"Riding the Lightning"

The bolt of lightning shot out of the sky and struck a small pine tree not two hundred feet from the campsite. The ensuing thunderclap was so loud it almost knocked Sammy from his camp chair. One minute you’re sitting by a nice campfire sipping on a cup of coffee and the next thing you know you’re grabbing an empty ice chest and scurrying down to the creek to get water to put out a fire.

Rushing up from the creek, Sammy noticed a tall man wearing a black top hat stomping the flames on the ground by the destroyed pine tree. As Sammy started putting out the small fires with the creek water the stranger took off his outer coat and smothered the rest of the flames in the surrounding grass around the tree..

“Where did you come from?” asked Sammy. The man mumbled something about “riding the lightning is a hell of a way to travel”. Sammy wasn’t sure if he heard the man correctly or not. The fire was now out and Sammy asked the stranger if he would like a cup of hot coffee. The man in the black hat just nodded his head and followed Sammy back to the campfire.

Once the coffee was poured, Sammy offered a seat next to the fire. As the man sat down he asked Sammy if he played any of the lotteries. Sammy thought: “what a strange question to ask…” but to humor the man he said he played occasionally, “why?” Instead of answering Sammy the man then asked him if he was a “giver or a taker?” Sammy thought for a moment and told him “he was raised to be a giver, and he was proud that he was able to help others less fortunate whenever he could.” Again the stranger just nodded and stared off into the flames of the fire.

Sammy wasn’t too sure what to make of this strange fellow and his seemingly random questions, but before he could ask anything that might shed some light on this, the tall man in the black top hat got up, thanked Sammy for the coffee, and headed out of the campsite off into the darkness. “Well if that wasn’t just totally bizarre Sammy said to himself.” “Oh well, it was different anyway.” After cleaning up the coffee cups and settling down the fire for the night, Sammy turned in.

When he awoke the next morning, Sammy wasn’t sure if he had maybe dreamt the whole thing up or what. He got out of the tent and looked towards the pine tree that was hit by the lightning and sure enough THAT part did happen. Now Sammy began to break down the camp and he noticed something on the chair where the man was sitting the night before. When he got a closer look he realized it was some kind of little black book. He picked it up and looked inside the cover to see if there was maybe a contact or name or something that identified the owner. All he found was a series of numbers on several of the first few pages inside. No name, address, phone number, nothing just the handwritten numbers on about the first six pages and the rest was blank.

Sammy finished packing up all the gear. He stowed it into his car, and he thought he would drive over to the other side of the campground to see if maybe he could find the owner of the book. When he was driving through the campground an eerie feeling came over him suddenly. There was no one else in the entire campground. Not one soul! “Well so much for returning the black book” he thought. He pulled out of the campground and headed home.

The drive back home was uneventful and peaceful. Sammy got lost in his thoughts and the time passed quickly. Before you know it he was pulling into his driveway. He decided to stow away his gear in the garage before getting comfortable, so he unloaded the car and packed it away where it belonged before turning out the garage light and heading inside his home.

A month or so passed and Sammy decided one day to start cleaning out his garage. He wanted to get rid of some stuff and maybe make enough space to park his car inside the garage. He was making progress, one pile of stuff for the garbage, one pile of stuff that needed to go inside the house, etc. when he came across that little black book from his camping trip the previous month. He pulled up a stool to his work bench and remembered the strangeness of the tall man in the black hat, the lightning, the tree burning and the weird questions the man had asked.

He sat down and opened up the book and remembered that there were only the strange sets of numbers written inside it. Sammy decided to take the book into his study and see if he could make heads or tails out of the numbers, see if there was any rhyme or reason to them. Once at his desk he decided he would write down all the numbers on one sheet of paper and look for any similarities or patterns. Once they were all written down it was easy to notice a few things, for one, each set of numbers were exactly the same length; exactly 20 digits. Also the fourth through the eighth digits were the same for all of the sets of numbers. It was puzzling to say the least. Could it be that those four numbers were the year? They matched the current year hmmm. Looking at all the numbers more intently yes, the first eight digits could definitely be dates!

What was it the strange man had asked Sammy? Something about “did he play the lottery?” What if the numbers from the lottery were the remaining twelve digits? Now getting excited, Sammy looked up the lottery on his computer and searched previous winning numbers. The first number matched a date of a drawing and when Sammy looked again at the paper he saw something amazing! The last twelve digits of the first number matched the winning numbers! He checked the next number written down and it matched also! Oh my! Sammy exclaimed. Looking at each of the successive numbers he saw that they lined up with the weekly drawing; date and winning numbers. The first six were ALL winners! Number seven lined up with this weekend's date...oh..my..gosh...he could have the winning number in his hand for the next drawing! There was only one way to find out!

Sammy bought a lottery ticket using the numbers from the little black book for the next drawing. Now all he had to do was wait. When the drawing was held, Sammy was mystified that the numbers he had on his ticket were selected! He won! This was amazing! He thought back to the encounter with the strange man. “What if he was sent to lead me along this path...didn’t he say something about riding the lightning? Didn’t he ask Sammy if he was a giver? Were those clues as to Sammy being singled out for something?”

Sammy went down to the lottery offices first thing the following Monday and it was confirmed he had won! They told him it would be several weeks before he would receive his check and Sammy thought “that’s fine, he was going to give most of it away to his favorite charities anyway”

Unbelievable! On the drive back home from the lottery office Sammy was smiling from ear to ear! He thought to himself; there are still two more numbers on the page that he transcribed from that little black book. Sammy bought a ticket for the upcoming lottery drawing using the next set of numbers and was beside himself...he was putting the ticket into an envelope and then he addressed it to the local Children’s Hospital. “Won’t they be surprised when they find out that they won the lottery!” He was smiling all the way to the mailbox….