The Handbook for Lightning Strike Survivors by Michele Young-Stone

Author:Michele Young-Stone
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Tags: Fiction, Romance, Contemporary, Life change events, American First Novelists, General, Fiction - General, American Contemporary Fiction - Individual Authors +, Lightning, Family & Friendship, Love stories
ISBN: 9780307464491
Publisher: Crown Publishing Group
Published: 2010-05-06T07:00:00+00:00

The Reverend Whitehouse flung a mud-crusted boot at Buckley when he walked into the kitchen. “That girl’s a whore, boy.”

“Who?”

“You’re coming to church Saturday and Sunday. Do you hear me?”

The reverend wasn’t a particularly mean man, just a cold man. A serious man making ridiculous demands with one thing in mind—his dwindling congregation.

There were only thirty people in the reverend’s whole congregation, so if someone was missing, the Reverend John Whitehouse and Winter Pitank took notice. The missing someone, the lax congregant, got a Christian visit to remind the offender about the importance of his soul; to remind the ailing someone that this was not the end of the journey but only a stepping-stone to a better place; to remind the lost sheep that it wasn’t too late for him to give to the Lord, to return to the flock, to share the wealth the Lord bestowed—every last cent.

After all, the reverend was a man who liked to eat. His girth showed that, and he couldn’t eat very well without money in his pocket and food on his table. He might’ve married his dead wife’s mother, the way she took care of him, if it weren’t inappropriate—the age difference. This was how the reverend thought.

Buckley didn’t know what went on in the reverend’s mind; nor did he want to know. Once free of Mont Blanc, en route to the University of Arkansas, Buckley would never have to see his fat zucchini-nosed stepfather again. He might’ve hated him, but he couldn’t waste that much energy on the man.

Buckley tossed the reverend’s boot back over toward the kitchen table. The reverend whispered, “How is she, anyway?”

“Who?”

“Your little girlfriend. How is she?” The reverend glanced through the window at Winter out front, parking the truck. “Come on, Buck.”

As Buckley walked toward the bathroom, shaking his head in disgust at what the reverend suggested, the reverend called, “You’re a weird boy.”

Sitting on the toilet, his shorts around his ankles, Buckley thought of Clementine’s story. She had said her dad called her a whore and a freak and told her to get out of his house. He’d said, “You’re dead to me.” Maybe it was better not to know his father than to have a father like Clementine’s.

Clementine told Buckley, “He’s a bastard.” Buckley knew she was never going home. She said, “If I’m dead to him, he’s dead to me.”

Buckley told Clementine his mother really was dead. He broke down and told Clementine that after the lightning hit, when they were trying to lift her to the dock, he could see her brain. The lightning had burned her and split her head open, and he knew she was dead. He told Clementine that if there was a god, which he seriously doubted, then that god was unjust. She agreed, adding, “God’s a bastard too.”

Taking his hands in hers, she said, “You can touch me.”

“That’s okay.” He didn’t feel right about it anymore, now that Chuck was around. Chuck could give her the drugs she craved.

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