Lightning Song (14 page)

He realized there were things he probably didn't understand. She frightened him with her hard way of seeing things. He stayed quiet. He looked again at the little beast. The llamas fur was coarse and stiff. The imprint of Laurie's boot toe stayed in the hide. Dust motes rose from it.

Swami Don said, “We'll have to drag it outside the fence. Maybe out to the ravine.” They kept standing there. No one moved. He said, “No sense inviting the rest of the pack in here to finish up.” They would have to cross the fence, of course, but firearm safety was always first in Swami Don's mind, everyone knew this. Leroy watched his daddy unload the rifle. It was a little tricky with just one hand, but Swami Don made easy work of it. He propped the rifle butt on his hip for support. He jacked the lever ten times, jacka jacka jacka, and the brass cartridges flew out the side to the ground until no more shells came out. Laurie gathered them up. When it was empty, Swami Don flipped the rifle out and grabbed it solidly by the curve in the stock and held it out to inspect the chamber. No shells, it was unloaded, he seemed satisfied. He left the chamber open. He said, “Well, I guess we better get busy.”

They were about to cross the fence when Leroy thought of the story of the day his daddy took a load of number six shot in the arm, his Old Pappy's shotgun, as they crossed a fence like this one. Swami Don propped the carbine against the strands of wire. He pointed down the fence to an open place
where the dogs had gotten through. A post had rotted, the fence had sagged. He said, “That's my fault. Later on I'll come back on the tractor. I'll bring the wire stretcher and some of that new wire in the barn.”

Laurie said, “Let me help.”

Leroy looked at her. At first he thought she meant she wanted to help with repairing the fence. Then he realized she was talking about the dead animal. Leroy kept watching. He didn't say anything. He hung back. He was a little scared of the death, he realized. The llama's head had flopped to one side and looked a little like Old Pappy the day he died and Leroy revived him. He wondered whether the dead llama could be revived. He imagined, for one bizarre instant, placing his lips upon the llama's lips and breathing life into the mutilated beast. Leroy imagined that he was responsible for all the suffering in the world. Swami Don stepped past Leroy and took the animal's foreleg in his good hand. He dragged the llama over to the fence and slung it underneath the bottom strand of wire to the other side. The animal was not large, about the size of a small goat, with a longer neck and longer legs. Swami Don took a breath. He was a big man and you could see he didn't relish crawling between the strands of barbed wire. He moved slowly. He lifted one wire with his hand and put his foot on a lower strand. He stretched the two wires apart to step through. You could see he didn't want to do this. For some reason he was resisting throwing this dead little innocent beast in a pit.

Suddenly Laurie said, “I'll do it.” Both Leroy and his daddy stood frozen at the fence and watched her. She pushed right past both of them, right up to the dead llama. Expertly she tucked the skirt of her dress into the top elastic of her underpants and scooted under the fence wire, through the opening that Swami Don had made. She moved nimbly, even in rubber boots.

Swami Don stood up straight and took his foot off the barbed wire. She was already on the other side. He said, “Laurie, no—”

Leroy couldn't move, he only watched. His sister amazed and frightened him, she was unpredictable. She lived in a world without dreams. He saw Laurie stoop down to the dead animal and take the flint-hard little hoof in her hand, a back leg. She gave it a tug and it moved easily, it slid along the Johnson grass. He watched his daddy allow this, he did not understand why. He watched again as Laurie started to drag the llama through the grass, and as Swami Don only stood and watched as well, though he must have known better. Leroy looked across the fence and watched his sister dragging the llama along behind her. She seemed strong. She moved at a good clip. She was dragging the dead beast out toward the woods, to the ravine, where it would not attract more dogs into the pasture. She was doing this thing that by rights was Leroy's daddy's job to do. Maybe it was not, maybe this was Laurie's job, somehow, maybe his daddy knew this.

Swami Don called, “Are you sure—?”

Laurie smiled back in their direction and kept moving. She moved so swiftly and put such distance between them Leroy could scarcely see her against the trees. Her yellow boots were the last of her to disappear into the trees. She was completely out of sight now. Swami Don hollered to her, or into the woods anyway, “Just keep going straight, honey. You'll see the ravine. You'll come to it.”

They waited.

Leroy said, “I was thinking of Old Pappy. In the attic.”

Swami Don looked at him.

“Why did he poison himself?”

Swami Don picked up the rifle. He looked at it, put it back against the fence. He looked again out into the woods. He didn't answer. They kept standing and waiting, looking out toward the ravine. They heard Laurie's voice coming from the deep shade.

