Lightning Song (10 page)

O
ne day Leroy was walking down the lane, coming back home from Mr. Sweet's store with a little bag of groceries for his mama, when he looked over at the junker cars parked in the muddy yard alongside the New People's cottage and saw the New People themselves, both of them, standing out there in the yard together. He wondered what they were doing outdoors, the weather had been so bad. Rain had fallen hard for the last few days, this was the first day it had let up at all, so everything was a mess. A bunch of trash that had been thrown up under the cottage, out of sight, had all been washed out, old newspapers, some two-liter plastic Coke bottles, a bleach bottle or two, a bedsprings, some pasteboard boxes that had collapsed in soggy heaps. A few rays of sun were poking through the clouds, but the skies were still low and it looked like it could start up raining again any time. Leroy's house had been struck by lightning three days in a row,
that's how bad the weather had been. The ditches were filled with water, all down the lane and out by the macadams. Frogs were flopping all over the roadway. Snakes were looking for branches and high ground. Mr. Sweet's roof had leaked and he'd had to move his meat cooler over in a corner and sweep the water out the front door with a straw broom and then mop up the whole store. A culvert was gushing. Leroy found a baby swamp elf that had drowned in a ditch. Its scaly little three-toed feet were sticking straight up. He didn't stop to look, just kept on walking. He wondered if the swamp elf's mama was looking for him. Grass wouldn't grow around the New People, it looked like, and so there they were, standing ankle deep in red clay mud.

Leroy was still out in the lane, a good distance from where the New People stood, but he could see that they seemed to be dressed in odd outfits. Just then he noticed another man, someone he'd never seen before, a bald-headed, red-faced man mopping sweat off his face with a white handkerchief. He was walking to his big shiny new car parked along the roadside. He came up to Leroy. He said, “Is it humid, son, or is it just me?” Sweat was pouring down his neck. Leroy couldn't think of anything to say. He pulled up his shirt and started to rout out his belly button with his index finger. The man was carrying a little metal strongbox and a leather pouch with a drawstring and looking back over his shoulder at the New People like he was about halfway mad at them, put out anyway. He had several pens clipped to a plastic pocket protector
in his shirt pocket. His shirtfront was wringing wet with sweat. He gave Leroy a good hard looking-over. He didn't seem to like what he saw. He said, “Y'all hillbillies ain't got no pride, is you?” Leroy didn't know what to say again, so he just stood there with his bag of groceries digging at his navel. Some of what he found there he put in his mouth. The man had on a shiny blue sport coat with dandruff on the lapels and big sweat stains underneath the arms. You could say he stunk. This was an insurance collector from Memphis, it turned out. He said, “They never told me nobody was going to die. You trust somebody, swear to God, and this is what happens, happens every time, you can't trust nobody, that's my newly revised opinion of the world, the human race of it, anyway, they's still a few pretty good redbones, I guess.” Leroy cut his eyes out across the yard at where the New People were standing among the old cars. The New Guy was wearing a long warbonnet made of dyed chicken feathers, all colors, and the New Lady was wearing a large pair of angel wings, also made of feathers and chicken wire. They both were wearing boots of a kind that Leroy later learned to call Wellingtons. They were just standing among the junkers in the mud. At least they didn't have knives. The insurance guy said, “Oh, they talk fancy, sure enough”—he indicated the New People with an angry jerk of his head in their direction—“but they're hillbillies, too, you mock it down, son, down at the bone them two's just like your ownself, some ig-runt, unrefined, hillbilly motherfuckers, if I ever seen a pair.”

Leroy said, “Somebody died?”

The insurance man said, “Jess look at them two out there. Ain't they disgusting?” Leroy looked. The warbonnet was so long it almost touched the ground. The angel wings were just as long. The insurance man said, “I seen it all now. Junkers and bleach bottles and chain-saw art and jug bands and a sculpture of Our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ on the Cross made out of beer cans, every goddamn redneck thing a hillbilly can think up, but I never seen no Indian and an angel, them's a new one on me, takes the cake, don't it, sons-a-bitches, anyway. You know what I heard? I heard this is the way hillbillies tell one another they in love, you know. Well, that is a joke, a big old funny joke. You mock it down, boy, a hillbilly knows not one goddamn thing about love, not one, it chaps my whole sweaty ass to hear they think they do. Makes my butt work buttonholes, sho does. Half the people in the Delta don't even know about love, let alone a hillbilly. They's some people in Memphis don't know all they is to know about love. Love's an illusive motherfucker, Junior, do you hear me, do you hear a word I'm saying, what the fuck do you think you know about love? Nothing, that's what. So just shut up.”

