Bolt by 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 narrative 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, in case you’re wondering. I hate stories narrated by dead people. Also wrong, also a cheat. Sunset Boulevard, for example. Great movie, but William Holden’s character 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 of them 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. When this story takes place, the contest was still a frustrating draw, no significant weight gained by me despite a constant onslaught of granny-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, I wanted to spend the summer lying around the damn house doing not a damn thing all damn day.

My parents, normally supportive, indulgent—I was an only child—did not share my views on the manner in which I intended to spend my time off. They suggested that a “bright young man” such as myself might want to get a summer job. Note the false flattery re supposed brightness, and the “young man” description, invariably employed when they wanted me to do something I wasn’t completely 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 were quite unmoved, entrenched in their position.

Okay, so I got a job.

It wasn’t what they expected, though. Dad managed an office furniture store, probably thought I’d ask him for some easy, make-work position. Instead I secured an entry-level job making deliveries on a beer truck.

In those days, even a dopey awkward kid such as myself could just stroll into a business, ask for work, be hired, and get cash in hand at the end of the day. 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. I liked him immediately.

Jimmy lived to talk, his daily monologue commencing when our shift did at eight a.m. and ending 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 I quickly learned this polite effort was unnecessary and unwanted. Jimmy didn’t really care to have the flow of his stream-of-consciousness impeded. He had one main topic: he liked to express 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 woman to love him. (This topic embarrassed me a bit. In my family, we loved each other all right, but we didn’t talk about it much.)

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. The taverns all smelled the same—stale beery yeast.

I realized quickly the cash I was being paid was coming not from the business but from Jimmy himself, who was clearly struggling with chronic back pain. I could understand why: the job was a physically demanding activity involving repeatedly moving numerous, densely-heavy weights around in an unavoidably 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 a great deal of happiness in both my parents and grandparents.

The day I was struck was July 6^th, 1971. A Tuesday. It rained hard early that morning, then stopped, although the ground stayed wet, the air remained humid, and the sky showed dramatic smears of orange and gray. At eleven o’clock it was already ninety-four 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 as the engine sputtered and died. Then I climbed up into the back of the truck to wrangle the beer kegs for delivery while Jimmy turned on the moaning hydraulics that unfolded the screechy iron liftgate at the back.

Soon a sweaty heavyset man approached us, waggling a fistful of keys; we had blocked his car in and he wasn’t happy about it. He and Jimmy enjoyed a mild, time-wasting disputation. I remember thinking that if the man thought he was going to out-talk Jimmy he was surely mistaken.

I stood 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 a newly blackening sky. It had a hole in it.

In eighteenth century France, it was widely believed that the vigorous ringing of the 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.” But these bold claims proved to be only wishful thinking: during one thirteen-year period, one hundred and three French bell-ringers who remained in their towers during storms were struck and killed.

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.

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 can. I surmise the bolt contacted the parked-in man’s body directly, as described above, and murdered him forthwith.

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, and found casually arrayed in a corner like a discarded doll.

My body, I am told, was located outside the truck, across the narrow sidewalk nearby, upside-down, embedded in a yew hedge. A bar patron rushing out to the scene happened to notice one of my black Chuck Taylor sneakers 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-haired girl in American History 102 you had such a hopeless crush on? She was never going to go out with you anyway. Worried about what profession you’re supposed to choose when you grow up? Hey, you’re a fully-qualified corpse, and they’re always hiring.

Truth: I don’t have any answers. I remember only nothingness, and did not experience the passage of time.

Maybe I wasn’t quite 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 from the lightning strike 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, 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 pleasant, in a way, though the constantly helicoptering presence of the six adults became irritating after a while.

My curfew was moved back an hour. Additionally, a series of gifts were given to me for no good reason, including some cool clothes. And yes—no matter what anyone says—in 1971 pink-and-brown striped bell-bottoms were cool.

Could I have milked the situation for more gifts, more privileges, more love? Yeah, I think I could have. 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 bring myself to 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 in the hospital, 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 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. Certainly not the unspeakably adorable goddess Jimmy had implied he was married to.

Anyway, I went into the room. Jimmy looked shrunken, impossibly small in the bed. He was all wired up and 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. 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. Can’t seem to find his voice.”

Jimmy died about two weeks later. Even the ignorant kid I was at the time knew that he did not really die from kidney failure, or whatever it was they said back then. The lightning had removed his most essential attribute—his fluent loquaciousness—and I don’t think he could be himself without that.

So—for many years 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 actually one of the best things that ever occurred 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 retained a vestigial glow. But whatever else might be said, 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 forty-three years.

That other writer was wrong: there are many, many pleasures greater than being shot at and missed.

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 just be the lightning.

My well of undeserved luck is, I suspect, finally beginning to run dry, however. At night, I used to fall asleep quite easily, always eager to enter my warm bed, embrace my warm wife. Forty-three years of feeling nested and safe.

Lately, though—and with increasing frequency—I find myself startling awake suddenly after only a couple hours of rest, feeling breathless, and disturbed by dreams.

Again and again those dreams show me the looming black sky with a hole in it.

Sometimes I throw my legs over the side of the bed and sit there awhile, in the purple-tinged darkness, refraining from switching on a lamp to keep my innocent wife undisturbed. After conceding that I won’t be able to return to sleep, I trudge to the bathroom—just to kill time, just for something to do. I ease the bathroom door closed behind me and flip on the light, which at that time of night seems impossibly, phosphorescently brilliant, like the blinding spotlights cops use in old movies when giving suspects the third degree. Once my eyes adjust a bit, my pupils down to pinpricks, I lean toward the mirrored door of the medicine cabinet and assess my face. I believe the expression I wear is exactly the same one worn by a person cursed.

So, just like they would, I have to ask.

Why me?

James W. Morris

Image: A double bolt of lightning grounding on a background of angry orange cloud from Pixabay.com