Lightning Song (8 page)

“You should try it yourself, Els,” he said to Leroy's mama. “You should let me take you out there sometime. You know where the place is, out on Highway 61, you'd recognize it. Try the flapjacks. That would be my recommendation. Whipped butter, real maple syrup, yum yum. I was asking this old gal, waitress, you know, with a scar on her face, marital difficulties, sad story, asking her about that maple syrup, where it came from, Vermont, you're probably thinking, that's where you automatically think it came from, I don't blame you, I fell into the same trap, I guessed Vermont myself, I won't lie to you, but nope, that's not it, not Vermont, guess again, where do you think that maple syrup was tapped, come on, take your wildest guess.”

He was enthusiastic about everything he did, everything he saw or heard. He said the short-order cook at the truck stop was a one-eyed man who could sing every song in
The Mikado
in its entirety with a cigarette hanging out of his mouth, a long ash on the end that never fell off. Harris was starting to pick up a few show tunes himself, he said, some night he might treat everybody to a song or two. He said he would take up smoking if he thought he could learn that trick with the long cigarette ash. He told about another man who had been to
Hollywood and walked through Mayberry, Gilligan's Island, Fantasy Island, Petticoat Junction, and the Love Boat. “They're not real!” Harris exclaimed at the end of his story. “They're soundstages! That's even better, isn't it, better than real!” Another time Harris got started on Gary Gilmore, the murderer out in Utah. Gary Gilmore this, Gary Gilmore that. Gary Gilmore, the Mormons. Gary Gilmore saying, “Let's do it.” Gary Gilmore, shot through the heart. Could there be anybody more boring than Gary Gilmore? Leroy had heard enough about Gary Gilmore. Gary Gilmore, would you please shut up.

Every once in a while Harris stopped by an old-fashioned barbershop in the old part of town and got a shave with a straight razor and a shoeshine. “It's a luxury, I know, I know, I could do without,” he said. “I'm going to think about cutting back on expenses one of these days, you just wait and see. You ought to hear that strop, though, once he gets that sucker going, man, sounds like Hambone, poppy pop, poppy pop, hambone, hambone, have you heard, yeah.” He said the shoeshine boy was a Mexican gent in his sixties or seventies, he didn't know how old. “Real old Mexican, name of Hernando, funny name, ain't it, Hernando, like the hideaway, I never thought about that hideaway serving Mexican food, did you, it ain't quite as romantic if you think about it being a Mexican place, them refried beans are some nasty eating, man, whew, I hope I don't sound prejudiced against our southern neighbors because that would leave a false impression, I'm
not, not in the slightest, love a Mexican, sure do, makes you kind of queasy to think about it, though, don't it, couldn't speak a word of English, poor old Hernando, locked up in a cocoon of silence, you might say, don't seem to bother him, though, Hernando don't seem to give a rat's ass. It's unusual, a Mexican gentleman in that line of work, don't you think, wouldn't you agree, shoeshine trade,
habla habla,
that's how they talk, makes you dizzy as a witch to listen to it. I myself don't speak a solitary word of Mexican, but if I did, I think I'd have to ask him about his career choice, see could I help him define his goals.”

Some days Leroy's head was spinning as he listened to his Uncle Harris.

Swami Don was rarely in the house for Harris's enthusiastic newspaper reading or his spirited report on his daily excursions. Swami Don spent his days in the pastures, or on the tractor in the fields, and many nights he was gone as well, working as a part-time night watchman at a sporting goods factory in Eupora. He was always looking for ways to supplement his income. And he especially liked the military-style uniform he wore to his night watchman job. He felt almost handsome in that uniform. Elsie liked it, too. She always looked at him a little different when he dressed in his night watchman uniform. By the time he got home, usually evenings, around suppertime, Harris was already in his party mode, with grog rations and puppet shows and the rest of his foolishness. He was finished talking about the newspaper and
The Mikado
for
now. The children's faces were glowing, always. Leroy knew his was without even looking in the mirror.

