Lightning Song by Lewis Nordan

Author:Lewis Nordan [Nordan, Lewis]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Algonquin Books
Published: 1997-01-01T05:00:00+00:00

15

“Hope 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.

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