Leroy said, “Who died?”

The man looked back over his shoulder. He said, “They's both ugly, too, they think they pretty but they not, they ugly, look at them, look out there, ugly as hammered shit, both of them, I don't care what you say, not to mention dishonest, the boy dying like that, without no warning whatsoever, never
been sick a day in his life till the murder, and I'm supposed to pretend like it don't matter to me? Life expectancy, seventy-six years, well forget that now, life expectancy don't mean shit to a hillbilly, it don't mean diddly-squat to a schoolboy gets hisself murdered, I don't care what kind of la-di-da airs they put on, life expectancy is straight out the window, now ain't it, just about fifty years too early. Do they care? Not a lick, never give one thought to me, my livelihood. Shit far and save matches, like my daddy used to say. You think it don't matter to me that a child gets murdered? Well, let me tell you, it does. It means plenty. It means whether I get a new car next year, it means food and drink for me and my wife. It's my livelihood we're talking about here, son. It means I'm the one's got to shell out the dough-ray-me, my company does, it might as well be me. It's the integrity of my actuarial tables that's at stake, too, they's a lot more to it than you ig-runt hillbillies ever think about. That man standing out there in the headdress, look at him, he's too old for that woman, I don't care how ugly she is. I heard people say he robbed the cradle, well, I got another idea on that subject, look like to me he robbed a grave, anybody that ugly's got to been dead awhile, wouldn't you agree with me, son, where'd she get that hair, and now trying to rob me, not trying, doing it, did it, I got to pay up, not a thing I can do about it either, the way the law's written, honest to God in holy heaven, son, what's a working man supposed to do if he can't expect children to stay alive? Look like a child would stay alive, don't it? You ain't planning
to die, is you, you ain't going around all-time getting murdered, is you, well, naw, naw, you wouldn't do that to me, I know you wouldn't, you're a good boy, fine child for who you are, little hillbilly shitheel without a hope in the world, and no romantical illusions about the future, sure, but an honest boy it looks like to me, that'd be my guess, and I'm known to be an excellent judge of character, mock it down. Take your finger out of your navel, son, it gives me the heebie-jeebies. Like I said, he's too old for that woman.”

When the insurance man was gone, Leroy looked through the gate and across the mud to where the New People were standing. The old cars, the under-house trash in the yard, the red mud, the headdress, the angel's wings, they made no sense. When had this started, this failure to make sense of a single thing? He tried to remember his life before Uncle Harris came—watermelons beneath the big tree in the yard, lightning bugs at night, honey trees, the gentle llamas, no thoughts of secret kisses. He remembered his daddy's story about trying to tell Old Pappy his heart's pain and wondered whether he should try the same, find someone to tell. He didn't really know what he wanted to tell. Something about missing Old Pappy, maybe killing him? Something about his mouth covering the old man's mouth? The chapped lips, the pinched nostrils, the rise and fall of the frail old rib cage. Did he want to tell about the secret kisses? Warn his daddy that what had happened that night at the Red Top dance with Hannah, down on the coast, was happening again? He couldn't tell
his daddy about the kisses; he couldn't stand to think of them, in fact. He didn't know who to tell. He could tell Mr. Sweet, he might catch him on a good day. He could tell Screamer McGee, or his daddy, Hot. He wished he could lick his own penis like Screamer, that was one thing he was never going to tell anybody.

He didn't exactly decide to visit the New People, he just found himself walking through the gate and out across the mud in their direction. His shoes were getting covered with the wet red clay. The New People seemed in no way surprised to see him.

