The Lightning Jar

David B. Holton

A bullfrog booms out nearby in the field, punching right through the summer cicadas, way down low like a thrum, thrum, thrum in the center of my chest, and the cicadas are higher up, like a buzzing between my ears. I stop a moment and study the jar Daddy told me to carry—it’s one of those big Mount Olive pickle jars. Even though the jar is empty, I still smell the sour pickle smell coming up through the jagged holes that Daddy punched in the lid.

“Daddy?” Between the bullfrog and the cicadas, I got to shout to be sure my voice will reach him. “You sure it’s all right for us to bottle them up in here?”

Daddy stops walking and peers back over his shoulder. I can see his frown—the moon is bright enough to cast shadows—and his face falls so heavy on me I can’t stand it. I look away.

“Course it is,” he says. “It’s what little boys are supposed to do. It’s what I did when I was your age.”

“But … won’t they just crawl out through these holes?”

Daddy laughs, then—not a full laugh, more of a short huff. “They ain’t that small.”

“And you promise they’ll be all right in there?”

“Yes. They’ll be all right.” Daddy shakes his head like I said something crazy, but then a smile takes the place of the frown. “Now, come on.”

Daddy’s got a great smile. Momma once told me that Daddy’s a real looker because he’s tall, has all his hair, and because he’s got a great smile—she said I got the same smile and that I’ll probably get the other things, too. But she also told me it ain’t just about having a great smile and a full head of hair; there’s a lot more to it than that.

“We ain’t got far to go,” Daddy says. “Just to the tree line yonder.” He starts walking again, across the field, and his boots crunch through the dead soybeans.

The crunch pulls at me, but I don’t follow him at first. We’re still less than halfway across the soybean field—well, the field that’s supposed to be soybeans but is mostly just scratchy brambles and dried-up clumps of dirt—and I can’t help it; I got to look back.  

Turning toward the house, I see the floodlights blazing yellow on all four corners and over the door. Our house looks real little in the daytime, all alone with nothing but empty, flat fields and other little houses just like it going off for miles in every direction to both sides along the state road all the way to Rocky Mount. But at this moment, our house looks like a big, yellow sun burning a hole right through the night.

Behind the double-pane window to the right of the door, Momma sits at her sewing machine—too far away to see her expression, but I’m sure she’s frowning, too.

Sometimes I wish there were two of me; that way, one of me could do what Momma said, and the other could be with Daddy, and Momma and Daddy would both be happy because they’d both get what they wanted. The two of me could just split the difference. Truth is, I feel as stretched out as a piece of Laffy Taffy, fat on both sides and thin in the middle.

Daddy stops crunching and calls back, “Come on, now. We ain’t got all night.”

“Yes, sir,” I say, and I turn away from Momma to run after Daddy.

My boots are about one size too big for me, and halfway to Daddy, the toe of my right boot gets hung up in a clump of dead soybeans. I fall face first, letting the pickle jar go as I throw my hands out to catch myself, and the jar bounces away and rolls across the dirt and comes to rest near Daddy’s feet. He peers down at the jar and then at me, and he’s scowling away.

“Careful now,” he says. “You hurt yourself, I won’t hear the end of it.”

Trying to pretend like it was nothing at all, I pick myself up and brush myself off. My knees are all right—I’m wearing my Carhartts—but my hands got scratched up real good on some stupid brambles. I suck it up because I know Daddy is watching me. I ain’t about to cry.

As I gather up the jar, Daddy takes a handkerchief from his jeans pocket and mops the sweat from his forehead, staring up into the sky, looking for something that ain’t there. It’s as clear as it can be, just like yesterday and the day before, and the day before that. This drought we been having goes all the way back to sometime in May.

“Hey, Daddy,” I say. “What’s this moon called. This one got a name?”

“Yeah,” he says with a smirk that ain’t really a smile. “It’s got a name. Way back when, they called this one the thunder moon ‘cause it rained so much in July.”

Daddy surveys the field, dried up all the way from the house to the tree line, every dead plant lit up by the full moon. He spits in the dirt and says, “I reckon that’s a bullshit name, now.”

My mind races for something to say that might ease Daddy back toward a smile. “Hey, Daddy,” I say, and he looks at me, his face kind of blank, waiting, so I push on ahead with the next thing I think of. “We about to catch some lightning, ain’t we?”

I see him chew on that one for a moment, and then his lips turn halfway up, and he says, “Yeah, I guess you could say that.”

“Well,” I say. “Maybe if we catch enough lightning, you and me will call up a storm tonight.” As if to help make my point, a breeze kicks up, bustling the heat about us both.

“Yeah,” he says, and sure enough, he’s smiling again. “Maybe you right.”

