The Cockroaches of Stay More Page 18

  Doc realized with a pang of conscience that he had been so busy attending this Patient, Larry Brace, and then trying to rescue Squire Hank, that he had woefully neglected his original patient, Squire Sam. Excusing himself from the company once again, and reminding them to keep a close watch on the Adam’s apple for any sign of swallowing, Doc made his way down from Larry Brace and over to the cheer-of-ease, and up it to the seat cushion, where Squire Sam lay as before, near the edge, taking in the view of the bustling activity on the couch across the way.

  “How you doing?” Doc asked, but received no answer because Sam couldn’t hear him. He checked Sam over. Respiration normal. Pulse normal. He tested Sam’s reflexes. Reflexes normal. Eyes okay. Prongs deaf. Sniffwhips straight and keen. He poked at Sam’s thorax and abdomen, to test for any internal injuries, but Sam did not flinch, nor wince. He spoke closely to one prong: “HOW YOU FEEL?”

  “Hungry,” Sam admitted.

  That was good, but Doc Swain had nothing more at hand to feed him, and everybody in Holy House was grumbling with hunger. Maybe Doc could persuade some of the folks to give up their funeral feeds for the worthy cause of nourishing convalescent Sam. Doc wondered how to explain to the deaf boy the task that was expected of him. “THINK YOU CAN WALK?” Doc asked loudly of one prong.

  Sam nodded, and said, “I’ve been watching. You want me to get over there and help, is that it? I’ve just been waiting for the doctor’s permission.”

  “YOU GOT IT,” Doc said. “CAN YOU STAND UP?”

  Squire Sam stood up. His six gitalongs were rickety and wavered a bit. Slowly Sam walked around in circles on the seat cushion, then widened the circle with stiffer gitalongs. He really oughtn’t to be exerting himself, Doc realized, but it was a matter of life and death for his father. He motioned for Sam to follow as he led the way down the side of the cheer.

  It was slow going, getting Squire Sam down off the cheer-of-ease to the floor. They could’ve flown, but the landing would’ve been jarring for both. Sam clung frantically to the fabric of the side of the cheer and lowered himself tail first, an unusual and clumsy manner of descent. They crossed the floor to the couch, and prepared to ascend a leg of Larry Brace, but were met by a mob of Crustians blocking the way, with Preacher Chid in the forefront.

  “Morsel, Chid,” Doc said, and eyed him warily.

  Chid did not return the greeting, but intoned solemnly, “The Lord is west.”

  “Not yet he aint,” Doc replied, but wondered if in his absence Lawrence Brace’s vital functions might have ceased. He moved to get a closer look, but Chid blocked the way.

  “Yea, verily I say unto ye,” Chid raised his voice, addressing not just Doc but the entire crowd of Crustians and non-Crustians alike, “our Lord has westered off and abandoned us. I don’t aim to preach His funeral. But the elders and deacons of my church has decided, and I agree, that we will have to move on out of Holy House and seek our salvation elsewhere.” A chorus of affirmations went up from the crowd, folks yelling, “You bet!” and “Shore thang!” and “Yessirreebob!” and “Yo’re darn tootin” and “Tell it, preacher!” and “Amen” and “Let’s eat!” Chid waved his sniffwhips for silence, and went on, looking straight at Doc Swain, “And there is only one place for our salvation, and that is Parthenon.”

  “So?” said Doc Swain. “How does this concern me? I got a few patients here to take keer of, including one who’s got his body all covered with a Man’s mouth.”

  “Wal, that ’un’s west too, as far as we’re concerned,” Chid said. “Aint no way you can git him out.” He pointed at Squire Sam. “And aint no way that this one can stop us by hisself from taking over Parthenon.”

  “Chid, you’re lucky he cain’t hear ye,” Doc said. “He’d make ye eat them words iffen he could hear ye. Now step out of my way, so’s we can git up yonder and see about them other two patients.”

  “Deef, is he?” Chid looked curiously at Sam, and then spoke to him, “Did you get yore prongs hurt as punishment for what ye did to the Lord?”

  Squire Sam, of course, could not hear this question, but Doc answered for him, “That wasn’t what did it. And he may be deef, but he’s still powerful enough to keep ye out of Partheeny.”

