Cats in the Ductwork

From behind the fiery red leaves of the retreating azaleas, a face I’d never seen before stared at me impassively.  A tortoiseshell, barely half grown, I judged, sitting calmly in my driveway and watching me.  Another neighborhood stray taking up residence under my house, I thought, just what I need.

Well, hello there, I said, Who might you be?

She blinked her yellow eyes and didn’t answer but when I took a step toward her, she immediately turned, darted through the latticework and disappeared into the darkness.  For the hundredth time I thought about having the latticework replaced but it’s become a sort of stray sanctuary and while I stubbornly refuse to feed any of them, winter is on its inevitable way and I can’t bring myself to take away their shelter, inadequate as it may be.  Later that afternoon, the first real cold front arrives, bringing with it three days of cold, steady rain.  Against my better judgement, I make up several small protected areas in the garage with cardboard boxes and straw, old blankets and discarded towels.  It’s not much of an offering but it provides a place out of the wind and rain and that plus constant prayers for a mild winter are as far as I’m willing to go.  Homeless, hungry,  neglected, abused animals and the way we treat them break my heart a little more each year.  We are more cruel than the seasons could ever dream of being.

Despite the weather, the hunger, the lack of shelter and the dangers, the neighborhood cats still seem to make it through year after year.  Their will to survive is close to indomitable.  I still see the old tabby who used to live in the garage and last spring’s mama cat still prowls along the fence line and torments the dogs.  The big orange tom and the bad tempered Siamese come and go often, patrolling their territories and making their voices heard.  The gray striped tiger who likes to sleep on the front steps still visits.  I don’t know whether this new tortoiseshell will survive but I do know she’ll give it her best shot.

A day or so later I realize I can see daylight from one of the heating/air conditioning vents and have to call the trusty mechanical people again.  They arrive promptly and cheerfully make the repairs, re-attaching a length of ductwork and putting things to right.  They understand about cats and gave up scolding me months ago.

Jesse's Rabbit

The little dachshund has fallen in love with a rabbit.

Having been hoarded for the first four years of his life, play isn’t second or even third nature to him.  Since I’ve had him, I’ve tried tennis balls and rubber bones and rope pulls and squeaky mice, even a cat toy or two but he’s never been even mildly curious.   We don’t fetch, we don’t chase, tennis balls leave him cold and we don’t even play tug of war with an old sock.  It’s hasn’t been something I’ve worried much about but it has always made me a little sad that no one ever taught him to play – it just doesn’t feel natural to me – so every now and again when there’s a little extra cash with no place better to go and a particular toy is on sale, I bring one home and try to tempt him.  He has a furry squirrel and an orange frog that he will sometimes drag around for awhile and then hide under the bed but it’s the rabbit that has captured his heart.  It’s as long as he is with a squeaker at each end and to my amazement and delight, I can’t get him to put it down.  He carries it everywhere, sleeps with it, growls when he makes it squeak, tries to drag it outside with him, sometimes won’t even put it down long enough to eat.   And woe to the kitten who approaches him when he’s guarding it – he’s having none of that – though he will bring it to me and dare me to take it away.

I make a point to always let him win.

A Place in Heaven

Here’s an observation.

In between the days - the good days, bad days, days you can’t hardly wait on to get here, and days you’re sure you should’ve stayed in bed – in between all those days, every now and again there’s one that, providing you survive it, is so grim, so awful, so bloated with misery and so terrifying, that it will wipe clean your transgressions and assure you a place in heaven.  Here’s mine.

It started with a frantic text from my friend, Michael, currently in New York City for Fashion Week.  The cur dog had broken out of the kennel, nearly breaking the handler’s wrist in the process, and bolted for the woods.  A six person search party had been formed and there had been a half dozen sightings across the pond at the tree line but he was still missing.  Michael was out of his mind with worry, trying desperately to make arrangements to leave three days early, but paralyzed with stress.

I’m on my way, I texted him back and rushed out of the house, not giving the first thought to the fact that I was – to be delicate, scantily clad - in pajama pants and a camisole.  It was pouring rain and starting to get cold but I didn’t really notice.

