Lightning Song (25 page)

Elsie said, “Oh, Laurie.”

They sat for a while and didn't say anything. Leroy was lying in his own bed picking at a scab on his heel. He kept listening. He heard his mama say, “Come here, sweetie.” Maybe she pulled Laurie close and held her. Maybe Laurie wriggled away. He couldn't tell. He could hear them, though. He knew that he would never love anyone as much as he loved Laurie.

Laurie said, “Tell him.”

Maybe Elsie looked at her. Leroy heard nothing for a while. Elsie said, “You mean Daddy? Tell him what?”

“I don't know.”

“He has to tell me, too.”

“I killed a dog.”

“My God, Laurie.”

Leroy listened for a while. They might have been crying, he wasn't sure.

Later he heard his mama say, “I don't know why I can't talk to him.”

I
t took Leroy a while to understand this, but when Harris moved out, Elsie moved up into the attic. At first she slept downstairs for a while and tried to act like everything was all right, but then that got too hard and so she moved out of the bedroom and into the attic. Leroy's daddy even helped her. They were separated, Leroy supposed. He had heard that expression and now it made sense. They scarcely spoke as they worked at moving Elsie's things upstairs, rearranging the furniture, adding things, taking others away. The move took place over several days, that was why Leroy didn't catch on right away. You could say the move was elaborate, even. Elsie found a small sofa in a used-furniture store and picked up an oak library table at Goodwill and refinished it herself. The sofa pulled out into a large comfortable bed, which she used at night instead of Harris's cot. The cot was long gone, out in the loft of the barn, dismantled and stored away. A table lamp with a green shade cast friendly shadows through the room. Leroy watched his mama carry up the wicker rocker from the porch. Harris had left his small TV and there was the phone, which Elsie used to talk to the Evil Queen most days. She referred to the attic as her “apartment” and encouraged the children to “visit” with her. She kept a few things in a tiny
refrigerator, which she bought on credit at Sears. She liked to keep a few bottles of Coke on hand to give them as special treats sometimes. She had to share the regular bathroom, downstairs, of course, but Leroy could see that that was not so bad. After school started, she took on a few more hours a week at her job in town and so Leroy didn't see much of her. Sometimes no one was home when he and Laurie got off the bus. Molly was staying half days in a nursery school in the village and had stopped wetting her pants altogether; it was odd that no one could remember exactly when that happened.

Swami Don kept up with the farmwork. He looked more like a convict than a farmer. Leroy had never seen anyone so sad. He dragged himself around the farm. His work clothes looked like a uniform. At meals he usually ate alone and he looked like a condemned man. Elsie seemed furious at him for being sad. One day she said, “If you just wouldn't look so stricken. Why do you always have to look so stricken?” He just looked at her. He couldn't think what to say. Leroy wouldn't have known what to say either.

One day Swami Don and Elsie happened to be standing in the kitchen at the same time. They usually avoided one another at mealtimes. Leroy was sitting at the table eating a peanut butter sandwich. Elsie was making herself a sandwich as well. Swami Don opened the refrigerator and seemed to forget they were not speaking and said, “Want a glass of milk with your sandwich?” Elsie's face flushed and she said, “You mopey son of a bitch.” He didn't even turn around, just kept
staring into the refrigerator. He said, “Fuck you.” She said, “How dare you.” He took out a bottle of milk and got a glass down out of the cupboard. He said, “Shut your ugly mouth.” The entire peanut butter sandwich seemed stuck to the top of Leroy's mouth.

Sometimes the children went up through the trapdoor at night and watched TV with Elsie. A few times Molly fell asleep on the sofa bed beside her and Elsie let her spend the night. Other nights Elsie stayed downstairs and sat on the sofa with a few pieces of mending or a book she was reading. These days seemed to Leroy almost like old times, almost normal. One night Elsie read an Ann Landers column to Swami Don before she realized this was not a thing she intended to do. Leroy watched to see if this would remind his daddy of Uncle Harris and make him angry, and it did not. Some days were not so bad.

