Lightning Song (15 page)

When Leroy heard that shot, even before he understood that one of the dogs had crumpled and lay dead on a spit of the gravel bar, whole worlds, some of them not yet even a part of his experience, opened wide to him, the white and red of the fair fleet limbs of gods, the steel shields of their eyes, the pomp and peacocks, the sun's disk crescent over a hill at dawn, the aura, the halo of lightning as it strikes a pine tree and ten gallons of pine sap boil up out of the trunk. The pack was scattering. The dogs ran every which way at once. They ran up the ravine, down the ravine, into the brush, the cane, around the
bend, out of sight. The dog that lay dead was a big shepherd-looking creature. A bright red gash was visible in its side, even at this distance.

There was nothing to say. No one could think of anything. Leroy sure couldn't. They stood around together until the wilderness seemed to calm down again. The clatter of their hearts was not so loud. All the birds had flown. The swamp elves had all run away, like tiny ostriches. No one could have said whether they could still hear the distant river.

One of the dogs was dead. The baby llama was dead. Old Pappy was dead. Leroy watched Swami Don take the rifle from Laurie and unload it. He cranked the lever and kicked out all the shells, live and spent. Laurie gathered them all up and put them into a pocket of her dress. Swami Don carried the rifle. The three of them made their way in silence, back across the pasture, in the direction of their house.

M
any years later, after he was all grown up and had gone away to college, Leroy read a story in
Ficciones
by the writer J. L. Borges. In it a character recalls a detective story he once read in which there was an inexplicable murder in the first pages, a slow investigation in the middle ones, and then a solution in the end. After the mystery had been solved, the speaker says that he then noticed a sentence he had paid no attention to before. The sentence is, “Everybody believed that the two chess players had met by chance.” This sentence makes clear
that the solution by the detective in the story is the wrong one. Then the perplexed reader rereads the misleading chapters and finds
another
solution, the right one.

Just as Swami Don, Laurie, and Leroy reentered the yard from the pasture they saw Elsie rush from the house, out the back door. She was waving something above her head. She was calling, “Donald! Donald!” Leroy stopped walking and looked, they all did. Leroy's mama ran in their direction, out of the house, down the path, clumsy, wild, distraught, as if with grief. She stopped. Leroy knew that she could have been an actress in a movie. She stood with her legs apart, her arms outstretched, in extravagant feeling.

She called out to her husband, “Only of love, my darling, do I want to talk. Only of you, whom I love, will always love, of the gratitude I owe you, of the inexpressible joy you gave me. I only want your hands to hold, the embrace of your strong arms. Disasters will follow disasters. Blood will always spill. And always only you will I love.”

For one moment, shining, fleeting, Leroy believed in silken dreams, their sweetness more ruby-throated than prayer, their efficacy more pure than geology. He loved his mother, he loved his father and sisters, the llamas and dogs and Old Pappy, even death, in the odorous apple, the song of cardinals, the red of poppies. Leroy saw the streets of a perfect town, its spotted trees, the dull lozenges of its paint and hardware store, a reverberant sun upon greenhouses, a long windowless
hospital wall bright with fresh whitewash. For one moment he believed in true love, which had once been his parents' to own and had come back fully.

The key sentence in Borges's story is translated “Everybody believed that the two chess players had met by chance.” The key sentence in Leroy's mama's outpouring was, “I only want your hands to hold, the embrace of your strong arms.”

Hands? Arms? Two of each?

The thing Elsie had been waving above her head was one of Harris's newspapers, a late edition maybe, or maybe it was a page from her scrapbook. In it was published a letter from Aldo Moro to his wife, Noretta. These romantic words upon Elsie's lips were the last Aldo Moro would ever speak, with tongue or pen.
Always only you will I love
.

“Did it kick?” Leroy would later ask Laurie about the rifle.

“Yes.”

“Did it hurt?”

“I liked it.”

“I kiss you. I hold you, my dearest,” Leroy's mama concluded, speaking from the memorized letter, there on the path that led into the pasture. “Oh, I kiss you.”

