Lightning Bug Read online

  Lightning Bug

  By the Author

  The Cherry Pit (1965)

  Lightning Bug (1970)

  Some Other Place. The Right Place. (1972)

  The Architecture of the Arkansas Ozarks (1975)

  Let Us Build Us a City (1986)

  The Cockroaches of Stay More (1989)

  The Choiring of the Trees (1991)

  Ekaterina (1993)

  Butterfly Weed (1996)

  When Angels Rest (1998)

  Thirteen Albatrosses (or, Falling o? the Mountain) (2002)

  With (2004)

  The characters and events portrayed in this book are fictitious. Any similarity to real persons, living or dead, is coincidental and not intended by the author.

  Text copyright ©1970 Donald Harington

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this book may be reproduced, or stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without express written permission of the publisher.

  Published by AmazonEncore

  P.O. Box 400818

  Las Vegas, NV 89140

  ISBN: 978-1-61218-106-6

  For William Styron

  il miglior fabbro

  Cogito, ergo sum.

  DESCARTES,

  Discourse on Method, iv.

  Fear boys with bugs.

  SHAKESPEARE,

  The Taming of the Shrew, i.

  By lust alone we keep the mind alive,

  And grieve into the certainty of love.

  ROETHKE,

  “The Motion.”

  Movements

  Beginning

  MIDDLING

  ONE: Morning

  SUB ONE: Recently

  TWO: Noon

  SUB TWO: Twenty and Eighteen Years Ago

  THREE: Afternoon

  SUB THREE: Seventeen Years Ago

  FOUR: Evening

  SUB FOUR: Fourteen Years Ago

  FIVE: Night

  SUB FIVE: Now

  Ending

  About the Author

  Beginning

  From a porch swing, evening, July, 1939, Stay More, Ark.

  IT BEGINS WITH THIS SOUND:

  the screen door pushed outward in a slow swing, the spring on the screen door stretching vibrantly, one sprung tone and fading overtone high-pitched even against the bug-noises and frog-noises, a plangent twang, WRIRRRAANG, which, more than any other sound, more than cowbells or distant truck motors laboring uphill, more, even, than all those overworked katydids, crickets, tree frogs, etc., seems to evoke the heart of summer, of summer evenings, of summer evenings there in that place, seems to make it easy for me to begin this one. WRENCH! WRUNG! WRINGING!

  IT BEGINS WITH THESE PEOPLE:

  the girl coming out through that twanging screen door, prettied up fit to kill in her finest frillery, swinging her fine hips once to clear the returning screen door being closed by that pranging, wranging spring. Her name is Sonora. The way these folks say it, it sounds like “Snory” so that is what I shall call her. She does not live here; just visiting, for the summer, with the woman who is presumed to be her aunt, who is at least the sister of the woman who is presumed to be her mother, Mandy Twichell, of Little Rock, where Sonora lives and goes to school with the rich city kids. She is a very pretty 17, with red hair even, but I am not yet certain that I like her very much. I guess the reason I don’t like her too awfully much is that she is inclined to tease me, if she ever notices me at all. One time when nobody was around, she reached down and chucked me right in my generative organ, and twitted, “My, Dawny, for such a little feller I bet you’ve got a big one!” Imagine. If she weren’t essential to the plot, I would be happy to exclude her entirely from this world.

  the woman sitting on the porch, the woman presumed to be Sonora’s aunt. Her name is Latha, with the first “a” long, and one would conceive that it might be spoken “Lay-thee,” in view of the way Sonora’s name comes out as “Snory” but there have been only one or two people who have called her that. She is Latha. Miss Latha Bourne, the postmistress of this place—and the heroine, the demigoddess, of this world. I am not certain yet just how old she is, but she’s old enough to be Sonora’s aunt, or her mother, for that matter, and she’s at least three or four years older than my aunt, who is 35. My aunt thinks that Latha Bourne is “crazy as a quilt,” but we shall have to see about that.

