Free Lightning Song by Lewis Nordan Page B

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 puppet shows and the rest of his foolishness. He was finished talking about the newspaper and
The Mikado
fornow. 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 broughtwith 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