Lightning Song (21 page)

Ruby Rae gave Swami Don strong assurances that Leroy had done well today, had showed exceptional promise as a twirler, that he had, in fact, been a leader. She commented again upon his courage in the face of gender alienation, his willingness to take risks. She insisted she was confident that with an actual baton in his hand Leroy could have made even greater strides than he had already done.

She placed her hand upon Leroy's shoulder as she spoke these words of praise and encouragement. The warmth of her fingers infused every fiber of the child with sexual longing. She was Graf von Zeppelin, she was Hindenburg. She told Leroy's father that she believed his boy had been born to twirl.

If Leroy had ever doubted his father's love, in this moment that doubt was erased. No man could have shown such pride in a child as he showed now. The radiance of his face, his countenance,
could have expressed nothing but the perfection of a father's love, no matter how imperfect the father. He believed every word Ruby Rae was saying. He believed Leroy had been born to twirl. He offered to do anything, anything at all, to acquire a baton for his son's use. He would get one right away. What was the point of wasting time, his son deserved it, deserved the best. He would take a day off, he would drive to Jackson, or Memphis. Didn't Ruby Rae imagine there were batons in Memphis, they must have plenty of batons in big cities, mustn't they? He seemed frantic to rescue this moment, how could he solve this problem? There must be a solution.

For Leroy there was a moment of clarity. Suddenly it seemed possible that he was not talented at all, that he had not been born to twirl, that no one on earth, not even Ruby Rae, could successfully predict anything about twirling talent by observing a boy pretending to hold a baton. Could she have heard banjo music if he had been strumming the kitchen broom? Leroy understood now that this was impossible, that Ruby Rae had some other agenda, some other plan for him that had nothing whatsoever to do with baton twirling.

Whatever happened to Leroy, for better or for worse, after this moment, he believed would be no one's fault but his own. He alone, he believed, stood in a position to understand the nature and intensity of all their various needs. He knew something was wrong here, he had the power to prevent it, and he
did nothing at all. He was willing to pay any price for the favor of another day, another moment, in the presence of this beautiful girl. So he believed in the innocent depths of his youthful heart.

T
he simple solution to Leroy's problem was for Leroy to borrow one of her batons, Ruby Rae said. And why not? She had lots of batons, plenty, dozens. Didn't that seem like the best idea? No waiting, no substitutions. She had a closet full of batons, some of them scarcely used. She told him that later on she would be happy to consider selling Leroy a used baton, if he wanted one of his own. Unless of course Leroy and Swami Don didn't like her batons. Unless they thought they could find a better baton someplace else. Mr. Dollarhide's weren't the best batons available, if they wanted Ruby Rae's private opinion on the subject, but it was up to them, it was their decision, whatever they decided was fine.

What Leroy began to understand was that Ruby Rae wanted something. Just what he was unsure, and cared not at all.

Swami Don must have heard something strange in the conversation
as well. Though her voice was calm, expressive, sincere, and her body a powerful expression of confidence, there was some great tension in her, some concealed pain or fear radiating outward from a depth, through the fingers of her hands. Not the nails, which were the blunt-tipped, well-manicured nails of a young athlete, a person interested in her appearance and physical well-being, but her hands.

For all her youth and beauty, the hand upon Leroy's shoulder seemed the hand of an old woman. Leroy noticed this, his daddy must have noticed it, too. The fingers were long, the knuckles were prominent, every tendon was visible. Blue veins showed through the skin, which seemed pale and thin. They were bony fingers, the fingers of a hag-witch in the movies. By looking at her hands and not at more obvious parts of her physical self Swami Don must have seen Ruby Rae, the sad, long history of her heart, the humanity of her, the terrified little girl in the body of a woman. He must have seen even her thoughts, the constant question in her heart: which one of my selves is real, the visible or invisible, the self that aches alone or the self that every man admires and becomes changed by, woman and child occupying the same space, the cosmic discrepancy, the balance-dance upon the razor's edge? And yet even seeing so much Swami Don could not have seen the dangers implicit in her pain, an oversight for which Leroy knew his father would always blame himself.

