Chapter 1

It was a warm October day in Scottsdale, Arizona, but windy, and ominous dark clouds had moved in from the southeast. From my perch atop a roof timber of a house that was under construction, I could see the storm front, like a line in the sky, oblique and moving toward me as lightning danced at its edges. I was where I was to inspect the steel plate attached to the ridge beam with bolts, and I didn't like what I saw. A gust of wind and dust struck my face like a forceful puff from a bellows. Dirt gritted between my teeth when I grimaced.

"Aaron, you'd better get down off that beam before the wind brings you down," Gabe Williams shouted over the roar of the approaching storm. Gabe was the general contractor for the house, a large custom house that I'd designed.

"The ridge beam is split!" I yelled as I grabbed for the roof joist attached to the beam with the same steel plate. I started to shimmy down the joist, hand over hand, my feet dangling in the wind about fifteen feet from the rough, plywood subfloor below.

I was four feet from the ladder when the air around me crackled, and a white light more brilliant than the inside of a star surrounded me.

Cold rain pelted John Windom's face, and he tried not to scowl as he shook Coach Flynn's hand and congratulated him and his team. Windom's boys had lost again, the sixth loss of the season. No wins.

Fortunately or unfortunately, depending on perspective, Windom knew he wouldn't be fired for the losing season. He coached high school football in a small Nevada town, although the high school served more than a town; it was a feeder high school for most of one county, White Pine County, and exceptional coaches were hard to come by for small high schools. School administrators made do with the quality of teachers and coaches they could attract. Mediocrity in action. Besides, Windom also taught freshman English, and he was a better than average English teacher for a coach.

Windom turned and sloshed through the driving rain toward the goalposts at the end of the field. Beyond the goalposts, he watched the members of his team scrambling into a school bus to get out of the rain. It was an old bus, like the equipment his players were issued, rundown and held together literally with duct tape and metaphorically with baling wire. The team would need reassurance, he knew, but he didn't have it in him to tell them that they'd tried hard, given their all, because the words would be a lie. They hadn't tried hard. The defense had exhibited a few brief moments of stellar effort, but the offense had been lackadaisical at best.

Fuck it, he thought as he walked under the goalposts.

To boost his depressed mood, his mind wandered back in time to relive the halcyon days of his high school football career and his first year at college before he was injured, but fleeting insertions of his current miserable situation soured the memories of his glory days and amplified his depression. Now he had a shrew for a wife who was spending him into the poorhouse. And a little girl. He didn't know how to interact with a little girl. He'd wanted a son, but...

The air crackled and a white light more brilliant than the inside of a star surrounded him.

I woke up dazed and befuddled, staring up at a dark sky with cold rain splashing on my face.

"John! Are you all right, John?" a pudgy, bald man said.

John? I didn't know a John, not at the construction site, anyway. Maybe...

What the hell? I wasn't lying on the subfloor of a house under construction. My eyes focused on what looked like goalposts! And I felt wet grass under my back, not rough plywood.

The pudgy, bald man helped me to my feet, and I needed his help. That's when I noticed my size. I wasn't five-eleven and a wiry one hundred sixty pounds like I was before I lost consciousness. Not by a long shot. I was well over six feet, maybe six-five, and considerably heavier than two hundred pounds, maybe two-fifty.

"Who are you?" I said to the bald man. The sounds coming from my mouth were deeper than my normal voice, I noted.

"Huh," the bald man replied.

I repeated my question.

"You know me, Coach," he said. "I'm Orville Canton, your assistant coach. I run the defense."

"Coach?" I muttered, shaking my head, trying to clear my thinking.

Looking extremely concerned, Canton nodded yes, but didn't speak.

"Who am I?" I said.

"John Windom," he said. "Lightning hit you; or rather hit the goalposts as you walked under them. Must have rattled some synapses in your brain, caused temporary amnesia, maybe. And your shoes are smokin'. We'd better get you to the hospital."

John Windom didn't wake up lying on wet grass under a goalpost. He woke befuddled in a hospital, his head wracked with pain.

"Ah, you're awake," a nurse said. "How are you feeling, Mr. MacDonald?"

"Head hurts," he said. "What did you call me?"

"Mr. MacDonald," the nurse said.

"Name's Windom," he said, "John Windom."

The nurse frowned. "I'll get the doctor. Be right back."

He squirmed on the bed, trying to become more comfortable, and the movement caused more excruciating pain originating in his right elbow. He reached for the elbow, but the tube connected to his left hand impeded his reach.

