Excerpt
Every atom in the air seemed combustible. Hateful little bursts of electricity popped and cracked and sizzled right at my ear.

I dared to look up once, just once, and against the rapid staccato of lighting, a giant broom-shaped wedge of black dragged across the horizon in a preternaturally slow, ponderous sweep. In my delirium, I believed somebody or something rode the storm, lashed at it, whipped it, whipped it, drove it and drove it as a spectacle just for me, for the purpose of getting back at me.

After the thunder tapered off to a distant rumbling and the rain had stopped, I sat there for a while, breathing deep of the wet, washed air. I dragged myself up and down the beach through stubby columns of mist arising like ghosts of cypress knees from the sand.

When the sun broke through the clouds in the west, a patch of sky turned baby-blanket blue, and for a minute or two, the new clouds looked pasted onto it--puffy and fluffy as dreamy dollops of marshmallow cream, seductively hopeful and naive, like the world in a child's picture book. Then the seagulls started circling and squalling, diving for the easy eats agitated up from the sea bottom during the storm.