Just after I got off the interstate, I noticed that the defroster didn’t seem to be working and severely cursing it didn’t seem to help.  Barely able to see, I swiped at the windshield and fiddled with the knobs for a few miles, all to no avail.  That was when I glanced down and saw that the temperature gage had sky rocketed into the red and when I looked up again, I saw clouds of steam pouring from under the hood.  I pulled to the side of the road and reached for my cell, which chose that exact moment to malfunction and refuse to let me call or text.  The next half hour was a horror show – I was able to drive no more than a quarter mile at a time and thoughts of burning up the engine kept creeping into my mind.  I finally reached the end of the dirt road that led to the kennel – now a mass of mud and foot deep, undercarriage destroying ruts – and pulled over again to re-boot my cell and pray.  Two kennel employees, part of the failed search party so it turned out, drove out and I stopped them and sent them back for water for the radiator.  Once that was finally accomplished, I was at last able to navigate the dirt road and get to the kennel.

The owner, waiting for me on his front porch in a yellow rain slicker and so distressed he was nearly in tears, led me across the property to the edge of the woods.  It was now raining like a monsoon and bitterly cold.  I was up to my ankles in mud with every step and suddenly realized I was absolutely freezing.  We called and called and called some more, for better than a half hour but there was no sign of the cur dog.  Beaten and on the very brink of hopeless, we went back to the house for hot coffee and warm towels and tried to make a plan.  We watched and waited for the next two hours before finally facing the fact that there was nothing more we could do.  He called for a taxi and gave me $40 to pay for it, then offered to have my car towed the next morning, at his expense.  The part of me that knew it had been an accident protested this – the part that was fighting frostbite, drowning, and something on its way to semi-nudity accepted.

The taxi was warm and I climbed in feeling defeated and near tears.

As we’re driving out, I need you to watch for a medium sized brown dog,  I told the driver, He’ll be wet and dragging a leash and……………

Like that one? the driver asked before I could even settle back against the seat and I looked out the window and saw the cur dog, standing alertly on the other side of the fence, drenched, cold and shivering slightly.  I know I yelled something – I don’t remember exactly what – and then threw the door open and staggered out, shouting the dog’s name and nearly falling.  I made my way down the road to the gate, praying he hadn’t gone far, and there he was – quite a distance off but standing still and watching me.  I began to call his name, whistle, clap my hands but it wasn’t until I turned and pretended to walk away that he came toward me, stopping maybe fifty feet from the gate and refusing to come any further.

There was nothing to be done except climb the padlocked gate and hope he wouldn’t run.  Once I was on the other side – no small feat for a soggy, freezing, 67 year old woman in her underwwear – I sunk to my knees in the mud and called his name and he came, all sixty wet, filthy pounds bounding like a puppy and knocking me flat.  For a relieved ten seconds or so, I knew I’d never been happier to see a dog in my entire life, then it dawned me that we were now on the wrong side of the gate.  Lifting him up and over a six foot gate was clearly out of the question and I didn’t see being able to climb and carry him.  I thought I might be able to pull him through the spaces between the metal bars but I needed to be on the other side to do it.  I managed to throw his leash over the top of the gate, climb over, and then squeeze, coax and push-pull him through unscathed.  Through the pouring rain and mud we walked – well, he trotted and I trudged – back to the kennel, as if we were on a Sunday afternoon stroll.  The owner hugged him first, then me.

I didn’t mind.

Last Minute Mike

Late on the Thursday afternoon before the Friday he leaves for New York City, my friend Michael searches his soul once more and finally decides that I have made a valid point and he should board the dogs.  In typical Michael fashion, it never occurs to him that for the kennel this might be late notice or that the logistics of getting four wild animals to boarding and him on a plane – all before noon, no less – might be a nightmare as well as my personal undoing.  On a good day, the man barely functions before 10am.

I call the kennel and make the arrangements but then he goes into equivocation mode.  The dogs will be lonely.  The dogs won’t understand.  The dogs won’t forgive him.  He can’t stand the idea of them in cages or not being fed cheeseburgers or mcnuggets for supper.  He’s afraid this whole idea will scar them for life.

Patiently I remind him that they are dogs.  They will be fed, sheltered, well cared for, watched over and played with.  They will not blame him.  They will not report him.  They will not be abused or die from sheer misery.  They will not even starve for lack of ice cream.

