Lightning Song (18 page)

There was no moon that night, the storm clouds were gathering, so he kept his strong left hand firm upon the wheel. Over time Leroy grew uncertain how much of this he knew to be true and how much he had imagined. The road was a winding one, newly surfaced and smooth but with no lines yet painted to mark the center or the edges. The darkness seemed very deep. Swami Don kept leaning over the steering wheel, peering out at the roadway bathed in yellow light. He was trying to assure himself that what he saw was only a roadbed, only the headlights, the graveled berm, a few other cars along the way, road signs, shadows. He couldn't believe a person raised Pentecostal could do what he was about to do. Or maybe it was only Leroy himself, later on, who would have a hard time believing the events of this night could have happened.

Later, Swami Don could not have described the motel where he stayed for two hours before work that night. Not the parking lot, the name of the inn, the key he must have used to open the door. Was there an ashtray, a Bible, a matchbook? Was there a desk, a television set, telephone? There must have been a window, drapes, a picture on the wall. He was not sure. He couldn't remember. There had to have been drapes, they were well hidden in there.

There was a bed, of course. That he was sure of. The Indian woman named Roxanne had sat naked propped against the pillows.
And a chair, too, there was a soft chair. He remembered sitting down when they first checked in, so yes, there was definitely a chair of some kind.

The rain had begun, was lashing the streets, the parking lot, outside the motel room. There was thunder in the hills, probably above his own house.

There was a mirror in the room, he remembered seeing himself. Most of these things he remembered much later, after Elsie knew, after even Leroy knew about some parts of that day. The details eventually came back some. Roxanne was only a girl, really, nineteen years old, she told him. When he first noticed her at the factory, as he was making his rounds of the key stations with the leather-cased clock slung over his shoulder, she smiled at him. Her straight white teeth in that dark face brightened dark corners all around. He gave a casual, left-handed salute from the brim of his hat and even winked. He knew for certain he had never before winked at anybody in his entire life. And that salute—where did it come from?

Roxanne worked in Screw Machine. She fed long brass rods into seven machines, breech and feeder and threader. The noise was unbelievable, a constant high-pitched squeal. She poured sweet-smelling oil over the action, to cool the metal. At the other end of the machines screws by the thousands clattered out of a chute and piled up in metal bins, a different-sized screw from each machine. Brass shavings piled up all around, like spun gold.

Roxanne was not beautiful. Though her hair was long and blue-black, it was bundled up under a hair net to keep it free of the machinery. Beneath the dark rust color of her skin lay a pallor, not of sickness, only a bone-weariness, the product of constant noise, the brutal hours of the graveyard shift, the strain of whatever life she lived beyond these factory walls. Her face was pitted in several places with scars that must have been left by chicken pox or acne. She was not fat but not shapely either, with a wide, flat butt and sturdy legs. She wore earplugs to protect her hearing from the incessant din of the machinery.

To Swami Don she was the most fascinating, the most exciting woman he had ever seen. She looked nothing like Elsie, or like Hannah, whom he also thought were beautiful. Roxanne's particular beauty, if that was what it was to be called, was electric. The sharp shock of coming upon her in the factory, even when he expected to see her, caused him to remember the wonderful terrors of first love. The exotic copper color of her flesh, the high cheekbones, the bright smile, her amazing youth! He imagined her hair net to be a beaded band, crafted by old squaws sitting together in a circle of light by the fire. It was a full headdress, made of the feathers of eagles. The screw machine key, which she carried on a string around her neck, he imagined to be a necklace made of squash blossoms. He thought of his own passing youth, of his daughters and son, who seemed always so unhappy these days. He wondered if he was the cause of their unhappiness. He wondered
what his own sad youth and dead mother and inept father had to do with tonight, with his children's lives. He imagined drums and horses and spears and paint.

Conversation was almost impossible in Screw Machine. Once in a while Roxanne took out one of the oil-filled earplugs when Swami Don was on his rounds and waited for him to come near. He stopped and they shouted greetings and pleasant words into one another's ear.

Other times they talked in the break room over coffee. She told him she was Creek, a full-blood. She came from Oklahoma, had moved east to try to make a break with the past, start a new life. She said she didn't want to end up smoking cigarettes and shooting pool and drinking Blue Ribbons out of long-neck bottles in an Indian bar. She pronounced the word
Indian
as In-din.

He told her he was married and in love with his wife and didn't think his wife loved him. He said he thought his wife wished she could make a new start. He said he thought she would probably be happier with somebody else. He told her about his arm, the accident when he was a child, how his hand flew up and slapped him in the face.

She told him a few things about herself, too. She said, “I'm moving up in the world.”

He said, “Mississippi doesn't seem like much of a step up from Oklahoma.”

They smiled, maybe sadly. This was when they started talking about maybe going to bed together. They touched hands
sometimes. That was about all, for a while. When he stood close to her sometimes she would lean against him so that he could feel her breast briefly against his arm.

She said, “It won't be the first time I been with a married man.”

