Lightning Song by Lewis Nordan Page A

hear they think they do. Makes my butt work buttonholes, sho does. Half the people in the Delta don’t even know about love, let alone a hillbilly. They’s some people in Memphis don’t know all they is to know about love. Love’s an illusive motherfucker, Junior, do you hear me, do you hear a word I’m saying, what the fuck do you think you know about love? Nothing, that’s what. So just shut up.”
    Leroy said, “Who died?”
    The man looked back over his shoulder. He said, “They’s both ugly, too, they think they pretty but they not, they ugly, look at them, look out there, ugly as hammered shit, both of them, I don’t care what you say, not to mention dishonest, the boy dying like that, without no warning whatsoever, neverbeen sick a day in his life till the murder, and I’m supposed to pretend like it don’t matter to me? Life expectancy, seventy-six years, well forget that now, life expectancy don’t mean shit to a hillbilly, it don’t mean diddly-squat to a schoolboy gets hisself murdered, I don’t care what kind of la-di-da airs they put on, life expectancy is straight out the window, now ain’t it, just about fifty years too early. Do they care? Not a lick, never give one thought to me, my livelihood. Shit far and save matches, like my daddy used to say. You think it don’t matter to me that a child gets murdered? Well, let me tell you, it does. It means plenty. It means whether I get a new car next year, it means food and drink for me and my wife. It’s my livelihood we’re talking about here, son. It means I’m the one’s got to shell out the dough-ray-me, my company does, it might as well be me. It’s the integrity of my actuarial tables that’s at stake, too, they’s a lot more to it than you ig-runt hillbillies ever think about. That man standing out there in the headdress, look at him, he’s too old for that woman, I don’t care how ugly she is. I heard people say he robbed the cradle, well, I got another idea on that subject, look like to me he robbed a grave, anybody that ugly’s got to been dead awhile, wouldn’t you agree with me, son, where’d she get that hair, and now trying to rob me, not trying, doing it, did it, I got to pay up, not a thing I can do about it either, the way the law’s written, honest to God in holy heaven, son, what’s a working man supposed to do if he can’t expect children to stay alive? Look like a child would stay alive, don’t it? You ain’t planningto die, is you, you ain’t going around all-time getting murdered, is you, well, naw, naw, you wouldn’t do that to me, I know you wouldn’t, you’re a good boy, fine child for who you are, little hillbilly shitheel without a hope in the world, and no romantical illusions about the future, sure, but an honest boy it looks like to me, that’d be my guess, and I’m known to be an excellent judge of character, mock it down. Take your finger out of your navel, son, it gives me the heebie-jeebies. Like I said, he’s too old for that woman.”
    When the insurance man was gone, Leroy looked through the gate and across the mud to where the New People were standing. The old cars, the under-house trash in the yard, the red mud, the headdress, the angel’s wings, they made no sense. When had this started, this failure to make sense of a single thing? He tried to remember his life before Uncle Harris came—watermelons beneath the big tree in the yard, lightning bugs at night, honey trees, the gentle llamas, no thoughts of secret kisses. He remembered his daddy’s story about trying to tell Old Pappy his heart’s pain and wondered whether he should try the same, find someone to tell. He didn’t really know what he wanted to tell. Something about missing Old Pappy, maybe killing him? Something about his mouth covering the old man’s mouth? The chapped