Looking back on this day, Leroy never really understood how Ruby Rae accomplished so much, how she managed to
convince Swami Don that it was a good idea for Leroy not to get into the truck with his father and go home, as any sane father and son would have done, but for Leroy to go home instead with Ruby Rae. It seemed impossible that even as she stood vulnerable before them, her hands a map of her troubled heart, that she could have exerted so much control. Why on earth did Swami Don not say, simply, sensibly, “Well, gee, thanks, but I've got a better idea, why don't you just bring the baton to practice tomorrow morning? He won't be needing it before then, now will he, no need to inconvenience everybody”? Why didn't he say, “You go on in your car, Ruby Rae, and me and Leroy, we'll follow you in the truck, he can just scoot in the house and grab a baton and we'll be out of your way directly”? There were at least a half dozen other sane things he might have said, including “No thank you.” Looking back, anyone in his right mind would have known this. What Swami Don said in fact—and it was exactly what Leroy had wanted him to say, prayed to the bizarre heavens that he would say—was the opposite of sanity. It made no sense at all. Swami Don agreed that Leroy should go home with Ruby Rae, do as she suggested, choose a baton, take his time choosing, not be rushed, handle each one until just the right baton surfaced, and she would drop him off at the house.

Swami Don said, “Well—”

Ruby Rae said, “I'll tell you what. Let Leroy hop in my car, just like the extra-special little grown-up that he is, all by himself, let him ride to my house, make his choice—I promise
you it will be a good one!—and then and only then, and not one second before, I'll drive him out to the farm myself. You'll see. Leroy can give me directions. Can't you, Leroy? You don't mind doing that, do you? What do you say, Mr. Dearman, how about it, any objections?”

He said, “Well, uh, okay, uh, yeah, I guess that would be all right.”

Even Ruby Rae must have been astonished for a moment at the hydroelectric power, the nuclear energy, of her sexuality, though every day since the onset of puberty she must have employed this power in some fashion, must have been aware of the atomic potential of her breasts, must have hauled them out of bed each morning in the knowledge that they held such strange powers over the affairs of men. Somewhere near the center of him, Swami Don must have known that this plan of hers was ridiculous, a stupid idea, but he agreed anyway that Leroy should have the right baton.

“Try not to be too long, though,” he said, weakly. “Don't overstay your welcome, son. And well, you know—”

He said good-bye to Leroy.

“Bye now, have a nice time. I'm proud of you, your being such a good baton twirler and all. So okay, see you at home. You won't have any trouble finding the place, Ruby Rae. Leroy here can show you the turnoff, can't you, Leroy? You know where the turnoff is, don't you? Okay, so long, I'll see y'all later.”

Leroy never asked nor tried to imagine his mother's response
when Swami Don drove the old pickup into the yard that afternoon without Leroy, with only Laurie and Molly in the cab, and told her that Ruby Rae had taken Leroy home with her because he was such an excellent twirler, that she wanted him to choose the perfect baton for his twirling needs.

“He was good,” Leroy one day would imagine his father telling his mother. “An excellent twirler. A leader in his class.”

He imagined Laurie trying to keep a straight face.

He imagined his mother's puzzlement. A leader in his class?

With no baton? Maybe this conversation took place during grog rations. Maybe she was simply glad to have Leroy out from underfoot. Maybe the conversation never took place at all.

T
he reason Ruby Rae took Leroy home with her was for sex. She parked in the driveway beneath a basketball hoop and the two of them got out of the car. Ruby Rae's parents' home was a comfortable bungalow with dormers and red-painted wood shingles for siding and a weathered slate roof. On one side of the house was a red-stained deck with a gas grill and comfortable deck furniture, including a table with a big striped umbrella. The yard was shaded by pecan and walnut trees. A redbud and a dogwood were in full leaf. Ruby Rae's parents were not at home, as Ruby Rae had seemed to know before she and Leroy arrived. She did not call out to them when the two of them entered the house with a key she retrieved from a bird feeder on the porch.

