to God’s order and to himself—if lightning would not strike at his ghastly figure from there, it was not because God was merciful toward him. His life was no life to live. His sisters encouraged him to stay under the table until he could reinvigorate the family name, but he refused to take any agency from the divine. If God wanted to end the line, then end the line he would. God was God, and our young man was still only a young man.
And so, the next time a thundercloud cleared its throat and the brilliant spider webs of electricity moved into the acres of the farm, he could be found in the middle of a field—a metal pipe fixed to his back like the sashimono of feudal samurai. He stood there that night, unharmed, until the sky went back to sleep, and then so did he.
To do something once can be the effect of temptation, but by this ritual he no longer envisioned himself tempting fate, but embracing it. The next storm that came through, and the dozen after that, were all met by the young man and his metal rod. His sisters begged him to stop mocking the sky—to stop tempting the tragedy that ran like iron through the blood in their veins. But he didn’t listen. Surely if God didn’t want him to be struck by lightning, then he wouldn’t be struck. Each time he marched onto the field under a shaded sky, he didn’t do so as a heretic, and he didn’t do so with fear or defiance—only with the certainty that the outcome was exactly as it should be.
He and his sashimono survived thirteen storms with that attitude. Thirteen. On the morning after the fourteenth his sisters found his torched, crumpled body. Seared onto his shirt was the exact shape of the bolt as it coursed through his figure, and onto his face the countenance of a perplexed buffoon.
The Parade
The parade sailed by Silvio’s gaze like the old reel film of some incoherent circus. There were horses, and llamas, and dogs, and humans, and they were all dressed in rampant colors of no theme or reason. There were cowboys, and athletes, and boosters, and nobodies, and they marched proudly like as many fascists. Amidst the mobilized army of people and creatures came fire trucks from a number of decades as if a time machine sat at the entrance of Main Street and hailed them through one at a time in order to give the masses a history lesson in the spectacle of old men riding old vehicles. Next came a similar exhibition of tractors for spectators to marvel at their size and guess at their purpose. When the local beauty queen passed by perched atop a red Ford Thunderbird, she waved out at the ogling of the men, the scrutiny of the women, and the empty watch of Silvio. Children swarmed the sidewalks and the streets like a pack of wild dogs and they flaunted their swelling candy bags to peers and parents alike. Silvio stooped to pick up the occasional hard candy that landed near his feet and poked through a handful of it before he selected one and tucked the rest of the noisy wrappers into his short’s pocket. Smiling cowgirls clopped by on top of bannered horses, and the kids with all the candy laughed guiltily when the horse dung splattered thick and green upon the asphalt. There were generic sedans that crept along with nothing more than the decal of a local business plastered to their doors, and there were big trucks that pulled big, slatted trailers that were filled up by the high school’s sports teams. The volleyball players wore spandex bottoms and the football players wore their helmets and they both fit in among the horse dung and the fire trucks just as well as the rest of it. Last was the remnant of the school’s marching band, with the droll blare of their brass horns unable to match, in volume or vigor, the pop hits that blasted from the regional radio station’s trailer two floats ahead. When the last of them had gone, Silvio was finally able to cross the street, dodging the splayed patches of excrement, and walk on to the church several blocks away. He took a spot next to the old man on the front steps, where he apologized for being late.
Silvio said, So what did you think?
About the writing?
Yeah about the writing. Are they going to put it in the bulletin?
There is no They, Silvio. It’s just Mrs. Crawford, and she said she didn’t get it. She thought it was a little too grim for the bulletin.
Silvio flashed a look of confusion. Too grim? I didn’t mean it to be grim.
I know you didn’t. But you have to think about your audience—about the congregation. They don’t care to read your musings on God striking down some poor farm boy.
I never said that God struck him down.
Sil, I just think that you should tone it down a little bit. If I were you, I would just have less death and destruction next time.
No you wouldn’t.
What?
Well if you were me then that isn’t what you would be doing. If you were me then you’d just be me. You would be doing what I’m doing, because that’s what me does.
The old man shook his head. He said, I just mean that if I were in your position, that’s what I would do. I would tone it down.
Okay.
The streets around the church temporarily populated with parade attendants making their way home. Parents walked with shed jackets and fold out chairs tucked under their arms, while grandparents shuffled along with the small and measured gait signature to their elderly demographic. Children skipped on their sugar highs and the slow tinder of barbequed meats began to fill the air around the old man and Silvio. In a distant backyard came the violent startup and concussive pumping of a lawnmower engine. The sun was prominent, but not hot, and the occasional soothing breeze had passerby’s commenting on what a perfect spring day it was.
The good news is that Mrs. Crawford said that she liked your style, and that no one has ever submitted any writing like that before. You should go talk to her. She seemed to be excited that someone was taking an interest in the bulletin.
She did?
Indeed. She told me to get you to submit something else—something a little less gloomy.
I can do that.
I’m sure you can. But Silvio, listen: I promised you I would support you on whatever this pursuit of yours is, but I also have the responsibility to urge you to do something a little more practical.
It’s been noted.
The old man offered a sarcastic thanks before Silvio rose from the steps.
Silvio said, I didn’t see you at the parade this morning.
That’s because I wasn’t there.
Why not?
Because I don’t like parades.
——————————————————————
Within a military unit you get a lot of different backgrounds, and these backgrounds lead to a type of necessary small talk. Mostly guys bragged on the girls they had hooked up with in the past, or told raunchy stories from their high school years—tales of hacking the school district’s security firewall, planting trees on the football field’s fifty-yard-line, pooping in file cabinets, and drawing cartoon penii on anything with a surface. But it wasn’t all adolescent gab and posturing, because guys shared dreams too—what they aspired to, what they wanted out of the military, and what they wanted out of life. Sergeant Murphy said it was his dream to visit every national monument and national park in the United States, and when he had done that he wanted to go worldwide with his visits—his ultimate goal was to see a mountain gorilla in Africa’s Congo. He was just beginning to go into detail about the stuff that he had already seen when Private
