Lightning Song Page 6

  Each day Harris slept late and Leroy found himself waiting expectantly for his uncle’s appearance. Each day when Harris finally emerged from the attic he was always wearing a long silk robe with a sash. He spent long hours in the bathroom. He used lotions and colognes. Each day he came out dressed in some new outrage of fashion. No one asked him about his clothing, there were other aspects of Uncle Harris’s personality that drew similar attention. His toilette was one. His indolence was another. He did nothing, absolutely nothing. He sat, he ate heartily, he made suggestions on improving the service, he asked people to bring him things, to adjust the fan so that it blew on him without ruffling his newspaper, he made himself comfortable, no one on earth had ever been so comfortable as Uncle Harris. Uncle Harris was the laziest man alive. Anyone would have agreed. Nobody held this against him, but no one could have failed to notice. He was not depressed, he did not sleep all day, he simply relaxed, his mood stayed high, his spirits were excellent. The work on the farm went on, and he did none of it. Leroy’s mama and daddy each had part-time jobs they sometimes worked at to help make ends meet. None of this bothered Uncle Harris in the least. If his brother and sister-in-law wanted to work, well, sure, work was an honorable thing, he fully approved, no need to be embarrassed, you go right on ahead, don’t let me stop you. In the meantime, he better check the sports page, that midseason pitching was beginning to heat up in Fenway, it looked like to Harris, real horse race shaping up in the American League, yessiree, go right on with your business, you ain’t disturbing me a bit, I mean it.

  Newspapers were Harris’s true love. He snuck in a dirty magazine, okay, that was true, hidden in a folded paper now and then, he had diversified interests, sure, but it was the newspaper that really captured his heart, he read as many of them as he could get his hands on, newspapers from all over the country. Uncle Harris was quick to make friends in the village, he found a newspaper supplier right away. There were so many of them, too, these newspapers. At the end of a day his hands would be black with newsprint. Why, he might have to bathe all over again. Who would have ever guessed there were so many different newspapers in the world, Leroy thought, they cost a fortune, must have, there were so many. When Harris finished reading one, he threw it on the floor. That’s all for that newspaper, let’s see now, where was the Post-Dispatch, I thought it was right here under the Commercial Appeal. Leroy’s mama was always having to pick up after Harris. He kept the newspapers stacked beside his chair and read one after another. By the time he was finished with them they were all over the house. It looked like a blizzard.

  Elsie said, “Maybe we should think about recycling.”

  Harris said, “I just read an excellent article about recycling scams, where was that piece, the Times I think, let’s see, I’ve got it right here somewhere.” Eventually he found the article proving the folly of recycling and the subject was dropped.

  Newspapers seemed a constant source of adventure. He loved to read aloud. He had a beautiful reading voice, it didn’t matter what he was reading. He could make serious things sound funny or even funny things sound serious. Leroy would have gladly done nothing during the day but sit in his uncle’s presence, in his lap if he would let him, but of course his mama wouldn’t hear of that. Indolence in others was not allowed. Harris was the only person on the property who was permitted to be a total bum. This seemed to Leroy simply to be the way of the world. Harris loved to read and he shared everything he read. He read to whoever happened to be in the room from whatever paper he happened to be making his way through. Ann Landers and the horoscope, of course, headlines, cartoons, Miss Manners, Heloise, the lives of others, in many forms, long articles on astronomy or anthropology, political pieces, op-ed pieces, book reviews, church bazaars, executions, plane crashes, disco artists, whatever caught his interest.

  “I’d love to go on a dig,” he’d say. “One of these days I’m going on a dig.”

  Leroy imagined going on a dig with him, or a safari, or deep-sea diving, or to the moon, whatever had caught Uncle Harris’s attention that day. Leroy noticed a look on his mama’s face one day that told him she might like to run away with Harris, too, she might enjoy a dig on foreign soil.

  Harris read the obituaries, at length. Watch out if you were in the room when Harris reached the obituaries. You were going to hear about some dead people if you were nearby, mark it down. The grown-ups knew to clear out. They had learned their lesson. The children usually got stuck with the tales of the dead. It didn’t matter to Leroy, he loved every word. Even little Molly was not immune to the obituaries.

