Lightning Song (26 page)

She screamed, “You fucked an Indian? You spoke intimate secrets!? Did you tell her you loved her?
Do
you love her?”

“Elsie, stop calling her an Indian. It's—I don't know— I wish you would stop. And I didn't say I actually—”

She said, “That's pathetic, that's just pathetic.”

He said, “The point is not really Roxanne anyway, it's lightning.”

She said, “All right then, while your son was getting raped by a majorette and struck by lightning, you were spending our money on a motel where you could fuck a factory worker. Is this the true meaning of the lightning? Is this the romance you are speaking of?”

They moved into the bedroom and slammed the door—they must have realized Leroy was listening—but they were screaming so loud Leroy had no trouble hearing. His daddy was warming to the fight now. He was shouting as loud as Elsie. He said, “Does it matter to you one iota that over two thousand people in the United States last year were struck by lightning, that our son was lucky enough to be one of them?” Leroy could hear Swami Don pacing around in there behind the closed door. Swami Don said, “Does it matter that five hundred of those people died and he didn't? He'll carry that
magnificent moment with him for the rest of his life, Elsie. Can you imagine the people who would give anything to wear those scars, those badges? He's the luckiest person in the world, we're lucky to be his parents. Our son was chosen, Elsie, by the universe, he is special, he hit the meteorological lottery! Can you understand a word I'm saying? One half of all farm fires—lightning! Our farm is one of them! Seventy-five thousand forest fires a year—lightning! Our woods and fields are smoking. Millions of tons of nitrogen released into the atmosphere, carried to earth on raindrops—every year, Elsie! On our property! Lightning is the source of life on our planet, our island home! Our farm, our son! They are the source of life!”

Leroy heard his mother's voice then. Something had changed, softened. She said, “Come to bed, Donald.” Leroy came close and put his ear to the door. He heard a rustle of clothes. He recognized the sound as clearly as if he'd been in the same room with them. His mama was starting to undress. His daddy raved on and his mama was getting naked. “Think about Ishmael!” he heard his daddy shout. Elsie said, “Come to bed, Donald.” Leroy imagined her outstretched arms. Swami Don's voice was almost a song, an incantation, now. He said, “‘The palsied universe lies before us like a leper, a monumental white shroud, and of all these things the albino was the symbol. Wonder ye then at the fiery hunt?' Melville, remember that? Remember when we first saw the llamas and we were memorizing Melville?” She said, “We'll talk tomorrow, come
to bed.” He said, “Ishmael is saying Ahab has to chase the white whale, it might be crazy, but he has to do it, nobody can fault him. The whale is the strange beauty at the center of the universe, at the core of life, you chase it if you are a good person, it chases you if you are blessed. We're blessed, Elsie, honey, blessed, Leroy, all of us, no matter the pain, no matter the enormity of our mistakes, the blessing won't fade, it's ours forever, all the pain of love is worth it if you're blessed with what we have, through ourselves, our son, all our children. You decide for yourself what romance is, everybody does this—or innocence, whatever you long for—you pick out the best symbol you can find, whales, llamas, lightning, it doesn't matter, so long as it is magnificent. Llamas are magnificent, Mississippi is magnificent, the red clay hills, the hardwood forests and swamp elves and bear cats and possums and lightning, oh my God, lightning is the most magnificent of all, Elsie! You've got lightning in your own backyard, angels of fire in your living room, in your plumbing, in our son's head and out his heels! Lightning is the symbol at the core. Choose a symbol worthy of a good man's love! Choose lightning, choose llamas, choose me!” “Make love to me, Donald,” Leroy heard his mama say. Swami Don was not finished. He said, “You know that story about Benjamin Franklin, the kite in the thunderstorm, remember that? Ben Franklin is a perfect example. He was one of the chosen ones, too, he was like us, when he started to fly that kite. Wasn't it raining? Did you ever think about that? How could he fly a kite in the rain? It
can't be done. You can't get a kite to fly at the beach half the time, let alone in the rain. That's with a decent kite, too, modern materials, balsa wood, plastic, printed-out directions on the package. Imagine the piece-of-crap kite Benjamin Franklin was trying to fly. What did he use, bedsheets and a couple of his father's neckties knotted up for a tail? It's ridiculous. That kite wouldn't fly. Tubby and Little Lulu might be able to get that kind of kite airborne, but no real person ever did, not without being special. And yet the lightning found him. I'll tell you something else about Benjamin Franklin. What about his wife? Have you ever given a minute's thought to Mrs. Franklin. She was as wonderful as Benjamin. What if she thought flying a kite in a rainstorm was a stupid idea, which I grant you it is, is one way of looking at it. What if Mrs. Franklin had said, ‘You are going to do
what
?' You are going to fly a kite in a rainstorm? Look at that ridiculous kite. You're not going to fly that piece-of-shit kite in a rainstorm. You're going to get your silly ass electrocuted, is all you're going to do. Forget the fucking kite. The kite is history.'” Leroy heard sounds after this that he understood very well. He covered his head with a pillow and blocked out the sounds of the bed and its inhabitants. He tried not to think of the ways a one-armed man makes love.