She called, “I see it. I see the ravine. I'm almost there.”

Swami Don called, “Don't get blood on your dress.”

The wild dog was still out there, of course, the one that had killed the baby llama. It was out there somewhere. This was a thought that Swami Don seemed to have forgotten until this moment. Leroy hadn't thought of it either, until he saw panic sweep into his daddy's face. He felt the same panic sweep through his own heart like a bad rain. He felt dizzy with fear. He heard a clatter behind him. He looked back and saw woodland creatures, fourteen or fifteen of them, the weird flightless birds of Mississippi called swamp elves, two-legged,
three-toed beasts with long necks and wide, wild innocent eyes, strange beasts no more than a foot tall, running from a willow shade behind them across open ground in the direction of the trees. In an instant they were gone.

Swami Don cried, “Laurie! Come back now. Laurie! Answer me!”

Leroy thought about a man's putting his daughter at this kind of risk. He thought his daddy was, in a way, just like Old Pappy. He almost said this. He imagined Laurie then, in the woods, on the lip of the ravine. He wanted to imagine that she stopped there, looked gently on the dead animal at her feet. He wanted to believe that she stroked the strange ears of the creature, felt their coarse velvet. He wanted to hear her voice speak a benediction of gentle words, a prayer, a naming of the animal, a memory of its life in a pasture pulling grass with its teeth, its small voice in the singing of llamas, morning and evening with the mature beasts. But when he tried to imagine these things he saw instead the cold glare she had given him at the New People's gate when she had seen Molly's underpants in her boot. He saw her grim and serious at her work of hauling the llama by its glasslike hooves, taking a deep breath, then slinging the animal like a sack of flour off the cliff and into the rough trench down below. He saw blood on her hands. He heard the wilderness ring with a sound like bells, and knew she heard none of this. She made no judgments, so far as Leroy could tell. She embraced what was real, made it her own, even cruelty.

Swami Don called out again, took the rifle from the fence. He tried to prop it between his legs and dropped it to the ground. He picked the rifle up, very clumsy. His withered arm bounced this way and that. His infirmity was more obvious to Leroy than ever before. He fumbled in his pocket for cartridges. His pocket might as well have been sewn shut. He couldn't get his big hand in. Leroy could hear the shells clicking in there, but his daddy couldn't reach them. Swami Don tried to force his hand into the pocket. He pushed so hard the pocket ripped at the seam. It didn't matter to Swami Don. He jammed his hand in and pulled out the box of cartridges. The yellow pasteboard gleamed in the sunlight. He flipped open the box top with his thumb and when he did the box slipped out of his hand and fell against his knee before it hit the ground. Bullets spilled out everywhere. The brass casings looked ancient somehow on the grass, like teeth, prehistoric and inscrutable. Leroy watched in amazement. He watched his daddy kneel down and pick up some of the spilled bullets. He looked toward the woods, then his daddy looked out into the woods as well. Swami Don fumbled with the bullets and the carbine in the same hand, trying to get the rifle loaded, and as he did he dropped all the bullets again. Just then Laurie came running out of the woods, waving and smiling. Her boots were yellow as sunshine. Both Leroy and Swami Don stood and watched her. Her dress was still tucked into her underpants. Her skinny legs and bony knees gleamed like ivory. She raced up to the fence, grinning like a monkey.

Swami Don said, “Laurie, thank God.”

She untucked her dress and showed him the printed cloth. She held out her hands and showed him her hands, too. She said, “No blood!”

Leroy said nothing, there was no need. Leroy thought he might as well have been a figure painted onto the scenery of these two people's lives.

After a while they walked along the fence, the three of them. The pasture was golden in the sunlight. Leroy trailed behind. They stopped and talked, Swami Don asked Laurie questions, she answered them, then they walked again. They came to the spot in the fence where the dog had entered the pasture and stood regarding it for a while. The hole was very large, so they talked about this for a while. It was a wonder the whole pack hadn't strolled through, Swami Don said. Leroy could tell that his daddy was disgusted with himself for allowing such a thing to happen. A herd of llamas, milkers and all, could be destroyed overnight, Swami Don said, mostly to himself. He said, “It looks like I've got some work ahead of me.”

Laurie said, “Can we shoot?”

“Shoot?”

She said, “Before you have to mend the fence?”

Swami Don looked up at the sun. It was not late. There was still time to shoot. Leroy hoped his daddy would say, No, we've had enough excitement for one day, something like that. It was true, really. Leroy had had enough excitement. He was sick of excitement, if you wanted Leroy's opinion.