  “Listen to this, Molls,” Uncle Harris might say. “This guy died and he was just, well let’s see, it says here he was thirty-four years old. Can you believe that? Thirty-four. Jeez. Same age as me. Whew. Makes you think, doesn’t it? Let’s see, it says here, oh listen to this, Molls, it says here he was survived by his mother—well, let’s see, hm, his daddy must be dead, he’s not mentioned, heart attack probably, men don’t live as long as women, it’s a scientific fact, you take any scientist off the street and he’ll back me up on this—survived by his mother, well at least she’s in good health, I’m glad to hear she’s doing okay, that’s good, and oh listen to this, seven brothers. Seven brothers! Wow! Jeez Louise! That’s one shitload of brothers, wouldn’t you say, Molls? What do you think about that?”

  Everything was an adventure. He drove into the village most every day. He had a few other regular stops, not just the newspaper guy. The newspaper guy was real old and said he taught Elvis Presley how to comb his hair. Some things you believe, some you just have to take with a grain of salt, that was Harris’s way of looking at it. He found a truck stop on the edge of town where he said they served the best breakfasts in the world. He was always bragging about these breakfasts.

  “You should try it yourself, Els,” he said to Leroy’s mama. “You should let me take you out there sometime. You know where the place is, out on Highway 61, you’d recognize it. Try the flapjacks. That would be my recommendation. Whipped butter, real maple syrup, yum yum. I was asking this old gal, waitress, you know, with a scar on her face, marital difficulties, sad story, asking her about that maple syrup, where it came from, Vermont, you’re probably thinking, that’s where you automatically think it came from, I don’t blame you, I fell into the same trap, I guessed Vermont myself, I won’t lie to you, but nope, that’s not it, not Vermont, guess again, where do you think that maple syrup was tapped, come on, take your wildest guess.”

  He was enthusiastic about everything he did, everything he saw or heard. He said the short-order cook at the truck stop was a one-eyed man who could sing every song in The Mikado in its entirety with a cigarette hanging out of his mouth, a long ash on the end that never fell off. Harris was starting to pick up a few show tunes himself, he said, some night he might treat everybody to a song or two. He said he would take up smoking if he thought he could learn that trick with the long cigarette ash. He told about another man who had been to Hollywood and walked through Mayberry, Gilligan’s Island, Fantasy Island, Petticoat Junction, and the Love Boat. “They’re not real!” Harris exclaimed at the end of his story. “They’re soundstages! That’s even better, isn’t it, better than real!” Another time Harris got started on Gary Gilmore, the murderer out in Utah. Gary Gilmore this, Gary Gilmore that. Gary Gilmore, the Mormons. Gary Gilmore saying, “Let’s do it.” Gary Gilmore, shot through the heart. Could there be anybody more boring than Gary Gilmore? Leroy had heard enough about Gary Gilmore. Gary Gilmore, would you please shut up.

  Every once in a while Harris stopped by an old-fashioned barbershop in the old part of town and got a shave with a straight razor and a shoeshine. “It’s a luxury, I know, I know, I could do without,” he said. “I’m going to think about cutting back on expenses one of these days, you just wait and see. You ought to hear that strop, though, once he gets that sucker going, man, sounds like Hambone, poppy pop, poppy pop, hambone, hambone, have you heard, yeah.” He said the shoeshine boy was a Mexican gent in his sixties or seventies, he didn’t know how old. “Real old Mexican, name of Hernando, funny name, ain’t it, Hernando, like the hideaway, I never thought about that hideaway serving Mexican food, did you, it ain’t quite as romantic if you think about it being a Mexican place, them refried beans are some nasty eating, man, whew, I hope I don’t sound prejudiced against our southern neighbors because that would leave a false impression, I’m not, not in the slightest, love a Mexican, sure do, makes you kind of queasy to think about it, though, don’t it, couldn’t speak a word of English, poor old Hernando, locked up in a cocoon of silence, you might say, don’t seem to bother him, though, Hernando don’t seem to give a rat’s ass. It’s unusual, a Mexican gentleman in that line of work, don’t you think, wouldn’t you agree, shoeshine trade, habla habla, that’s how they talk, makes you dizzy as a witch to listen to it. I myself don’t speak a solitary word of Mexican, but if I did, I think I’d have to ask him about his career choice, see could I help him define his goals.”

