Lightning Pictograph, Neolithic
We were taken on the bus from Kindergarten to a state park where trees over a hundred feet high made shadowed places where deer could be seen if we were lucky. There were paths we were to hike on. Cabins had been built in a field with forest all around. We were going to have a picnic but a huge storm struck. Torrential rain and bolts of lightning that blinded us combined with swirling wind and thunder so loud shouting teachers could not be heard over it. Trees swayed as if trying to pull up roots and run away. Branches broke off with snaps like bones breaking to fly at his as if thrown. Everyone screamed when hail began pelting us. It was big hail, like golf balls, and it hurt, left marks. Some kids got knocked down by it.
At the first rain teachers told us we’d wait it out in a cabin’s sheltered porch but as the storm worsened so quickly they decided we needed to make a run for the bus and go home. Day trip was cancelled.
Huge flashes of lightning seemed to be striking the field where we ran. Some kids crumbled into hysterics. Some remained stoic and did as told, trying to help smaller kids. We ran for the bus, wincing and crying out as hail and branches hit us. When one of us fell, others helped that kid to gain footing, to keep moving.
Inside the bus it sounded like a steel drum. The hail hammered. We could see dents forming in the bus’s roof and some wondered if it would hold. Gazing out through a half-fogged, smeared window, I saw a huge bolt of lightning slam down not more than a bus-length from me, into a small group of kids running with a male teacher. I noticed a girl I knew, who’d worn an inappropriate dress to the picnic. It was lacy and fancy but bogged her down as she ran. I watched her, rooting for her to keep her footing, to make it to the bus. That’s when the lightning hit. It blinded me for an instant. When I’d blinked away the afterimage, I saw kids lying in a circle around the male teacher, who was also flat on his face. None moved. Women teachers ran to help them, and they got to their feet dazed and were led to buses.
We drove back with shivers, sobbing, and occasional wails for Mommy. The day trip had been a disaster and parents were called to come fetch their children. My mom and I walked home in a quiet rain under her umbrella, me jumping into puddles now and then. I didn’t mind being wet and felt safe now that there was only rain, no big storm.
On the TV that evening we found out a tornado had struck the camp where we’d been. No one was reported injured, so I figured the ones hit by lightning had shrugged it off. We were mountain people, after all.
Next day at school I noticed the little girl who’d worn the inappropriately fancy dress was not there. I asked about her. “Where’s Betty?” received blank looks. “Who?”
None of the kids knew who I meant, even though she’d been our classmate. None would admit knowing or remembering her. I asked the teacher and she frowned and asked me who I meant.
No one admitted she was gone or that she’d ever existed. My imagination was praised in a way even a little kid knew was patronizing, condescending, and dismissive. Oh that Eugene, he sure has quite the imagination, doesn’t he? Betty, of all things.
I think her name was Betty. Pretty sure that was her name although I can’t remember her last name. It was Italian, I think, if my impression after 55 years is at all accurate. May not be. Maybe I’m confabulating but I don’t think so. I’m baffled.
Never saw her again. I’m not even sure if she existed, after all these years of wondering, but I’m convinced she did, and I’m wondering if lightning hadn’t somehow erased her from this world, or shoved us into another one, one in which Betty had never set foot, let alone worn fancy dresses to picnics that ended by being routed by a storm.
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Note:
I think the place is Cook’s Forest, most likely, and I was in Kindergarten at age five, so 1963-ish. No clue about Betty. Incidentally, my neighbor at the orchard house in Altoona, where I lived when this happened — a house and orchard no longer there, alas — was Helen Wolfe, and of course upon moving to Ebensburg I met Ellen Wolf. Eerie gothic realm, Western Pennsylvania’s mountains.