We go round and round until he tells me that it’s all too stressful and maybe he just shouldn’t go.

Then don’t go, I tell him. 

He fires back that it’s my fault because I’m not willing to take his money and tend to them.

I remind him that I have seven animals of my own and – forgive me for saying so – a life of my own and first of all I don’t enjoy making four trips a day (one as early as 7, one as late as midnight) or cleaning up dogshit or not being able to sleep in or go to bed late.  And second of all, though I love them as if they my own, they’re not and besides has he forgotten that he promised me twice before to make arrangements before his next trip.

As expected, he sulks.

Morning comes and the real fun begins.  He’s still in his jockeys and hasn’t showered or packed by the time I arrive.  His prescription eye drops haven’t been delivered, he can’t find his blue blazer, the littlest dog is vomiting, he’s unhappy with his eyebrows (he had them tattooed the last time he was in New York) and he’s certain we’ll get lost on the way to the boarding place.  And it’s raining.

I call the pharmacy to discover they’re out of the eye drops.  I call the New York hotel and get the name and number of the nearest pharmacy and make arrangements for the prescription to be transferred.

And find his blue blazer.

And  feed the littlest dog a half teaspoon of Pepto Bismol.

And call the kennel and get directions.

There’s nothing I can do about the eye brow situation or the approaching hurricane.

The kennel is in the country and by that I mean IN THE COUNTRY AND AS FAR AWAY FROM CIVILIZATION AS YOU CAN GET WITHOUT ENDING UP IN TEXAS.   We get reasonably close but there are no signs and we have to call.  We end up on a barely one lane, rutted dirt road that winds and twists its way deeper and deeper into the woods and reminds us both of a scene from “Deliverance”.  The only reason we arrive at all is that there’s no place to turn a Chevy Suburban around and if looks could kill, I suspect I’d already be dead and left in one of the ditches.  The kennel folks, sipping coffee and smoking cigarettes on their front porch, are as country as they come, just one big family of hillbillies who love dogs.  They descend on the Suburban in their overalls and rubber boots and baseball caps, leashes in hand. 

Oh, dear God, Michael whispers in desperation, We’ll never get out alive.

You watch too much television, I tell him, It’s going to be fine.

The dogs are led away, the two big ones trot eagerly off and the two little ones are hand carried, and Michael steps out in his linen Armani trousers and Gucci shoes.  I’m choking from trying not to laugh.

Twenty minutes later we’re headed for the airport.  I leave him and somehow manage to navigate the Suburban home in the rain, struggling to reach the pedals and wondering at every turn if the back end will turn with me.

Never think that everyday life can’t be an adventure.

    

Loosening the Laces

A year and a half after a semi-forced retirement, I find myself still with a working (and paid off) car, still mostly making it on social security and a part time off the books job, still mostly healthy and within a month or two of having the wretched credit cards down to a zero balance.   The dogs and cats are healthy and happy, I’m able to get out and hear my music and I’ve begun actually selling some of my photographs.  Even the sad light and lengthening October shadows that have brought on a free floating depression each fall for most of my life seem less powerful.  And yet, despite it all, a part of me is still waiting for it to crash around me.  As my cousin tells me, like her, I’m waiting for the other shoe – the heavy, mud crusted one – to fall.   I have to remind myself constantly not to loosen its laces.   How strange that we are so often our own worst enemies.

You might think that since none of the catastrophes I worried about and lost sleep over have come to pass, that since I stressed and scared myself silly for absolutely nothing, it might be time to take a second look at how I handle life's little ups and downs.  You might think that I'd have learned a little something about faith or manufacturing trouble or imagining the worst or simply staying in the day.

Nope.

No disasters hanging on the horizon just means I get to invent some new ones.

Not all the time, of course, that would make a person certifiable.  But enough of the time that I scold myself on a pretty regular basis for toxic thinking and then have to endure a second scolding for beating myself up about it.  As the old blues saying goes, can't win for losing.

I'd like to think that worry just follows me like a little gray rain cloud.  Truth is, I keep it on a short leash and counter it with each and every unexpected bright day.  It's kind of like what a friend recently posted about optimism - one step forward and two steps back isn't failure, it's the cha cha - and besides, as another sunshiny friend of mine was quick to point out, who's to say that when the other shoe does drop, it won't be filled with rainbows?

