The Bewildered. Peter Rock
then Chris. They brought their friend down to the ground.
“Is he breathing?” Chris said. “Is he alive?”
Leon was not moving. Now even the skin of his face settled and smoothed, eyelids sliding closed.
Kayla knelt next to him. She tilted back his head, opened his mouth. She pinched her nose and breathed into him, and checked to see his chest rise, and did it again, gasping herself. She waited, and Leon’s chest rose without her.
“He’s all right,” Chris said. “He’ll be all right.”
“He tastes burnt,” Kayla said.
Leon pulled up his arms; he put his folded hands under his cheek, as if he were sleeping. All his hair was singed away on one side. He began to twitch again, his limbs faintly jerking. His jaw opened; he ground his teeth as if he were chewing, then swallowed like he was drinking. His eyes rolled, then closed again.
A car rattled by, not slowing. They did not notice. A warm wave of rain passed over them, then eased.
“It had to be lightning,” Kayla said, repeating it. “Miles away where we didn’t see it. Lightning, lightning.” She was trying to get the belt, the spikes off him, as if that would help.
“Don’t touch me,” Leon said, suddenly. He sat up, twisting his head from side to side, his expression confused.
“Can you hear me? I’m right here.”
“What? Who?”
“Wait, Leon. Stay down.”
Chris looked over at Kayla, who looked back at him, both of them lost in that moment. A cool wind swept through the tall grass, around them. And then Natalie was there. They had not heard her truck, nor seen it arrive.
“Let’s go!” she was saying, “What’s the slowdown, here? What’s up with your hair? Was it that way before?”
Chris kept looking at Kayla, not certain what to say.
“Yes,” Kayla said. “It was that way.” Her flashlight was in her jeans’ pocket, forgotten, still on; it shone, a darker blue circle through the fabric.
Leon turned his head and looked at them with dawning recognition.
“Is everything all right?” Natalie said. “We need to get the wire in the truck, and then get out of here. We’re compromising the whole situation.”
“We’re resting,” Chris said. “We’ve got three balls done.”
“Resting?” Natalie said. “What about that last wire?” She pointed to it, loose in the tall grass, weighing it down, the wire that Leon had cut just as things went wrong.
“Yes,” Leon said, his voice thick and slow. “Well, let’s go now.”
He seemed about to tilt, to fall over on his side, but then began to crawl toward the rolls of wire; after fifty feet he stumbled up, barely walking, and Chris and Kayla trailed, staying close to help him and to keep Natalie from seeing. But she was not paying attention; she was out ahead, already stripping the wire with long, powerful jerks, tearing it up from the grass and coiling it. She still wore her coveralls, only now instead of her black boots she was in blue sandals, and she swayed to keep her balance as she gathered the last of the wire.
“Headlights!” she suddenly shouted. “Truck!” And they all fell flat in the long, wet grass, waiting, holding their breaths.
The rain had stopped; a swirling wind kicked up. The four of them rose again, all converging on the truck, each carrying one heavy skein, long strands of green grass snagged in the copper wire. Somehow Leon had also gathered the belt, the clippers, the headset, the trombone case. The bottom of his left shoe was blackened, the sole flapping; Chris stepped in front, so Natalie wouldn’t notice. But she was already lifting the wire, rolling the balls into the back of the truck.
“We’ll all ride back here,” Kayla said.
“Suit yourselves.”
They crawled in, over the tailgate, pressed close together, damp and safe, crowded by the skateboards and backpacks and wire. Natalie’s face was visible for a moment, through the back window as she closed it down, and then there was the sound of the engine, the feel of the highway passing beneath them. The balls of wire began to roll around the back of the truck, bristly, catching on their clothing, pulling at their hair; the three sat with their feet outstretched, holding the wire away. They leaned into each other; they held each other close.
NATALIE SAT IN THE CAB OF HER TRUCK, parked later that same night, once again on East Burnside, watching her children skate away. Her black boots stood on the seat next to her, the sandals on her feet a nightmare to drive in—she’d been in a hurry after the blackout, eager to check on the children, to see how involved they were. And something was up with those three, something; they were too scared to admit it, happy with their secrecy and that was fine, none of it mattered except that they got the wire, wire she had hopes for. She chuckled as she watched them disappear—laden with their backpacks, their instrument cases, staying tight together as they rolled down the sidewalk, startling pedestrians.
She shifted into gear, eased into the sparse nighttime traffic, turned south on MLK, past the Mexican restaurants and strip clubs, the clown supply warehouse. The girl, Kayla, had switched the radio to this terrible classical station, and now Natalie spun the dial into static. Once, perhaps, she’d been able to listen to classical, even enjoy it on a wound-up night like this; she suddenly recalled that she had really used to love the blues; names came from nowhere—Buddy Guy and Robert Johnson and Johnny Winter. These days she couldn’t really bear any music; she preferred the static, the bristles rising and twisting higher, magnetic as the storms passed over. As she drove she could hear the balls of wire, cutting through the static: they rolled their way around the bed of the truck—a scratching, a muffled ricochet—as if charged and trying to work their way free.
She was ravenous! She accelerated, swooping up the Tacoma exit, then back over MLK, toward her place off Johnson Creek. She passed through the dark streets, the run-down houses, the wet dogs with their raspy, worn-down voices. The street she lived on went from blacktop to gravel to dirt; she could drive the last eighth of a mile with her eyes closed, and often practiced doing so.
Her only neighbor was an abandoned, boarded-up house, and her trailer wasn’t even a double-wide, and it wasn’t level, cinderblocks sinking into the soft ground. Pale blue, with a white stripe under the windows, rusted, dented on the far side where it likely tipped over in some past transport. She liked the sense that her house, too, had a past, that it had lived other places, housed other people and possibilities.
She skidded under the tall cedar, switched off the ignition, the radio static out of her ears and—boots in hand, truck door slamming, chain-link gate dragged open—she kept moving. Clumps of crabgrass made up the yard, growing around the previous tenants’ bottle caps, shreds of magazines left out to cure and weather. The broken screen door hung loose, ready for her to clatter past, to push the storm door and then step on top of the forwarded letters, the job offers, the flyers from credit card companies.
She hit all the switches. She liked the lights bright, fluorescent, flickering so fast no one could tell they weren’t steady. She was home, here where no one could hide; the weight of a footstep was felt, wherever you were. Two bedrooms, a living-dining area separated from the kitchen by a bar, and the bar and table covered in magazines, the way she liked it.
She jerked open the refrigerator, mixed herself a glass of weak Tang, just orange-tinted water, and tore into a Slim Jim, chewing fiercely as she poured water into a pot, put it on to boil. As she was getting it all going, getting past the initial craving, the shakiness, she paged through a magazine—April 1976, Denise Michele in a grass hut, near a rope hammock, no surprise. Her legs are shorter than most, her skin darker (though the lines of her string bikini are evident; not everyone gets to see all this), her left hip cocked up and