  the boy sitting in the porch swing, trying to make out Latha Bourne’s exquisite face in the pale light coming from kerosene lanterns within the house. He is a tousle-haired little whippersnapper, five going on six, who is not related to either one of these females, although he has in common with Sonora that he is just visiting, spending the summer with his aunt, who lives up the road a ways from Latha’s place. He comes down here every evening and sits in that porch swing and watches people, until either somebody runs him off or his aunt calls him home. His name is Donald, but the way they say it, all of them, is “Dawny.” He likes to come to Latha’s place in the evenings because she is a great teller of ghost stories, but mainly he likes to come to Latha’s place because he is in love with her, and will always be, even when he is old. Even when he is old, the thought of her will give him twitchings and itchings [and the only way he will ever exorcise her, the only way she will ever give him any peace, is for him to write a book about her, who is, it should be obvious by this time, the Lightning Bug].

  IT BEGINS WITH THIS SETTING:

  the house of Latha, which is also the combined store-post office of Stay More, a community of some 113 souls in the Ozark mountains of Newton County, south of the county seat, Jasper, and the lovely village of Parthenon, west of the village of Spunkwater, north of Demijohn, Hunton and Swain, east of Sidehill and Eden. [One must not attempt to find it on a recent map; one may find Newton County, and one may find Jasper and Parthenon and Swain, but one shall not find Stay More—not because it is some screwball name that I made up in my own head, but because today it is nothing but a ghost town, almost.] The origin of the name is obscure. Although the expression is common parlance among the natives of that region, as in, “Don’t be rushin off, Dawny. Stay more, and eat with us,” it is not certain that this connotation was intended by the founders of the town, Jacob and Noah Ingledew, who came from Warren County, Tennessee, in 1837. Some conjecture that these brothers, with prophetic foresight, realized that the village might eventually become a ghost town, and hence the name was meant not as a mere invitation but as a plea, a beseechment. During the last years of its status as a U.S. Post Office, it was resolutely spelled “Staymore” by the postal authorities, over the protests of the postmistress.

  It straddles two green-watered streams of small, good fishing water, Banty Creek (a variant, “Bonny Creek,” appears on some maps), the smaller, which empties, near the center of the village, into the larger, Swains Creek, which empties into the Little Buffalo River to the north. In this year, 1939, a crew of W.P.A. men is constructing a cement bridge for Banty Creek where it crosses the main road. There is no bridge on Swains Creek; to reach the schoolhouse one must drive through water over the hubcaps…or walk across a precarious foot-log. The roads, all of them, are, of course, only dirt and gravel.

  The business census back in 1906–07 listed the following: Ingledew’s Commissary—Drugs, Groceries, Hotel, Livery and Notary; Jerram’s General Store; two other general stores; three blacksmiths; two physicians, Alonzo Swain and J.M. Plowright; two dentists, Sam Forbes and E.H. Ingledew; William Dill, Wagonmaker [one must remember this one]; Noah Murrison & Son, Sawmill & Gristmill; and the Swains Creek Bank & Trust Company.

  Now in 1939 there is only this: Lawlor Coe, Blacksmith; Latha Bourne, General Store
and Post Office; Colvin Swain, Physician; E.H. Ingledew, semi-retired dentist (he pulls but no longer fills); J.M. Plowright, fully retired physician; and what is left of the big Ingledew store, which old Lola Ingledew still runs single-handedly (she lost the other hand in an accident at the sawmill) only for the purpose of providing some slight competition for the store of Latha Bourne, whom she detests with every fiber of her being, or something like that. Last year industry came to Stay More in the form of Oren Duckworth’s Cannon Factory, on Swains Creek near the schoolhouse. This opens in June and employs 20 men and women, canning beans during June, and canning tomatoes in July and August; the cans are sent unlabeled to Kansas City where a Big Name Food Processor attaches his own label. The factory does not produce cannon; it is simply known as The Cannon Factory.