Swami Don saw the newspaper carnage sometimes, before Elsie managed to pick up after Harris. Leroy thought his daddy might be irritated by the mess, especially by Harris's laziness. You could build a table on that man's laziness, it was so sturdy and sound. But this turned out not to be so. Swami Don didn't seem to mind at all, any of it. He was encouraged by the clutter, not irritated. He said it seemed like a mess made of happiness and enthusiasm. He said he believed he himself could learn a few things from Harris's careless life. Anybody could. Or maybe Harris was not completely careless, he said one time. We don't know, really, he was saying. Maybe the newspapers meant Harris was looking for work, a part-time job of some kind, to help out with the expenses. He might be going through the classifieds in every major city in the country, that was certainly a possibility, Swami Don said. Well, Leroy knew this was crazy. That was one idea that made no sense at all. It didn't matter, though. That was the odd part, it didn't matter a bit what Harris was doing with those newspapers. Swami Don didn't mind that his brother lay about the house and village all day. He didn't want his money. He was just grateful to have his little brother in the house after being so far apart for so many years. Harris didn't have to do one thing more than he was already doing to make Swami Don a happy man.

One night Harris got out two hand puppets he had brought
with him from the coast. One was a sea captain puppet, with a red beard and square glasses down on its nose and a corncob pipe and a little white cap with gold braiding on the bill. The other was a flamboyant woman with a great mass of red hair and huge, brightly rouged lips and big boobs. These puppets supposedly looked exactly like Captain Woody and Belle Trudy, Harris's foster parents. Swami Don had lived with the captain and the belle for one year also, in high school. The two brothers took roles in an impromptu play. Leroy looked on in amazement as he saw his father take one of the parts. Harris was the captain and Swami Don played Belle Trudy. He was good, too. He was funny. He was hilarious, in fact. Leroy could hardly recognize him. His face seemed to change, the way he held his mouth, his whole body, when he talked through the puppet. Sometimes Leroy almost forgot he was watching a puppet show and thought Belle Trudy was really saying those funny things. She spoke in an amazing falsetto, or rather his daddy did, this masterful person in Leroy's home. Was this really Leroy's daddy? It was not possible. Had the planet really turned inside out? Harris had changed their lives. This thought could not be escaped, Leroy sure couldn't escape it anyway. When the puppet show was over, Swami Don put the doll aside. His face was bright red with surprise and good feeling.

Leroy crept about on a regular basis now. He looked in his mama's purse. He went through his daddy's pockets. He poked through drawers in his parents' room. This was before he went creepy-crawling in Harris's attic room. He didn't find
anything much, his mama and daddy didn't seem to have any secrets, nothing real interesting, well, some rubbers, Trojans, in the red pack, they weren't real good for blowing up because they were treated with some kind of lubricant and tasted a little funny. He took two anyway, it couldn't hurt. He had heard about a boy, well, he knew him actually, it was Screamer McGee, Hot's boy, the child who could lick his own penis, double-jointed, you know, he stretched a rubber over the bell of a bass horn in the junior high school band room one time, took him about three hours, latex of course, forget about stretching one of those sheepskin doogies, but school wasn't in session now, summer vacation, so Leroy couldn't really think of anything good to do with the Trojans. He eventually just threw them away. He wasn't looking for anything especially when he was creepy-crawling, he was just looking.

As far as Leroy could tell, Uncle Harris didn't have much of a life outside the family and his goofy friends in the village and the newspapers. If you're too lazy to turn your hand, that's what happens, Leroy had to suppose. It didn't matter, though, it was all right with Harris that he had no real life. It made Leroy wonder what a man this lazy would ever have had the get-up-and-go to do that would cause his wife to run him off. Harris was talking about getting a telephone put in his room in the attic. This was about as high a level of activity as Harris ever reached, calling somebody to perform some service for him. He might need to call somebody, he said, well sure, he might find a need one of these days to make a phone call,
transact some business, sell some stocks, see, you never knew about that sort of thing. Somebody might want to call him, see, that was another good reason he might need a phone, though he didn't say who he was expecting a call from. There were a couple of things he needed, come to think of it, Harris said. Maybe he needed a little TV set, too, nothing fancy, it could be small, very small, don't worry about a big screen, wasn't necessary; it didn't need to be color, either, although sure, he would prefer color, a little color portable would be nice, that NBC peacock, now that was something, wasn't it, a color portable would be perfect, actually, those big tail feathers.

