How far away is the lightning bolt when it strikes?

As the shutters on the barn dormers clattered, light slashed through the bedroom. A few seconds later, thunder boomed in our ears like cannon shot.

"If you count the number of seconds between lightning and thunder, you can tell how far away the bolt was," I told my younger brother as we lay in the dark. We were in elementary school, and I was keen to show off what I'd learned in science class. I remember the day well, for our grandfather had died a few days before.

Another flash lit the nightstand between us, and as the blackness returned, I counted out loud, "One, two, three, four, five ..."

Then the thunder rolled once more over us.

"It's five miles away," I said. "Every second equals a mile."

• • •

There is something comforting about a thunderstorm, perhaps because it offers relief. All that afternoon my brother and I slogged through the mugginess as the brilliant sun pressed us inside. Gradually a wind out of the southwest picked up, rustling first leaves then whole branches. Clouds moved in like soldiers to a battle site.

To the southwest, the sky had transmuted to a dark blue, but twirl around to look northeast, and the sky remained its normal, sun-washed turquoise.

Then, over a few brief minutes, our room grayed, forcing us to turn the lamp on earlier than usual.

• • •

In Sioux mythology, at the beginning of time one of the three great beings was Inyan - the rock - an omnipresent and omnipotent being who'd always existed. His spirit was called Wakan Tanka - the Great Spirit or Great Incomprehensible.

Inyan created the earth; its rivers are his blood. When Inyan wanted a companion, he created Wakinyan, or the Thunderstorm.

The Thunderstorm later gave birth to Ksa - or Wisdom - who had a strange shape. All those who existed liked Ksa, except of course for Unk, also known as Passion.

• • •

As my brother and I played Connect Four and Life and Trouble that afternoon in the gray room, we could hear the bangs in the far-off distance.

"Where do you think grandpa goes when he dies?" my brother asked.

I shook my head. "Nobody knows."

Then God-to-Earth lightning streaks zigzagged across the sky, flashcubing the horizon. The television picture fizzled briefly. A few seconds later came the thunder, like two giants suddenly clashing.

A few more streaks and collisions later, the rain arrived.

It sounded like a thousand rattlers shaking their tails. Leaves trembled beneath the falling rain. But the lightning became subtle, like a light quickly going on and off, and the thunder softened to a hungry stomach's growl.

Soon, almost unnoticed, the rain faded, and the sky gradually lightened to a white-gray.

• • •

Ksa, the Sioux said, created language and stories, names and games.

In a way, Thunderstorm is their grandfather.

• • •

My brother must have thought me wise that night.

Then he asked where birds go during a storm. "Don't their nests get wet?" he said.

I swatted at a mosquito hovering over my face. "I don't know. But the bugs go inside."

Another lightning strike came, and this time my brother counted aloud the seconds: "One, two, three, four ..."

Then the thunder arrived.

"It's getting closer," he said.

• • •

Though storms usually advance in a single direction, crossing the state from west to east, they rotate, their spiral arms sometimes carrying a silent emptiness between them. If seen from above, they can appear like a galaxy amid the cosmos, blackness marking the space between tentacles.

And so while the rain ended by early evening, like a faithful companion the thunderstorm returned that night to rain upon us once more.

"It never really left," I said to my brother.

The next morning, as I walked past the family portraits along the staircase, I paused at the one of my grandfather.

That picture always had been there and always would be, even when I'd be grown up. I thought of our fishing trips, of the walks we took past the cornfields, of him pointing out the pheasants at the wood lot.

He lived a county over, and so we only visited on weekends.

But even in death, he never would leave, either.

(originally published June 29, 2003)