Free Lightning Song by Lewis Nordan Page A

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 hetaught 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.
    â€œYou 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 toHollywood 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’mnot, 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