Thunder and Lightning

Note to readers: this is my entry in the 2021 Summer Lovin' contest. Votes and comments are welcome. Hope you like it.

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Aaaahhh, summertime in the south. Heat and humidity, mosquitoes, ticks, biting gnats, kamikaze "dog-pecker" gnats that commit suicide in your eyeballs, crawl into your ears and up your nose, acres and acres of lush poison ivy. Did I mention heat and humidity? Air that feels like a hot, wet blanket; a suffocating presence that saps energy and brainpower and the will to live. Summertime -- the season that in the age of global climate change increasingly lends itself to being lived entirely indoors -- in air conditioning powered by the very same fossil fuels blamed for getting us here in the first place.

David Robinson had been cooped up in the AC for a couple of weeks and was going stir crazy. Brief forays into the tropical mugginess for groceries, a late morning ride on the lawn mower before the grass got completely out of hand, an occasional socially-distanced meeting with clients or co-workers. Otherwise, for most of the summer it had been Zoom meetings and spreadsheets and halfhearted spins on the stationary bike with the fan blowing full blast.

He needed a dose of the outdoors, hot and sticky as it may be. He got to the state park about 8 AM, just as the sun was climbing above the trees and the fog. The forecast was the same as always: high of 95 degrees, humidity 80%, good chance of afternoon thunderstorms. He chose a familiar route; a loop trail that would take him about 10 miles through hardwood forests and old fields, down along a slow-moving river and back to the trailhead. The air was already oppressive, but at least the temperature hadn't hit 75 yet. As he double checked his water bottles and hoisted his daypack, there were only two other cars at the trailhead, and one of them appeared to be a dog-walker. He noticed that the other car had a tag from four counties to the west, with a Sierra Club decal on the back window and a Resist! bumper sticker. Probably someone from the state university. Anyway, it looked like solitude was on the menu for the day.

The first mile was an easy stroll through flat terrain; following an old field road that doubled as a fire break for the controlled burns the park personnel did periodically. After about a mile or so the trail went into the tree canopy and began climbing a pretty steep hill. Another mile of up and down hills and he was completely soaked with sweat and squinting from the gnats swirling around his face. The cicadas were playing an urgent symphony of sexual desperation in the trees overhead; buzzing vibrations that swelled in intensity to a crescendo and then trailed off. He wondered if their sex lives were any more successful than his own. Lately, his was nonexistent.

He rounded a curve in the trail and faced a long uphill slog. He heard the loud, high-pitched shriek of fear at the same time his brain registered the image of a human figure jumping backward, reacting to some perceived danger. The voice sounded feminine, and yes, that was a female form some 100 yards up the slope. She was backing up cautiously; recoiling from something or someone threatening. As he got closer the form took shape and developed details: a chubby woman in her mid-thirties with light brown hair, pale bare legs, tan shorts hugging an ample but shapely derriere. She was looking down at something in the trail a few feet in front of her.

Not wanting to get too close and startle her before letting her know he was there, he stopped about a hundred feet away and called out: "Is everything okay?"

She turned abruptly with a surprised look on her face, a look that quickly seemed to morph into relief to see another human.

"There's a snake in the trail! It scared the hell out of me. I almost stepped on it."

So, there was a snake in the trail. That fact registered in the logical part of his brain, but what really hit him instantly was the pretty face, and the huge breasts. This woman was stacked! Definitely very chubby but well-proportioned, and very pretty. He couldn't quite process it, but there was something familiar about her as well. Had he seen her before?

As he closed the distance, he had the presence of mind to look down and scan the trail ahead of his feet -- he knew from experience that where there was one snake, there might be two, especially if it was the poisonous variety. When he got to her side, he could see the rattlesnake ten feet ahead; coiled up in the middle of the trail, coolly watching them.

"I wasn't really paying attention to the trail, but for some reason I just happened to look down as my foot was about to land next to the snake," she said. "I nearly jumped out of my skin."

"What should we do?" she added.

