Lightning Bug Read online

  IT BEGINS:

  one by one, or together in pairs or groups, the boys come. In his dad’s car, a ’36 Chevy coupe with rumbleseat, is Oren (“Junior”) Duckworth, Jr., and his brother Chester. These are the best-looking. On foot, and separately from different directions, arrive the triplet sons of Lawlor Coe the blacksmith, Earl, Burl & Gerald. You should know that the way they say “Gerald,” he rhymes with his brothers. Gerald will die a hero with the Marines at Iwo Jima in 1945. These brothers look just alike, which is not much to look at: inclined to pudginess, and over-freckled. Alone on foot comes John Henry (“Hank”) Ingledew, Bevis’s boy, nephew to dead Raymond Ingledew, who was Latha’s beau a long long time ago. Then comes the W.P.A. gang, who are staying with the folks of Merle Kimber, who is a W.P.A. boy himself (and who rhymes with the Coe triplets, though he’d just as soon not); he and Leo Dinsmore are the only ones from this valley; the others are Furriners, which means that they don’t come from this valley: Clarence Biggart comes from Madison County and is even a married man, so is J.D. Pruitt, who comes from someplace up north in Newton County, Eddie Churchwell and Dorsey Tharp are from downstate somewhere.

  Here are a dozen boys. They have each said, politely, “Howdy, Miss Latha,” and they have each said, warmly, “Howdy, Snory, honey,” and a few of them have even said, “Howdy, Dawny.” One of them, Eddie Churchwell, teases me. “The boogers are sure gonna git you tonight, Dawny boy. I seen one down the road, a-comin this way, and I figgered he was out after me, but he tole me he was comin to grab you.” I titter.

  They stand around. There are three empty chairs on the porch, but the boys do not sit in these. Some of them sit on the porch rail, brushing the cats aside, but most of them just stand around, some of them in the yard.

  Merle Kimber spits. As if on signal, each of the others, in turn, spits. After a while Merle Kimber spits again, and one by one the others do. Clarence Biggart has a reason to spit, because he is chewing tobacco, but the others spit because…well, because I guess it makes them look manly, although you’d think that if they keep that up long enough, night after night, we would all of us drown in it by and by. Maybe the spit is a kind of advertisement, maybe a substitute for all the sperm they’d like to get rid of.

  It is professional spitting. I have tried to do it but can’t. A certain snap of the tongue squirts it out through a crevice between the front teeth, in such a way that it goes in a straight stream and lands intact and compact. When I try to spit, it splatters all over. Any one of these boys could hit a horsefly from five yards away. Naturally, they are spitting only into the yard, not upon the porch. Inside, over the post office boxes is a printed sign, KINDLY DO NOT EXPECTORATE UPON THE FLOOR, but I don’t think any of these boys knows what that means, even if they could read; still, they are gentlemen, and know where to spit.

  But Chester Duckworth, spitting, is momentarily careless: his blob alights on J.D. Pruitt’s shoe. J.D. hauls off with his fist and clobbers Chester a good one; soon they are scuffling in the grass, putting up a scrap not really out of belligerence so much as ostentation: they are showing off for Snory. J.D. is older by several years, nearly 21, but Chester is bigger. They smack each other around all over the landscape; J.D. chases Chester up the road, and after a while he comes back, huffing and puffing and rubbing his wounds. Later, Chester too comes back, acting like he was just arriving. “Howdy, Miss Latha,” he says, cool as buttermilk. “Howdy, there, Snory, honey. Howdy, boys. Howdy, Dawny, has that ’ere booger man not cotched you yet, tee hee?”

  Merle Kimber spits. J.D. Pruitt says, “Hoo, Lord, aint it a hot night, though?”

  Clarence Biggart says, “Yeah boy.”

  Junior Duckworth says, “Hotter ’n Hades.”

  Hank Ingledew says, “Might come a rain tomorra.”

  Earl, Burl & Gerald Coe spit.

  Eddie Churchwell says, “Well, now, boys…”

  [Now if one has not been reading me carefully, one is anticipating that pretty soon Latha Bourne will start selling tickets and each of the boys will take Sonora into the house. One is not reading me at all.]

  Eddie Churchwell says, “Well, now, boys, why don’t we just draw straws?”

  John Henry “Hank” Ingledew slugs him square on the jaw. Then the big fight begins. Although Merle Kimber and Leo Dinsmore are local boys, they side with the Furriners because being a W.P.A. boy is more important than being a local boy. So it is six against six, our boys against theirs. Knock down, drag out, clear-to-Hell-and-back-again. Even though they are serious, and even though they are hurting one another, they are still essentially showing off for Snory.

  I have watched this fight so often it no longer interests me. So I watch Latha and Snory watching it. Snory is feigning alarm, and even making little screaming noises. But Latha has the trace of a smile around the edges of her mouth.

  What does she look like? She is dark, and of very fair skin. She is taller than average, and neither thick nor thin, but full-bodied, I suppose what you could call “shapely” though not in any way to make men whistle. [I cannot help but think of Vanessa Redgrave in Blow-Up, which of course is ridiculous, and possibly even an insult to Miss Redgrave, but I have no doubt that a highly paid make-up technician could take Latha and after some diligent and thoughtful work transform her into the spitting image of Miss Redgrave. As a matter of fact, I have before me—on the wall—a poster obtained for $1.00 from Famous Faces, Inc., Box 441, Norristown, Pa. 19404, depicting Miss Redgrave life-size from the scene in Blow-Up when she is about to allow herself to be laid by David Hemmings in order to “buy” his roll of incriminating negatives. She is wearing a dark hip-hugging miniskirt with a wide black leather belt. But she is topless, and out of modesty has hugged her arms around herself to cover her lovely breasts. She is staring out of the picture (and into the eyes of Hemmings?) with large eyes—with the expression of a very sweet and good girl who has done a bad thing and is now getting ready to do another bad thing because of it. (My Aunt Murrison always said, “Two wrongs never make a right.”) Not only have I seen Latha Bourne in that exact same pose, one afternoon when I barged in on her while she was dressing, but also I have seen Latha Bourne with that exact same expression…and, kindly believe me, that exact same beauty.] I love to look at Latha Bourne, which is something I do more often than anything else, except sleep. Maybe I disturb her, looking at her so much. The fight goes on, with grunts and thuds and slams and rips, but I don’t watch it.

  Here are all of the known facts about her: she was born in Stay More, in a cabin on the east side of Ledbetter Mountain. (The post office is at the foot of the south side of the same mountain.) