The storm had nearly stopped when the crack and flash called him back forcibly from the edge of fitful sleep. Despite the distracting ringing in his ears he knew where he was. There was no need to open his eyes; the rain sounding on the tin roof and the musty scent reminded Matthew that he was in his grandfather’s hay loft. He knew this without the need of language, without the need to formulate a conscious thought. Likewise, without the use of words, but rather an awareness of the pressure in his chest, he remembered why he was there.

The outline of the small triangular window for the hay trolley was etched in contrasting reds behind his eyelids. Trying to comprehend the image elicited the first concrete noun to form in his mind: “lightening,” which also explained the ringing. The second noun, close to follow, was a vocal “shit” followed by an immediate realization punctuated by a throaty “fuck.”

***

Matthew first wanted to sleep in the barn in the late 70’s or early 80’s. It wasn’t his idea; he was only 6 or 7. It was probably Peter’s or Paul’s, or more likely their grandfather’s, in an attempt to get the kids out of the house for the night. In either case, his older cousins were tying up their sleeping bags and filling a backpack with appropriate supplies when Matthew tried to join them.

“I didn’t sign up to babysit,” was all Peter said but it was enough that Matthew knew there was no point in trying to follow along, it would elicit nothing more than insults.

In the morning the two slightly older boys were camped out on the couch, clumps of hay stuck to their sleeping bags and scattered around the room. Something had scared them inside during the night. They didn’t want to talk about it and no one pushed them to, mostly because grandpa shit a brick when he saw the mess they had made on the new carpet.

The next summer, on the first night of their yearly visit to the farm, Matthew moved his things out to the barn on his own, without asking permission. No one talked about that either, except his grandfather. “I think it’s better out there, quieter. I’d sleep out there too if my back wasn’t shot.” He coughed and continued, “besides someone has to keep an eye on the silver at night.”

Eventually Matthew understood what his grandfather meant. Not the part about the bad back, he was still in his 30’s after all, his back hadn’t gone to hell yet, but the part about the silver. In the 80’s the whole family spent a week at the farm every summer. In the 90’s the older cousins started showing up for a day or two and eventually stopped coming all together. Throughout college and between jobs Matthew went whenever he could. Eventually, after a five year absence from the farm, after only seeing his grandfather in the nursing home and hospital, he was back sleeping in the hay loft for the weekend.

He, his parents and his Aunt Joan and Uncle Bill were there cleaning out the house to sell the farm. Grandpa had passed away less than a month ago but Bill was anxious to sell. He made no secret of the fact that he had never liked living in the old house or milking cows. The realtor’s sign was already next to the mailbox, he said they would probably get their asking price if they got rid of all the junk in the house.

And junk was all that was left. It was obvious that Joan and Bill had come sometime in the last few weeks to cart off anything of value. They were convinced that they deserved it, especially the silver. Matthew knew his mother was angry, the silver had belonged to her mother, and daughter-in-law Joan only wanted it because it was valuable. She probably wouldn’t even display it. She might have already sold it for all anyone knew. But no one mentioned it. They already knew what Joan would say if confronted, “it meant so much to Peter.”

Peter had died in the late 90’s from an uncommon form of adult leukemia. Understandably his parents were devastated. Matthew thought it couldn’t have happened to a more deserving person. Of course he kept his memories to himself. The most colorful examples came from early childhood when Peter pushed his face into cow shit or locked him in the outhouse all afternoon or more likely pressured Paul into doing something similar, repeatedly. The methods changed and the persecution intensified as they got older, constant condescension and refined insults hurt more than being pelted by wads of wet toilet paper or rotten apples.

The one time Matthew let his parents convince him to visit his cousin in the hospital Peter lay in the bed telling everyone how useless Matthew’s major was. He worked it seamlessly into the conversation, with a smile, in such a way that everyone else in the room nodded and agreed. Matthew held his tongue but wanted to ask “what good will your STEM degree do you when you’re dead?”

Once Peter was gone, Paul took his place. The cousins didn’t see each other often, but Paul made sure that when they did, he made the experience miserable for Matthew. He was a professor of Theology and New Testament Studies, the only field outside of the sciences acceptable to the rest of the family. Paul was not an actual professor yet. He was a lecturer, slowly working on his PHD, but that didn’t stop the whole family from speaking of him as if he was the reincarnation of Thomas Aquinas. Matthew always found the comparison appropriate seeing as Saint Aquinas spoke frequently of justice and tolerance while constructing the necessary philosophical scaffolding to justify the torture and execution of heretics during the inquisition.

Luckily Paul hadn’t come for the weekend, which wasn’t a surprise. Even as a teenager Paul had never been available when actual work had to be done. Not like the work was overly taxing. The process was simple. Uncle Bill had rented a dumpster and most of Saturday comprised of walking out of the house, arms full, to fill it. If anyone found anything they wanted to keep they put it in their vehicle. Uncle Bill and Aunt Joan drove their pickup truck. Several times Aunt Joan saw things in Matthew’s car and explained in detail how Paul would really appreciate them as a reminder of Grandpa, going on and on until Matthew agreed to let her have whatever it was. The one time Matthew’s mother tried to ask for something in the truck Joan said, “we’re going to donate all these things to our church’s women’s shelter.”

Matthew didn’t question what the women’s shelter planned to do with the chainsaw, palm router and generator that his Uncle Bill had so quickly grabbed first thing in the morning. Neither did he point out that the shelter was not affiliated in any way with her church or any other but rather the pastor’s wife simply delivered donated items twice a year and the women in the church had a dubiously charitable competition going to see who could donate the most second hand items.

On one of the trips out to the dumpster Matthew encountered his mother standing next to his car with a grocery bag in her hand. He knew by the look on her face, without even looking in the bag what was in it. She took it out and handed it to him saying, “Grandpa would have liked you to have this.”

It was the family bible. It was old but not old enough to be valuable. If it was, Joan would have taken it already. It wasn’t ornate or beautiful but it was large. It wasn’t the kind of thing that he could hide inconspicuously on his bookshelf.

Matthew tried to decline saying, “it’s so big.”

But his mother quietly opened the first page to show him where the birth and baptism, marriage and death dates of the family were written, at first in Grandmother’s hand and then in hers. Matthew wanted to comment that Grandfather didn’t give a shit about the bible, that he probably never opened it in his life. But, he didn’t say anything. Instead he took it, opened his car door and set it on top of the random collection of flannel shirts, hand tools and kitchen items he had chosen as keepsakes.

His silence was not acceptable to his mother who had clearly wanted the book to start a conversation. “Your Grandfather had his doubts too but he still went to church because family is important.”

Matthew knew that his Grandfather went to church when Grandma was alive because she made him. Afterward he kept going out of habit. It was where the community met to talk about the weather, the harvest and the price of seed corn. It was nothing more to him than free coffee and a chance to see the girls in their Sunday dresses. Matthew didn’t say this but his mother could read it on his face.

Unable to coax a subtle conversation out of her son she came out with the gist of what she clearly wanted to say all along. “Aren’t you afraid of what’s going to happen when you die?”

Matthew didn’t have an answer other than, “no.”

“Where do you think your grandfather is now? And what about your cousin Peter? Don’t you believe they are together in heaven?” When he didn’t answer quickly enough she restated, “well, where do you think they are?”

Matthew wanted to make a comment about the ridiculousness of any possible universe where the two of them would ever receive the same eternal compensation for leading vastly different lives. But he knew that not even his own mother acknowledged the cruel things his cousin had done to him. It was strictly taboo to speak poorly of the dead. Instead he decided to admit that he did believe his grandfather and cousin were in the same place and answered, “in the ground.”

It was the wrong answer. “So you think Jesus died for nothing.”

“You know I don’t think Jesus was ever alive,” another wrong answer.

His mother approached hysterical as she lectured about denying the Holy Spirit and the wages of sin. Matthew just stood silently and listened. His mother was worse than his cousin Paul at times like this. At least Paul could have an informed discussion about the questionable authenticity of certain passages attributed to Josephus. Instead his mother worked herself up until she stormed away with a final, “I don’t want to be standing too close when you get struck by lightning.”

***

He tried to keep his eyes closed and will his heart to slow down but Matthew knew it was futile. He’d never fall back asleep. When the stark contrast from the initial flash equalized he noticed a red glow coming in the trolley window. It was too high to see out so he got up and walked over to open the double loft doors. They opened onto a clear view of a burning 50 foot spruce tree rising above the rock pile between the driveway and the pasture.

The lightning bolt had split the tree in half. It formed an enormous flaming V that illuminated the entire farm yard with red-orange light. The pitch in the wood whistled and popped, the flames lifted embers hundreds of feet in the air.

***

His father came out to chastise him, “why do you have to bait your mother like that?”

Matthew wanted to say, “I didn’t even say anything until she demanded answers.” But his father cut him off before he started to speak.

“You should be ashamed of yourself. At a time like this the family needs to come together and you can’t think of anything better to do than act like a rebellious teenager.

Matthew just stood looking at the grass stains on the sides of his shoes from mowing the lawn earlier that morning. He didn’t protest. He didn’t defend himself. He didn’t even list his grievances in his head. Instead he wondered whether his father actually believed all that shit. He didn’t know, but he did know that his father always blamed him for his mother’s outbursts.

***

All the small branches and needles had already been consumed and the flames started to subside when Matthew looked towards the farm house. He saw his mother standing at the window facing him, her nightgown glowing in the firelight. She looked directly at him. A reflection on the glass obscured her eyes but it was easy enough to read her mind.

In his mother’s world there was no such thing as a coincidence. It didn’t matter that the pine tree was the tallest thing in the area, it didn’t matter that there was a short thunder storm in a dry summer, it didn’t matter that lightening fires happen all the time. God had sent the lightening as a warning, a condemnation of his willful disbelief, a sign of what was to come and no natural explanation, no appeal to reason and no amount of silence on Matthews’ part would ever convince her otherwise.