When we get to where we’re going, I slow down and let Daddy get between me and the trees. The woods that line the back of the field are thick with sassafras, cedar, live oaks, pines, and creeper vines that carpet and connect everything in between, and in the daytime, these woods are as green as can be. But at night, even nights like this one, they’re like a black curtain come down over some unknowable cavern full of monsters and demons. Daddy says that stuff’s all in my imagination, and I’m too old to be scared. But the truth is, I am scared.

Daddy strides over to me and kneels and says, “Hand me that pickle jar.” After I hand it over, he unscrews the top and sets the jar in the dirt between us with the lid next to it and says, “Okay, now hold out your hands, palms to the sky.”

I follow his instructions and spread my hands out in between us. I can see Daddy studying the scratches on my palms, clear as day in the moonlight, but he doesn’t say nothing about it. He just brings his hands underneath mine, and his palms press up against my skin, tough as two baseball mitts. One day, I’ll have hands hard as his, and no stupid brambles will ever get through my skin no matter how scratchy they are.

“Now, when you catch hold of one, you got to be gentle,” he says, “You got to cup your hands like this, so there’s still a space in the middle, and don’t put no pressure on him. They’re just little critters, and little critters can’t abide too much pressure.”

As Daddy stands up, I cup my hands together like he showed me, and stare toward the tree line, and then, I see something I didn’t see before—a flash, then another, and another! And little bits of light dance all along the edge of the black woods, twinkling on and off like stars—no, not like stars. Like lightning!

Like little bits of lightning, zapping right through the shadows.

“Well,” says Daddy, pressing his hand up against my back. “What are you waiting for? Go get us some of that lighting and call us up a storm like you said you would.”

He gives me a little shove, and he laughs as I take off, and his laugh is like gas for my engine. I head straight for the first flash I lock eyes on—I lunge for it, but the little bit moves every time it goes out, and it takes me several tries until finally—finally!—I shut my cupped hands together with a loud pop. There’s something inside tickling one of my palms, and I clasp my hands together so tight that nothing could ever get out, but I leave a space in the middle just like Daddy showed me; I don’t squash down. I run straight back to Daddy, and the whole time I’m squealing with laughter because the little bit of lightning tickles my hand. Daddy waits by the open pickle jar with the top in his hand, and he’s laughing, too, and his laugh is so loud I can’t hear the buzzing of the cicadas or the booming of the frog or nothing else, and all I hear is Daddy laughing, and nothing—I mean nothing!—scares me anymore, not the woods, not any old monsters or demons. When Daddy laughs like this, they don’t exist at all.

I shove my hands way down inside of the big pickle jar and pull one hand out and shake the other like crazy, but the lightning clings to my hand and won’t let go. It’s the funniest thing ever; I shake, shake, shake, and shake again. Finally, the lightning hits the bottom of the jar.

Daddy plops the top back on and then holds the jar up at eye level—I’m tall as he is when he’s down on one knee—and we peer into the jar at the little bit flashing all by its lonesome.

“That’s a good start,” he says. “But I think we need more than that, don’t you?”

I grin at him and say, “Yes, sir,” and he grins right back at me, and he and I both got the same great smile, don’t we? “Yes, sir. We sure do.”

“All right. Go on, then. Gather us some more lightning.”

On the walk back to the house, I lead Daddy through the field, jar held high like a magic lantern to light the way, and my face hurts from laughing and grinning so much. The moon may be shining too bright for the stars, but my jar shines even brighter than the moon—some fifty flashing bits all adding up to one zip-zapping batch of lightning.

About halfway back, the breeze picks up, and goosebumps pucker up on my arms as the temperature drops. My jar gets brighter as the field around us gets darker, and then I see it, a cloud passing right over the moon! And I don’t mean one of those wispy ones that don’t mean nothing—no, sir. I mean one of those tall, puffy ones that sure as shooting spells rain.

“Look, Daddy! Look,” I say, pointing at the cloud.

But Daddy doesn’t say nothing, and when I look back, I can see he’s not looking at the cloud—he’s looking at the house, and he’s wearing that same frown again.

“We ain’t got time for stargazing,” he says. “We got to get you back. Your mother’s going to have our hides if you don’t get to bed soon.”

“Yes, sir,” I say.

The field grows real dark behind us, and a low rumble rolls right through me. All of a sudden, I’m scared again—I got a feeling I know what’s coming next. I hope I’m wrong, but just as soon as we get into the circle of light around the house, Momma opens the front door, and right away, I know she’s cross. Momma's a good deal smaller than Daddy side-by-side, but three steps up, standing in the doorway, she towers over me and him both.

“You said nine-thirty,” she says, and her lips don’t show at all, and her black hair falls down to her shoulders, and her face is like some kind of predator poking its head out of a bush.

