The Cockroaches of Stay More Read online

  The Cockroaches of Stay More

  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 Off the Mountain) (2002)

  With (2004)

  Donald Harington

  The Cockroaches of Stay More

  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 ©1989 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: 978-1-61218-124-0

  For my daughters: Jennifer, Calico, and Katy, and

  my stepson Mickel, who never

  heard a bedtime story like this one.

  The author is very grateful to Jack Butler for a careful reading of the manuscript. He found what was good and said so; he saw what was missing and wrote it himself.

  Contents

  INSTAR THE FIRST: The Maiden,

  Chapter one

  Chapter two

  Chapter three

  Chapter four

  Chapter five

  Chapter six

  Chapter seven

  INSTAR THE SECOND: Maiden No More,

  Chapter eight

  Chapter nine

  Chapter ten

  Chapter eleven

  Chapter twelve

  Chapter thirteen

  INSTAR THE THIRD: The Rally,

  Chapter fourteen

  Chapter fifteen

  Chapter sixteen

  Chapter seventeen

  Chapter eighteen

  Chapter nineteen

  Chapter twenty

  Chapter twenty-one

  Chapter twenty-two

  Chapter twenty-three

  Chapter twenty-four

  INSTAR THE FOURTH: The Consequence,

  Chapter twenty-five

  Chapter twenty-six

  Chapter twenty-seven

  Chapter twenty-eight

  Chapter twenty-nine

  Chapter thirty

  INSTAR THE FIFTH: The Woman Pays,

  Chapter thirty-one

  Chapter thirty-two

  Chapter thirty-three

  Chapter thirty-four

  Chapter thirty-five

  INSTAR THE SIXTH: The Convert,

  Chapter thirty-six

  Chapter thirty-seven

  Chapter thirty-eight

  IMAGO: The Mockroach’s Song

  INSTAR THE FIRST:

  The Maiden

  Chapter one

  One time not too long ago on a beginning of night in the latter part of May, a middle-aged gent was walking homeward along the forest path from Roamin Road to the village of Carlott, behind Holy House in the valley of Stainmoor or Stay More. The six gitalongs that carried him were rickety, and there was a meandering to his gait that gave a whole new meaning to the word Periplaneta. This wanderer gave a smart nod, as if in agreement to a command, though no one had spoken to him yet. His wings were not folded neatly across his back and were neither tidy nor black but flowzy and brownish. Presently he was met by a plump parson whose wings were very black and long and trim like the tails of a coat, and who was humming a hymn, “The Old Shiny Pin.”

  “Morsel, Reverend,” said the flowzy gent, and spat, marking his space.

  “Good morsel to ye, Squire John,” said the pudgy parson, and spat too.

  “Now sir, beggin yore pardon,” the wanderer said, spitting again, “but we bumped inter one another last Sattidy on this path about this same time, and I said, ‘Morsel,’ same as now, and you answered me, ‘Good morsel to ye, Squire John,’ same as now, didn’t ye?”

  “More’n likely I did,” said the parson, and spat.

  “And seems like once before that, maybe Friday.”

  “I might’ve, now ye mention it.”

  “Wal, Reverend, then how come ye called me ‘Squar John,’ please tell me, when I’m plain ole Jack Dingletoon, as everbody knows?”

  The fat parson strode six steps or twelve nearer. Their spaces intermingled and overlapped.

  “I jist had a urr to do it,” he said. The minister’s huge eyes twinkled and his voice had an impish seriousness. “Don’t ye know, I’ve been researchin and studyin folkses pedigrees all over Stay More, if the day comes when Man shall ask of me to call the roll and account fer ever blessit one of you’uns. I’ve crope inter ever crook and nanny of town and talked to everbody about their foreparents as fur back as they can recollect. And it’ll surprise ye to learn, Squire, that you aint a Dingletoon atter all. Nossir, ‘Dingle-toon’ is jist the way that one of yore ancestors long ago got in the way of mispronouncin ‘Ingledew.’”

  Jack Dingletoon pondered this. “Naw!” he remarked. “You don’t mean to tell me!”

  “Shore as I’m astandin here,” said the parson, and requested, “Tilt up yore jaws thataway, Squire, and let me look at yore face. Yes, that’s the Ingledew touchers and sniffwhips, I’d bet on ’em, a little adulterated, ye might say, no harm meant, please sir. Why, you’re descended from ole Squire Jacob Ingledew hisself, the first rooster-roach to set gitalong in this valley.”

  “So’s everbody else, aint they?” Jack observed.

  “Wal, not edzackly,” declared Brother Tichborne, for that was his name, and he was no descendant of Jacob Ingledew himself, but of relative newcomers generations later, who were Manfearing Crustians without any record of incest. “As fur as I kin figger, the Dingletoons was a branch what broke off from the Ingledews way back afore the time of Joshua Crust Hisself. You know, the Lord Joshua weren’t no kin of the Ingledews, and matter of fack He prophesied the Ingledews would wester off from the face of the earth, jist lak they been a-westerin. Not on account of the sin of incest, though, but on account of the sin of pride.”

