By Lorraine C. Lordi
July 03, 2008 11:26 am A man in blue jeans and a faded baseball cap stood next to his red pickup truck on the side of this winding back road, staring straight up at the sky. His expression waivered between wonder and woe. Reverence, I would call it. But what exactly was he looking at? I slowed down to see what object up there in the sky held him so totally rapt. Was it an eagle? A UFO? An eclipse? By the eeriness of this afternoon's hue, it could have been that. One minute earlier, the sun had blinded me. Now, any light in the sky seemed to have vanished — poof — in one swift swallow. This whole week had been a scorcher. More reminiscent of August than of late June. Perhaps the sun outspent itself and decided to punch out early today. More likely, it had been upstaged by another powerful force of nature. An oncoming thunderstorm. I pulled my car over to the side of the road and stepped out, too. It's hard to drive straight on a road when you keep looking above and behind you. With a clear and steady view now, I realized what had made the man stop. A black expanse the size of Kansas was morphing out like a blanket of smoke across most of the sky. On the storm cloud's underneath side, a thick brown projection, like a god's angry finger, pointed down at the very place we were standing. The man jumped back in his truck, and I know why. That storm cloud above us was preparing to pounce. Suddenly, the darkness inked out any remnants of gray. The storm's oppressive energy, like a heavy coffin lid, sucked out any breathable air that might be left down here. Shivers raced up and down my spine, from inside my skull to the tips of my toes. I followed the man's lead and jumped back into my car. As my parents always said, the best place to be if lightning's coming your way is in a car. With the windows rolled up. I rolled up my window and exhaled. For a split second, complete silence. Nothing moved. Then coffin lid closed, and I heard it. A crack — no, not a crack — unless you're talking about every tree in the forest having its spine shattered all at once. No, that sound from that storm cloud burst forth like a sonic boom. Instinctively, I shut my eyes tight while the whole earth shook as if a battalion of angry giants had catapulted down from the heavens. And I, down here all alone in my car, knew this truth: I had no more power to stop this force than a defenseless little ant. Four seconds after the sonic boom (I counted to see how near the storm was now), a glorious bolt of lightning tore sideways across the sky. Another came on its heels, throwing its hot flame, like a javelin, down to the ground. Two seconds later, another heart-pounding cloud explosion. Before I could blink, the storm exhaled another streak of lightning, like a dragon's breath, that split the sky in two. Thunder growled back again at the fire that had just burst forth from its bulging black belly. One second of silence. Of darkness. And then down roared the rain, with drops splattering like ocean waves on my windshield. Another crash shook the earth. White flares darted down from the sky like meteors. I opened my eyes. And watched in awe. Scientists tell us that lightning reaches 54,000 degrees. That's hotter than the sun. They also say that thunderstorms can reach 12 miles high and contain an unstable energy field that rivals an atom bomb. "It's only angels bowling in heaven," my mother said whenever thunderstorms roared through town. When I was a child, that sweet vision of angels never satisfied me. As I'd stare out at the storm from my bedroom window, I sensed otherwise. All that dazzling, brilliant lightning and heart-pounding thunder couldn't possibly come from angels. It could only be created by a greater power. A power that created angels (and me) in the first place. nnn Lorraine Lordi lives in Londonderry. To order her collections of Derry News columns or sign up for one of her writing workshops, go to www.plumriverpress.com.
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