  Some days Leroy’s head was spinning as he listened to his Uncle Harris.

  Swami Don was rarely in the house for Harris’s enthusiastic newspaper reading or his spirited report on his daily excursions. Swami Don spent his days in the pastures, or on the tractor in the fields, and many nights he was gone as well, working as a part-time night watchman at a sporting goods factory in Eupora. He was always looking for ways to supplement his income. And he especially liked the military-style uniform he wore to his night watchman job. He felt almost handsome in that uniform. Elsie liked it, too. She always looked at him a little different when he dressed in his night watchman uniform. By the time he got home, usually evenings, around suppertime, Harris was already in his party mode, with grog rations and pup
pet shows and the rest of his foolishness. He was finished talking about the newspaper and The Mikado for now. The children’s faces were glowing, always. Leroy knew his was without even looking in the mirror.

  Swami Don saw the newspaper carnage sometimes, before Elsie managed to pick up after Harris. Leroy thought his daddy might be irritated by the mess, especially by Harris’s laziness. You could build a table on that man’s laziness, it was so sturdy and sound. But this turned out not to be so. Swami Don didn’t seem to mind at all, any of it. He was encouraged by the clutter, not irritated. He said it seemed like a mess made of happiness and enthusiasm. He said he believed he himself could learn a few things from Harris’s careless life. Anybody could. Or maybe Harris was not completely careless, he said one time. We don’t know, really, he was saying. Maybe the newspapers meant Harris was looking for work, a part-time job of some kind, to help out with the expenses. He might be going through the classifieds in every major city in the country, that was certainly a possibility, Swami Don said. Well, Leroy knew this was crazy. That was one idea that made no sense at all. It didn’t matter, though. That was the odd part, it didn’t matter a bit what Harris was doing with those newspapers. Swami Don didn’t mind that his brother lay about the house and village all day. He didn’t want his money. He was just grateful to have his little brother in the house after being so far apart for so many years. Harris didn’t have to do one thing more than he was already doing to make Swami Don a happy man.

  One night Harris got out two hand puppets he had brought with him from the coast. One was a sea captain puppet, with a red beard and square glasses down on its nose and a corncob pipe and a little white cap with gold braiding on the bill. The other was a flamboyant woman with a great mass of red hair and huge, brightly rouged lips and big boobs. These puppets supposedly looked exactly like Captain Woody and Belle Trudy, Harris’s foster parents. Swami Don had lived with the captain and the belle for one year also, in high school. The two brothers took roles in an impromptu play. Leroy looked on in amazement as he saw his father take one of the parts. Harris was the captain and Swami Don played Belle Trudy. He was good, too. He was funny. He was hilarious, in fact. Leroy could hardly recognize him. His face seemed to change, the way he held his mouth, his whole body, when he talked through the puppet. Sometimes Leroy almost forgot he was watching a puppet show and thought Belle Trudy was really saying those funny things. She spoke in an amazing falsetto, or rather his daddy did, this masterful person in Leroy’s home. Was this really Leroy’s daddy? It was not possible. Had the planet really turned inside out? Harris had changed their lives. This thought could not be escaped, Leroy sure couldn’t escape it anyway. When the puppet show was over, Swami Don put the doll aside. His face was bright red with surprise and good feeling.

  Leroy crept about on a regular basis now. He looked in his mama’s purse. He went through his daddy’s pockets. He poked through drawers in his parents’ room. This was before he went creepy-crawling in Harris’s attic room. He didn’t find anything much, his mama and daddy didn’t seem to have any secrets, nothing real interesting, well, some rubbers, Trojans, in the red pack, they weren’t real good for blowing up because they were treated with some kind of lubricant and tasted a little funny. He took two anyway, it couldn’t hurt. He had heard about a boy, well, he knew him actually, it was Screamer McGee, Hot’s boy, the child who could lick his own penis, double-jointed, you know, he stretched a rubber over the bell of a bass horn in the junior high school band room one time, took him about three hours, latex of course, forget about stretching one of those sheepskin doogies, but school wasn’t in session now, summer vacation, so Leroy couldn’t really think of anything good to do with the Trojans. He eventually just threw them away. He wasn’t looking for anything especially when he was creepy-crawling, he was just looking.

