The Cockroaches of Stay More Page 12

  Every one turned and tuned their sniffwhips, and beheld the approach of none other than the subject of discussion, the Woman Herself. The great circular beam of Her flashlight preceded Her, but only briefly did the flashlight illuminate the front of Doc Swain’s clinic, and it did not shine upon the porch floor where the mob of loafers crouched. The Woman was strolling slowly down one rut of the Roamin Road. No one could ever remember having seen Her on this part of the Road before, approaching Holy House. Hardly was She out of sight when all the roosterroaches began a busy prattling amongst themselves.

  “Wal strike me blind!” Tolbert Duckworth said. “If that aint the—!”

  “Maybe She’s a-gorn to visit Him!” Fent Chism voiced the thoughts of several.

  “What’re we a-waitin fer?” Chid Tichborne said. “Let’s go see!”

  At that moment a girl roosterroach came running down the Road, following in the steps of the Woman, but scrambling as fast as her gitalongs would carry her. When she came within sight and sniff of the Loafer’s Court, she stopped, pausing for breath and to cast an anxious glance at all the loafers.

  “Morsel, gal,” called Doc Swain. “What’s the rush?”

  The girl looked from one to another of the loafers. She was panting. “Howdy, sirs, and morsels to y’uns,” she said timidly, between wheezes.

  “Somethin chasin ye?” Doc Swain asked. “Have you seen the White Mouse?”

  The girl looked over her shoulder, and appeared uncertain. “Yessir, I think there’s some kind of booger a-follerin me,” she declared.

  The loafers laughed, and one of them teased, “Was it white? What color was it?”

  But the girl did not answer. Taking a deep breath, she resumed her journey, as fast as she could skitter.

  “Now who-all was thet?” asked a loafer.

  “I do believe that was little ole Tish Dingletoon, Jack Dingletoon’s biggest gal,” declared another.

  Another loafer asked, “Did ye hear that ole Jack has done went and westered off?”

  “Yeah, him and Josie both, together,” said another.

  “Maybe she’s jist a-lookin for to find them,” suggested still another.

  “Wal, fellers, that’s sorrowful news,” commented Brother Chid Tichborne, “and I don’t know about you’uns, but me, I’m gonna git right back to Holy House and see what’s up.” He straightened his gitalongs and rose up from the porch floor. He paused to see if any other loafer would budge, but the others remained crouched. “Wal?” he said. “Aint none of you’uns interested in goin with me?”

  Tolbert Duckworth asked Doc Swain, “Hey, Doc, what you aimin to do?”

  “Me?” Doc said. “Why, I don’t rightly know. How about you, Squire Hank?”

  “Wal…” said Squire Hank, but showed no sign of budging from his crouch. Everyone watched him closely for a sign of a budge, and then they watched Doc Swain for a sign of a budge. Squire Hank spat, and said, “I thought maybe that booger she was afeared of might jist be my boy Sam, but it don’t look like he’s a-follerin her. Don’t look like any boogers a-follerin her.”

  Chid Tichborne said, “Wal, I don’t know about the rest of you boogers, but I aim to foller her.” He took another couple of steps toward the edge of the porch, but there was no sign of a budge from any of the others.

  Finally Doc Swain remarked, “Jist think, fellers. This might could be the only chance we ever have in our lifetimes to see Her speak to Him, or vice versa.” Doc creakingly rose up from his crouch and stood upon his still-remaining three gitalongs, wobbling unsteadily, and moved over beside Chid.

  Squire Hank said, “Could be She’s jist going to tell Him to stay away from Her.” He too rose up, stretched, and prepared to go. With the Squire leading, all of the assembled loafers decamped from Doc’s porch and ambled off down Roamin Road in the direction of the Woman’s flashlight, now just a pinpoint of light nearly a furlong away, rapidly merging with the light coming from a window of Holy House.

