decks of clouds, and the southern sky had gone a copper shade. We watched the
thunderheads lumber closer, fascinated by their size and their mute threat. Every now
and then it seemed that a giant flashbulb had gone off inside one of them, turning their purplish, bruised colour momentarily to a light grey. I saw a jagged fork of lightning lick down from the underside of the closest. It was bright enough to print a blue tattoo on my retinas. It was followed by a long, shaking blast of thunder.
We did a little bitching about how we were going to get caught out in the rain,
but only because it was the expected thing–of course we were all looking forward to
it. It would be cold and refreshing… and leech-free.
At a little past three-thirty, we saw running water through a break in the trees.
“That’s it!’ Chris yelled jubilantly. That’s the Royal!’
We began to walk faster, taking our second wind. The storm was getting close
now. The air began to stir, and it seemed that the temperature dropped ten degrees in a space of seconds. I looked down and saw that my shadow had disappeared entirely.
We were walking in pairs again, each two watching a side of the railroad
embankment.
My mouth was dry, throbbing with a sickish tension. The sun sailed behind
another cloudbank and this time it didn’t come back out. For a moment the bank’s
edges were embroidered with gold, like a cloud hi an Old Testament Bible illustration, and then the wine-coloured, dragging belly of the thunderhead blotted out all traces of the sun. The day became gloomy–the clouds were rapidly eating up the last of the
blue. We could smell the river so clearly that we might have been horses–or perhaps
it was the smell of rain impending in the air as well. There was an ocean above us,
held in by a thin sac that might rupture and let down a flood at any second.
I kept trying to look into the underbrush, but my eyes were continually drawn
back to that turbulent, racing sky; in its deepening colours you could read whatever
doom you liked: water, fire, wind, hail. The cool breeze became more insistent,
hissing in the firs. A sudden impossible bolt of lightning flashed down, seemingly
from directly overhead, making me cry out and clap my hands to my eyes. God had
taken my picture, a little kid with his shirt tied around his waist, duckbumps on his
bare chest and cinders on his cheeks. I heard the rending fall of some big tree not sixty yards away. The crack of thunder which followed made me cringe. I wanted to be at
home reading a good book in a safe place… like down in the potato cellar.
‘Jeezis!’ Vern screamed in a high, fainting voice. ‘Oh my Jeezis Chrise, lookit
that!’
I looked in the direction Vern was pointing and saw a blue-white fireball
bowling its way up the lefthand rail of the GS&WM tracks, crackling and hissing for all the world like a scalded cat. It hurried past us as we turned to watch it go,
dumbfounded, aware for the first time that such things could exist. Twenty feet beyond us it made a sudden -pop!!–and just disappeared, leaving a greasy smell of
ozone behind.
‘What am I doin’ here, anyway?’ Teddy muttered.
‘What a pisser!’ Chris exclaimed happily, his face upturned. This is gonna be a
pisser like you wouldn’t believer But I was with Teddy. Looking up at that sky gave
me a dismaying sense of vertigo. It was more like looking into some deeply
mysterious marbled gorge.
Another lightning-bolt crashed down, making us duck. This time the ozone
smell was hotter, more urgent. The following clap of thunder came with no
perceptible pause at all.
My ears were still ringing from it when Vern began to screech triumphantly:
‘THERE! THERE HE IS! RIGHT THERE! I SEE HIM!’
I can see Vern right this minute, if I want to–all I have to do is sit back for a
minute and close my eyes. He’s standing there on the lefthand rail like an explorer on the prow of his ship, one hand shielding his eyes from the silver stroke of lightning