  Jack Dingletoon chuckled. “Wal, we couldn’t be no kin of the Ingledews nohow. We aint never had nothin to be proud of.”

  Brother Tichborne smiled in agreement. “You shore aint. But maybe the Dingletoons has got jist as much right as the Ingledews to dwell in Partheeny.”

  Jack snorted, but all six of his gitalongs tingled. “Haw! That’d be the day, us a-movin inter Partheeny, or even Holy House. That would be the day!” He moved closer and lowered his voice, although no one was eavesdropping except a quartet of crooning katydids and some grazing roly-polies. “Preacher, how long has this news about me been knowed? Have the Ingledew squars been told I’m their kin?”

  “Nossir,” said the parson, “nary a soul but me and you knows it.” He explained that he had come across the information while interviewing old Granny Stapleton, virtually deaf, deprived of both her sniff-whips and near west from arthritis but still possessed of exceptional memory. Brother Tichborne had a great talent for separating history from legend and tall tale, and had been able to determine from Granny’s information that the Dingletoons were indeed long-ago scions of the Ingledews. “At first when I heared it, I tole myself, wouldn’t be no
sense in passin it along to ye, nohow,” said the parson. “The knowin of it aint got the power of itself to rain down morsels upon ye. But I figgered it won’t do ye no harm neither to know it. Maybe it could uplift yore spirit and take the hump outen yore back.”

  Jack Dingletoon involuntarily straightened his pronotum, elevating his shoulders and even his head. His large kidney-shaped eyes seemed to moisten, and the tips of his wings trembled. “Preacher,” he declared solemnly, “that is the best news ever I learned in all my born days. Jist wait till I tell Josie! Won’t her eyes pop outen her skull! But first, let’s us me and you go celebrate with a little drap of brew. Reckon they’d let me inter the cookroom if they knowed I was a Ingledew?”

  “Thanks jist the same, Squire John, but I reckon I’d better not,” declined the minister, not from any scruples against intoxicants but from a reluctance to mingle with the frequenters of the cookroom’s beer cans, scarcely a Crustian among them. “I’d best be gittin on back to the Frock.”

  “Don’t ye reckon they’d let me jine ’em in the beer can if I was to tell ’em I’m a Ingledew?” Jack Dingletoon repeated with less confidence.

  “You could try,” Brother Tichborne allowed. “But more’n likely they wouldn’t believe you. Best not let yore knowin of yore own name git ye inter lordliness. Have you ever tried to enter Holy House afore?”

  “Course not,” Jack declared. “But if you was to go with me…”

  “Not tonight, thank ye, Squire John,” said Brother Tichborne, and turned to resume his journey. “Say hidy to Josie for me. And a long good night to ye.” The obese parson hitched up his gitalongs and skittered off into the darkness.

  Jack walked on, six, nine or eighteen steps in a profound reverie before lowering himself down upon the substratum, beneath some towering grasses silhouetted against the moon, and gave himself over to consideration of the significance of being an Ingledew, not a mere Dingletoon. The whole world was changed. The night was twelve shades of blue now, and thirteen shades of ultraviolet, and the air was beginning to fill with lightning bugs. Within range of Jack’s sniffwhips and eyes a lady lightning bug was perched upon the end of a blade of grass, testing and fine-tuning her lantern. Jack paid her no mind although his ocelli twitched at each neon flash of her summons. Choral groups of katydids were serenading in four-part harmony; here and there a cricket could be heard warming up his instrument of challenge, and in the distance sounded a background of countless Hylae peeping and piping.

  The peepers were a variety of frog, mortal predators upon any roosterroach who came near them. The music of the night had its ominous overtones and also its discordant noises: somewhere nearby a huge nightcrawler worm was laboring noisily uphill with many shiftings of gears, backfirings, and faulty rumblings in its transmission. It was sending out signals: “BREAKER ONE OH. DO YOU READ? HOW-BOUTCHA, BIG MAMA? UP THIS HUMP HUNTIN FOR BEAVER LOOKIN FOR A NAP TRAP AND GOTTA LOG SOME Z’S. PEELIN OFF? TEN TWENTY? GIVE A SHOUT.” Lost in thought, Jack ignored the worm, whose language was not in his ken, anyway. From some distant rise another worm answered: “TEN FOUR AND BODACIOUS, GOOD BUDDY. WHAT’S YOUR HANDLE, BUFFALO? ROGER ROLLER SKATE. ONE FOOT ON THE FLOOR, ONE HANGIN OUT THE DOOR, AND SHE JUST WON’T DO MORE. SIXTY-NINE? STACK THEM EIGHTS. WE GONE.”

  Jack lowered his sniffwhips and his tailprongs, tucking them all beneath him so that he was no longer confused by the flowering cacophony of sounds and scents, the strident bloom of seeking odors, the yearning blare of efflorescing aromas, the redolent reek of craving commotions, the purple smell of boisterous desires, the lascivious essences of unfolding tones, the rank voices and perfumes of swollen lust.