  “Keep us out of Partheeny?” Chid said, and scornfully laughed. “Heck, Doc, you don’t understand. You got it backwards. It’s gonna be us keepin him out of Partheeny, once he ever gits thar. Time he gits thar, we’ll already have the whole place to our-selfs. Right, folks?” The crowd of hungry followers of Chid chorused, “Yeah Brother!” and “I mean!” and “Betcha boots!” and “Pon my word!” and “Let’s eat!” Chid took six or twelve dramatic steps in the direction of an exit hole out of Holy House and shouted, “What are we waitin fer? Let’s go!”

  Tolbert Duckworth exclaimed, “Wait, Preacher! Half the country between here and Partheeny is under water!”

  “And more comin down,” someone said.

  “Pitchforks, cats and dogs,” added a third.

  “WE CAN SWIM, CAIN’T WE?” Chidiock Tichborne screamed.

  As if in answer to this question, as if the Lord Himself, west to all the world, had spoken a final word, a word of protest against His people abandoning Him, there was a sudden near flash of lightning, followed instantly by the most enormous crack of thunder anyone had ever heard. It literally knocked the multitudes off their feet. The light of the reading lamp, the only illumination in the great loafing room, went out. The electricity throughout the house went out. Clocks stopped. The Fabulous Fridge westered. The typewriter went off.

  In addition to the three patients he already had, Doc had to minister to several ladies and one or two males who had fainted. The rest of them, those who could get back on their gitalongs again, dispersed, either to their favorite hiding places or to places where they could pray to their Lord, who, Doc was both gladdened and disturbed to notice, showed signs of rousing from His coma, as if the thunderclap had awakened Him. There was not a minute to lose: Doc grabbed Sam by a gitalong and the two of them scurried up the body of Lawrence Brace to His face, which was twitching in imminent threat of preparation for one big swallow. They fought their way through the thicket of hairs in His beard.

  Chid, when he recovered from the thundershock, declared bravely, “Well, I can swim to Parthenon by myself, if need be. Anybody going with me?”

  Only a half-dozen Crustian deacons volunteered to accompany their minister on his brave outing, and they exited through a hole in the front of Holy House.

  Doc pantomimed the force he wanted Sam to exert against the corner of Larry’s mouth, and Sam went at it, with all his strength, which was still considerable despite the weakness of his convalescence. With fractions of a millisecond to spare, Sam threw his body against the right corner of the lips of Larry and pushed the flesh back just enough to uncover the missing tooth, making a gap through which Squire Hank instantly squeezed with an exclamation of deliverance.

  Man swallowed.

  Squire Hank did something he had never done before and might never do again: he embraced his son.

  Chapter twenty-six

  If you cain’t shet yore mouth, Maw,” Jack warned, “you’re liable to git a midge caught in it.” For the longest time, from the moment they had first entered Parthenon, Josie, even in her sleep, had been hanging her mouth open like a nymph gaping at a swallowtail butterfly. There weren’t any butterflies in Parthenon, but the things Josie kept gawking at were no less stunning, if stationary: furniture of brass! tables of teak! machinery of mahogany! and shelves, ledges, benches, brackets, blocks, bends, knobs, pulls, handles, cribs, cubbies, curtains, and clothes! The walls were covered with images! Patterns, pictures, pretties everywhere! Neither Jack nor Josie had ever, even in their dreams of the houses of Man, conceived of anything like it. Jack himself, who had sense enough not to hang his mouth wide open as his wife was doing, still wondered if perhaps they might have westered after all and were now in heaven. But if this were heaven, they were not going to
sit on the right hand of Man…or Woman, who clearly had the run of the place and didn’t look as if She had any intention of bending over and placing Jack or Josie or anybody on Her right hand.

  Their best instincts told Jack and Josie to stay out of Her sight, and they did. They waited until She was asleep before exploring the house, and then they seemed to have it all to themselves. There was no sign or scent of their daughter, Tish. What was more peculiar, there was no sign or scent of the Squires Ingledew, who, everybody knew, were the lords of the manor. For the longest time, Jack, without expressing his doubts to Josie, had feared that they might have entered the wrong house, that this was not Parthenon, that there was a third inhabited house in Stay More…but there were certain clues that this was the right place. In the cookroom, for example (a fabulous wonderland that put the cookroom of Holy House to shame, nay, to utter disgrace), they discovered a hidden apartment that obviously was the personal lodgings of Squire Hank, but without Squire Hank in it.

