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I used to love thunderstorms. My mother told me thunder was the sound of angels bowling and my father taught me to calculate how far away a storm was by counting the seconds between a lightning flash and the sound of thunder. Divide the number by five. Five seconds means the storm is one mile away.
I remember striding down Lancaster Avenue when I was eight, twirling my little umbrella and belting “Singing in the Rain,” skipping in time with the song, thrilled by the lightning flashes and the thunderclaps. I never once considered I was in any danger. I continued to love thunderstorms until 1972 when I was 24.
That year I landed a summer job at a dude ranch in southern Colorado. I was a receptionist and reservation agent, the face of the ranch from 7 am to 9 pm. I got to know the names of the guests and where they were from. I flirted with the forest rangers who checked in to let us know how the fish were doing in the Conejos River. I kept track of the horse-ride reservations for Luciano, the handsome head wrangler, who’d stop in every morning to pick up the list. I remember him leaning against the check-in counter, smiling at me, chatting about his family, and asking me about my life back in Milwaukee. He always wore a Western-style shirt dotted with embroidery and a few sequins.
Often from noon to 1:30, when there were no guests signed up for rides, I was allowed to go riding with the wrangler, Peter, who probably had a crush on me. Peter taught me how to read a horse’s moods and personality, what they loved and what they hated. Once he was sure of my ability to stay in a saddle, he started taking me on long canters through the meadow below the lodge. I loved cantering more than anything I’d ever done before. It was like flying; it was like dancing full-out or singing at the top of my lungs, a joy so big I didn’t know where to store it.
One day in July, I signed up to go with a small group of guests on an afternoon ride. But when the time came, I was tired. I’d been up late the night before, sitting by a campfire with my staff buddies. Instead of going along on the ride, I went back to my room and took a nap. A crack of thunder woke me from a nightmare.
I walked back up to the lodge, feeling uneasy. When I opened the big heavy wooden door to the spacious lobby, I saw a few people sitting, a few standing, all talking anxiously. I recognized them as the group who’d signed up for the ride. A forty-something dark-haired man named Frank looked pale and sick. I grabbed his 14-year-old son’s arm. “What happened?”
“There was lightning,” the boy said, in a shaky voice. It wasn’t raining. It hit Luciano’s horse and he fell and they’re both dead.” He began to sob.
The woman who owned the ranch beckoned to me. She was tearful, too. “We’re waiting for ambulances,” she said. “One is to take Frank to a hospital for a checkup. The other,” she could barely talk, “is for Luciano’s body.”
She instructed me to bring coffee, tea, and cookies for the survivors. As I served them, I listened to their stories. There’d been no rain, no thunder. Only a few stray clouds. Lightning hit the metal saddle horn on Luciano’s saddle. The electricity traveled down to the horse’s heart and up to Luciano’s chest. Luciano and his horse were both killed instantly. Frank’s horse was hit and killed, and Frank landed, alive, under his horse. The others were stunned but uninjured. Together they‘d carried Luciano’s body back up to the lodge.
I went outside, reeling from the pictures in my head, struggling to grasp that Luciano was dead. I walked around the cars in the parking lot to calm myself down. I passed a blue jeep and peered in. There was Luciano, leaning in the back seat, seeming asleep. His shirt was melted above his heart.
It wouldn’t hit me until the next day how lucky it was that I’d been too tired to go riding that afternoon.
Seven years later, I wrote a poem about Luciano and the lightning; it was published in a small literary journal. I thought though that its true home was with Luciano in the meadow where he’d died. I drove back to Rainbow Trout Lodge and walked down into the meadow. I found the small wooden cross that marked the spot where Luciano and his horse were buried together. I stood there looking up at the clear uniquely azure mountain sky and pictured the deadly lightning bolt that had come from nowhere. “Luciano,” I whispered. “I wrote this for you.” I pulled out a copy of my poem and read it out loud for him. And then I buried it at the foot of the cross.
I don’t sing in the rain anymore if there’s thunder. I have a deep respect for lightning. And I don’t take my good luck for granted.
References
Luciano and the Lightning originally published in Porcupine, 1996