The best day was when Leroy's daddy decided it would be a good thing for the children to have a pet. “Children need a dog,” he said. “What's the point of living on a farm if you don't have a dog?” Everybody knew he was still feeling guilty about killing the wild dogs, they figured this was his way of making amends, but that was all right, nobody blamed him, and a dog did sound like a good idea, it was an excellent idea, even Elsie had to agree. Swami Don said he had heard about a place way out in the country where he could get a good dog, free, too, had all his shots, Mr. Sweet told him about it, drew him a map out to the place. He said, “Y'all go on out to the pickup if you
want to go along,” so all three children went flying out the door and jumped up in the cab and fought for the seat next to the window. Elsie surprised everybody by saying she thought she'd go along for the ride, too. She said she had never heard of this place they were going.
Swami Don said, “It's way out in the boonies.” She said, “Are you sure you can trust Mr. Sweet's map?” It was pretty crowded with five people in the cab of the pickup, but they managed. They all squeezed in. Leroy said he'd sit in the bed with the new dog on the way back, Laurie said she would, too. Swami Don said if they sat back there they couldn't stand up, they'd have to sit down the whole way back. Elsie took the window seat and Molly got to sit in her lap, so everybody was more or less satisfied as they pulled away from the house and down the lane.

They drove and drove and left the paved road for a gravel road and then another mile or more down a dirt road that ended in an old trailer park. Mr. Sweet's directions were pretty confusing, but Swami Don said he guessed this had to be the place. Mr. Sweet had neglected to mention anything about a trailer park. All the trailers were old and in pretty bad shape, but some had porches and carports made of green plastic sheeting. A couple had flowers planted along walkways. There was one plastic swimming pool for little kids, left over from last summer, with green scum on the water. Leroy looked at all this, and looked left and right for some sign of a dog, but couldn't see anything promising.

Elsie said, “Are you sure you got the directions right?”

Swami Don said, “Well, I'm not sure.”

They drove very slow along a road through the trailer park until they saw a small crowd of men milling about. Swami Don pulled the truck over to the side of the lane and stopped. He said, “I guess this must be it.” He and Elsie opened their doors and all five of them got out and looked over at the men. The men were looking at an ostrich. The ostrich was six feet tall and must have weighed two hundred pounds, it had to, it was a seriously big ostrich. Leroy watched it walking around with great big round eyes. Every now and then it stopped and ate a little corn from a wooden tub. Leroy trailed his mama and daddy up close enough to get a good look.

A man was saying, “It bit me, that's all I'm saying.”

Another man was saying, “I ain't clear what you're trying to tell me.”

“I'm trying to tell you it bit me.”

“So you're saying this here ostrich bit you?”

“I could have been bad hurt.”

“From an ostrich bite?”

“You never know.”

“I never known this ostrich to bite.”

“It sure bit me.”

“I known him to kick.”

They started walking back to the pickup.

Swami Don said, “That was something.”

A woman in a housecoat called out the front door of one of
the trailers. She said, “Are y'all the ones Mr. Sweet sent out here for a dog? He won't hunt.”

That day ended well, with everyone smiling and throwing sticks for the new dog. Leroy looked at his parents and wondered how long this would last.

T
he worst day was when Elsie figured out that Swami Don had had a girlfriend out at the sporting goods factory. Once this leaked out, Leroy didn't have to be quiet to hear. The words came through the walls in Dolby stereo. Deaf people from miles around heard all about the girlfriend at the factory. It got nasty, Leroy would have to admit. Up to that point it had been a pretty good day, too, before this information slipped out. Elsie and Swami Don had been trying to “communicate.” That was the word Elsie used over and over these days. She was always “communicating.” Some days Swami Don would forget and just want to “talk,” but she always reminded him they weren't supposed to be talking, they were supposed to be communicating, anybody could just talk, that was the whole problem with their marriage, they'd always only just talked, never communicated, there was a difference, a big difference.