  Maybe, Jack decided, after waiting hours in the cookroom for the squires or Tish to return, the squires had taken Tish off to tour the rest of the fabulous castle. He decided to search elsewhere in Parthenon for them, but first he and Josie had to rest up from their long hike—and their swim—from Carlott, a more perilous journey than their recent attempt to get home from the Lord’s Refuse Pile. Jack realized he wasn’t in the very best of condition—hadn’t Doc said something about his pigeon tubes being squoze up by fatty bodies?—and he had traveled more in the past three nights than in all the rest of his life put together.

  Their first night at Parthenon, Jack and Josie dined lavishly in the cookroom on an assortment of particles they found beneath one of the stoves (there were two: an old woodstove and a modern electric range) and spent the rest of the night confining their explorations to the cookroom alone. Since Squire Hank appeared to have it to himself, except for occasional forages from the son squire, and the two squires could not hope to consume even a fraction of the scraps that the fastidious Woman overlooked, there was still an untouched bounty of edibles here and there, in cracks, crevices, and beneath things. Not alone on the floor beneath the stoves but on the countertops too, their sniffwhips kept drawing them to fresh discoveries of snippets of food.

  “Close yore mouth and eat,” Jack commanded his wife, but she was too awe-struck even to speak, let alone eat, and Jack could not remember when Josie had ever been at a loss for words.

  It was away along in the second night before a situation arose which finally moved Josie to close her mouth and speak. This night, after the Woman had climbed into her great fabulous brass bed and her slumber-scent wafted across the room, Jack and Josie began to explore this room and a small room adjoining. Josie’s mouth opened even wider at the sight of such things as a large oval rug braided of strips of colored wool, and Josie spent an hour just running around the grooves of the braids like a racehorse on an oval track.

  The adjoining room, the Woman’s washing room, contained a marvelous dresser, which Jack and Josie climbed, to explore such things as the Woman’s hairbrush, comb, and bottles from which emanated exotic fragrances. From a corner of the dresser they had a view of a pool of water, enclosed in a white porcelain bowl framed in a wooden oval, which gave them much wonder and conversation. It looked like a private swimming pool, but one much too small for the Woman. Did she have a pet fish? Or perhaps it was a birdbath—but there were no birds inside of Parthenon. Josie closed her mouth in fear of the water.

  They resumed their tour of the house, but when the Clock, in foppish tones, uttered “TUTTI-FRUTTI,” Josie’s mouth fell open again. Ever since entering Parthenon, they had been hearing the chiming of the Clock, although not close enough to distinguish “NOUGAT” from “ECLAIR.” But now, Josie exclaimed to Jack, “Did ye hear what that thing called me?”

  “Aw, now, he wasn’t speakin to you personal, Maw,” Jack assured her. “He probably calls everybody that.”

  Nothing would do but that they climb up the mantel and explore the Clock themselves, finding it every bit as enchanting as their daughter had, several nights previously, and finding even a trace of the scent of their daughter. Jack was smart enough to figure out that the interior of the Clock, with its library of edibles and the little wardrobe of Sam’s moults, was Sam’s apartment, and had been inhabited, at least overday, by his daughter. But where was she? Where was Sam?

  They left Sam’s apartment and explored the rest of Parthenon. Next to the Woman’s room was the great vacant room which had once been the general store and post office of the humans of Stay More, but was now unused, dusty, moldy, cobwebby, and contained only a few pieces of furniture attesting to its former use: the antique wood-and-glass post-office boxes and the postal counter, empty shelves, a couple of glass showcases, spool cabinets, and, on the walls, a variety of old advertisements for Garrett’s Snuff, Brown Mule Chewing Tobacco, Carter’s Little Liver Pills, Putnam Dyes, and Lydia Pinkham Remedies. This room, lost in time, was as foreign to Sharon Herself as it was to Jack and Josie Dingletoon. There was scarcely a thing to eat here that had been overlooked by previous generations of Ingledew roosterroaches or by other scavenging creatures. Indeed, there was no evidence of other living creatures in this room; even the Cobb spiders had long since given it up.

