When Lightning Strikes Twice. Debrah Morris
the outfit I was wearing when I got here. Everything was so tattered, it looked like I was the loser in a bear fight.”
“Yes, that happens sometimes with lightning. Clothing is shredded, metal zippers and fasteners fuse. People have been knocked right out of their shoes.”
“She said the owners wouldn’t be needing these now.” He was dressed in a pair of freshly laundered jeans and a wrinkled white shirt that had been washed but not ironed. “I don’t know about wearing a dead man’s clothes, but since I was pretty near dead myself, maybe they won’t bring me bad luck.”
“I don’t think you have to worry about that.”
“I reckon not. I’ve been plenty lucky lately.”
Reckon? Hardly a Joe word. Now that she thought about it, he sounded different too. The timbre of his voice had changed. It was deeper, more confident. Temporary inflammation of the trachea maybe.
That wouldn’t account for the change in his eyes. Where before they had been mud-dark and flat, the luminous brown depths now possessed an indefinable mystery. As if that weren’t unsettling enough, there was also a new stillness in his features. Surely, such composure hadn’t been there before. Just looking at him was like glimpsing the familiar for the first time. Like what Brindon’s wife Dorian had said about the Eiffel Tower. The image had been imprinted on her consciousness for so long that when she finally saw it, she had felt an eerie sense of recognition.
Joe’s straight nose, firm lips and dimpled chin were the same. Yet, they were different, too. Finer. Like a stone tumbled by a river, until all its rough edges had been worn smooth. Why had she never noticed how good-looking he was? A twist of shame tightened her belly. Maybe she’d never really looked at him before. Never truly listened. Never given him a chance.
Her character flaws didn’t explain how he had morphed from a greasy, ill-mannered slacker into a clean soft-spoken man who said “reckon” and “ma’am” and endeared himself to career nurses. Now there was a mystery.
“Seriously. You don’t have to make the bed. They have people to do that.”
“Seems the least I can do, considering everything folks have done for me. They bring me tasty grub three times a day and juice and cookies whether I want ’em or not. Some lady’s always coming in to check my temperature and make sure I’m comfortable. It sure is a hospitable place. Hmm…guess that’s why they call it a hospital, huh?”
“Maybe so.” Mallory smiled, but his comments confused her. He was sincere, not flippant or sarcastic. Sincerity was not an attitude she expected from a man who had been born obnoxious and then suffered numerous relapses. “Dr. McKinley tells me you’re ready to go home.”
“Yep. As nice as it is here, I can’t afford to run up a bill for room and board.” He gestured to the bedside chair. “Would you care to have a seat?”
Mallory sat, marveling at his courtesy. The last time she’d seen him, he had suggested she buy a six-pack and watch a wrestling match. “Has anyone talked to you about your bill?”
“Yes, ma’am. A nice lady came in. Called herself a social worker. How can she be social and work at the same time?” He shrugged. “Said they’d fix me up with a payment plan so I can settle my debt when I get back on my feet.”
“Good. How are you planning to get home? Have you called someone to come for you?” Mallory tried not to stare, but was intrigued by the way the setting sun shone through the window and backlit his head with a golden corona.
“No. There’s no one I care to call. Since I’m afoot, I guess I’ll walk it.”
“On those?” She eyed the crutches propped against the bed. “Excuse me for saying so, but you haven’t exactly mastered their use.”
He grimaced apologetically. “I’m about as gimpy as a one-legged chicken. Dr. Mac said I should keep off my feet for a few days, but I figure I can make it home.”
“Slapdown’s twenty miles from here,” she reminded him.
“It is? Well, of course it is. Maybe hoofing isn’t the way to go.”
“I can give you a ride home.”
His face brightened, his warm brown eyes glowing with appreciation. “I’d be much obliged.”
She echoed Mac’s words. “What are neighbors for?”
“We’re neighbors?”
Was this an example of the confusion the nurses had noted? “You live next door to the clinic where I work and close to where I live.”
He beamed. “Well, good. That’s about the best news I’ve heard all day.”
News? Had he forgotten where he lived? “Really, Joe, how are you feeling?”
“Right as rain and happy as a pup with two tails.”
Brain damage was definitely a possibility. Simply being charged with negative electrons wouldn’t cause him to suddenly start talking like a character from Mayberry. “Are you sure?”
“Matter of fact, I haven’t felt this alive in…well, let’s just say in a long, long time.”
A couple of hours later Joe checked himself out of the hospital, and they drove home. Dodging Mallory’s questions was like walking through a cow pasture: you had to watch where you stepped. He couldn’t tell if she was suspicious about him or just abnormally curious. The only good thing about living through lightning was having an excuse to act as worn-out as a fat uncle’s welcome.
He pretended to wake up when Mallory parked her little truck in front of a rickety metal house on wheels. From the beat-up look of it, the trailer as Mallory called it, had been plunked down in the middle of the junk-strewn lot by a cyclone. Several skinny dogs crawled out of the shade to bark a yapping welcome. Joe’s heart sank deeper as he looked around. “I live here?”
Mallory grimaced. “Home sweet home. I fed the demon horde while you were in the hospital.”
“The what?”
“The dogs.”
“Oh. Thank you.” He looked around in disgust. What kind of self-respecting man lived in a rat-hole like this? The place would embarrass a blind fur trapper. “Are all these dogs mine?”
“Apparently so. Five at last count.”
“That’s a heap of dog.”
“And not a keeper in the bunch.”
Joe reached for the door handle, and grinned when he knew exactly how the contraption worked. That happened more often than not. As Celestian had predicted, his new body carried the old Joe’s physical memories. Deeply ingrained in his sinews, they enabled him to adapt to his new life without going walleyed over twenty-first century advancements. That’s why watching television and walking through automatic doors and racing along the road at more than fifty miles per hour didn’t feel nearly as strange as it should have.
“Thanks for the ride,” he told Mallory. “If you’ll fetch my crutches from the back, I’ll get on in the…house.”
“Shall I help you out of the truck?”
“I can manage.” She handed him the crutches, and he hopped onto the uneven ground. Pain zinged up his legs from the burns on the soles of his bandaged feet. He hoped the inside of his new home wasn’t as junked up as the outside. If it were, he’d have a heck of a time getting around.
Mallory walked ahead and opened the door. He limped across the yard, and the hounds slunk up to sniff him. A couple growled and backed off, while the rest tucked their tails and whimpered back into their hiding places. None of them seemed exactly enraptured to see him.
“So much for man’s best friends, huh?” Mallory held the door open. “Leave for a couple of days, and they forget who you are.”
Joe