  Although he tuned out the sounds and scents, he could not avoid the spectacle of two katydids mating right in the road beside him, fork-tailed Scudderiae scudling in the dust to the tune of the male’s continuing lavender croon: “Tzeet, baby! Tzek, baby! Oh, tzuk, baby, yeah, yeah!”

  Jack had already had, beginning at the crack of dusk, an immoderate dose of Chism’s Dew, the fermented essence of honeydew, scorned by serious drinkers as nothing but rotgut. All his life he had craved a sample of the genuine beer that was a feature of life in Holy House, beyond his reach and station, but he had never even tried to enter Holy House, let alone the cookroom beer cans there, although the cookroom was full of holes and he could have crept through any of them. Now, with the aid of the nerve given him by Chism’s Dew, he might pass through one of those holes and, if accosted and challenged, declare, “Boys, have I got news fer you’uns! I aint a Dingletoon but a Ingledew!” Wouldn’t they jump, if they believed him? If they believed him….

  The copulating katydids had flounced jointly on down the trail out of sight, and were replaced by a young roosterroach swain skittering along and whistling “Down in the Arkansas.”

  Jack Dingletoon raised his sniffwhips, lashed them back and forth, and called out, “Hey, sonny, come here.”

  The lad stopped, turned his head, twitched his tailprongs, flicked his own sniffwhips with considerably more alacrity than Jack could muster, and replied, “Wal, look who’s tryin to boss me around! Why onch you come here, ole Jack?”

  Jack did not budge. “I ast ye fust, boy. And don’t ye call me ‘ole Jack’. I’m Squire John Ingledew, boy, and I aint askin you to come here, I’m a-tellin ye to.”

  “You and who else, Jack Orv Dingletoon?” the youth taunted, spat, and tossed his head. “Drunk as per usual, I see. Who’d ye say you was?”

  Jack drew himself erect, and for a brief moment rose up on his hind gitalongs in the mantis-threat stilt walk, causing the pre-imago adolescent to cower and turn as if to flee. “Now you lissen a me, Freddy Coe! If you know what’s good fer ye, you’ll pay me some mind and not give me no more of yer sass. I’m a Ingledew, boy, and Master of the Cosmos! I’m a cousin of Squire Sam Ingledew or maybe even his half-uncle! Don’t ye know I got the power?” Jack swished his sniffwhips across each other and hoped for some phenomenon to occur to give proof to his power. He hoped the dark blue sky would suddenly fill with lightning. Or that the Great White Mouse would come into view. Or that at least all the sounds of the spring night would join to play the Purple Symphony. But instead, as very ill luck would have it, a centipede suddenly appeared, Scutigeria forceps, scooting forcibly up the trail in search of prey. This centipede, or Santa Fe, as they call it in the Ozarks, had only twenty-eight gitalongs, not a hundred, but its fangs were already dripping with the deadly poison that kills roosterroaches in an instant.

  Poor Freddy Coe was so paralyzed with fear that his six gitalongs lost their automatic escape response and he stood there trembling and screaming. I’m a gone rooster, Jack Dingletoon told himself, thinking how briefly he had been allowed to enjoy the pleasure of being an Ingledew before his wretched life was snuffed out by this dragon of a Santa Fe. He felt the multigitalonged monster’s sniffwhips already singling him out for special attention. What would Squire Hank Ingledew do in such a situation? Pray? No, everybody knew Squire Hank and all the Ingledews neither feared nor worshipped Man. My number is up, Jack realized, as he braced himself for the Santa Fe’s fatal lunge. Instinctively he rose again into the mantis posture, a poor sham which wouldn’t fool a Santa Fe even if centipedes were afraid of mantises. This Santa simply smirked with evil mirth and opened its forceps wide. So long, cruel world, Jack said to the cruel world, and prepared for his west.

  But in the split instant that the centipede lunged, Squire John Orval Ingledew, without stopping to remember how to unfold and flap his forewings let alone his hindwings (the prescutal process laterally projects close to the tegula which lies medial to the base of the remigium of the wings), took to the air! As if in awe (or was it only the beating of his wings?) the air was filled with the strains of the Purple Symphony in triumphant prelude almost out of keeping with the clumsiness of his blast-off.

  He knew he could not maintain the flight for very long, two seconds at best, but he was out of reach of the fatal fangs of the centipede,
who did not even pause to register disappointment before diverting its attention to Freddy Coe, still quivering and howling in abject cowardice and terror. Jack’s joy at his own escape was tinged with pity for poor Freddy, who had no wings yet and could neither fly nor flee. But Miz Coe had eleven more just like him in her brood and she might not even notice him missing. He was a snotty kid, no loss to anyone.

  Then—he must have been hearing the voices of his brave Ingledew ancestors castigating him—Jack suddenly felt dastardly and selfish, shamed and debased, and he used the last ounce of his flight’s energy to divebomb the Santa Fe’s neck, where he got a good hold and took a good bite and then kicked free from the wildly thrashing gitalongs. He had not really hurt the Santa Fe, but he had scared the shit out of it, and it was beating a quick retreat, leaving a shower of feces in its wake. It disappeared into the forest of the tall grass.

  “Now that,” he said to Freddy, “is the way a true Ingledew orter handle the situation.”