Swami Don was shocked, but he said nothing.

She said, “Or a one-armed man neither, come to think of it,” and both of them laughed.

A few times, in the first light of dawn, after their shifts were finished and Swami Don had made his last round of the warehouse and plant and had raised the American flag on the flagpole in front of the factory, they stood in the parking lot among the parked cars and kissed. After work they usually sat for a while in his pickup and mostly talked.

Once when they were kissing he held her breast for a while in his good hand. They agreed to meet at a motel near the plant. He said he would call next time he filled in. That's when they would do it.

She said, “If you change your mind, that's all right.”

He'd said, “I was brought up, you know, pretty strict.”

She said, “If you call, you call. If you don't, you don't.”

He met her in the motel parking lot. He handed over the money to the person at the front desk. He opened the door to the room for her and followed her inside.

For a moment they only stood and held one another, just inside the door. They kissed a couple of times and stepped apart. Swami Don was trembling.

Roxanne began to undress.

Swami Don knew almost right away that he would never go through with what they'd planned. When he looked into the mirror and saw himself, that's when he knew for sure.

He said, “Uh, Roxanne—maybe you'd better not.” Take off her clothes, he meant.

She had her back to him when he spoke. She'd just taken off her shirt and bra. She paused for a moment, didn't move or turn around. She laid the bra on the end of the bed next to her shirt and sat down on the edge of the bed and went on undressing. Each boot she pushed off with the toe of the opposite foot. The boots were worn and cracked with tooled swirls engraved in the leather, the heels were run down. She unhitched the silver buckle of a tooled-leather belt and pulled her pants down over her feet and laid the pants out with the other articles of clothing. She took off her underpants, which Swami Don noticed were new and still had a tag on them. She was fully naked now.

Across the hills the lightning was flashing, the thunder rumbled outside the motel walls. Swami Don thought of his wife and children asleep in their beds, of Leroy, his strange and distant son. He saw in the mirror that he was still wearing his rolled-brim cowboy hat. He took off the hat and held it in his hands.

He said, “I can't, Roxanne. I'm sorry.”

Roxanne still didn't speak. She turned and pulled back the covers of the bed. He saw her fully naked now. The bush of
black hair between her legs was as dense as a jungle. It seemed to grow out of control, from hip to hip. Her nipples were so dark they seemed black. She propped both pillows together against the headboard and got into bed and sat leaning back against them.

She said, “I know you love your wife.”

Swami Don sat in a chair across from her and laid his hat on the floor beside him.

“It's not that,” he said. “I'd probably do it anyway, if it was only that.”

Roxanne was patient, requiring little. She kept on sitting there, in the bed, with her legs stretched out.

She said, “What's your wife's name?”

He didn't look straight at her at first. Then he did.

He said, “Elsie.”

Her head moved up and down, only slightly.

She said, “Elsie.”

“Yes.”

She sucked her teeth in a quiet way.

She said, “Ain't that a cow's name?”

He said, “Are you angry with me?”

She took one of the pillows from behind her back and put it in her lap and folded her hands and laid them on the pillow. She seemed very young.

“Borden's, yes,” he said, finally.

“Right. Right.”

“‘Milk from contented cows.'” He shrugged, unhappily.

“I thought I remembered that.”

“Except my Elsie's not so contented.”

Roxanne lifted her breasts in her palms and set them comfortably on the pillow.

She said, “Anyway.” She said, “I guess we agree on one thing.”

Swami Don looked at her.

She said, “She's a cow.”

They both laughed, sadly.

Swami Don said, “Well—”

She said, “I should talk, with this set of jugs.”

He said, “You're beautiful.”

She shook her head.

“No way.”

She reached to the foot of the bed and snagged her bra and put it on.

She said, “I'm saving up my money.”

Swami Don didn't ask what she was saving for.

He said, “It's this uniform.”

She just sat there, in her bra. She unfolded and then folded her hands again.

He said, “I can't explain it.”

Roxanne said, “You don't have to explain it—”

He shook his head. “I'm not sure.”

She grabbed her shirt and swung her legs over the side of the bed and started to dress.

She said, “Listen to that thunder.”

He looked out at the flashes of light in the distance.

“
Somebody's
taking a pounding.” She looked at him. She said, “Didn't mean to make no pun.”

She pulled on her boots and stood to check herself in the mirror. She turned and sat at the foot of the bed and leaned in toward Swami Don, with her forearms resting on her thighs like a man.

