Call Down The Thunder, Ye Gods

Naomi Lettle had a nightly habit, since her husband died, of writing her prayers down on a notepad. She had been doing this for the past five years, and it became a kind of therapy for her. She wasn’t sure why she started, but if she had to guess, it was probably in her grief. After Jack died, she never really recovered, emotionally or physically. The car wreck that killed him, shattered her leg, and even after prolonged therapy, she never could walk right again. Her “dead leg” she called it.

The writing saved her. They began as angry outpourings, spilled over regrets, questions, longings. Time and distance from the pain, however, mellowed them, until they became the simple, somber expressions of a tired and lonely woman, who was about to go to bed. She put her notepad down, and began her limp to the kitchen. Pouring herself a glass of milk, she drank it slowly, and then set the glass in the sink.

My Jack loved his milk, she thought. Always had to be whole milk though, none of that two percent, skim milk stuff. Wouldn’t touch it. She filled up a tiny dish and placed it on the floor, and a gray cat darted over and began drinking. “Jack wouldn’t like you around, would he Roxie?,” she said, stroking her back. “Nope. Always liked dogs better. But we won’t tell him will we?”

She put the milk away, and stopped to look at the fridge door, regarding the photographs taped there. One was a high school graduation picture of her daughter Janet, taken seven years ago. So happy then, Naomi thought. We all were. Mother and daughter saw each other infrequently these days. Janet was busy with her own life and growing family, and would call every now and then to check up. But it wasn’t the same as it used to be, and Naomi knew that.

Tom was in the next picture. A son she hadn’t seen or spoken to in several years. A fight between them had severed the last remaining thread in their relationship. It was about Jack. Always about Jack. Shortly after, he left state, and she didn’t hear from him again. Her notebooks over the past two years, had been filled with prayers for him.

The last picture, was of her and Jack, taken a few days before the accident. Both smiling. Unknowing. When their belongings were recovered from the wreckage, the camera was found intact, the photos developed. As painful as it was, the thought never crossed her mind of not putting that picture up. She had to. It was the last thing she had of him.

On the day of the accident, a severe storm had been gathering, and was now delivering its payload upon the sleepy Florida town where Jack and Naomi had been vacationing. They were trying to make it home.

“I told you we shouldn’t have stopped at that goddamn restaurant before we left,” Jack said, through clenched teeth. “We could’ve already been out of all this before it started.”

Jack took a cigarette from his nearly empty pack and lit it. The smoke trailed from his nose, as he exhaled. Naomi hated it when he smoked in the car. It made her eyes water. She dared not say anything, though. Not while he was in this mood.

“I’m sorry, Jack, I just thought it would be nice to have a sit down lunch before we left.”

Jack exhaled, smoke filing out of the cracked window. “Just shut up, and help me keep an eye out for our exit. It’s so goddamn hard to see in all this mess.”

Jack eased the car along the crowded road, scanning for the exit. He finished his cigarette, and flicked the butt out, rolling the window back up.

“You know, if wasn’t for that idiot son of yours, wrecking his car, we wouldn’t have to be getting out of here in such a hurry.”

“Jack, he’s our son, and please don’t call him that. It was an accident.”

“You’re always covering for him. I don’t get it. That boy has been screwing up for most of his damn life, and you’re always taking up for him. Remember the time I whipped him when he walked in the front door with mud all over his feet? And you got all mad, and wouldn’t talk to me for the rest of the day? If you’d just stayed out of it, he probably wouldn’t be such a mama’s boy. Things like that, over and over. Never thinking. Ever since he could talk, I’ve tried to show him the right way, but he always wanted to do things his way. I never understood him. He was always so strange. I always thought he took after your people. Remember me takin’ him hunting, and I shot that squirrel, but it didn’t die, and I had to crush its head? He cried and cried over that. Never could get him in the woods again. Weird one. And now he’s wrecked his car, and we have to clean up the mess. Well, I’ll tell ya right now, this ends tonight. Either he gets his goddamn act together, or he gets out.”

Naomi shifted uncomfortably in her seat. She knew it was pointless to try and reason with him when he was worked up like this. She knew deep down, Jack really loved the boy. He just always had a hard time expressing it. Jack always said that he showed his kids more love than he ever got growing up. She always tried to make them see that.

“Now Janet always had it together, made good grades, went to college. Did everything I told her to, except for that boyfri–”

The truck slammed into Jack’s side of the car, killing him instantly. He never noticed that he’d run a red light into oncoming traffic. Naomi slipped into unconsciousness.

Naomi stared at the smiling, weathered faces in the photo. The faces stared back.

“Come on Roxie, time for bed.”

“Goodnight Jack.”

She turned off the kitchen light.