N
ot long after Leroy saw the lady in the western vest, he saw something else almost as amazing. Out in the pasture at twilight a bright ball of fire drifted down the sky along a curious course, down, down, slowly, slowly, toward the earth. He watched it for what seemed like a long time, far out from the house, above the deep woods. Just above the treetops the fireball seemed to explode. Fire shards drifted like an innocent rain of flames into the forest. He heard no thunder. He kept on watching. He walked into the woods, to the spot where the flames had seemed to fall. There were no traces, no scorching.

The woods were clear, the trees in full leaf. The world beneath the trees seemed dim and fuzzy at the edges. The forest floor was covered with leaves. A squirrel scared Leroy by running through the leaves and straight up a pin oak tree. Leroy stopped to check for snakes. He looked for the fireball
for a long time before he noticed the sun had gone down beneath the tree line and darkness had fallen. The woods were very dark, though when he looked straight up through the trees, the sky still had some dark blue light. Large birds were circling overhead in the big wide sky before dropping down into the forest to roost. Lightning bugs had come out, and out to his left, in a clearing, he could make out snake doctors in the air above the high grass. He hoped he didn't scare up a bunch of swamp elves out of the cane. They were harmless, he knew that, but the way they sounded when they ran, well, he didn't care for it, they scared him. He looked back toward his house and could see the porch light on. He looked back into the woods. Nobody would be worried, he had often stayed out like this on a summer evening. He halfway thought he might see a spark somewhere along the ground, or in the branches of a tree, or in the fork of a dead tree trunk, some small clue to the meaning of the fireball, but there was nothing. It was gone, whatever it had been. It had seemed important, he couldn't have said just how, a sign, something another. He turned and began to walk up out of the woods and into the pasture, on his way home. The problem was, he had missed grog rations. Well, shoot. He had completely forgotten about grog rations. He was mad at himself about that. Uncle Harris was probably already up in the attic, the party was over, well, doggone it.

Leroy walked up out of the woods and through a field and into the yard. He came in the house through the back door.
The house was quiet. Maybe his daddy was working late, maybe he missed grog rations, too. No, the tractor was in the shed, the pickup was parked out back. A table lamp was on in the living room, but that was it, not much sign of life. Where was everybody? Leroy walked through the front part of the house. He didn't call out, he just looked around, listened. He could hear the water running, the sound was coming from the bathroom. That's where Swami Don was, in the shower, okay, that was a little better. Somebody was home, at least. Then he could hear quiet voices from the rear of the house, in the girls' room. His sisters were playing together in their bedroom. Okay, he was just a little tense. He was breathing a little easier, everybody was home after all. Leroy looked around for his mama and found her too, right where he might have expected, in the kitchen.

And in fact he found his Uncle Harris as well. He was not in the attic after all. Uncle Harris was in the kitchen, too. He was standing right there with Leroy's mama. Leroy's mama and Uncle Harris were kissing in the kitchen. That's what they were doing, kissing, in the kitchen, right there. They didn't see Leroy, he'd been pretty quiet, and they were pretty busy themselves, right about now. Leroy stood in the doorway and watched for a while. They kept on kissing. He said nothing. He just stood there and watched.

The kiss that he was watching was not a comical kiss. Not on the head or forehead, not with a loud smack at the end or the funny word
smooch
. This was a long, serious kiss. A secret
kiss. Leroy looked at his Uncle Harris's hands as they gently passed over his mama's backside and hip and leg and maybe up to her breasts. His mama's hand was on Harris's neck, the other on his shoulder. This kiss had not been forced on her, it had not surprised her. They were kissing. That was it. Leroy didn't know what had happened to the world. A memory of his lips on Old Pappy's came back to him and he pushed it away.

The kiss ended. They didn't look around, they didn't draw their faces apart, they didn't know Leroy was standing at the door. They spoke a few quiet words, Uncle Harris, then Leroy's mama. Their lips were still close. Leroy could understand nothing they said. They kissed again, brief and tender. They spoke more soft words.