Distractified

It comes as no great surprise to me when the old woman’s death brings out the worst in the family. 

It takes less then a day and a half for them to be at each other's throats, bitterly quarreling about the wording of the death notice, the plans for the service, what to bury her in, even what flowers there should be at the church.  Everyone has an opinion on what she would've wanted and she's quickly lost in the she loved me best shuffle.  

Grief does strange things to people, my daddy used to say as he'd try and spread oil on the troubled waters of a family in crisis, death intervenes and in its immediate aftermath, we can lose sight of what's really important.  Sometimes it's easier to argue over funeral details than face the reality of loss.  

Or in the words of my grandmother, You got to be distractified to get through a dyin' and that's all there is to it.   It don't pay to dwell.

There may be not only truth but wisdom in this, I think to myself, but I wonder that we can't do it quietly and kindly.  This family feels a need to snipe and snarl at each other, as if it's a competition.  Everyone wants the final say and is prepared to fight for it - loudly, sarcastically, arrogantly - one breaks down in tears, another cusses a blue streak and still another threatens to boycott the service entirely.  In the end, despite their mutual vows to wash their hands of each other, I'm hoping they will regain their senses and gather together but I'm not counting on it.  As soon as one quarrel is put to rest, another breaks out.

Death doesn't give a damn, of course, and it wouldn't surprise me if somewhere on the other side, the old woman wasn't laughing herself silly at all this nonsense and enjoying being the center of attention.

In the end, propriety will surely win because this is a family that cares deeply about appearances and social standing.  No matter how intense their differences, they will not put them on public display.  They will wear navy blue and be on time and afterward will open their home for a proper visitation evening.  Everyone will put on their funeral manners and behave with dignity and grace and they will distractify themselves til the cows come home.

 

The Secret Keeper Cave

More than a dozen or so years after Ruthie and I had first found what became our secret cave, we looked for it again.  The sun was high and the ocean sparkled like diamonds with the whitecaps stirred up by the wind.  We walked the narrow path around Cow Ledge, single file and laughing at the shared memories – Old Hat and her trusty shotgun, Sparrow and his old hound dog, Miss Clara’s little cabin, all gone to dust now – all the way to Driftwood Cove and then uphill to Lighthouse Point and finally downward and past the abandoned graveyard to the grown over dirt path that led to Crittendon’s Creek.

Didn’t seem so long when we were kids, I said settling onto a fallen log and sliding my bare feet into the warm sand.

Ain’t that the truth,  Ruthie agreed, pulling out a pack of Exports and lighting up.  It took several tries on account of the wind and she cussed once or twice until I pulled out my Ronson wind-proof.  She lit two and handed one to me, just as we used to do so many years ago.

Old habits, she said with a grin.

You buy them or steal them?  I asked and laughed, keeping the old game going.

We sat in comfortable silence for awhile, listening to the seals barking in the distance and the tide coming in and then decided to have lunch before going on.   Miz McIntyre, widowed these days but still manning the counter at the general store four days a week, had packed us box lunches and made us promise not to peek.  We discovered grapes and hardboiled eggs, chicken salad and strips of dried fish, and best of all, a half dozen slices of thick white bread, generously spread with butter and coated with sugar.  Tucked into a corner of each cardboard box was a small, cellophane bag of dulse – an acquired taste if ever there was one – but something we’d both learned to love as children. 

Do you remember…….. we both began at the same time and then laughed ourselves silly.

We each smoked a lazy second cigarette and then headed toward the sound of the creek, each hoping for something familiar that would lead us to our childhood hideaway.  Time and weather and isolation had altered the landscape considerably and I think we were both surprised when we reached the head of the creek and knew at once we were there.  The entrance was wildly overgrown, thick with weeds and branches all woven solidly together with a thicket of vines.  I had a pocket knife but Ruthie’d had more foresight and had packed a small axe.   We set about sawing and hacking our way through and eventually cleared just enough of a space to crawl through.

It was cool, shadowy, a little damp.  I thought if we spoke loudly enough, there would be echoes but neither of us was that brave so we talked in whispers.

