We were forced to go around in a circle, introducing ourselves — first names only, of course — with the opportunity to discuss how we were feeling. Now everyone clammed up. Physical ailments were one thing, but this was something else entirely. What has your strike done to your soul? Your sex life? Now that flames have shot through you, is your ego intact? Or is it busy clicking, shaking, shuddering?
No one spoke up. The Naked Man made himself busy adjusting his boots. A teenaged girl with beautiful curly hair and mismatched socks closed her eyes and hummed. Her face was scarred with what I later learned had been raindrops vaporizing on her skin during her strike, turning to steam and burning her perfect complexion.
We weren’t about to talk about our emotional state. No one wanted to get that personal. We eyed one another and laughed self-consciously.
“Next topic,” a chicken farmer named Marv called out; he was roundly applauded.
We moved on to what folks really wanted to talk about. Lightning gossip was extremely popular with this group. “Bigger than,” “worse than,” “did you ever hear of” kind of stories. I listened to the tale of a man who’d been killed by a strike, then carried forty feet and deposited in a haystack. Another of a woman who had every other plate in her china cabinet shatter when lightning came sweeping through her condominium. I learned that open fields were dangerous, that some lightning left rooms filled with smoke, that cows were often victims of a strike, and those who survived gave curdled, yellow milk. But the subject people were most interested in and the stories most often told were about folks who’d been killed and came back to life.
There was a theory, unproven, but accepted by many in the room: the theory of suspended animation. Because lightning was capable of shutting off the systemic and cerebral metabolisms of a victim, much like a short circuit, a person could be “gone” — be officially and medically dead — for an extreme amount of time, past what might seem logically salvageable, and then brought back. Why it was possible to resuscitate such people was unknown. All the same, it happened.
There was an old man near Jacksonville, for example, known as the Dragon, who had allegedly been killed twice by lightning, not that anyone had ever seen him in person. And even closer, a man they called Lazarus Jones, right here in Orlon County. He was definitely real, his existence documented at the morgue and the hospital. Seth Jones, that had been his name before he revived.
I felt something go through my body. A current. It was the mention of an individual who could face down death. All at once, I was interested in something.
That hadn’t happened to me for a very long time.
So, what could he do, this man who’d been dead? How big? How bad? I leaned in, the better to hear, dragged my chair closer to the inner circle. Well, for one thing, it was said Lazarus could make an egg on a tabletop spin in a circle. His presence caused electromagnetic disruptions; elevators went up instead of down, lightbulbs burned out, clocks stopped. He’d been five foot ten when struck, six foot afterward. The lightning had stretched him, rearranged whoever he’d been before, altering him almost beyond recognition. He now radiated so much heat, he could eat only cold food; anything raw became cooked as he swallowed. He’d been gone for forty minutes, no heartbeat, no pulse. Impossible, of course, and yet it was true, documented by the EMTs. When Lazarus arose, his eyes were so black it was impossible to tell whether his pupils were dilated. Not that he would let anyone test him. Not eyes nor heart nor lungs.
“How did he manage to come back to life?” I asked Renny. “Wouldn’t he be brain-damaged after all that time?”
“Not if the theory of suspended animation holds true.”
We were whispering, knee against knee. I could feel Renny had a tremor. If I wasn’t careful, I’d start feeling sorry for him.
“They’ve been trying to study this guy Jones, but he won’t talk to the folks at Orlon. I guess he’s super-paranoid. I heard he chased Dr. Wyman off his property with a gun.”
Wyman, the neurologist who’d wanted to know if I was crazy when I put my hand through the window.
“Maybe he’s got the right idea,” I ventured. “Wyman’s my doctor, too. Maybe we shouldn’t be such guinea pigs.”
“Oh, I don’t mind. At least they give us snacks. And not just carrots.”
Renny grinned, then got up and headed to the refreshment table. I saw that he, too, limped. The foot the lightning had gone through had shriveled and was misshapen and the leg seemed to have nerve damage. Hence the tremor, the wobbling when he walked. I looked away. I didn’t want to think about Renny lining up his putt on the green, out for a great day, nothing more.