The house was cool and spacious. On the floors lay enormous Oriental rugs with brilliant designs of peacocks and dragons. The floors themselves were covered with large Spanish tiles. Oil paintings of a modern and original sort hung on the walls. There was a low hum of central air-conditioning. Leroy and Ruby Rae had exchanged not one word between them on the drive from the school grounds to her home.

Leroy looked around the room. He said, “Where are the batons?”

Ruby Rae held her hair up off her neck and fanned herself with her hand.

She said, “Are you hot? I'm about to burn up.”

Leroy followed her through the front rooms and into the kitchen. There was a note on the refrigerator door that Leroy didn't have time to read.

Ruby Rae read it hurriedly and said, “Huh.”

She opened the refrigerator and took out a full pitcher of lemonade that her mother or father apparently had left for her. She took two glasses out of a cabinet and scooped ice into each of them from an ice bin in the freezer and poured two glasses of lemonade.

Leroy said, “Thank you.”

She took the lid off the top of a yellow cookie jar in the shape of a scrunched-up rabbit and signaled Leroy to help himself. He reached in and took out a peanut butter cookie, his favorite kind. He bit into it.

She said, “Yummy, right?”

Leroy said, “It's okay.”

They sat on tall bar stools at the kitchen counter and sipped their lemonade and chewed their cookies. Ruby Rae was right, Leroy had not realized how uncomfortably hot and humid the day had become, how good the air-conditioning felt. They had been out in the sun for a long time. Leroy felt very tired, suddenly, as he began to cool off.

Ruby Rae said, “I don't know about you, but I
smell
.” She raised her arm and stuck her nose into her armpit. “Whew!” She did the same with the other armpit.

Leroy must have felt something in this moment, fear, erotic need, he could not say, then or years later when he remembered.

Ruby Rae said, “I'm going to pop in the shower for a sec, okay? That okay with you?” She said, “Okay, Leroy?”

“Okay.”

W
hat Ruby Rae did with him was wrong, Leroy knew this then, knows it now. He does not in his memory romanticize this day, or minimize its consequences, does not pretend to have escaped suffering gravely the effects of what happened. Many disasters of his life, bad choices, bad behavior, were controlled by this moment. But those conclusions stood nowhere near to Leroy's heart. He focused entirely on the girl, her flesh, her outlandish nakedness. This was the first
time Leroy had ever seen a real naked girl, except to change Molly's diaper. This was entirely different from the pictures in Uncle Harris's magazines. Entirely different.

Out of the kitchen, wordless now, and down the hallway of this sparkling house, Leroy's feet sinking like animal paws in the pine-needle cushion of the forest floor, soundless, into the pile of a thick and tightly woven carpet, to a gleaming bathroom Leroy followed Ruby Rae, as he knew he was meant to do. He had no will of his own, but if he had been in possession of any power of will whatsoever, Leroy felt sure that he would have done exactly what he was doing. Nothing could have stopped him.

If he could have seen the future, the spectacular ruin, the unhappiness of years, the wreckage, the obsessions and their concurrent resultant debilitations, still he would have chosen what was now chosen for him, this trek, this incredible journey down the hall behind the beautiful Ruby Rae.

She entered the bathroom. Leroy looked past her, he saw the porcelain, he saw the framed artwork on the walls, he saw a bouquet of fresh flowers on a shelf beneath a window. He stopped at the door as she stepped inside and switched on lights as bright as an airport runway and stood before the mirror that hung above the vanity. The two of them, Ruby Rae and Leroy—she with her eyes in the mirror, he with his naked eyes, a metaphor whose application had never seemed so just—watched Ruby Rae peel herself out of the leotard.

Only for an instant could he watch the real person of her.
He averted his eyes. The pain of her beauty, unfiltered, was intolerable. He watched instead her image in the mirror, a practice that provided only small relief.

First one shoulder, and then the next, she pulled the garment away from her flesh and bared her chest. The great boulders of her breasts avalanched free of the blessed nylon that had held them. The sound they made was like thunder as they rolled forth. They were large enough to have their own weather. He imagined lightning crashing around them and striking his house. He saw fireballs emerge from their chimneys. He watched them glowing through the eternity of his life.

What could he do, what could he say, in this moment that required so much?