Swami Don said, “It's loud, you know. It hurts your ears.”

Laurie said, “I know.”

He said, “It kicks.”

She said, “It's okay.”

He jiggled the rifle in his hand.

“I guess we could get off a couple of rounds.”

She said, “Can I load it?”

Swami Don seemed pleased.

“I guess that would be all right.”

Swami Don gave her instructions and she filled the magazine.

“That's it,” he said. “Now crank the shell into the chamber.”

Leroy didn't say anything, he just felt like being quiet for now, for some reason. He stayed quiet for the whole long walk through the woods to the place where his daddy liked to go to shoot.

T
hey were standing in a clearing along the ravine. Behind them lay the woods and pasture and fence. In front of them was the deep cut through the wilderness. Swami Don explained again that this was the safest place to shoot, the ravine had steep soft banks, there was no chance of a ricochet, a stray bullet. They looked a long distance down to the bottom. They talked about what they might shoot at. Leroy said it was okay with him if Laurie wanted to go first, go right ahead.

Laurie's target was a two-liter plastic bottle, Coke, Diet Coke, something, the label was faded. People were always
throwing trash down this ravine. Swami Don moved up close to her side, helped her hold the gun. He told Leroy, “You stand right there, son, that's good, no sudden movements, stay well behind the shooter, you know all this stuff by heart, don't you?” He showed Laurie how to line up the notch on the rear sight with the raised front sight at the end of the barrel. Leroy was eaten up with envy, yet he stood apart. It wasn't only envy he felt. He was always filled with wonder in the presence of his sister. It was no different this time, it was more wonderful in fact. She looked beautiful and strange holding this gleaming, rich-wooded, sweet-smelling rifle. She looked dangerous, and Leroy loved this about her. Laurie was holding the rifle to her shoulder. “I've got it,” she whispered. “I can see the front sight.”

“Excellent,” Swami Don said, almost whispering himself. “All right now, line both of them up with the Coke bottle, your target, you know.”

Laurie automatically took a deep breath and exhaled evenly, without being told.

Swami Don said, “Can you see it?”

Leroy watched him adjust her elbow slightly.

What happened next caught Leroy by surprise. A sudden shock of sound, a violent crack, seemed to strike him in the face, that's how unexpected Laurie's first shot was. From the look of wide-eyed surprise on his face, Leroy's daddy was no less astonished. The wilderness clattered. Birds startled from the trees. A rabbit sprang from the brush. An echo as crisp as
a thunderclap smacked the three of them square in the face, two slaps in one second, like a forehand and a backhand. The echo was already back from the opposite face of the ravine. The gunshot and the echo seemed simultaneous sounds. The fire from the barrel and the ringing in their ears were simultaneous.

For what seemed like a long time, then, the sound of the shot, and its echo, traveled away from them. They seemed to diminish in size, as if into the distance. They became a distant rumble, a memory, a prayer. They seemed to reach the river and catch a current and glide away on the moving stream.

Leroy blinked his eyes. He opened his jaw to click open his ear passages. His daddy did the same.

Laurie brought the rifle down from her shoulder. She shucked out the spent shell and sent a live round into the chamber. The three of them looked down into the ravine. The plastic bottle was split wide open. It was hardly recognizable. It lay several feet farther down the gully from where it had been. Swami Don turned to Laurie. Probably he was going to congratulate her. Good shot, maybe he was going to say. Or maybe he would have scolded her mildly for firing without first letting him know, waiting for the go-ahead. “From now on, give me a signal of some kind, okay.” Maybe that was what he would have said, if there had been an opportunity. Or maybe he just then noticed what Laurie had already seen, what Leroy would take another couple of seconds to pick up on. The pack of wild dogs that had been sleeping in a camouflage
of wild brush and cane, far down the length of the ravine, now roused itself at the sound of the gunshot. The dogs milled about, anxious and nervous, seven or eight of them, on the lip of a gravel bar. One of these dogs had killed the llama. Maybe Swami Don only meant to say, You see there, see what I mean, this is proof of the need for good fences, didn't I tell you, didn't I say I had work to do before the end of this day? He didn't say any of this, though. He didn't say anything. He didn't get a chance. Just before he might have spoken one of these fatherly thoughts, both Swami Don and Leroy witnessed something completely unexpected. This was the most amazing thing either of them had ever seen. They watched as Laurie took a deep breath, her second in this brief space. A second time they watched her exhale. A second time, too, the wilderness exploded with gunfire. Laurie had aimed and squeezed the trigger.