  Chapter sixteen

  But the Woman did not climb the porch of Holy House. The Roamin Road skirts within sniffing distance of the porch, but the Woman stayed on the Road, and Tish stayed on Her heels, or close behind, almost to the edge of Banty Creek, where a small dirt road led from Carlott to the old low-water cement bridge over the stream and provided the Lord’s vehicle with access to the outside world. It also provided access for the mail vehicle from the outside world to stop at the Lord’s mailbox, which was a piece of metal junk, a World War ii cartridge case mounted upon a pole stuck in the ground amid brambles and brush. Here the mail carrier, driving out of Jasper, the county seat eighty furlongs to the north, stopped every morning to leave a copy of the Arkansas Gazette (daily), the Newton County Times (Thursdays), the New York Review of Books (biweekly), Arkansas Times (monthly), Audubon (bimonthly), and Poetry, the Southern Review, Poetry Northwest, and PMLA (all quarterly), and various circulars, fliers, handouts, and other promotional material and appeals from purchasers of mailing lists for “literate middleclass natureloving bookreading forties white males.” The only exercise the Lord was ever known to take, apart from the late-afternoon inspection of the weeds in His Garden, was to walk from Holy House to His Holy Mailbox, a distance of maybe half a furlong. Very rarely did He get a letter.

  The Woman found the cartridge case with Her flashlight, opened its lid, and dropped the letter into it. “There,” Tish heard Her say to Herself, “I hope the mailman doesn’t think it’s an outgoing letter.” Tish wondered what an outgoing letter was; one that was friendly and sociable?

  The Woman did not pause before turning around, and Tish had to leap to get out of the way of Her footsteps as the Woman began retracing Her path. She walked faster on the return journey, and Tish did not even try to keep up with Her.

  The loafers saw Her coming back. They were nearly abreast of Holy House, wherein their families were doing whatever they could to entertain themselves through the night, when one of the loafers shouted, “Yonder She comes back again!” and another bellowed, “Let’s us git off the Road!” and all of them scrambled to get out of Her way. One of them, Luke Whitter, was a step too late, and was ground into the earth by the Woman’s shoe. Doc Swain rushed to check him over, but Luke was pretty thoroughly squashed, and was groaning his last. There was nothing Doc could do.

  “The Lord giveth, and the Lord taketh away,” said Chid Tichborne. “Our Joshua Crust saith, ‘Be thou faithful unto west, and I will give thee a crown of life.’” And he made a mental note to remember to include Luke Whitter’s name among the several obituaries he would have to deliver tonight at the services.

  “Amen,” said the Crustian loafers, and turned Luke’s carcass over into the belly-up position and covered it with blades of grass.

  “Wal,” observed Doc, “hit don’t look like the Womarn was aimin to visit Holy House after all.”

  Mont Dinsmore announced, “Yonder comes that gal again.”

  Tish wanted to enter the forest of weeds to avoid walking through the mob of loafers, but the scent of west coming from Luke’s carcass frightened her, and she passed onward among the roosterroaches.

  “That booger still after ye?” Doc Swain asked her.

  “Nossir,” she said, smiling, “I reckon he drowned in Banty Creek.”

  “You aint a-follerin that Womarn, air ye?” he asked. Tish nodded her head. “Where’d She go? What’s She up to?”

  “She jist went to mail a letter,” Tish said. “She mailed a letter to the Lord, and put it in His box.”

  Brother Chid Tichborne solemnly declared, “I shore wush they was some way we could find out what-all that letter says in it.”

  But not even the most irreverent among them was in the mood for going to the Lord’s Holy Mailbox and attempting to tamper with His mail. Most of them still remembered the story of a family of Ledbetters who had gone to the cartridge case one night, dined on the gray flocking that stuffed the lining of a Jiffy bookmailing bag, and were sound asleep when the Lo
rd surprised them there the next day, and swatted them all west with a rolled-up Gazette.

  Instead of venturing onward to the mailbox, the mob of loafers entered Holy House, not through the same hole but through several. At a respectful distance, Tish followed. If nothing else, she could satisfy her curiosity about the interior of Holy House. She might even get some information about her missing parents. She kept as close as she could to Squire Hank, as if she might need his protection, and sure enough, just as she entered the loafing room she was accosted by a large lady roosterroach who challenged her territorial rights.

  “Jist who d’ye think you air?” demanded Mrs. Kimber.

  Squire Hank placed himself between the two females and said to Mrs. Kimber, “She’s with me.”

  “Oh, beggin yore pardon, Squar, I didn’t know,” Mrs. Kimber apologized, and got out of the way.