A bit of a dilemma. Normally he would just leave a snake alone and go around it, but a poisonous snake in the middle of a hiking trail was a hazard for any other hikers that passed through. Leave it alone and hope it moved off before anyone else came along, or risk getting it really pissed off by forcibly moving it?

"I think we should get it off the trail so someone else doesn't step on it," he finally said.

"And how do we do that? I'm not getting near it."

He looked around and found a decent stick, broke it off at about five feet, and gingerly nudged the snake. At first the snake just looked slightly annoyed, but after a few more nudges, it turned on the rattles -- the tail vibrating 2 inches of what he guessed to be about a dozen rattles, sounding almost like the buzzing of the cicadas only much more menacing.

"God that's scary!" she said, grabbing him by the arm and moving behind him, as if to hide from the snake.

He prodded the rattler a few times and finally physically picked it up with the stick, until it got disgusted with the whole situation and started crawling off down the hill, buzzing the whole time. He followed it at a discrete distance until it was 20 feet off the trail and on the other side of a log.

"Well, hopefully it will stay off the trail for good," he said, as he walked back toward her.

Those eyes! Pretty, light blue, soft eyes that seemed to be smiling. Again, the feeling that he had seen her before. She was looking at him as if she was trying to figure out some lost connection too -- some missing puzzle piece from the past. Suddenly, she seemed to find it; a smile and a spark of recognition in her face.

"David?"

She knew his name. WTF?!

"It's Melanie, remember me?"

And suddenly, he did. He remembered looking into those pretty blue eyes across the table of an Applebee's restaurant, three, maybe four years ago. Melanie Walker. They'd had one date -- a meal at a place halfway between them. A rush of thoughts ran through his mind, and he was acutely aware of choices made, possibilities unexplored, options left on the table. He remembered lovely cleavage in a low-cut blouse (not sleazy, just flirty), intelligent conversation, laughter. In the feast or famine world of online dating, he had had several first dates all in quick succession, and Melanie had been in the middle. A few days later, he had met someone who he really clicked with, and they had dated for a couple of years. Unfortunately, it ended, by her choice, and he had been out of the dating scene ever since.

He had been a gentleman and not left Melanie hanging -- he had emailed her an explanation that he really enjoyed their date, but had met someone and started a serious relationship. It wasn't because she was overweight, he told himself. Or the fact that she had young children and was pretty well tied down, he further told himself. Just a matter of timing. But he was astonished at how happy he was to see her now, with no makeup, soaked with sweat, her wavy brown hair plastered against the side of her face.

"Hi Melanie, yes I remember. Good to see you."

What now?

"You must have left home early to get here today," he said, aware of the 2-hour drive from where she lived.

"Yeah, I needed to get away for a hike before classes start," she replied. "My Ex has the kids for the week. I start classes and they go back to school next week."

He remembered from their date that she was divorced with two kids; a college instructor, originally from somewhere in the northeast, who had moved south for a job. "You're a professor at the university, right?" he asked.

"Yep, Economics -- I teach several courses and do research in Macroeconomics. You're an engineer, right?"

"Yes," he replied. "Macroeconomics: I bet that's been an interesting field to study for the last year and a half."

They resumed the hike, with him in the lead at her request to scare off the snakes.

"You realize the first person just gets them riled up enough to bite the second one, don't you?" he joked.

So after one date and a 4-year pause, they embarked on an impromptu second date; reconnecting and catching up.

"Well, what's your story?" she asked. "What's been happening in your life? Are you married? -- I remember that you were dating someone."

"No, we dated for about two years. She ended it. I was in a funk for awhile and didn't date, and then COVID hit... and well, the world has been crazy ever since. How about you?" he added.

"Not married. I've dated a little, but being a single Mom and a full-time professor doesn't leave much time. I got tenure a couple of years ago, and then last summer before the vaccines came out I got COVID -- that knocked me on my ass for awhile."

"Wow, I've been lucky to avoid getting the virus so far," he said. "Did you have any long-lasting effects?"

"No, but for about a month it was pretty rough."

As they got just past the halfway point of the loop trail, he heard a distant boom. At first he wondered if there was some blasting going on, but a few seconds later the unmistakable rolling rumble of thunder reached his ears.

