Short Story: Never Drive A Nail In A Tree

That spring the late afternoon thunderstorms had become such a regular occurrence that Eddie and I knew the minute those fast moving black clouds made the sun blink the first time that we needed to head for the house.

We each had saved a nickel from a quarter allowance with which we had each bought a pack of Black Cat firecrackers. We were in the woods behind the house reenacting the battle of Iwo Jima with a platoon of little green plastic soldiers when we heard that telltale distant rumble. Matches and ordnance were quickly gathered and limbless synthetic warriors were crammed into blue jeans as we raced the first spatters home.

Mama was standing on the back stoop holding the screen door open with one hand and waving us on with the other as we sprinted the last two dozen yards across the new grass and into the kitchen with the rain ripping through the trees on our heels like a man-eating tiger after a couple of Sri Lankan woodcutters. We slid to a squeaking stop on the linoleum as the crack of the screen door slamming was drowned out by the explosion of lightning striking some poor old maple down by the creek.

Eddie and I went directly into our bedroom to triage our wounded troops. The rain on the roof sounded like the Soco Mountain Cloggers as we knelt there beside our twin beds examining the Black Cat mangled horde of GI’s laid out before us. We were determining which of our troops might live to fight another day when what sounded like a 500-hundred pounder loosed from an enemy bomber shook our house. The instantaneous clap of thunder was as deafening as the grand finale at the annual Cherokee Park Fourth of July fireworks extravaganza.

Ears still ringing, I felt an odd allover tingle and the next moment I was looking down at two red horizontal burn marks running across my shirtless stomach. They were exactly the same distance apart as the top and bottom wires of the bedsprings that I had been leaning against.

We heard a thump and ran into the kitchen to find Mama lying on the floor, a dishrag in one hand and the handle of a two-quart saucepan in the other. Knowing full well that she was dead, Eddie and I began to scream, at which point Mama’s eyes fluttered open and she looked at the two of us as if we were three headed trolls.

Then she slowly sat up, gazing in wonder at the pot handle in her hand. The pot itself was lying nearby along with the screw and lock washer that had until only moments ago held the assemblage together. The two of us helped Mama to her feet and into a kitchen chair. That’s when we discovered that the green Formica, which had once been the table top, was now just a wavy sheet of plastic perched atop the particle board to which it had until very recently been glued.

Mama slowly shook her head, laid the pot handle on the Formica and said, “I saw that bolt of lightening hit the tree in the backyard. I swear it hit dead center of the nail that the thermometer was hanging on. At that same instant I saw a blue flame whizz along the aluminum trim around the countertop and disappear into the oven.”

Eddie walked over to the back door and looked outside. He spun around and yelped, “Holy June bugs!”

I jumped to my feet and ran to see what out there in the back yard could elicit such language.

There was a strip of bark about a foot wide missing from the point where the nail, which had held the thermometer, had been extending down to the ground at the base of the old oak. The soil of the yard along the path of a large root was ripped up as if a John Deere had drug a plow from the tree to the back steps. The back steps had been constructed of bricks. Those bricks were scattered around the backyard as if someone had dumped them out of a helicopter.

The clock on the stove read 4:43 until I was a senior in high school, when it suddenly started up again and ran fine ever after. The water heater and oven elements had to be replaced and the toaster only toasted bread on one side. And every wall outlet cover in the house shattered. We found pieces of the plastic embedded like shrapnel in the sheetrock walls of the hallway and bathroom.

From that day till this I can’t hear thunder without getting the urge to drag a mattress into the hallway and cowering under it. But, nowhere near an electrical outlet.

Michael Reno Harrell travels across America singing his self-pinned songs and telling stories about life in the Southern Appalachians. He makes his home in Burke County, North Carolina.