“H
ope this is okay,” the New Guy was saying with a bright smile on that warm, clear evening when the New People stopped by for a visit. Leroy had seen them walking up the path toward the house and he followed along behind them. He saw his mama see them, too, and watched her get up from the wicker rocker and open the screened door and invite the two of them up on the porch. Leroy came inside, too, trailing along behind. Leroy's daddy was already home from work. He was all cleaned up and had finished supper and was sitting out in the breeze in his khakis and sockfeet. He stood up from the glider and made sure his shirt was buttoned up and his belly wasn't showing from beneath it and came to the screened door to greet the New People, along with Elsie. Laurie and Molly were back in the house somewhere, so when they heard the commotion they came out and sneaked looks at the New People from around the doorjambs. The New Guy
was saying that he and his wife had begun to know the children, especially Leroy here, he said—he said this with a firm, confident wink in Leroy's direction—“We had a nice trek together one afternoon with Mr. Sweet,” he went on, and so now he thought it was high time to get to know the children's parents as well. “Hope an impromptu visit like this is okay with everyone, not an intrusion.” Leroy listened. The New Guy did not say you sam. He was not British, and not in costume, did not seem strange at all. He wore casual clothes, jeans, shirt, sneakers. Both of them did. His wife was not a señorita. The New Guy passed some object he'd been holding to Leroy's daddy's hand. “Not at all,” Leroy's mama was saying, “please come in, I haven't been much of a neighbor, I'm afraid.”

Swami Don did not react right away—he had stood up and come to the door, all right, so he was not impolite, but once he was there he seemed incapable of anything else, he didn't actually speak to the guests, only stood and looked at them as if he had been taken completely by surprise. In fact, Leroy realized he had been taken by surprise. He'd been handed something, which he'd taken in his one good hand, and now seemed to have concentrated all his attention on this object, so there was no energy left over for anything else, even the smallest of conversation. He held the object he'd been given, he regarded it—Leroy would have said suspiciously if he could have thought of the right word. It was something contained in a brown paper bag.

“Well, let's see,” Elsie said to Swami Don. She meant the
small gift he had just received. “Don't keep us in suspense. What is it?”

Laurie sat down on the glider. Leroy sat beside her. He wanted to get a good view of everything. Their arms touched, they sat so close. Leroy watched as his daddy realized he was holding something foreign in his good hand. It seemed not to have been handed to him but simply to have appeared there, as if by magic. It had come into his hand in a moment of confusion, during introductions. Leroy realized his daddy had missed the introductions, too. He might as well have been a sleepwalker. He had accepted the bag, whatever it was, automatically. He looked slowly down at the bag and could see now that it was a bottle of wine. Except for grog rations, this was the first alcohol to make its way into this house. It was the first time Swami Don had ever held a bottle of liquor in his hand. Leroy watched him closely. He stood holding the wine bottle by the neck like a chicken ready to be slaughtered for supper.

“And as long as we're making these introductions,” the New Guy went on saying, “well, let's do them right, make it formal, get them out of the way.” Leroy had never seen so bright a smile. He watched as the New Guy extended his hand in Swami Don's direction to be shaken. He spoke his name and the name of his wife, but the words made no impression on Leroy. He might as well have said, “We are the New People.” He did say, “At your service, sir.”

Leroy knew that an extended hand meant a handshake. And
he knew that with his daddy a handshake was impossible. He watched his daddy stare at the New Guy's hand as if it might be a snake. Swami Don was still holding the bottle of wine like a chicken by the throat. A few times over the years Leroy had seen a hand stuck out at his daddy in this way, at church maybe, at a PTA meeting when there was a new teacher, or down at Mr. Sweet's store. Usually the other person caught on quickly that Swami Don had no hand suitable for shaking and so the extended hand just went away and no one mentioned it. Once or twice he had managed a successful left-handed grasp. In this case, though, he was holding the wine bottle. No left-hand grasp was possible. There was no free hand. Leroy also realized his daddy could not speak, he could only stare. He had no skills to explain his situation. The New Guy had not yet realized that Swami Don's arm was withered and useless. He kept holding his hand out expectantly. The smile stayed bright.

In the confusion there must have seemed only one thing to do. Leroy watched the twisting of his daddy's face as this conclusion seemed to be reached. Leroy knew it was a mistake, what was about to happen, but there was nothing he could do to stop it. He watched as his daddy maneuvered his good left arm, the hand with the wine bottle in it, until that hand was under his tiny right wrist. Leroy watched him lift the lifeless arm with the other arm. He watched him extend his useless, pale baby-hand straight out to be shaken. Leroy looked at the New Guy. He must have caught on by now, he had to have. But
no, he had not. He still did not know that the hand in front of him could not be shaken. He did not understand at all the extent of Swami Don's confusion and ineptitude. Abruptly then, in a manly way, the New Guy seized the diminutive hand in front of him in his own and gave it so hard and ringing a handshake he might have been trying to tear it off and throw it out the window. The wine bottle dangled wildly below the handshake like a clapper in a wildly clanging bell. Bells seemed actually to be clanging in Leroy's mind and heart as he watched.