"Sounds like the thunderstorms are getting an early start today," he said. "We may get wet before we get back to the cars."

"We can't get much wetter than we already are," she replied.

This was true; they were both soaked with sweat -- he wiped his brow with his hand but had no dry place to wipe his hand. One water bottle was empty and the other one was going down rapidly.

"Besides, I kinda like thunderstorms," she added. "And at least it would cool us off."

"I kinda like thunderstorms too, but lightning... not so much." He recalled reading about a fisherman struck and killed by lightning on a local lake just last week. Despite all the comparisons between chances of winning the lottery and chances of being struck by lightning, he knew that it was a real danger for people who spent time outdoors. No lottery ticket required.

For the next half hour, the distant thunder thumped and boomed, getting louder and more frequent. When the trail briefly left the forest and skirted an old field, they could see the thunderhead clouds building to the south, piling up like giant vanilla ice cream cones rising out of a dark mass of heavy chocolate fudge. The flashes of lightning were almost constant between clouds and along the leading edge of the nearly black cloud base. By the time they went back into the trees the wind picked up and it had gotten very dark and several degrees cooler, and he could hear the sound of the first raindrops hitting the tree canopy. A few seconds later the rain became a torrential downpour, and it was impossible to see more than a couple hundred feet ahead. He had raingear in his pack, but at this point, why bother? Hopefully, it was doing its main job of keeping his wallet and phone dry anyway.

A flash of light, a CRACK-BOOM! as a bolt of lightning hit so close there was almost no delay between the lightning and the resulting thunder. He flinched and jumped reflexively. As he recovered, he glanced at Melanie, expecting to see her cowering and spooked as well, but to his surprise she was calm and serene, with a peaceful smile on her face.

He had to almost shout to be heard from two feet away: "Well I guess you get your wish of a cool down and a storm to enjoy."

He flinched as another thunderbolt cracked overhead. She just grinned and poked him playfully in the chest. "I think it's fun," she said.

There was nothing to do but keep walking. They weren't going to get any wetter than they already were, and hunkering down under a tall tree was a bad idea during an electrical storm. His clothes felt cold and clammy now against his skin, and there wasn't a semi-dry spot anywhere on his body.

"You lead," he said, as he returned the playful contact, lightly touching the small of her back and steering her toward the trail ahead. The warmth of her body through the wet shirt gave him an unexpected thrill, and he felt a sudden urge to kiss her, to feel her warmth against his body, hold those beautiful breasts in his hands.

Shake it off, don't make a fool of yourself.

She led the way through the driving rain, and with visibility limited to just a few feet, he found himself focusing on the round buttocks in front of him. The thin shorts clung tightly to her ass and he could clearly see the outline of her panties underneath. The cheeks of her ample rear rubbed together and jiggled with every step.

As they walked, the storm settled into a less intense but steady rain; the lightning and thunder kept flashing and banging but nothing was quite as close as the initial fireworks. They walked for about a mile without conversation; no point in trying to talk over the rain and rumble of thunder. She seemed to really be enjoying the storm. She never flinched when a flash of light lit up the trees and the following boom made the whole world shake. She always had a smile when she glanced back at him, checking to see if he was still behind her.

"You want to take the lead for awhile?" she asked.

"You're doing a fine job as hike leader," he replied. "Besides, I like the view from back here." Wait, was that too creepy?

She just grinned and shook her hips in an exaggeratedly sexy manner.

Nice!

The trail was almost a river of mud now, and they were slipping and sliding going up and down the hills and trudging through puddles several inches deep on the flat spots. Their hiking boots and lower legs were covered in mud. They came to a small stream that was normally just a trickle, but was now a raging torrent of muddy water, and he was grateful for the wooden footbridge that had been built last year by a local Boy Scout troop. They paused halfway across to look at the creek, hands on the railing, close enough that their bodies were touching. The bridge had bounced a little as they walked across, and he felt the sharp pain on the back of his left calf just about the time he was looking down and saw all the yellowjackets swarming around his legs. Damn yellowjackets like to build their nests under wooden bridges.

