by Lindsay Easter
Beyond the city limits, lightning strikes one late August evening.
At the intersection of tenth street and twenty-second avenue, a man on a bus looks up from his newspaper at the flickering light. Instinctively, he begins counting.
One Mississippi. Two Mississippi.
He thinks it has been two years since he has seen lightning. Not just a flash in the sky, but a bolt that leaves an afterthought like tree roots on your eyelids. There aren’t storms in the city often, at least not the kind he remembers. The kind where a hot, windy night tenses until the clouds crack and gives way to a fleeting downpour. When it rains here, it comes down feebly, for hours, tapering off by late afternoon.
Five Mississippi. Six Mississippi. Seven Mississippi.
When he was seven, his nana told him thunder was the sound of lightning. It was July on his uncle’s farm in northern Oklahoma, and the thunderstorm had roused them both in the middle of the night.
“You can count to see if the storm is getting closer,” she whispered as they stood at the window, staring out into the darkness with anticipation. “Let’s count together.”
Nine Mississippi.
He had dated Kathy only nine months, but it had felt longer. She had called him absent-minded and claimed he wasn’t present. She would get frustrated with him on walks when he stopped to prod at pebbles with a stick along the shoreline.
“You have rocks,” she said, taking his hand before he could reach down to pick up another.
“God, you collect things like a kindergartener.”
Ten Missi—thunder. He waits for the lightning and begins again. One Mississippi. Two Mississippi. Three Mississippi.
There are only three passengers on the bus now, two stops left for the night.
Four Mississippi. Thunder.
He rises as the bus slows and heads down the aisle towards the door.
“Sir, you forgot your—”
He turns to see a young woman holding out his umbrella to him.
“Thanks,” the man says, knowing he’ll need it on his walk home.
“You’ll need it,” she says and smiles. “Storm’s getting closer.”
Lindsay Easter is a senior English major with a concentration in creative writing and a minor in history. She most enjoys writing creative nonfiction and fiction of various lengths. She is currently revising a two-volume fantasy novel that she hopes to complete by the end of the year.