  The loafing room was dark except for one corner, and none of them went near it, for it contained the awake Man. A lone lamp cast its pointed beam upon the pages of a book held in the lap of the Lord. All the air around and over His head was swathed in the fumes of smoke from the cigarette burning between His fingers. On a table beside His Great Cheer-of-Ease was His Great Sacred Crystal Ashtray, a marvelous cube of glass with tapered corners rising to four concave troughs for holding His burning cigarette when He chose to put it down, and the interior of the cube was filled with extinguished butts. On one side of the Great Sacred Crystal Ashtray lay a pair of pencils, long yellow logs with rubber tips and pointed lead ends, and beyond those was a tall tumbler holding ice cubes and amber liquid. And beside the drinking glass was His Terrible Swift Rapturing Revolver Shootin-Gun.

  One of the loafers announced, “He aint a-drinkin no beer tonight. They aint been a single blessit can opened out to the cook-room.”

  Another loafer observed with an expression of disgust, “Jist that pizen hard stuff. Old Granddad. Westerly as scorpion-piss.”

  Another loafer announced, “They’s a couple of Fritos on the cookroom floor. Better hurry.” Several dozen of the loafers decamped from the loafing room toward the cookroom.

  Tish whispered to Squire Hank, “I wish there was some way to tell Him He’s got a letter from Her.”

  Squire Hank did not respond, but continued observing the Lord. Was he as deaf as his son?

  Chapter seventeen

  The deaf son rose long after the deaf sun had set. The Clock had struck the news, “DIVINITY!” a reference not to any Godhead or Manhead but to the divinely delicious confection, white as a newborn nymph, stuffed with chopped nutmeats. Sam felt as if he were stuffed with chopped nutmeats. He required a long minute to realize the lateness of the hour, and the fact that he had done something unimaginable, something totally beyond his normal powers, something wonderful but terrible: he had planted a marble! But where was the girl? Frantically he searched the Clock. What had her name been? Yes: Tish. “TISH!” he called out, and realized that he was simultaneously sniffwhip-spelling it, and remembered the delightful means of communication they had devised. Further, he remembered with a shock that he was in love with her. There was no mistake. It was not simple lust, not merely a desire to give her a marble, nor even a wish to confer upon her the motherhood of the next and possibly last generation of Ingledews. He loved her!

  But she was neither in nor around the Clock, and his sniffwhips could find no trace of her, save a faint lingering touch of the pheromone that she had sprayed the morning before. He climbed down from the Clock, and was vaguely disturbed by an out-of-the-ordinary situation: the Woman was not in Her cheer-of-ease, as usually She was during the hour of Divinity; Her stereo phonograph was not playing; Her kerosene lamps were all unlit; Her presence could not be detected within the Parthenon. She was not at home.

  Sam rushed into the cookroom, hollering, “Dad! Have you seen a girl?” but his father was not there. It was likely that his father was hanging out, as usual, at Doc Swain’s place. Sam scrambled out of Parthenon and gained the Roamin Road, and headed off toward Doc’s place.

  There was nobody there! The nightly Loafer’s Court was not convening. No patients waited to see the physician. Sam felt an unearthly sense of abandonment. Where was everybody? Sam was assailed by a metaphysical qualm: had the world of his ken and kin deserted him because of his sinning with Tish? But had it been a sin? Premarital fornication, yes, but had he seduced her? No, it had been entirely mutual; in fact, her pheromone had escaped before his affy-dizzy had escaped.

  He decided to journey onward to Holy House in search of his fellow creatures. In his haste and near-panic, he bumped into a cricket. It is almost impossible for anyone with good hearing to bump into a cricket, because they are the most raucous of sound-producing insects, their so-called “chirp” audible from great distances, eight or nine furlongs. Actually the “chirp” is a monotonous reiterated challenge of the male to his fellow males, an expression, “Shy ye, feller, up,” meaning “You, sir, back away from me.” Unlike the calls of other male bugs, which are meant to attract females, it is meant to scare off the competition, much in the same way that the fighting of horn beetles and stag beetles is simply an elimination of the weaker. The loudest cricket wins. When two male crickets meet, they will holler “Shy ye feller up” at one another insistently until one of them gives way and retreats.