"Run!" he shouted as he gave her a push toward the end of the bridge.

"Ouch! Shit!" she yelled as the bees started stinging her too.

She bolted to the end of the bridge and jumped completely over the set of stone steps at the end and splashed into a puddle. He followed close behind, wishing she was going faster as sharp stings punched into both legs and his left arm. He stopped briefly to swat the bees off his legs and saw that a swarm of pissed-off yellowjackets were still following them.

"Keep running!" he yelled as he gave her a gentle push. She picked up speed, and dodging logs and limbs and puddles the best they could they ran another 50 yards or so until she stopped abruptly and bent down to rub furiously at the stings on her legs. He hit the brakes but all that did was send his feet sliding in the mud, and the next thing he knew they were both on the ground in a pile of mud-soaked clothes and hiking packs, rubbing bee stings and assessing the damage.

"Are you okay?" he asked.

"Nothing broken. I think I got stung two or three times, though."

"Are you allergic to bee stings?" he questioned.

"Not that I know of. Never had a reaction before, but it's been a long time since I got stung."

He sat up and rubbed his legs and checked the spots that were hurting. Best he could determine, he had been stung six times; all on his lower legs except for the one on his left forearm. They were both covered in mud and sitting in two inches of water. It would be funny if it didn't hurt so bad. At least the yellowjackets had given up the chase and were no longer buzzing around.

"You happen to have any chewing tobacco with you?" he asked.

"What!?"

"Chewing tobacco -- did you bring any with you today?"

"What the hell are you talking about?" She looked confused and a little offended by the question.

"When I was a kid, my grandpa would put tobacco juice on bee stings -- it supposedly helps take the pain away."

She was grinning now. "You southerners have some weird customs."

"I keep forgettin' you ain't from around here," he said in his best southern drawl. "Well, I guess we'll just have to make do the best we can without the Chaw."

He got to his feet and then helped her up, again getting a thrill from her touch on his arm as she steadied herself. He couldn't help but notice the outline of her nipples poking through her shirt, even through the bra, which was outlined plainly under the wet clingy shirt -- at least the parts that weren't covered in mud.

"I don't think I've been this wet and muddy since I was a little kid," she said.

"Rattlesnakes, lightning bolts, bee stings... I hope we can make it to the car without any broken bones or locusts or raining frogs," he replied.

They hiked the last two miles to the cars in a steady rain, the thunderstorm pretty much past but the clouds still getting rid of moisture, the bee stings becoming a dull ache that also started to itch by the time they finished the trail.

"I neglected to bring any dry clothes with me today," he said when they got to the trailhead. "Do you have a change of clothes?"

"I have a change of clothes, but I'm too wet and muddy to bother changing into dry clothes."

There was a little covered kiosk at the trailhead -- a sign with a map of the trails and a list of state park regulations, with just enough of a roof to keep them out of the rain if they stood close together. Unfortunately, there was no bathroom where they could change clothes and dry off. They huddled together under the kiosk roof, watching the rain and trying to figure out how to go from wet and muddy to dry cars without making a mess. He normally took a change of clothes with him on hiking trips, but had left home in a hurry this morning and forgot the clothes. He did have a couple of towels in his gym bag in the trunk.

As they watched the rain he realized that he had his arm around her shoulder and her arm was around his waist and he could feel her body heat through the clammy clothing. He hadn't made a conscious decision to be so close and intimate, but it just felt natural; just what you do with a sexy girl after surviving a storm together and bee stings and muddy trails and a close encounter with a rattlesnake. And he further realized at that moment that there was nothing in the world he wanted more than to kiss her -- right now. An odd thing to contemplate -- a first kiss four years after a first date.

She seemed to realize the intimacy of the moment at the same time, and as she turned toward him there was no hesitation or uncertainty or questioning; they kissed like storybook lovers who had been waiting their whole lives for this kiss. Hungrily they kissed, tongues entwined and searching, bodies flushed and hot, hands caressing, simmering desire boiling over suddenly, with the roar of rain on the metal roof blocking out everything else in the world.