That night when Elsie came into his room, wearing her nightgown, to tuck Leroy in bed, Laurie was already in Leroy's room. She had heard the fight as well, and the aftermath, and she had been frightened. She had dragged a quilt
and her pillow with her and made a pallet on Leroy's floor. She told him she had heard the shouting and was scared. They were lying in the darkness, looking out at the clear fall sky outside the window, where moonlight hung like orange crepe paper in the tree limbs. Elsie came in and found them there and sat at the edge of Leroy's bed. She said, “Come on, I think we can all three squeeze in here for good night.” Leroy scooted over as close to the wall as he could and Laurie and Elsie managed to squeeze in beside him. They lay together in the silence. The new puppy was asleep at last. It had wet the floor a dozen times, it could never hit the paper, and nobody had the heart to make it sleep outdoors. Leroy began to feel sleepy.

Laurie said, “Tell the story.”

Elsie lay still for a minute. She said, “Well, let's see, the story, how does that old story go—?” Leroy and Laurie knew she was just teasing, she remembered the story.

Laurie said, “Daddy was your boyfriend, and he had an old car—”

“Oh, yes, that's right, I remember now, he had an old car, and so one day, late in the afternoon, when our college literature class had let out, he said he wanted to take me for a drive in the country.”

Laurie said, “You thought he wanted to kiss you.”

“Well, I sure did, that's exactly what I thought—”

Leroy said, “He did kiss you.”

“Later, he did, he most certainly did, but not right away,
that would be later, so okay, who's telling this story anyway?” The children snuggled down into the bed, they stayed quiet. Elsie said, “Daddy stopped the car beside a big field and turned off the engine.”

“That's when you heard them,” Laurie said.

“Right. We listened for a while, and then I heard them.”

“You thought they were horses at first.”

“You know this story better than I do.”

Leroy said, “Their hooves were flying. They sounded like thunder in the hills.”

“That's just the way it was. Thunder in the hills.”

“Then you saw them,” Laurie said. “They were magnificent. You had never seen anything so beautiful.”

“Their slender bodies, their long necks, legs so thin you wondered how they held them up,” Leroy said.

Elsie said, “I saw their pointed snouts and bulging eyes—”

“All colors—,” somebody said. “Rust and pure white and pure black and mottled.”

“—running for the fun of it,” somebody else said.

“Yes, sweethearts,” Elsie said. “Running and running, just for the fun of it.”

They lay together for a while in Leroy's bed in the moonlight.

Laurie said, “And then you fell in love?”

“Yes, honey, that was what happened. I fell in love.”

This was where the story always ended. Maybe sometimes
Elsie said, “And then my three little angels were born,” but the story of the day she first saw the llamas ended here.

This night, though, Leroy said, “But what does it mean?”

Leroy felt Elsie turn in the darkness to try to look at him. She said, “Mean?”

He said, “What does the story mean?”

Laurie said, “Yeah.”

Leroy felt his mama turn back and lean against the pillows again. He could hear her breathing. They were squeezed up in the little bed so closely he could feel her soft breath against his hair. She said, “Well, gosh, let's see. What does this story mean? Hm. Let me think— I never really considered it this way before. It means—I guess it means that true love lasts forever. That would be my guess. True love lasts forever, I believe that would be it. That's the meaning I suppose I'd have to give to the story about the day your daddy showed me the llamas, how beautiful they are when they run.”

Lewis Nordan is the author of three collections of short stories and four novels,
Music of the Swamp, Wolf Whistle, The Sharpshooter Blues,
and
Lightning Song.
His prizes include the Southern Book Critics Circle Award for fiction and three American Library Association Notable Book citations. Born and raised in the Mississippi Delta, he lives now in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, where he serves as Professor of Creative Writing at the University of Pittsburgh.

Grateful acknowledgment is made to the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts, where this book was written.

Published by

ALGONQUIN BOOKS OF CHAPEL HILL

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Chapel Hill, North Carolina 27515-2225

a division of

WORKMAN PUBLISHING

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New York, New York 10014

© 1997 by Lewis Nordan.

All rights reserved.

Cover design by Steve Brower.

This is a work of fiction. While, as in all fiction, the literary perceptions and insights are based on experience, all names, characters, places, and incidents are either products of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously. No reference to any real person is intended or should be inferred.

LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOGING-IN-PUBLICATION-DATA IS AVAILABLE.

eISBN 978-1-56512-764-7