  Their third night in Parthenon, Jack and Josie convinced themselves that they had the place all to themselves, except for the Woman, who had a regular schedule: She was finished with Her supper and the washing of its dishes each night when Jack and Josie awoke, and then, while they had breakfast, She sat on the porch in Her rocking cheer until dark, watching lightning bugs, then spent the balance of the evening, before bedtime, sitting in Her cheer-of-ease with a book, and listening to music not at all like the Purple Symphony, music of many instruments and voices that came from two separate large boxes placed on the floor of Her listening corner. The third night, Jack left Josie in the cookroom and sallied forth into the Woman’s room while the Woman was still awake and listening to the music. He kept out of sight along the edge of the wall, then crawled beneath Her cheer-of-ease, where he was able to perceive the reason there were two boxes from which music came. He discovered, by placing his body so that each of his tailprongs received the same amount of sound from each of the separate boxes, that the music surrounded him, it seemed to come not simply from the boxes but from the four walls and ceiling of the room, and it captivated his tailprongs. For a long time he listened to the music, which, whenever it came to a long silence, the Woman would start up again by turning over great circular black plates.

  But once the Woman stopped the music before it came to its silence; She interrupted it, made it stop, because the giant black ant perched on the giant black beetle, who had given Tish such cause for wonder, was now making a discordant music louder than the music from the boxes. But Jack, or Squire John as he truly ought to be called when sober (and he had endured nearly four nights now without a drop), understood that these were not insectile creatures but mechanical, metallic thingumajimmies.

  For three nights he had heard the Woman muttering aloud, talking to Herself, indistinguishably, in entire paragraphs, but now She was speaking aloud, clearly, into one end of the thingumajimmy.

  “Hi, Gran. Just fine. No, not yet. Yes, I know. Um-huh. Wouldn’t you think? Yeah. Well, I couldn’t. That’s right. If I did. Sometimes. You’ve got me. Of course. Soon, I hope. You’re kidding. Well, possibly. Oh, come on. No, Gran. Never. Don’t say that. Huh? Ah, me. So what did you say? That bad, huh? You didn’t. And what did she say? Oh, no. Well, I’ll be. Um-huh. Unt-hum. Hunt-uh. Maybe. Who knows. Tomorrow morning. But not last night. If we get one more drop, I’ll go nuts. Did it? Well, you never know. If I don’t, he would. Yeah. What I’m telling you. Could be. Any time. Right. Bye-bye. Sleep tight.”

  Squire John sat for a long moment puzzling over the significance of what he had heard. At a loss, he returned to the cookroom, where he had left Josie feasting upon a bit of strawberry s
hortcake fallen from the Woman’s supper dessert, and repeated to Josie, word for word, what the Woman had said. Then he asked, “What do ye make of that?”

  “Wait a jerk, and let me git this straight,” Josie said. “What did She say right after ‘But not last night’?”

  “She said, ‘If we git one more drop, I’ll go nuts.’”

  “That’s what I thought ye said She said,” Josie said, and resumed munching her strawberry shortcake.

  Squire John waited. At length he said, “Wal? What do you think?”

  “I think this strawberry shortcake is the best thang ever I et,” Josie declared.

  “I mean,” said Squire John, “what d’ye make of Her words? You’re a female, like Her. What-all kind of womenfolk talk is that-all?”

  “Wal,” said Josie at length, finishing her food and cleaning her chops, “hit’s plain as the sniffwhip on yore face that She was a-talkin to Her grandmother. What did the Other Lady look like?”

  Squire John tried to explain that there were no pictures, only words, on the thingumajimmy. Josie was dubious, but she explained to Squire John, “The Granny-Woman asked Her how She was doing, and She said She was doing just fine. Then Grandmaw says, ‘You haven’t gone to bed, have you?’ and the Woman says, ‘No, not yet.’ Grandmaw says, ‘The ten o’clock news said that Sheriff Tate was defeated in the run-off,’ and the Woman says, ‘Yes, I know.’ And Grandmaw says, ‘Did you vote for him?’ and the Woman says, ‘Um-huh.’ Then Grandmaw asks…”

  Squire John’s mouth was hanging open; he listened in amazement as his wife, with a female intuition beyond his grasp, told him word for word the conversation between the Woman named Sharon and the Grandmother named Latha. The subjects covered, in addition to the aforementioned county election, were: the use of rotenone as a duster for vegetable crops, the progress of Sharon’s strawberry crop, the approaching visit of Sharon’s Sister coming from a place called California, the Sister’s divorce from her Husband, an earlier conversation on the telephone between the Grandmother and the Wife of Sharon’s Brother Vernon, the current duration, amount and possible future of the rainfall, and, finally, the current status of the ongoing relationship, or lack thereof, between Sharon and Man Our Lord of Holy House.