  Even if he had not been in such a hurry, Sam Ingledew, not hearing the cricket, would have bumped into him. He gave the cricket a bad start, because no other bug had ever bumped into him before.

  When he had recovered, the cricket said, “I say, shy ye feller up.”

  “Beg pardon,” Sam returned, apologizing both for having bumped into him and for being unable to hear him. As a general rule, he detested crickets, but he was nothing if not polite.

  “SHY YE FELLER UP!” the cricket repeated, so loudly that Sam couldn’t help hearing him.

  “Sorry,” Sam said, and made to move around the cricket, but the hostile cricket shifted his position, blocking Sam’s way. The cricket was not much larger than Sam, although he had the long thick thighs and gitalongs of an athlete; his sniffwhips were much longer than Sam’s, and he had a belligerent expression on his face. “Look, buddy,” Sam said, “if you’ll just step aside, I’ll give you no trouble.” Again he tried to get around the cricket, but the cricket continued to block his way and continued to repeat his mindless warning.

  One fact of life which had led Sam to question the infallibility and wisdom of Man—not particularly the Man of Holy House but all Men—was that Man venerated or at least cherished the cricket but despised the cockroach. Crickets to Man were cute, adorable, and charming, and it was thought to be very bad luck to kill one of them. Sam had never heard of a cricket being killed by Man…or by Woman. But cockroaches, of basically the same size, shape, color, and configuration, in fact more sleek and streamlined than crickets, simply because they lacked the stupidity to rub their wings together and make “music,” were therefore not “cute,” but objects of revulsion and enmity. It wasn’t fair; it wasn’t cricket.

  “Listen, my friend,” Sam said to the cricket, “I don’t want your old lady. She isn’t of the least attraction to me. Fat thighs look okay on a fellow, but on a girl they’re lousy. Step aside.”

  If the cricket understood what Sam was saying to him (and Sam doubted their intelligence too), he gave no sign of it, but only continued saying, “Shy ye feller up.”

  Sam decided that the only thing to do was to lower himself to the cricket’s level and communicate in his own tongue. “Shy ye feller up, yourself,” he said to the cricket.

  This was a mistake. For a moment it stunned the cricket into silence, but then he resumed, louder than ever, “SHY YE FELLER UP!”

  “Oh, for crying out loud,” Sam said, and attempted to shove the cricket aside. But the cricket rose up on his long rear legs and cuffed Sam a blow on the side of his head that rang his bell. Sam slugged him back. The cricket punched Sam full in the face. Sam clobbered the cricket on his chop
s.

  This scuffle drew the combatants off the Roamin Road and into the forest of weeds, and thus Sam was not aware that the Woman, Sharon, returning from her postal errand, had passed by, heading home.

  Sam and the cricket circled one another warily with their dukes raised. The cricket jumped and bit Sam painfully on the abdomen. Sam remembered that crickets, though usually vegetarian, are capable of being carnivores. The cricket was now screaming at the top of his wings, “SHY YE SHY YE FELLER UP FELLER UP SHY YE FELLER UP SHY YE!!!” Sam lashed him with both sniffwhips, gave him a series of one-two punches with his touchers to the face, then kicked him over onto his back, jumped onto his chest and got in several good pokes into his soft underside.

  Undaunted, the cricket arched his back, flipped over and threw Sam off of him, then sank his teeth into Sam’s thorax and held on. Sam clawed furiously at the cricket, inflicting wounds all over the cricket’s body until the cricket released his bite on Sam.

  Sam was aware that a number of other male crickets had formed themselves into a ring of spectators around the fighters. Even if Sam was to defeat this cricket, might he not be attacked by the cricket’s kinsmen? For a moment this prospect weakened him, and he caught two hard blows from his opponent.

  He went down. Remember you’re an Ingledew, he told himself, and all Ingledews have the power. He struggled to his gitalongs, righted himself, and realized the other crickets were cheering him! “Strike ye, feller, up!” one of the crickets urged. “Hit him, feller, up alongside his head!” another said.

  Sam kicked out and tripped his foe off his gitalongs, and as the cricket went down, Sam bashed him a good lick on the side of his head, then a mighty blow on top of the head that plowed the cricket’s nose into the earth. The cricket tried to rise, and made two good efforts at getting up, then collapsed all of a heap.