Ben had a really cool torch. One of those long black ones like security guards carry. His was made by Smith & Wesson, who I thought made guns. It looked a bit like a gun. It was heavy as anything and I wondered why he carried it around in his backpack, but didn’t ask.
I grabbed Dad’s yellow torch from the garage. The torch was clipped to a pegboard with all of his tools. Every tool had a place, neatly outlined in black ink so you would know where to put it back once you had used it. I flashed the torch on quickly to make sure it worked (it did, barely), then unlocked the back garage door.
Gumbo whined at me, wanting to come, but just then another searing flash of lightning lit up the windows of the garage, and I swear he went white as a ghost and disappeared back into the house whimpering.
‘Chicken!’ I called after him, not feeling so brave myself.
The wind whipped the door out of my hand as I went to close it behind us and slammed it shut, almost taking my fingers off in the process. The whole house seemed to shake with the impact. Then there was another brilliant flash of light followed a few seconds later by a huge peal of thunder, and this time the house really did shake. I could see the image of the streetlights in the garage windows dissolve into a million fractured pieces, like a reflection in a pool of water after you have tossed in a pebble.
‘Are you sure you want to go out in this?’ I asked Ben, but he was busy looking at his watch, huddled into his rain coat as if trying to hide from the weather. His coat was really cool, with fluoro strips, like those the cops wear.
‘Three seconds,’ he said. ‘That means it’s just a few kilometres away, and still getting closer. We’ll have to hurry.’
He trotted off into the storm, the light from his flashlight cutting a laser beam through the rain, and called back over his shoulder, ‘You can’t photograph a lightning strike on a fine day!’
We were at the top of the hill when lightning flashed again, and from here we could just see the tip of the pylon jutting above the dark trees, silhouetted against the brilliant, but momentary, blaze of light.
‘Hurry up!’ Ben called, metres in front of me, but easily visible in his bright coat. I grabbed the tip of my hood and pulled it low over my face. Even so, the pelting rain found its way inside and ran down the sides of my neck.
Ben seemed to relish it all, turning his face into the rain and cackling like an old witch. I just kept thinking that water must have somehow found its way into his circuits, and his system was going haywire.
It wasn’t until we reached the bus shelter on the corner of Ridge Road that I saw what Ben was up to.
It was a bus shelter with glass walls and an opening which faced the massive structure of the pylon. The weather was blowing against the back of the shelter, so it was a huge relief to step into some relative warmth and dryness.
Across the road, in the middle of a cleared field, the power pylon impassively faced the weather, impervious to its effects. It was huge. One of the mighty soldiers carrying the high voltage wires across the countryside and down to the Glenfield substation. It started at a four-cornered base and, a little like the Eiffel tower, narrowed as it stretched towards the sky. Near the top, three hefty arms reached out from either side, gripping tightly to the lines with huge ridged insulators.
The wires were almost invisible against the dark sky, except where they passed close to streetlights. There, the sheen of the lights on the wires made rhythmical dancing patterns against the blackness of the sky.
It gave me an odd feeling, watching the pylon. It was strong, masterful, brimming with energy and power, yet, at the same time, strangely powerless. It had no say in its own destiny. It had no free will. It just stood there and did its job, facing the elements.
‘How do you know the lightning’s going to strike the pylon tonight?’ I asked, shouting over the booming of the rain against the glass wall behind us.
‘I don’t,’ Ben replied. ‘But it’s the highest thing for miles around, and the lightning’s really close. So it’s good odds.’
‘Have you done this before?’ I asked incredulously.
‘Five times,’ he said. ‘But I’ve never got a photo yet.’
Lightning flashed again and the thunder followed almost immediately.
‘Got to hurry,’ Ben said. ‘It’s right on top of us!’ He pulled a tiny metal shape out of his backpack and unfolded it into a full-sized tripod. He had all the toys, that boy. His parents must have been loaded. I didn’t even have an ordinary camera.
‘Why not?’ I asked, as he screwed his camera on to the top of the device.
‘Why not what?’
‘Why didn’t you get the photo?’
‘Four times the lightning didn’t strike the tower, and the other time it did but I missed the shot.’
I shone my torch on his face and he grinned at me. ‘Sixth time lucky!’
‘But how do you know when to take the photo?’
‘I don’t. I just set the camera on a low aperture and leave the shutter open for half a minute at a time.’
As he spoke, he lined the camera up at the pylon, making a few adjustments, and pressed the shutter button.
I stared at the camera in silence for a long moment, until it finally clicked off. Ben immediately pressed the button again and, even as he did so, there was a searing flash of light that seemed to be all around us, turning night into day and, at the same moment, an enormous explosion of thunder rattled the glass panels of the bus shelter so violently I was afraid they would shatter.
I thought the world had erupted. I thought I had been caught in the middle of an explosion. I thought I was dead.
Ben, on the other hand, was just about jumping out of his skin. ‘I think I got it! I think I got it!’
‘Can’t you check?’ I said in a kind of daze, my ears still ringing from the explosion.
He shook his head, and I realised that he had already pressed the shutter again. ‘I’m taking another in case it happens again.’
‘But I thought lightning never strikes in the same place twice.’
Ben laughed. ‘Lightning strikes at the tallest object. It’ll hit the tower again unless it has already moved too far away.’
There was another flash of light and a roaring freight train of thunder, but this came from further down the valley and seemed a bit less like the end of the world.
Ben nodded. ‘It’s passed by. Let’s have a look then.’
He wound the camera off the tripod, breathless with excitement, and pressed a couple of buttons on the back.
The pylon flashed up on the little screen, soaring into the night sky, a towering pattern of black rods, silhouetted in the light of the jagged streak of heaven that speared it from above. It was awesome, breathtaking. The lightning bolt itself was a multi-fingered river of light, jagged and deadly, frozen in a split second of time on Ben’s camera.
What a contrast! The pylon: powerful, yet powerless. The lightning bolt: sleek and deadly, free to roam the sky, obeying no rules, striking where and when it pleased.
‘Wow,’ I said slowly, comprehending for the first time what the struggle up the steep road in the storm had been all about. ‘Wow!’
Ben was beaming in the light of my torch. ‘We got it, we got it!’
It occurred to me that he had included me in his excitement. I had done nothing, and yet I was still part of the success. I guess that’s what friends are all about.
I turned and stared down over the hillside. The lightning flashed another time, still nearby, and the brilliance of it illuminated all the dark recesses of my mind, giving me a sudden clarity, throwing thoughts into stark relief.
At that moment I knew, beyond doubt, what to do with my strange and unique power.