An I.V., he figured.

Then he saw his hand, a hand that wasn't his! His hands were large and hairy, but the hand in front of his eyes was small with long, slim fingers, almost hairless fingers.

Frightened, he kicked at the sheet covering his body. Then he screamed, a sound of agony and terror.

"Where is my body?" he wailed.

The nurse rushed back into the room, followed by the doctor.

"Calm down," the nurse said and tried to hold him steady.

While cursing and thrashing in terror, he backhanded the nurse, knocking her away. She slammed against the wall of the room and crumpled to the floor. Blood spurted from her nose.

"Get some orderlies in here!" the doctor yelled through the open door toward the nurse's station in the corridor.

"What did you fuckers do to me?" Windom bellowed. "What did you do with my body?" He ripped the tubes from his arms and rolled his feet to the floor.

He was rising from the bed when two burly orderlies entered the room. While they tried to restrain him, his flailing fist struck one of the orderlies on the cheek, but the blow carried little power. The other orderly threw the violent man back onto the bed and held him down with the weight of his heavy body. The other orderly rushed to help. Windom kicked and screamed like a trapped wild, animal until he felt a pinprick in his shoulder, and blackness overwhelmed him.

"Transfer him to the psych ward and restrain him," the doctor said.

"The crazy bastard broke my nose," the nurse muttered, her face splattered with blood.

Less than an hour ago, I was Aaron MacDonald. I am still Aaron MacDonald, but my ego or consciousness or soul or whatever it is that makes me me, occupies a different body, a body that is known by those who know him as John Windom. The transfer happened when...

Wait! Was it a transfer or a swap? I was struck by lightning in Scottsdale, Arizona, and John Windom was struck by lightning in Ely, Nevada, perhaps at the same instant. Is John Windom occupying my body, Aaron MacDonald's body?

The concept, the possibility astounded me. Intrigued me, too.

I chuckled. If that's what happened, as bodies go, it appeared that I came out ahead on the swap. As Aaron MacDonald, I was forty-five years old. With the switch, I picked up about twenty years. Maybe.

"Orville, how old am I?" I said to my ... friend?

"Twenty-five or six, thereabouts," he said.

"Besides colleagues, are we also friends?"

Orville took his eyes off the road and looked at me. "Friends would be a stretch, Coach." He pulled into a parking lot next to a small hospital. "Can you walk to the emergency room entrance?" He pointed. "Or should I drop you off before I park?"

"I can walk, Orville. I don't think the lightning strike hurt me, except for memory loss," I said. A permanent memory loss, I told myself. I sure as hell can't tell anyone that I'm Aaron MacDonald, not John Windom. I'd end up in a crazy house.

As we strolled toward the emergency room, I said, "Orville, tell me about John Windom."

My colleague huffed a derisive laugh and said, "Tell me what you remember about yourself, and I'll try to fill in some of the blanks."

"I have no memories at all, zero, zip, nada. My history is a blank slate. Orville, we're not friends. Let's start there. Why aren't we friends as well as colleagues?" I shortened my stride so Orville didn't have to hurry to keep up with me. I felt some pain at my ankles.

He said, "We met last summer when you took over from Coach West because he retired. I tried to be a friend, but you made it plain that you weren't interested in my friendship. You treated me with disdain, probably because I'm not an athlete. I never played football, never played any sport, but I was a fan, still am. I'm a math whiz. I teach algebra and one class of calculus for a few honor students. But, as I said, I'm a huge fan of football, and accordingly I studied the technical aspects game. Five years ago, Coach West needed some help, mostly a warm body, he said, but also someone who knew something about the defense, and he asked me if I'd like to be an assistant coach. The assistant coaching job paid an extra stipend, so I said yes, and Coach West put me in charge of the defense. To my great joy, I discovered the extra job I'd taken because I needed the money also gave me great satisfaction and purpose, that is until Coach West retired and you took his place. To be frank, we had words, John. I told you I'd stick out the season, but that you could take the assistant coaching job and stick it after the last game this year. I don't like you. I consider you a bully and a know-it-all."

Great, I thought cynically. Maybe I didn't get the better end of the swap after all.

"With that said to clear the air," Orville said, "when we get inside, if you want, I'll call your wife to let her..."

"I'm married?" I said, interrupting him.

"Yes, and you have a daughter."