  The post office is at the head of what would be called Main Street were it not just a dirt road with a few buildings on either side, half of them vacated, especially the bank, a stone edifice whose broken glass window stares the post office in the eye all day long. A traveler passing rapidly south on the main road might miss the post office entirely; it is set back in a kind of hollow a hundred feet up the road that goes to Right Prong and Butterchurn Holler, the same road that my Aunt Murrison lives on. At the foot of the main road is the big old half-empty unpainted Ingledew Store. Lola Ingledew, sitting on the front porch of her store, can squint fiercely and count the number of men on the front porch of Latha’s store, a quarter of a mile away.

  Latha’s store is small; the whole building has only five rooms: the large room with the post office boxes and counter at the front end and the merchandise everywhere else; her sitting room, to the left, her bedroom behind it; the spare bedroom, to the right, where Sonora sleeps; and the small kitchen.

  A porch runs the whole length of the front. On it, tonight, we are sitting, I in the swing, Snory in the straight-back rush-seated chair, Latha in the rocker, rocking, some.

  IT BEGINS WITH THIS MOOD:

  [Hell, who has never known a summer evening? But anyway:] from the distance, cowbells are dully clapping thing-thang in dewy fields and shadowy thickets; evening milking is done, and the cows move back to pasture.

  From the yard grass, from all around, from everywhere up and down the valley, chirps of bugs scrape cracklingly up, and croaks from the creek, and peeps from the trees; you learn to recognize the instruments of this chorus: the tzeek-tzek-tzuk of katydids, the irdle dee irdle of crickets, the tchung of the tree frogs, and that old jug of rum by the bull frogs.

  A watermelon seed drops on the porch floor, bounces twice. Sonora smacks her lips and draws the back of her hand across her mouth.

  The air is all blue. All the air is blue. The night is hot, more than hot, but blue is cool.

  Latha tells Sonora that she looks very pretty tonight.

  My dog—Gumper isn’t my dog, but he belongs to Uncle Murrison, who is my host, and he follows me around—Gumper comes trotting up and climbs the porch and slobbers on the floor. He is an ordinary hound, and he smells. I am embarrassed for his smell. Sonora kicks at him, and Latha swishes her arms at him and makes a noise in her throat, “Gyow hyar!” which means, “Get out of here” but is the only way the dog would understand that. Gumper puts his tail between his legs and bumps down off the porch; he walks to the great oak in the yard and lifts his leg against it and waters its roots profusely and audibly: another sound for the summer night. Later he sneaks back onto the porch from the side, and curls asleep beneath the swing I’m sitting in.

  Latha asks Sonora who does she think she might go out with tonight?

  Sonora says we will just have to wait and see.

  Other sounds: someone, far off, trying to start a car. Farther off, the bugle-baying of a treeing dog. And more crickets and katydids and tree frogs, faster because of the heat, louder because it’s hot.

  The blue air carries all the smells of the summer night, which even obliterate the powerful smell of Gumper sleeping below me. The blue air is full of green things, strange wildflowers and magic weeds, and of creekwater, and of some dust and motor oil mixed with the dust and wild dew. Especially of the dew, which is the creekwater and dust and wild green things all liquefied together and essenced and condensed.

  Gumper, in his torpid contentment, makes the mistake of striking the floor noisily with his wagging tail. Another thumping sound for the summer night, but because of it he is once again evicted.

  “Git home, you smelly dawg!” I holler after him.

  His disappearance brings out the cats. From all over: black and striped and marmalade, and gray and white and calico. I’ve never counted, but I think Latha feeds something like two dozen cats. They make no sounds to contribute to the summer night’s chorus, but their indolent grace is a decoration, they festoon the porch rail and the porch and the shrubbery with their sensuous, writhing forms. Some people keep a lot of cats because they like cats, but Latha keeps cats because she likes to watch them fuck. I know this for a fact.

