~
Jubilee
The trip had taken Rodney three days and two nights. It was early dusk of the third day when he turned right and drove his pick-up truck down the gutted gravel driveway that led to the abandoned singlewide trailer. Not that he could see the driveway. The whole property was overgrown with dead grass and dried weeds that brushed against the sides of his truck as he drove. Grasshoppers shot into the air, their bodies black silhouettes against the mid-autumn sky. He parked beside the trailer—the space where his PaPaw had always parked the truck—and shut off the engine.
Rodney didn’t get out right away, but sat and listened to the engine tick as it cooled down. He left the keys in the ignition. Without looking, he reached out and grabbed the pack of Marlboro Reds sitting on the dash and shook one out. He tossed the pack back onto the dash and then rolled down the window before opening the door.
He got out and stretched. His muscles ached and his joints cracked and popped in protest. He’d driven straight through, stopping only for gas and to take a piss. He hadn’t even stopped to eat, living on nothing but coffee and cigarettes for the past three days. He dug his Zippo out of his jeans’ pocket and lit his cigarette. He went to slip the lighter back into his pocket, but stopped. He brushed his thumb over the engravings on the lighter: his initials R. M. and a lightning bolt. The Zippo had been a gift from his MeMaw when he’d turned sixteen. Three things every man needs: A good woman, a good knife, and a good lighter.
“Fuck it,” he muttered and chucked the lighter onto the dash. He dug out his pocketknife and tossed that onto the dashboard too. Two outta three ain’t bad. He’d never stayed with a woman more than six years. The truck kept dinging until he slammed the door shut. Rodney leaned back against the truck and smoked.
Kudzu had overtaken the only tree in the front yard, a lightning scarred oak that towered over the trailer. The kudzu was claiming the trailer as well, its vines reaching out across the span and grabbing hold of the roof. Small tendrils of new shoots had worked their way into the spaces between the window screens and the glass.
Rodney didn’t bother to go inside the trailer. He hadn’t been back since he was twenty-eight years old when he came home for his grandparents’ wake, and he doubted anyone else had been here in the last twenty-one years. Instead, he reached in through the open window of the truck and turned the high beams on. He pulled off his flannel shirt, tossed it on the hood, and started walking down the back half acre towards the creek, wading his way through the tall weeds.
Half-way down he stripped off his t-shirt and let it drop to the ground. The sky was darkening, clouds bunching up like wads of steel wool. A stiff wind kicked up. The wind had a chill bite and it nipped at his exposed skin, raising goosebumps. Next off was his belt and this was discarded as well. When he was about five yards from the creek, Rodney stopped. He sat down to take off his boots and peel off his socks. He stood up, unzipped his jeans and pulled them off along with his underwear. Naked, he waited. It’d started here. It was going to end here.
There was electricity in the air; he could feel it. The small hairs on his neck tingled and the hair on his arms rose as if pulled by a magnet. If he listened closely enough, he could hear the static building in the atmosphere—an almost audible buzz. He searched the blotted sky, seeking the telltale seam that would herald the coming bolt. It would be the slimmest of slits, a sliver of silver right before hell burst forth. Ozone filled his nostrils, his lungs. Blood tastes like copper, but electricity tastes like galvanized zinc. It set his teeth on edge, but it got him hard too.
***
It’d been summer, Deep South summer, the humidity so high people ran the risk of drowning when they went outside. MeMaw and PaPaw didn’t have central air or even ceiling fans—just box fans shoved into windows that did nothing more than draw the moisture-laden air into the house and stirred it around.
Rodney was seven and immune to the extremes of hot and cold, aridity and humidity. On that day, he’d been skinny dipping in the creek and catching crawdaddies, throwing them in a big galvanized bucket that PaPaw had given him.
“Fill that up boy, and MeMaw will cook us up some crawdaddies for supper,” PaPaw had said and then gave Rodney a knuckle-size chaw of tobacco. “Go on, boy.”
