The Truth About Love and Lightning by Susan McBride Page B

doing, he would doubtless be ashamed. Because what Hank did was pretend. He didn’t know how to talk to the Great Spirit, to any spirit, not really. His gift was mimicry, not magic.
    Then even Nadya began to nudge him, stroking his hair and whispering in his ear, “Aren’t you curious, my sweet? Don’t you want to see if you can make the sky listen to you speak?” She touched the teardrop-shaped mark on his bare shoulder. “If you can’t do it, then at least you’ll know for certain, yes?”
    “But what if I flop? What if they see I’m a sham?” he said, because onstage he performed; he didn’t control the weather. The fact that it was damp outside when he finished could be no more than dumb luck or coincidence.
    “The only way you can know is to try,” she told him.
    “What if they put their faith in me, and I fail?” he asked.
    She merely shrugged and smiled, assuring him, “Then I will love you still, no matter what.”
    So Hank bit the bullet and agreed to perform a ceremonial dance on a farm outside Jefferson City, Missouri, when Wilbur Coonts’s Caravan of Wonders decamped there for a week of gigs at a theater in the state capital.
    Though a solitary cloud hung over the downtown that evening, spitting out a hint of moisture as Hank left through the stage door and got into a waiting pickup with a farmer named Bert Peckinpaw, once they were a couple blocks beyond the venue, the sky was clear and full of stars.
    The road out to the farm was all gravel and as bumpy as a camel’s back. With the window rolled down to let in the hot breeze, Hank felt covered by a layer of silt by the time they arrived.
    “Can I get you anything, Chief Littlefoot?” Peckinpaw asked once they’d exited the truck.
    Hank cringed at being called “Chief” outside his vaudeville act. It felt downright sacrilegious. “No, just leave me be, and I’ll find you when I’m done.”
    It was a sultry June night and dry as a bone, the ground so parched cracks ran through the dirt like empty veins. Hank did ask Peckinpaw to keep his kin and any curiosity seekers away. He hadn’t even wanted Nadya to come along because he was too nervous.
    Why was he even doing this? To prove something to himself? To see if he really had the gift as his father insisted, or conversely to prove his father wrong?
    Whatever the reason, it was too late to turn back. Hank stood in the parched grass near the anemic-looking stalks of corn spread out before him in a gently undulating wall. He felt the scant breeze on his face and gazed up at the stars, knowing he had no props to make the weather change. He had only faith in himself, which was hardly unshakable. He hoped the Great Spirit would be generous and not dismissive of him for using the rain dance in his act for entertainment. If he could not provoke the thunder and lightning, he would fail, and that would be that.
    With a sigh, Hank touched the single eagle feather woven into his hair to symbolize the wind and then the leather cord with the turquoise beads tied around his throat, the stones a symbol of the rain. Finally, he spread out his arms and took in a deep breath.
    “Grandfather,” he said quietly, “if you’re in the clouds watching me now, please, don’t laugh and think me a fool. I’d appreciate a little help, if you’re not too busy. I just want to know if I have this great blessing my father talked about. If it’s true, I need to use it.”
    The stars merely winked at him, and the warm air rustled through the field, setting the stalks of maize to whispering; but he heard no laughter, no sign that they were mocking him.
    With a grunt, he began to shuffle, his feet light as they moved in a circle, stirring up dust from the dry earth. He chanted words he knew well, ones he’d heard in the ceremonies of his childhood, calling upon the spirits of the land and the heavens to bring the rain.
    Hank fell into a trancelike rhythm as he danced, his thoughts becoming one with his intuition;