The New Guy said, “Oh very well, very well, you may go along then, if that's the way it's going to be, come on then, hop in, can't hang about all day, you see, am I right, eh, what, hm, pop right in, shall I drive, dear, what do you say, would you rather do the honors, eh, speak up, what say now, my angel?” He shook his head and the feathers of his bonnet sounded like a million beads clicking together.

The angel, the New Lady, said, “You be the chauffeur, I'll be the lady.”

“Oh quite right, very good, excellent suggestion, the Lady and the Chauffeur, should we go back for the other costumes, oh well, no, I think not, these are fine, just fine, we'll make do, all right then, that's that, it's all settled, let's see, let's just see now—” He was looking at one of the enormous old cars in the mud. “Let's see whether we can get this old cruiser cranking, as they say in the American South. You'll have to sit
up front with me, I'm afraid, young man, all right, no complaining, front seat it is, hop around to the other side, that door's heavy, be careful, here we go, grief therapy, all aboard, chop-chop, beggars can't be choosers, all that, hop in, no more delays, agreed, all agreed on that count, excellent then, first rate, ready now?”

Leroy walked around and climbed into the front seat of the car and pulled shut its heavy door like closing a bank vault. The interior was huge and his legs were so short they seemed to stick almost straight out when he sat all the way back on the seat. He looked at the vast expanse of dashboard, many dials and clocks and instruments. He put his bag of groceries on the seat next to him. The New Lady opened the back door and arranged her wings so she wouldn't sit on them and got in. She made herself comfortable, folded her hands in her lap. The New Guy was last to step inside. He stood back and looked at the car admiringly. He pulled a handkerchief out of his pocket and made a motion as if to polish off a speck of dust from the hood, though the car was rusted through in several places and stained and caked with red clay that had splashed up all over it during the heavy rains. He put the handkerchief back in his pocket. He walked along his side of the car. He kicked a tire, like he was buying or selling. At last he said, approvingly, “The chap I got this beauty from is still singing the blues. Oh, I admire this Southern vernacular of yours! Never mind what I paid, you wouldn't believe the bargain, in any case. Oh, it's still crying time for that unlucky gentleman, I can assure you.”

The car was a Ford, and it was massive. Leroy learned that it was called a Crown Victoria. It seemed as big as the
Queen Mary
. It was the most amazing thing Leroy had ever seen. Nothing about it seemed quite real. It was a color of green that was impossible to believe anyone had paid real money for when it was new. There was no describing the color, pea green, maybe, with wild metallic undertones. The tires were slick, the rust along the underside of the car was growing like a fungus, there were rust patches on the hood and top and trunk as well. Both sides of the windshield were busted into opaque spiderwebs in the shape of the heads that had tried to go through it. The trunk lid wouldn't shut.

The New Guy said, “It doesn't need a key.”

The steering column was cracked, Leroy noticed, as if the car had been stolen rather than purchased, so you could start it with a screwdriver.

Leroy sat in his seat and looked. He had never been inside such a car. He loved this car. Just sitting inside it, behind the busted windshield, beneath the tattered lining of the roof, in the stink of ancient mildew, he knew that life was good. He knew he had found a safe place, with people like himself. He had never seen a car quite so beautiful as this. What had he ever seen in Uncle Harris's little sportster? What had he been thinking when he admired Uncle Harris's puny little excuse of a car? That was no car. That was a shadow. This was a car. This was the car of Leroy's dreams. Good things could actually happen to a person who rode in this car. Dreams could come
true, broken hearts could be unbroken, lost love could be reclaimed. He wished his daddy could ride in this car, his mama, too. If they could ride together in this car they would fall in love all over again. They would go away on a second honeymoon, if they ever had a first one. If they owned this car, all happiness would be theirs, enough to share even with Leroy. The person who owned this car would have a magic charm against all future harm, and grief would have no sting.

Leroy was overcome with good feeling. He said, suddenly, “I'm riding shotgun.”

The New Guy had been dusting off the steering wheel with his handkerchief, finding the screwdriver beneath the seat, checking a road map for some unknown reason. His headdress kept getting in the way. Now he stopped all his busy-ness and looked at Leroy. He let out a breath, a sigh of gentle dismay. Oh callow youth, his sigh seemed to say.