- When Lightning Struck, or Death at an Early Age
I was twelve and in the 6th grade, when one of those long-shot phenomena of nature actually occurred. Sort of rare, such as, in an opposite way, winning the lottery.
The first inkling that something out of the ordinary had taken place came into view after a powerful thunderstorm hit Kingsville, Texas. In our classroom, outside the window, we could see several former Stephen F. Austin Elementary School students now attending Gillette Junior High wandering around the school grounds. Why were they milling about, talking to whoever would listen?
We students saw the teacher in the next room go out to talk to them, as if she were going to call school officials about their truancy, and tell them to please go away. But she came back chastened, sort of bent over, tentative in place of assertive. Long strides became slow
She came over to our room and was met by Mrs. Traylor, “La Traila,”—the “trailer,” as we called her because she was very tall. The two met about halfway. They whispered to each other and pointed to the students outside, and there was a vigorous, nervous sting to the whispered words. Gestures and a look of anguish on their faces told us more than whispers.
Once again alone with the class, Mrs. Traylor hesitated. She sent one of the teacher’s pets to the principal’s office. When the student returned and gave her a message, Mrs. Traylor, in slow, serious, grave tones, said only one sentence: “No matter what anybody tells you, there will be school this afternoon after lunch.” Could this be related to these students hanging around? We thought so; something had happened. But no whispers about it, even. We just looked at one another, shrugged and made faces.
The questions in our minds grew larger with an absence of answers. The storm had passed, hadn’t it? Mrs. Traylor, much respected as the smartest teacher at the Elementary School, qualified, for God’s sake, to teach the older 6th grade students fractions, the Civil War, and Poe. Impatiently, we waited for lunchtime. Mrs. Traylor had us merely sit and study as she looked kind of abstracted, glancing out the window at the still, gray sky. She stared at her former students.
When it was noon and we went home for lunch, we found out from the wandering Junior High students what had happened. Four students at the Junior High, in the 7th grade, a year older than us, had been killed by a lightning bolt during the thunderstorm that just past. They were out during PE class when it happened.
I knew three of the four students. Closest was David Rojas, brother of “Los Cuates” Rojas, the twins, Tina’s friends. Another was Irra, for Israel, and a third was Tani, maybe short for Estanislao, and a friend of my cousin Humberto Adame. The fourth lightning victim I didn’t know.
I especially knew David Rojas and Irra. I immediately thought of them alive since I’d just seen them in the last day or two. At that time, it was inconceivable that we might have thought about death; I knew these guys, and they were about my age. How could we possibly think about death? Though, in fact, for God’s sake, death lurked around the barrio more than in most neighborhoods. We knew of it, but had not really applied it to ourselves.
Sometime before, I’d seen Irra at an elementary school football game (we were the Austin Pioneers, and, yes, we had fully outfitted teams and cheerleaders and all). Irra was raging up and down that sideline, using incredibly foul language in excited protest about calls by the officials. Actually, it was the teacher in the room next to ours who told him to shut up or leave.
David Rojas was the person I knew best. Bright, and the top-graduating 6th grader the previous spring, David had indicated he too, like his twin brothers, was interested in a sexual-romantic relationship with my sister, Tina. He was, I believe, actually older...