And he had. Rodney ran down to the creek, the bucket banging against his shins. He stripped off his shorts, underwear, and t-shirt. He was as brown as a pecan all over. The grass was higher along the creek bank, and the verdant blades brushed against his knees. He stepped into the rushing water and sucked in his breath at the first shock of cold. The water was only ankle deep near the bank, but dropped off less than two feet from the shore and then it’d be up to his waist.
Children have no sense of time. Rodney hadn’t learned hours and minutes but estimated time by meals: morning was breakfast, noon was lunch, evening was supper, and night was bed.
He hadn’t noticed the sky turning dark, or the hours he spent in the water, his fingers and toes pruned. He’d pissed in the water several times, even took a shit and watched as it floated down the creek. He hunted for crawdaddies under the rocks, hidden in the water grass, not crying out when they’d latch on, gripping his skin between their pinchers until his hands and fingers were covered with tiny cuts and bruises.
The sky had turned from blue to gray to black and still Rodney hadn’t noticed. In the distance, he heard MeMaw calling him, but paid her no mind. His bucket was nearly full. He knew he’d get the switch for not coming when she called, but he wasn’t scared of the stinging or the thin angry welts that would rise up and make it sore to sit down.
When the bucket couldn’t hold any more crawdaddies without them spilling out, he stopped and admired his work. Naked, he stood over the bucket. The crawdaddies scrabbled inside, their hard bodies clicking against each other and scraping the sides of bucket. That was a satisfying sound. He bent over to grab the metal handle…
…and froze like a rabbit. His skin goose-bumped, the downy hairs on his body erect. His pecker stiffened. The air smelled funny, like after a heavy rain except there hadn’t been any rain and the scent was stronger. His teeth felt chalky. A buzzing filled his ears as if bumblebees had crawled inside his head. MeMaw stood on the back porch, hand-rolled cigarette dangling from the corner of her mouth, holding a switch in one hand as she waved her arms around and yelled at him to git his ass up here.
And for the first time, Rodney had felt afraid. Not afraid of his MeMaw, or a switching, or of his pecker acting funny. No, this was more than fear. This was the blind terror of prey locked in the gaze of a predator. He was being watched, watched from above, and he feared it was the great eye of God.
It hadn’t been a question of fight or flight—how could he fight against the eye of God? Where could he run?
In an instant, the buzzing stopped, he heard his MeMaw scream, “Run, boy, run!” and he chanced a look at the sky as the silver seam split open; he closed his eyes just before the bolt reached out and struck him.
***
Rodney studied the sky, remembering all the times he’d been struck. To be hit by lightning once is chance, twice is coincidence, but to be hit six times—once every seven years—and survive, somebody is trying to get your attention.
The buzzing hadn’t invaded his head yet. He looked down at his stomach. Five of the scars, like delicate fern fronds, covered his arms, legs, and back and were faded from time. His first scar, on his upper right thigh, was indiscernible; only he could see its faint lines. The sixth scar blazed across his stomach and chest, still raised and darker than the surrounding skin, as if something grew underneath.
The buzzing began and grew louder each second. Rodney searched the black clouds. He’d never been able to keep his eyes open, though every time he’d tried so hard to, but at the last minute he’d flinch, giving into the terror that screamed inside his heart. Maybe this time would be the last. Maybe this was his Jubilee.
The silver seam started to crack the clouds and the buzzing stopped. Rodney braced himself, raised his arms high, open and wide, his palms lifted upwards towards the sky. This time he would keep his eyes open. This time he would see the face of God.
~
M.S. Gardner has perfected her impersonation of a normal human being enough to fool the locals and hold a job as a reference librarian at the community college. While her physical body resides on the Gulf Coast, she mostly lives in her head. Her work has appeared in the Strangelet Journal, and in the online magazines Altarworks, Hypnopomp, and Page & Spine.