Unlike so many things that you leave behind in childhood, it was almost exactly as we remembered, maybe a little smaller.  You could see for miles – that had made it an excellent lookout – and with just one or two backward steps, you were in complete darkness – which made it an excellent hiding place.  It was here we’d played pirates and had sword fights with sticks tied together with twine, dreamed of stowing away on the freight ships as they left harbor, practiced magic tricks and listened to rockabilly music.  It was here that Ruthie had come after one memorable Saturday night encounter with her drunken father – she’d stayed overnight all alone - and I was astonished at her courage.  It was here we’d hidden from the bootleggers, scratched our initials into the walls, rehearsed steps for when we were old enough to go to the dance.  It was here that we’d made our voodoo dolls from sand filled socks, painting on their faces with red nail polish and piercing them thoroughly with hatpins discreetly stolen from Nana’s jewelry box.  It was here that once each summer we left the secrets that were too private to share - even with your best friend – one confessing while the other stood guard and then switching places.

We didn’t stay long but, silly as it sounds, we did take the time to perform the old ritual one last time and it didn’t feel silly, it felt solemn.  Just when you think you’ve put the past behind you, I remember thinking, you trip on it.

We re-covered the entrance, stacking branches and clumps of grass over it – to keep it private, I suppose – then we walked home the way we’d come, single file and slowly.  By the time we reached The Point, the sun was setting, the wind had died down, and it was pretty much deserted except for Ruthie’s little red sports car parked at the end of the breakwater.

 

My only real extravagance, she assured me, Bought it with Daddy’s life insurance money and if that ain’t justice, I don’t know what is.

She drove like the wind.

 And the rest?  Echoes.  Nothing but faint, harmless echoes.

Missing the Mayhem

Putting the very best possible face on it, work is still barely controlled chaos so when Michael piles all four dogs into the old Suburban and heads to Arkansas for an overnighter, the sudden quiet is unnerving.   It takes all of twenty minutes before I miss the mayhem.   Must be some mild form of insanity, I scold myself but the stillness is difficult.  No barking, no jingling tags, no tapping toenails or ferocious battles with pull toys, no low growls as they get in each other's faces.  It's uncomfortably eerie.  Worse, it's lonely.

He's gone to see his grandmother, laying nearly comatose in an Arkansas hospital, with a freshly signed DNR order on her chart.

I don't know what to wish for,  he confesses to me uneasily, Lord knows, I don't want her to die but.......

He's thinking of the nursing home, the blank days, the pain, the dementia.  She sees things that aren't there, doesn't want to eat, is plagued with bladder infections and trouble breathing.   To keep her safe, she has to be restrained at night and is confined to a wheelchair during the day.  She's fragile, confused, needs constant care and a sitter to watch over her.  Her money's gone and though no one has told her, her family is dividing her belongings and the little house she spent all of her adult life in will soon be on the market.  There's no hope for any kind of recovery, no hope for her ever going home again.  They love her dearly and everyone wants the best for her.  No one except Michael will even say the word burden but they're all thinking it and feeling guilty and ashamed because of it.  They want it over for her and themselves and the thought doesn't sit well with their collective conscience.  It seems so dreadfully wrong and unforgivably selfish to wish her to die so in between the painful and futile visits and the caregiving, they worry, chastise themselves, and pray for strength.

She's had a good life, Michael says, sounding more than a little desperate and I wonder who he's trying to convince, A long life.

I nod and agree,

Gawd-dayam,  he adds, She's ninety eight!  Isn't that enough?

He isn't looking for an answer so I shrug.

And don't you tell me to let go and let God!  he tells me though I haven't said a word, despite the fact that it's exactly what I'm thinking.   

Two days later, the old woman rallies and testily informs a family member that when she's ready to die, she'll let them all know.  One more diagnostic test is scheduled and then she'll be released.  

Just like the dogs, I think to myself, they make me crazy when they're here but I can't stand not to have them around.

Mayhem was never intended to make sense but once you get used to it, it's hard to let it go.













