

The next week, he made it a point to track her down at school. Lily even dropped him off early one morning so he could wait outside the door of her classroom, eager for her to appear. When she saw him there, her big blue eyes lit up.

“Sam! I’m sorry I haven’t been out to the farm in a while,” she said as kids pushed around her to get into the room. “But my mom’s been on a tear. She doesn’t believe I should spend so much time running loose with a boy like—” She stopped herself. “Never mind. I’m just sorry is all.” She bit her lip, looking down at her feet.

A boy like him?
Is that what she’d been about to say? Sam had a feeling he knew exactly what Mrs. Brink meant. Her aversion to him couldn’t be because he lived on a farm, as half the population of Walnut Ridge did. It was more likely because he had Indian blood running through him. Lots of the kids had made digs about that in the past—some still did—and his parents had told him that such thoughts were passed down from parents who didn’t know better. Sam was just glad that Gretchen
did
know better than that.

“I feel awful, Sam, honestly. My dad stuck up for you, but Annika put her foot down. And when she does that, it’s not worth fighting over,” she whispered, pressing against the tiled wall and leaning toward him. “No matter what, you will always be my best friend. I’ll see you around school, right? And one day, I’ll be old enough that Annika can’t keep me from doing whatever I want.” She squeezed his hand. “You trust me, don’t you?”

He could do little but nod.

“Good!” She smiled at him, but it wasn’t quite as bright as usual. Then she slipped into her classroom, and Sam shuffled off to his.

That night as he lay in bed, something pained him terribly, an ache in his chest that made it hard to breathe. All he wanted was to be with Gretchen Brink. It seemed like such a simple thing. He turned on his side and pulled his knees to his chest, balling up in frustration, wondering if his head might explode with all his pent-up angst.

Outside, the wind picked up, banging the shutters against the clapboards and moaning through the eaves, the sky as bottled up as Sam, the air emitting a low rumble as if the clouds were as fit to burst as he.

Eighteen

1970

Sam had been in love once and only once.

He knew that some folks were geared toward trial and error, the whole “plenty of fish in the sea” approach to relationships. But at seventeen, he was already sure of where his heart belonged. No one else he’d ever met—or had yet to meet—could make him feel as good as Gretchen.

But he was aware that the sixteen-year-old Gretchen had her share of suitors, not the least of whom was Frank Tilby, son of the sheriff of Walnut Ridge. Even though Sam had caught Gretchen blushing at Tilby’s macho attempts at flirtation in the hallways of the high school, and even though he realized she showed up at Tilby’s baseball games to cheer him on from the stands, something inside Sam couldn’t imagine Gretchen ending up with anyone but him. They had been best friends since Sunday school, even if they didn’t see each other as often as they used to. But that bond between them meant something, didn’t it? She had told him before that she loved him, though maybe that kind of love was more brotherly than he now hoped for. But feelings could change, couldn’t they? He had heard his mother say that the most enduring affection started out slowly and burned more deeply as time passed. Love that came too quickly was more like a flash fire, there and gone in the blink of an eye.

Which gave Sam a ray of hope, and he hung on to it.

Oftentimes in the late spring when the weather was neither too hot nor too cold, he and Gretchen would prepare a late-night picnic, and he’d borrow his father’s truck to drive to an open field. He’d park smack in the middle, lower the tailgate, and they’d sit with their legs dangling over.

They would eat first, usually something like cold fried chicken and coleslaw with lemonade. Once they’d filled their bellies, they’d push the basket deep into the bed so they could spread out a quilt and lie flat on their backs.