be rusty, but it’s not. Do you know why it’s not?”
I shook my head.
“Because it’s been struck by lightning so many times. Skytop’s a special place. It draws the lightning, and that iron rod is its focal point.”
He was looking dreamily off toward Goat Mountain. It was certainly not big compared to the Rockies (or even the White Mountains of New Hampshire), but it dominated the rolling hills of western Maine.
“The thunder is louder there, Jamie, and the clouds are closer. The sight of those stormclouds rolling in makes a person feel very small, and when a person is beset by worries . . . or doubts . . . feeling small is not such a bad thing. You know when the lightning’s going to come, because there’s a breathless feeling in the air. A feeling of . . . I don’t know . . . an unburned burning. Your hair stands on end and your chest gets heavy. You can feel your skin trembling. You wait, and when the thunder comes, it doesn’t boom. It cracks, like when a branch loaded with ice finally gives way, only a hundred times louder. There’s silence . . . and then a click in the air, sort of like the sound an old-fashioned light switch makes. The thunder rolls and the lightning comes. You have to squint, or the stroke will blind you and you won’t see that iron pole go from black to purple-white and then to red, like a horseshoe in the forge.”
“Wow,” I said.
He blinked and came back. He kicked the tire of his new-old car. “Sorry, kiddo. Sometimes I get carried away.”
“It sounds awesome.”
“Oh, it’s way beyond awesome. Go up there sometime when you’re older and see for yourself. Just be careful around the pole. The lightning has chipped up all kinds of loose scree, and if you started to slide, you might not be able to stop. And now, Jamie, I really do have to get rolling.”
“I wish you didn’t have to go.” I wanted to cry some more, but I wouldn’t let myself.
“I appreciate that, and I’m touched by it, but you know what they say—if wishes were horses, beggars would ride.” He opened his arms. “Now give me another hug.”
I hugged him hard, breathing deep, trying to store up the smells of his soap and his hair tonic—Vitalis, the kind my dad used. And now Andy, as well.
“You were my favorite,” he said into my ear. “That’s another secret you should probably keep.”
I just nodded. There was no need to tell him that Claire already knew.
“I left something for you in the parsonage basement,” he said. “If you want it. Key’s under the doormat.”
He set me on my feet, kissed me on the forehead, then opened the driver’s door. “This caa ain’t much, chummy,” he said, putting on a Yankee accent that made me smile in spite of how bad I felt. “Still, I reckon it’ll get me down the road apiece.”
“I love you,” I said.
“I love you, too,” he said. “But don’t you cry on me again, Jamie. My heart is already as broken as I can stand.”
I didn’t cry again until he was gone. I stood there and watched him back down the driveway. I watched him until he was out of sight. Then I walked home. We still had a hand pump in our backyard in those days, and I washed my face in that freezing-cold water before I went inside. I didn’t want my mother to see that I’d been crying, and ask me why.
• • •
It would be the job of the Ladies Auxiliary to give the parsonage a good stem-to-stern cleaning, removing all traces of the ill-fated Jacobs family and making it ready for the new preacher, but there was no hurry, Dad said; the wheels of the New England Methodist Bishopric moved slowly, and we would be lucky to have a new minister assigned to us by the following summer.
“Let it sit awhile,” was Dad’s advice, and the Auxiliary was happy enough to take it. They didn’t get to work with their brooms and brushes and vacuums until after Christmas (Andy preached the lay sermon that year, and my parents almost burst with pride). Until then, the parsonage stood empty, and some of the kids at my school began to claim that it was haunted.
There was one visitor, though: me. I went on a Saturday afternoon, once more cutting through Dorrance Marstellar’s cornfield to evade the watchful eye