(as told by Ned McElwee, late of the Jewel Tea Route)

You ever see lightning caught? No, you haven’t. And if you say you have, you’re either lying or from Georgia, which is the same thing. But I have seen it once, maybe twice, though some days I can’t rightly tell if I saw it or dreamed it, which in my experience makes no real difference.

It was back in the summer of ’63. Not the famous one. This was the other ’63, when nothing much happened except a drought and a particularly violent pie-eatin’ contest at the county fair. I was running my usual circuit then, selling notions, potions, and the occasional lie dressed in sincerity.

I’d stopped at a clapboard house near Terrapin Creek. Widow’s place. Lonesome kind of yard, no chickens, no laughter, just one big glass jar on the porch railing, glowing faint like there was a candle inside. But it wasn’t candlelight. It flickered blue, like storm light seen through tears.

The widow came out onto the porch. She was as thin as a rail, with eyes sharp enough to cut memory. “You here to sell,” she said, “or to buy?”

I told her that depended on the merchandise. She smiled like someone who’s lost too much to take offense. “Lightning,” she said. “A piece of the sky I caught myself.”

Now, I’ve been sold a lot of nonsense, snake oil, miracle elixirs, politicians, but I’d never been sold weather. So, I asked her to prove it.

She unscrewed the lid, and I swear by every lie I’ve ever told, that jar hummed. A pale blue spark danced inside like a trapped spirit. The hairs on my arm stood up, and I smelled rain though the sky was clear as glass.

“How much?” I asked.

She said, “You can’t buy lightning, Mr. McElwee. You can only borrow it. You give it back when you’ve learned something.”

Well, I didn’t like the sound of learning, but I liked the look of that jar, so I offered her five dollars and a bottle of hair tonic. She said no. I offered my word. She said that’d do.

So, I took it; the jar, the spark, the promise. Kept it on the seat beside me in the truck all summer, watching it flicker whenever I told a lie, which is to say, often.

But here’s the thing: it started to fade. Each town, each sale, each story, the light dimmed a little more. By the time I hit Piedmont again, it was just a shadow, a memory of glow. I took it back to her place. Her house was gone. Just an empty clearing and the smell of thunder.

So, I left the jar there on a stump and walked away lighter by one secret and heavier by one truth: sometimes you don’t own what dazzles you. You just hold it long enough to see yourself by its light.

I still think about that widow. Or, maybe she was never there at all. Sometimes, when storms roll in over Terrapin Creek, I swear I see that same blue shimmer dancing across the water.

And when I do, I raise my glass, or whatever’s handy, and say, “Ma’am, your loan’s still good. But I’m keeping the memory for collateral.”

*****

New Yesterdays is available through the following links: Books-A-Million, Barnes & Noble, and Amazon as well as your favorite bookshops. The Audiobook is available from Libro.fm, as well as Amazon.