“It’s just ten o’clock,” he says, holding back a few steps from the house, hands shoved down in the pockets of his jeans. “What’s a few extra minutes with my boy?”

“Look, Momma,” I say, raising my jar. “We caught a jar full of lightning, and now—”        

“That’s nice, honey,” she says. “Now, say goodnight to your father.”

“But Momma, I—”

“No buts. It’s late, and you got school tomorrow,” Momma wraps her arms tight over the front of her white t-shirt like she’s trying to hold herself back. “Time for your father to go.”

I hate summer school. If I didn’t have to go to summer school, it wouldn’t matter that I’d stayed out with Daddy. I should have got better grades, then I wouldn’t need tutoring.

“Ain’t you going to offer me something to drink?” Daddy says. “I’m thirsty.”

“You know better,” Momma says.

The yellow light above the door hits their faces such that their brows hang dark shadows over their eyes—it’s like I’m standing at the edge of the woods again. I raise the jar a bit, hoping my lightning might zap some light into the shadows, but the light above the door is too bright.

“It’s still my house,” Daddy says. “I can come inside if I want to.”

“It’s late,” Momma repeats, and she turns to one side and opens a boy-sized space in the doorway, and her eyes cut through the shadows straight at me. “Time for my son to go to bed.”

“But, Momma—

“Bed,” Momma’s face pulls tight as a piece of plastic wrap. “Now.”

When I get in my room and shut the door, I don’t even need to turn the light on because my jar zaps like crazy, shining into every little nook and cranny. I set the jar on the nightstand by my bed, and as I kick my boots off and strip down to my skivvies, I hear Daddy’s heavy boots thumping around on the floorboards in the den. Our house is just two bedrooms with a kitchen and a den in the middle—where Momma does her sewing—and the walls ain’t nothing but thin sheetrock, so I can hear pretty much everything going on in the den even with my door shut.

Momma tells Daddy to stop, that he’s getting dirt on everything. He stomps harder.

Too riled up to sleep, I lay on top of my covers and thumb an old Archie comic—in this issue, Archie’s trying to decide which one to take to the high school dance: Betty or Veronica, and he ends up taking Veronica, and like Daddy says, brunettes ain’t nothing but trouble. Then again, I ain’t so sure he’s right—after all, Momma’s the brunette, and he’s the blond—and then something bangs in the kitchen, hard, and Daddy unleashes a string of curse words. I toss the comic aside. I put my pillow over my head, but I can still hear them—Daddy’s voice rolls like rocks through the floorboards, and Momma’s voice screams through the rafters like the wind. Even if I can't understand the words they’re saying, I still get the meaning.

I hear something else, a loud bang outside the house, and I take the pillow off my head. Then there’s a flash, another bang, and hard drumming on the roof—and sure enough, a sheet of rainwater running down my window. I can still hear Daddy yelling and Momma crying, but now their voices are mixed up with the wind and rain and thunder and lightning, and it’s all part of the same storm that I called up with Daddy when I went out to field with him instead of going straight to bed like Momma told me.

In between the drumming on the roof, there’s another sound, a tapping sound coming from my nightstand. When I look over, I see that where there was a lightning jar before, now there’s just a big pickle jar full of little critters throwing themselves against the glass, trying to get out. The jar still zaps out light enough to see, but not as bright as it was—already, a handful of critters are sprawled out on the bottom, legs kicking in the air. A few ain't moving at all; they just lay there on their backs, cold and dark. In the field, these critters were all made of lightning, but now, they’re nothing but bugs falling dead on the bottom of a pickle jar.

I jump out of bed, yank the jar from the nightstand, run to the window—another flash of lightning lights the world, and the bang that follows almost makes me drop the jar. I clutch it tight against me with one arm as I raise the window with the other, and the rain soaks my skin. The critters that are still alive smack the glass—I can feel the little hits against my chest and arm, and all I can think is that Daddy wasn’t supposed to be here today; if I had gone to bed instead of going out with him, Momma would be sewing right now and Daddy wouldn’t be in the house. After I get the lid unscrewed, I turn the jar upside down out the window—the dead bugs fall right out, but for some reason, the live ones still hold on to the side of the jar; they don’t seem to know where they are supposed to be.

I do the only thing I can think of, then; I pitch the pickle jar just as far as I can pitch it—it lands on the dirt driveway near Daddy’s truck and rolls away from the house toward the field. I wipe my eyes and squint as the jar comes to a stop just beyond the yellow circle thrown by the floodlights, hoping to see the lightning leave the jar, but I can’t see through the storm.

I hope the little critters make it out alive.

I shut the window and get back in bed, soaking wet, but I don’t care. I throw the pillow over my head again, but then, the front door slams. I lift the pillow enough to hear Daddy’s truck crank to life outside, then sputter out to nothing as he drives away across the field.