  As far as Leroy could tell, Uncle Harris didn’t have much of a life outside the family and his goofy friends in the village and the newspapers. If you’re too lazy to turn your hand, that’s what happens, Leroy had to suppose. It didn’t matter, though, it was all right with Harris that he had no real life. It made Leroy wonder what a man this lazy would ever have had the get-up-and-go to do that would cause his wife to run him off. Harris was talking about getting a telephone put in his room in the attic. This was about as high a level of activity as Harris ever reached, calling somebody to perform some service for him. He might need to call somebody, he said, well sure, he might find a need one of these days to make a phone call, transact some business, sell some stocks, see, you never knew about that sort of thing. Somebody might want to call him, see, that was another good reason he might need a phone, though he didn’t say who he was expecting a call from. There were a couple of things he needed, come to think of it, Harris said. Maybe he needed a little TV set, too, nothing fancy, it could be small, very small, don’t worry about a big screen, wasn’t necessary; it didn’t need to be color, either, although sure, he would prefer color, a little color portable would be nice, that NBC peacock, now that was something, wasn’t it, a color portable would be perfect, actually, those big tail feathers.

  8

  Not long after Leroy saw the lady in the western vest, he saw something else almost as amazing. Out in the pasture at twilight a bright ball of fire drifted down the sky along a curious course, down, down, slowly, slowly, toward the earth. He watched it for what seemed like a long time, far out from the house, above the deep woods. Just above the treetops the fireball seemed to explode. Fire shards drifted like an innocent rain of flames into the forest. He heard no thunder. He kept on watching. He walked into the woods, to the spot where the flames had seemed to fall. There were no traces, no scorching.

  The woods were clear, the trees in full leaf. The world beneath the trees seemed dim and fuzzy at the edges. The forest floor was covered with leaves. A squirrel scared Leroy by running through the leaves and straight up a pin oak tree. Leroy stopped to check for snakes. He looked for the fireball for a long time before he noticed the sun had gone down beneath the tree line and darkness had fallen. The woods were very dark, though when he looked straight up through the trees, the sky still had some dark blue light. Large birds were circling overhead in the big wide sky before dropping down into the forest to roost. Lightning bugs had come out, and out to his left, in a clearing, he could make out snake doctors in the air above the high grass. He hoped he didn’t scare up a bunch of swamp elves out of the cane. They were harmless, he knew that, but the way they sounded when they ran, well, he didn’t care for it, they scared him. He looked back toward his house and could see the porch light on. He looked back into the woods. Nobody would be worried, he had often stayed out like this on a summer evening. He halfway thought he might see a spark somewhere along the ground, or in the branches of a tree, or in the fork of a dead tree trunk, some small clue to the meaning of the fireball, but there was nothing. It was gone, whatever it had been. It had seemed important, he couldn’t have said just how, a sign, something another. He turned and began to walk up out of the woods and into the pasture, on his way home. The problem was, he had missed grog rations. Well, shoot. He had completely forgotten about grog rations. He was mad at himself about that. Uncle Harris was probably already up in the attic, the party was over, well, doggone it.

  Leroy walked up out of the woods and through a field and into the yard. He came in the house through the back door. The house was quiet. Maybe his daddy was working late, maybe he missed grog rations, too. No, the tractor was in the shed, the pickup was parked out back. A table lamp was on in the living room, but that was it, not much sign of life. Where was everybody? Leroy walked through the front part of the house. He didn’t call out, he just looked around, listened. He could hear the water running, the sound was coming from the bathroom. That’s where Swami Don was, in the shower, okay, that was a little better. Somebody was home, at least. Then he could hear quiet voices from the rear of the house, in the girls’ room. His sisters were playing together in their bedroom. Okay, he was just a little tense. He was breathing a little easier, everybody was home after all. Leroy looked around for his mama and found her too, right where he might have expected, in the kitchen.