The moment went on forever, it seemed to Leroy, but it had to end eventually. Eventually the New Guy would have to see what he had done. The knowledge came to him too late. He was already in midhandshake, pumping away. He was slinging Swami Don's hand this way and that, every which way. What a handshake it was. It was surely a world-record handshake. No hand was ever shaken so thoroughly as this. Even good hands, real hands, unmaimed and unmutilated hands, would have had a hard time withstanding this handshake. It went on and on, even after it was clear what had happened, what a mistake had been made. Even now that he knew what he was doing, the New Guy seemed unable to stop. Handshakes have a momentum, their own life, they are unmanageable once they are set free. He shook and shook and shook and shook, already embarrassed and remorseful, and yet unable to stop shaking, pumping, ringing. At last he did stop. At last he dropped the hand, more than dropped it, slung it
away from him like something hot. The hand seemed now to take flight it was cast away with such force. It seemed to Leroy to spin out into the air like a Frisbee, it seemed to hang suspended. The hand became a great bird hanging on a column of air. Actually, it was still propped upon Swami Don's good hand.

For a moment then no one moved, no one spoke. Elsie was a deer caught in the headlights. She could not move. Finally she did move. The New Guy said, “Oh! I'm sorry, I—” Elsie took the bottle from Swami Don. She smiled. She seemed calm. She said, “Here, honey, I'll take that.” She stripped the paper bag away from the bottle and held the bottle up to look at it. She was smiling. To Leroy she seemed to have done this every day of her life. Leroy's daddy's face was a mask. The others smiled and chatted, but he seemed unable to say anything at all. The New Lady produced a knife with a corkscrew in the handle and expertly uncorked the bottle. Elsie went into the kitchen and came back with four glasses with Peter Pan figures on them. She said, “Okay, who's Captain Hook and who's Tinker Bell?” The New Guy said, “Ah yes, that would be us.” The New Lady said, “Wherever did you
find
these?” Leroy's mama said, “Aisle 3.” When everyone laughed, Leroy knew this was a fine day for Elsie Dearman.

The New Guy poured wine for everyone. He lifted his glass for a toast. “To our beginning,” he said. Everybody clinked glasses. Leroy kept his eyes on his daddy, who did not raise his glass for the toast. He seemed unaware of the presence of anyone
else on the porch. The wine had hypnotized him. Leroy watched as Swami Don looked down at the glass of wine in his hand. He watched as Swami Don failed to clink with the others. He watched him hold it to his face. Swami Don looked into the purple liquid as if it were a magic well. He looked like a man contemplating three wishes. He stuck his nose deep inside the glass.

The New Guy sipped from the rim of his glass and noticed Swami Don at his strange ritual.

The New Guy said, “Fruity?”

Swami Don kept on breathing the fragrance of the wine. He looked up. He said, “What?”

The New Guy said, “Would you say it has a fruity smell?”

Leroy watched his daddy put his nose back into the peanut butter jar.

“Flowers,” he said. “It smells like flowers.”

The New Lady said, “Excellent.”

The New Guy said, “Why did I take a class when I am living next door to an expert?”

Next Elsie put her glass to her lips. She paused. Leroy knew that this was the first time she would have ever tasted alcohol. She had never even sipped from Uncle Harris's glass at grog rations. He watched as she tilted the glass. The wine slid up the side of the glass and into her mouth. He watched his mama taste alcohol for the first time. He watched her hold it in her mouth for several seconds. He watched her swallow. She brought the glass down then and Leroy watched her face and
saw what happened inside her as the wine went down. He saw a perfect inner warmth radiate throughout her whole self. He saw a network of countless invisible hot wires hurled out through her body from a single perfect source of heat. He watched everything. He could read all this in the small pleasure of her hooded eyes, the skin about her mouth. He believed that everything had suddenly changed, he was not sure why. He believed—though he could only sense this at some vague core—that some enormous new thing was about to happen, maybe even to himself. He looked back at his daddy, who watched Elsie even more closely than Leroy did. Swami Don looked as if he expected to see horns pop out from his wife's forehead and a tail with a spear-point unfurl from the base of her spine. She said, “Mm.” She put her jar down on the table. She was Wendy. She said, “Flowers,” nodding, thoughtful. “Yes, flowers is right.” Swami Don nodded with her, the flowers of death, yes. “Fruity, too,” she said, with a small smile in the New People's direction. “The forbidden fruit that leads to the grave,” Leroy heard his daddy suddenly say without meaning to do so. Swami Don let out an abrupt little scream. Leroy thought Swami Don would be humiliated, but he was not. He did not know he had screamed and the others paid no attention, or took this to be a joke. Elsie was not finished. She said, “Nutty.” The New Lady broke into tiny applause, literally, and startled Leroy. She said, “Oh, my, that was impressive.” Elsie took another sip, a gulp actually. She said, “It's like holding acorns in my mouth.”