  

No Free Lunch

 It was beginning to turn overcast as I pulled into the drugstore parking lot.  I was hot, tired, running late and anxious to get home before the rain and I didn’t notice the crazy man right off.  When I looked up, he was half-standing, half-crouching in front of the car’s hood, hands raised to the level of his ears, fingers curled claw-like.  It made me think of a scrawny bear in attack mode with a flat top haircut - a ridiculous image - but there was no mistaking the menace in his twisted features and contorted body.  He was alternately leering and shouting. I was about to turn the key in the ignition when he suddenly shambled off and approached a pick up truck three rows down and began pounding his fists on the passenger side window.

Hongry!  I could hear him yelling, I'm hongry!

The headlines being what they are these days, I might've just said the hell with it and gone on to a different store but it would've been troublesome and he was three rows down so feeling relatively safe, I left the car and made my way to the store.  He continued to roam the parking lot in his dirty green work pants and grease-stained yellow tee shirt, shaking his fists at the empty cars and shouting incoherently. Not your everyday homeless panhandler but surely not actually dangerous, at least so I hoped.  Once inside the drugstore, I could still hear him ranting and cursing.  More than one customer suggested that someone summon the police but the manager shrugged.

I bought my cigarettes and was about to leave when what's left of my liberal conscience kicked in.  

Never give money to an addict, I could hear the voices of a half dozen aftercare counselors saying, Buy his lunch, pay his rent,  get him some clean clothes and a haircut but never give him money.

I turned around and picked up a ham and cheese pre-packaged sandwich, a carton of milk, and a chocolate bar.  It wasn't much and I wasn't at all certain I wouldn't regret it but the 60's me still speaks up every now and again and the voice is hard to ignore.

Hongry!  I could hear him shouting to the gray sky, I'm hongry!

I approached him cautiously, offered him the plastic bag, tried to smile.  He glared at me with dark, angry eyes and for a moment it hurt my heart to see a human being so beaten down and lost.  Then he snatched at the plastic bag, peered inside it, flung the contents onto the ground and defiantly stomped them to smithereens.  When he was done, he held out both hands in a gimme gesture.

Money!  he growled at me.

I shook my head and began to back away just as a police cruiser slowly pulled in behind him.

Ma'm!  the crazy man snarled, Money!

The police officer - young, muscled up, fresh-faced but deadly serious - stepped smoothly between us and asked if I was alright.  I assured him I was fine.

Sir, he said quietly to the crazy man, Ya'll need to move along now.

Hongry!  the crooked little man protested but it was hollow now and his shoulders were pitifully slumped.   There was no fight left in him.

The officer glanced at the remains of the sandwich and milk, the smeared chocolate and the torn plastic bag.  He sighed.

Ya'll need to move along now, he repeated,  Can't have you litterin' and scaring the customers.

The little man looked from him to me and back again.  I silently cursed for listening to that damn 60's voice.

Don't make me arrest you, the officer warned.

But it wasn't to be.  The little man stubbornly stood his ground and the misting rain began to come down harder.  By the time the officer handcuffed him and put him in the back of the cruiser, his sad yellow shirt was sticking to his thin chest and his green pants were damp with rain.

The cruiser pulled out with its passenger and the rain washed the parking lot clean.

T-Rex and The Lightning

The first time T-Rex was struck by lightning, he was nine and had just run away from home.   He set out for the ballfield where he always went to think and dream of a future in the big leagues.

Rexard Earl Titus, you'd best be home for supper! his overwhelmed mother shouted as he set off down the front path in his patched blue jeans and frayed tee shirt, his bandana-wrapped belongings - pocket knife, harmonica, two comic books and a jar of peanut butter - tied to a green stick and resting on one thin shoulder.  He looked all the world like a Norman Rockwell image of a hobo.  It was early morning on a late summer day and when Lurline saw the rain clouds she thought of chasing after her youngest boy with his yellow slicker but by the time she'd snatched it off the hook in the hall, he was already almost out of sight. She gave a resigned sigh and let him go. 

By noon, the rain clouds had considerably darkened and the light rain had turned fierce.  Lurline pulled on her rain gear and boots and set off to look for T-Rex, knowing he would head for the ballfield and the fragile shelter of the old three-sided dugout, hoping he was holed up and not drenched to the skin.