She said, “Okay, listen. I'm going to enlighten you about some stuff most folks don't know about me, so get ready, here it comes. You're a pretty good-looking boy, buckaroo. Gimp arm and all. I seen plenty worse. I fucked most of them. Took money for it sometimes. Plenty of times. And me just nineteen years old. Drugs for payment, other times. Sometimes I did it for nothing at all. Not even the common courtesy of their name. I knowed that, afterwards, I'd probably go back to the trailer park with a dose, or the crabs. I didn't care. Didn't make no difference to me. Just so I didn't have to be by myself. And take a good look at me, while you're at it. Do you really believe I'm nineteen? If I'm nineteen years old I'm also the king of Norway and a virgin. I'm twenty-eight years old, cowboy. This is where I'm at, right here, and this is what I'm doing, right now. The hair net and the smock I wear in the plant, to keep from getting sucked into one of them machines, ain't exactly the uniform that fully expresses my inner self, like you seem to be trying to tell me about that monkey suit you're wearing. And it strikes me as the complete and living end that a semi-fucked-out bitch like myself would get a job in a factory running an apparatus called a screw machine.
Don't that one just take the cake, for real? Somebody must of seen my resume, put me right on the floor. ‘Put that one in Screw Machine, hell, make her the foreman.' So next time you're praying for true love, buckskin, you tell whoever it is you're praying to that Roxanne said go fuck hisself. Except my real name ain't even Roxanne, it's Darla, and if I begin to sound bitter, you can start your philosophical and psychological analysis of me and the universe with the drunk squaw-slut who give me birth and saddled me with that stupid name, my mama. I'd trade Darla for Elsie any day of the week, believe it. Elsie is an excellent name compared to Darla. Are you beginning to get the drift of what I'm saying? I ain't going to bother mentioning the abortions and the child, a little boy, that the welfare took away from me and put in foster care. Let me spell it out for you. I got no business being here, in this motel, in this room, with you. To me, you're dangerous as poison. I could fall in love with you. I'm already in love with you. I been in love with you since the minute I first seen you. I been dreaming about you all my life. You didn't know I was a romantic fool, did you? Well, I am, sure as shit, romantic right down to the bone. When I imagine the perfect life, you want to know what I think about? I think about being married to you, sleeping beside you on the farm, milking them goddamn llamas you told me about. What the fuck is a llama anyway? It ain't nothing like an ostrich, is it? There's ostriches all over the goddamn state of Miss'ippi, have you noticed that? Sumbitches run wild. You don't need no uniform to make me
fall in love with you. You don't need that bad-ass cowboy hat and nightstick and badges. You could wear a grass skirt and a bolo tie and, to me, you'd still be the world's most perfect man. It's wrote all over you. If your ungrateful cow of a wife ever takes off and leaves you, well, fuck it, Jack, you're still ahead of the game, you've still got a good life, because you are who you are, can't nothing change that, can't nobody take it away. All right, end of confession, end of sermon. We got to go to work, we got to get out of here, see. But just let me tell you this one thing first, one more thing. I'm lucky, too. You didn't know that, did you? You thought I was just somebody you could fuck or not fuck, depending on how your uniform fit you right at that particular moment, depending on whether you felt like shedding the perfect outward expression of your innermost self and getting yourself a piece of pussy or not. That's what you thunk, wasn't it, asshole? Well, that's where you're mistaken, see. I'm here to tell you, I'm a lucky woman. I'm bitter, all right, so be it, and I'm resentful, ain't got over that yet neither. And I still fall in love with the ones I can't have, I'm addicted to romance, ain't that the shits. Don't romance just chap your fucking ass? But I'm out of Oklahoma, partner. That's victory, right there. It ain't no small thing. I had the courage to get out, leave it behind. The brown state, that's how I think of it, Oklahoma. Treeless as the fucking moon. Home of Oral Roberts University and Roman Nose State Park. I come from there to here, to Miss'ippi, see, the Magnolia State, all the way out here to this green paradise with its
awful reputation, and I'm happy. I'm a lucky girl. If you ain't from Oklahoma, you don't know what I mean. You might not think it's a big deal—Oklahoma, Miss'ippi, take your pick, you might be thinking. But take my word for it, there ain't no comparison. Another thing I'm lucky about. I'm out of the business, you know, peddling pussy. Two years, I ain't bartered or sold. That's another big deal for me. It's like a world's record, a personal best. You might take it for granted, but I don't, not me. Three, I'm off of everything, all substances, and I mean everything, boy, smack, crank, perks, blow, rock, no needles, whiskey, beer, grass, nothing. I go to them meetings. I went to one before I come here tonight. I don't even drink none of them piss-tasting Coors Lights, God's revenge on the cowboys and Indians, a western curse. I got friends now, too, I got a good-paying job with a job description that makes me laugh sometimes, on my better days, Screw Machine. Nobody but you knows my name is Darla. I got a letter from the welfare in Oklahoma City, talking about letting my little boy come live with me on a trial basis. Scares me to death, but that's all right. Scared ain't the worst thing I ever been. And one of these days, if I live long enough, I'm finally going to get around to forgiving my crazy-ass mama, too, for what she never meant to do anyway. Everything will happen in its turn. First things first, like they say in them church basements. I ain't saying my life is perfect, or even good. It ain't worth a shit by most standards I can think of. I ain't what you call fully evolved or nothing. Forgiving God for putting me in Oklahoma,
for example, is going to take a little longer. I ain't sure they got enough steps in that goddamn program to cover Oklahoma. They might need to add a couple more.”