The Afternoon the School Lights Came On

“Best hand I ever saw on a pole,” Elvin said. “Calm as a pond. Never hurried, never wasted a move. He trained half the men on this crew, me included.”

“Roberta says he was never home.”

“He wasn’t.” Elvin turned onto the county road where we had poles to set. “He worked every storm for thirty years. Ice storms, tornadoes, the derecho, the flood of ninety-seven. He missed birthdays. He missed Christmas twice. He missed his oldest boy’s graduation because a line was down in the river bottoms and the pumping station was out.”

I thought about that. I thought about Roberta alone in that farmhouse with three kids and a husband who was gone every time the sky turned green.

“She raised those children by herself half the time,” Elvin said. “And Arlis knew it. It ate at him. He told me once he could fix anything on a pole and nothing at his own kitchen table.”

“That’s not my fault,” I said. “And it’s not Gavin’s.”

“No,” Elvin said. “It’s not. And what she told that boy wasn’t right. I’d tell her so to her face.” He glanced over at me. “But I’d bet you she’s not mad at you, Josie. I’d bet you she’s still mad at storms.”

We worked that whole sixth day on the north side of town, out along the road to the high school and up the hill toward the elementary school.

That stretch had taken the worst of it. Every pole for half a mile was down or leaning, and the wire was lying in yards and tangled in trees and wrapped around the bumper of somebody’s pickup like Christmas lights in a box.

The elementary school sat at the top of the hill. It was an old red brick building with tall windows, built in the fifties, and every kid in our end of the county had gone through it. I went through it. Gavin was in fourth grade there.

The tornado had missed the building itself by maybe two hundred yards. It took the playground fence and a row of oaks along the street and every power pole in front of it. But the building stood.

The principal, Dorsey Whitlow, had been up there every day since the storm. She was fifty, a tall woman with reading glasses on a chain, and she had taught my sister in sixth grade before she ever ran the school.

She walked out to our trucks that afternoon with a clipboard against her chest.

“I’ve got a walk-in freezer full of food going bad,” she said. “About four hundred pounds of chicken and ground beef the families on this street could be eating. And I’ve got nineteen days of school left in the year, and nowhere to put my kids.”

“We’ll get you, Miss Whitlow,” Elvin said. “Tomorrow afternoon, if the poles come in.”

“The school circuit’s the last one?” I asked.

Elvin nodded. “It’s the tail end of the line. We have to rebuild everything between here and the road before we can energize it. Everything on this hill comes back on with the school.”

Dorsey Whitlow looked at me. “Josie Kincer. You’re Gavin’s mother.”

“Yes, ma’am.”

“He’s a good boy. Smart. Talks about you.” She smiled a little. “He told the whole class in February that his mama climbs poles. He was proud as a peacock.”

I didn’t say anything. I couldn’t.