That should be ... Interesting was the descriptive word that came to mind. My marriage when I was Aaron MacDonald didn't last long, less than a year. My ex-wife believed monogamy was for chumps. I'm a chump. No children, fortunately.

"Tell me about my wife and daughter," I said.

"I don't know much about them. Your wife's name is Yvonne; she's a beautiful woman. Piper, your daughter, is four or five years old, I think."

Automatic doors opened, and we stepped into the emergency room.

The doctors, nurses, and various technicians poked, prodded and tested. I had minor burns that wrapped around my ankle bones making the burns look like the Nike logo, and while I was at the hospital reddish-brown feathery skin lesions appeared. A doctor informed me that the lesions were common with lightning-strike victims and would disappear in a few days. The condition was an inflammatory response rather than a burn.

They could find no physical evidence for my professed amnesia, not even in the MRI. After questioning me about the extent of my memory loss, the doctor told me the condition was probably temporary, which was normally the case with electrical shock induced amnesia.

"Usually, memory loss only involves the traumatic event itself, or a short time before the event," the doctor said. "What you're reporting sounds like total retrograde amnesia, which is extremely rare without serious brain damage. Still retrograde amnesia is usually temporary, as well. Don't let your memory loss worry you." He smiled. "You'll get your memory back sooner or later."

I grunted. "In other words, suck it up and learn how to live with the problem until it goes away on its own."

"Yep," he said, widening his smile.

"Are we done here? May I leave?" I said.

"Yep," he said.

"Orville, you're still here?" I said, surprised as I walked into the waiting room.

"Yeah. I haven't been able to locate your wife, so I figured I'd better hang around in case you were released and needed a ride home," he said.

"Thanks," I said. Then I laughed. "Good thing you stayed. I don't know where I live, don't know my telephone number, don't know anything about this city..."

"Ely isn't a city," Orville said, interrupting my litany of what I didn't know. "It's a town at best. It is the county seat of White Pine County. You coach White Pine High School's football team. You also teach some freshman English classes."

English I could teach, maybe, but football... ? I knew nothing about the finer points of football.

As we were leaving the hospital, a woman rushed to stop us.

"Ah, Mr. Windom, I have your invoice ready," she said and handed me a sheet of paper.

Her nameplate said she was Gloria Peterson. She was a pretty blonde, a little overweight, mid-thirties, thick glasses with atrocious thick black rims. I noticed a wedding band on her finger.

"Sorry about that, Mrs. Peterson," I said and glanced over the invoice. I gulped at the total and looked at Orville. "Do I have medical insurance?"

He laughed. "Yes. I carry my insurance card in my wallet."

I felt my back pocket. How about that? A wallet. I leafed through the cards in the wallet and found the insurance card, which I handed to Mrs. Peterson. She smiled with relief, took the card, and Orville and I followed her to her desk.

While Mrs. Peterson inserted my insurance information into a computer to redo the bill, I looked over the other items in my wallet. My Nevada driver's license said I was six-four, not six-five, and I weighed two hundred forty pounds. I calculated my age from my birthday: twenty-six. I'd be twenty-seven next year on January 15^th.

The efficient Mrs. Peterson looked up from her computer and said, "Your insurance covers all costs except $150 co-pay for the emergency room visit."

No cash, but I had a credit card in my wallet. I gave her the card. She smiled, took the card, and said she'd be right back.

"Tell me more about Ely and the high school," I said to Orville.

"Ely and the surrounding towns have a population of about 7,000," Orville pontificated. "The county's population is around 10,000. The high school totals about 400 students, with about 20 students per teacher, which is a pretty good ratio. Lund, a town south of Ely, also has a high school. Ely..."

"Mr. Windom," Mrs. Peterson said as she returned, "I'm sorry but your card was refused."

I checked my wallet. No other credit card. I shrugged. "I'll have to send you a check, Mrs. Peterson, and I don't have my checkbook with me."

She looked dubious, but nodded.

As Orville and I left the hospital, I said, "Looks like my finances aren't in very good shape."

He snorted. "Teacher's pay isn't much."

Orville drove me to my vehicle parked at the high school. It appeared that I owned a four-year-old, four-door Chevy pickup truck. Was it paid for, or did I still owe a bank some payments? I followed him to my house in the pickup.

Not like my house in Scottsdale, I mused as I gazed at an ancient residence whose architectural style defied description. Ugly fit best. Did I rent or own? I hoped for the former. I did not want to own the house.