  And now, as the blue of the air darkens, the lightning bugs come out. At first, as with stars, only one or two (and I would as soon wish upon a lightning bug as upon a star), but then, quickly, dozens and hundreds, until the air of the yard, of the road, of the meadow across the road, of the creek beyond the meadow, is filled with them. There are at least 35 different species out there, flashing their cold yellow-green light, and each species uses a different signal system of flashes. Contrary to popular belief, the purpose of the flashing light is not guidance, nor illumination as such, but purely and simply to make “assignations”: the males fly around in the air, advertising their availability; the females wait immobile on leaves in bushes and trees, and if they spot a flash coming from an eligible bachelor of their own species, they return a flash whose signal has the same intervals.

  [I was disturbed recently to learn from a fellow of my acquaintance, an intelligent person from Andover, Massachusetts, that he had never heard of a “lightning bug.” When I described this creature to him, he replied, “We call those fireflies.” This bothered me so much that, at considerable expense to myself, I asked the Thomas Howland Poll organization of Princeton, New Jersey, to conduct a nationwide survey. The results satisfied me: 87% had definitely heard of “lightning bugs,” 3% had heard of lightning bugs but thought they were insects who made thundering noises, 7% had never heard of a lightning bug, 1% thought it was an automobile, and the remaining 2% had no opinion.]

  What is most uncanny is that the interval of the flash is dependent not only on the species, but also on the temperature of any given night. The bugs flash twice as frequently on hot nights as on cool nights. Thus, the brilliant female must not only memorize the signal of her own species, but also know exactly what the temperature is. Otherwise, if she flashes the wrong response and attracts a male of a different species, the only thing she can do is eat him.

  The male of the species is fickle. As soon as he engages the female in procreative recreation, she obligingly turns off her luring light. But if any other females happen to be flashing their lights in the vicinity, the busy male will quickly disengage himself, as per coitus reservatus, and take off after the competing lady.

  Some species of lightning bugs do not eat at all after becoming adults; the adult stage is only for the purpose of procreation; they become adults, they flash, they fuck, they die. This has nothing to do with Latha. She lives.

  The lightning bug, or firefly, is neither a bug nor a fly, but a beetle. I like bug because it has a cozy sound, a hugging sound, a snug sound, it fits her, my Bug.

  Deep in the dark blue air sing these lives that make the summer night. The lightning bug does not sing. But of all these lives, it alone, the lightning bug alone, is visible. The others are heard but not seen, felt but not seen, smelled but not seen [I have bottled a sample of that air and sent it for analysis to the Meredith Olfactory Laboratories of St. Louis, whose Dr. S.I. Coryell is the leading authority in differentiation analysis, but his report is of little hel
p: “This specimen is broken down as follows: 1.09% glucosides extract from chlorophyll of various field weeds, primarily Datura stramonium, or Jimson-weed; 2.03% fragrance of clover-blossom; .08% fragrance of alfalfa; .04% essence of hay, primarily Timothy and Johnson Grass, probably new-mown, but not wholly discrete from residues of same included in .009% bovine excreta; .0085% effluvium of stream water with traces of crayfish, bass and bream, and limestone; .00076% excretion from human sweat glands; .00034% miscellaneous excretions from a canine male animal, possibly a hound; .00026% excretions, mingled, from several diverse feline animals, male and female; .00017% traces of oestrus secretions in various mating reptiles and insects, including .000002% exudations of the insect, Photinus pyralis or other species of the Family Lampyridae, fireflies. There is also a trace of emanation from the rubber seal on the Mason jar in which you sent the specimen, but apart from this, Mr. Harington, I regret to say that I cannot positively identify the larger proportion of components, and I would be pleased if you would inform me where and when this specimen was taken.”] That air, that blue magical scented balmy air, is the world, the habitat, the home of the lightning bugs. And of my Bug.