Boy's gon' be the death of me if'n we both don't catch the pneumonia, she muttered to herself and that was when the lightning cracked and lit up the sky clear to the edge of the outfield.  At first she thought the small figure standing there at second base and suddenly flung to the ground was a shadow, just her eyes playing a trick, she told herself.  But then she was running, every bone in her body knowing that her child had been struck by lightning and was most surely dead.  T-Rex lay on his back in the muddy grass, arms and legs splayed out like a starfish, scorched little body still heaving. Lurline snatched him up and ran for both their lives.

He weren't dead, Alice, she told my grandmother, voice still trembling, God musta seen him after he sent that lightnin' and took pity on him.  So help me, 'til he woke up I weren't real sure what to pray for, his soul or mine.  I let him go into that storm.

It weren't your fault, Lurline, Nana reminded her gently, Mebbe you did let him go but you saved his life too.  I reckon the good Lord'll see that.

Lurline began to cry and Nana - not one much accustomed to offering comfort and usually impatient with tears - looked on helplessly.  

Fetch me the brandy and one of my good handkerchiefs, child, she told me briskly, and shut your mouth or you'll catch flies!

The end of summer turned into the beginning of fall and T-Rex, now generally seen as a supremely blessed and lucky child, slowly but surely made his way back.  By October, Ruthie wrote, he was almost his old self though he did have frequent headaches, a slight limp, and an uncanny knack for predicting storms.  Lurline had become almost violently overprotective.

Guilt will do that, Nana allowed, but I reckon a damaged child is better'n a dead one any day.  Damage heals.

And by Christmas, it seemed that she was right.  Lurline's yearly Christmas card included family pictures, all her smiling children with T-Rex featured prominently.  It made my grandmother smile as well and she scotch taped it to the mantle and propped up the best picture in the cotton snow village on the hearth.

Fast forward six years to a late summer afternoon on the same ballfield for the last game of the season. T-Rex, no longer a spikey haired, fresh-faced nine year old but a lanky teenager who, as his mother liked to say, had grown into his own self, ate like a horse and outgrew his clothes faster than she could mend them.  He was also the most feared pitcher in years - not graceful, not fluid, but able to regularly instill terror in the hearts of the hitters he faced - he was blazing fast and when it came to the strike zone, accurate to the point of deadly.

It happened in the seventh - he was well on his way to a no-hitter - and just as he went into his windup, the clouds began to gather and the breeze died.  Without warning, a clap of thunder exploded overhead and sent spectators scattering.  In its wake, there was an unexpected stillness to the air, the field was nearly buried in shadows and streaks of sickly yellow-ish light appeared over the now-choppy ocean.  I remember thinking that we all knew the lightning was coming but that T-Rex knew it first - seconds before the jagged bolt came shooting out of the sky with a wicked sizzle, striking him square between the shoulder blades, and lifting him clean off his feet before roughly dropping him to the ground - we'd all seen him look up at the sky in bewilderment. Then he was face down in the dirt, a spiral of lazy smoke coming from his blackened uniform. For a second, no one moved then Lurline screamed and everyone was in motion. Doc McDonald reached him first, turning his slender body over with practiced ease, ripping away the remnants of the seared shirt and frantically starting CPR.  Even with Lurline screaming and being held back, it seemed to take forever but the stale air changed, the skies cleared, and T-Rex - dazed, groggy and barely conscious - opened his eyes and tried to speak.

Damn, son, if you ain't made of steel,  Doc told him when he muttered something unintelligible, Just save it for now and rest easy 'til we get you checked out.

T-Rex groaned, a pitiful sound, but Doc just grinned and gently brushed his singed hair out of his eyes.

All in good time, son, he said calmly, All in good time.  

To survive one lightning strike was miracle enough, the village declared.  To survive a second could be no less than the hand of God.  T-Rex, having been raised in a good, God fearing home and humble as a result of it, thought it was just bad luck and worse timing but to be on the safe side, he decided he'd had just about enough baseball and sadly hung up his cleats, turned in his glove, and made a point of keeping clear of the ballfield.

It's not always easy to quit while you're ahead and it was years and years later when he confessed he'd never quite been able to get over the idea that a third lightning strike was - somehow, somewhere - just waiting.