Leroy suspected the Evil Queen had come up with communicating. The Evil Queen was very modern. He could just hear the Evil Queen advising his mama to communicate. Elsie had been complaining to Swami Don that day that there was no romance in her life. That was the idea she was trying to
communicate. Even to Leroy she sounded like a broken record. Leroy could tell that his daddy was getting irritated. He looked like he had heard about enough about how unromantic he was. He had had about enough of this communicating, it was starting to get on his nerves. Elsie kept on communicating, she didn't let up. That was why she was so infatuated with Aldo Moro, Elsie explained, the romance aspect. “The romance that I'm missing on this farm, that's why I'm always reaching out for more.” That was why she—she kept this part vague—why she “did what she did” with Harris, was the way she put it that evening. Leroy could tell that Swami Don had communicated until he was blue in the face. One thing led to another. It was right after this that the Indian maiden problem started to unravel a little. At first Swami Don just said that she was a young woman at the plant, that was the way he communicated it, before he lost control of the situation. He kept it real vague. He hadn't meant to say anything about her at all. You could tell it slipped out. Elsie had complained that there was no romance in their lives and Swami Don said that there was so romance, there was plenty of romance in their lives if you just looked at it the right way, he'd talked all about it with this Indian maiden at the factory, Native American woman, he corrected himself, and she seemed to understand full well just how filled with romance their life was. “So I just wish you'd quit saying there's no romance,” he communicated through clenched teeth.

Elsie said, “Indian maiden?”

He said, “Uh—”

“You've been discussing our private life with an Indian?”

He said, “Roxanne is not really the point, Elsie, the point is the romance in our life. Let's try to stick to the subject, if you don't mind. Anyway, I shouldn't have said Indian. I meant to say Native American. Roxanne says In-din, I realize, but—”

She said, “Roxanne?”

He said, “For example, the lightning. That's really the point I'm trying to make here. I'd like for you to understand what I'm getting at. The lightning striking us is romantic, see? See what I mean? I'm seeing the lightning in a more positive light than maybe you're seeing it. Roxanne sure agreed with me that it seemed romantic to her. You ought to hear her go on about lightning. About the llamas, too. Roxanne really understands romance, she sees it the same as me.”

Elsie's voice had become quiet and steady, fierce, Leroy might have said if he could have thought of the right word. She said, “I see. And what else did you tell this Indian named Roxanne?”

“Well, I told her about the night you and me had to go out together to put the llamas in the sheds, remember? A storm caught us by surprise. Lightning had been arcing through the hills, the rain hadn't started up yet, and then all of a sudden it was right on top of us. We were running every whichaway, remember? We just about had the herd rounded up, everybody safe, when that tall cedar lit up. It just lit up. You couldn't have forgotten it, Elsie. The whole tree was surrounded in blue
light. You said it looked like a blue halo. And remember the smell? The whole world smelled like it had turned into a cedar closet just then. Remember that smell, how we just stood and breathed it in, again and again? Red resin bubbled down the side of the tree like paint, it coursed along the trunk. Splinters hung in the air. Remember, we said the splinters looked like ruby-colored hummingbirds. Great dark slabs of bark flew away from the tree like crows. Cedar needles blazed up in flames. That was the most romantic moment of my life. I told her about that, I sure did.”

“And this is what you told some Indian bitch? What does this Indian factory worker look like? Where did you do all this fancy talking? What's the name of that sleazy little motel near the plant, is that where you were? Is that where you got so poetic about lightning and llamas with an Indian? Lightning is not romantic, it's a curse. Lightning is the opposite of romance, you idiot. Even an Indian ought to know that. Roxanne, is that it, is Roxanne her name, is that what this romantic Indian who understands you so well calls herself? Well, that's fine, that's just great. What else did you do with this Indian, this so-called Roxanne person? How old is she, by the way?”

He told her everything, he couldn't seem to stop himself.

Oklahoma, Creek nation, nineteen years old (that was the story!), black eyes, her hopes, her dreams, a son she loved that reminded him of himself. He left out the abortions and alcoholism and the welfare. He didn't tell her about the kisses,
either, not right away, or about Roxanne getting naked. That would come later, when the screaming had reached a higher pitch. Elsie insulted him, he got madder, and then he told her that part as well. Leroy ran for cover. He put his hands over his ears, but he heard every word anyway.