Daddy’s gone, but the storm ain’t over. Momma's crying in the other room, I’m crying in this one, and the rain keeps on coming. I know no amount of rain’s going to fix things now.

The next morning, I wake to the light rapping of Momma’s knuckles against my door frame, her usual shave-and-a-haircut, but I’m so tired I can hardly open my eyes. It’s still dark outside, and it’s still raining, and I don’t want to leave my bed. I groan, and Momma laughs.

“Come on, sleepy-head,” she says, leaning against the doorframe, arms crossed over her chest almost the same way she was last night, but not the same—relaxed and smiling like it’s any other morning. She’s got her uniform on, a red button-up, short-sleeve skirt checkered black-and-white on the collar and apron, and I always think Momma’s real pretty done up like this.

“I’ll fix you a nice breakfast,” she says, “and then I’ll drive you to school on my way to the diner. You don’t need to wait for the bus in this weather.”

Momma hums a tune as she goes back toward the kitchen—this little light of mine, I’m gonna let it shine—but it’s like I’m full of mud. I drag myself out of bed and into my jeans and a t-shirt, then I pull my socks on one after the other, but then I step in a puddle by the window and soak both my socks, so I got to go back for a fresh pair.

By the time I get to the kitchen, the smell of bacon fills the air—Momma stands over the stove, spatula in hand, humming away. I sit down at the table and work to tie my shoes.

“Momma?”

“What, baby?” she says, still facing the stove against the wall across the kitchen.

“About last night,” I mumble. “I’m sorry I …” I can hardly get the words out.

Momma turns and peers across the kitchen at me, her eyes squinty. “What, baby?”

“About last night, I’m really sorry …”

The bacon in the pan pops and sizzles. She turns the stove down and lays the spatula on the side of the pan, then comes over and kneels by my chair so that I’m almost a head taller than she is, but I don’t look down on her. I can’t do that.

“What are you sorry for?” she asks, placing her hand on my knee. When she does that, our eyes meet, and there’s so much between us I just can’t help it—the tears start up, and she’s the same. I may have got my smile from Daddy, but I got my eyes from Momma.

Then I say, “It’s my fault Daddy came in here last night.”

She takes a breath—her eyes as green as grass after the rain, and just as wet—and I can tell she’s holding something back because the little muscles at the sides of her face jump around.

“Listen now,” she says. “And you listen well. Your daddy and me? That’s not on you.”

“But if I had just—”

“No. None of that was your fault. Never was your fault, never will be your fault.”

I don’t say nothing, and for a minute, neither does she. The rain drums the roof of the house and patters the window, and the bacon pops in the pan. She takes my hands in hers.

I’m glad my hands aren’t as tough as Daddy’s, because Momma’s hands are soft as tissue paper, and I wouldn’t want to scratch them up. I don’t ever want to hurt Momma. Never.  

“Hey,” she says, and her face is like the sun peeking out from behind a cloud. “Where’s that lightning jar you wanted to show me last night? I didn’t see it in your room this morning.”

“I threw it away,” I say. “I let the little critters go. Shouldn’t be kept in a jar like that.”

“Is that right?” she says, standing; she bends and mashes her lips against my forehead.

When she pulls away, I can feel a wet spot on my skin, but I don’t wipe it off like I usually would.

“You’re a good boy, you know that? A real good boy. I want you to stay just like you are, for as long as you can.”

“Yes, ma’am,” I say, though I don’t really know exactly what I’m supposed to do.

When Momma gets to the stove with her back to me, she says, “Want to see a trick?”

“What kind of trick?” I say.

Momma pulls a funny face and juggles one, two, three eggs in the air, like a clown. I try not to laugh, but I can’t help it, a giggle spreads over me, and before I know it, all of the mud is washing right out. I’m laughing, and she’s laughing, and she almost drops one of the eggs, but she catches them all and holds one up. “Okay, now how do you want them?”

I don’t even have to think about it. “Sunnyside up.”

She grins and says, “All right, then. Sunnyside up it is.”

Momma goes back to humming as she cracks the eggs on the side of the pan and drops them into the bacon fat, and I turn my eyes toward the window. It’s grown lighter outside, and I can see all the way to the tree line—the rain falls steady now. Everything looks gray from ground to sky and side to side, but somewhere behind all that gray, I guess the sun’s coming up.

I can see the soybean rows have turned into little streams running off toward the ditches alongside the field, and some of the brambles are washing away. Who knows—maybe when the rain is done, some of the soybeans’ll come back just as green as ever, and maybe then, Daddy will smile more.

Then again, maybe not. Either way, I know there’s more to it than that.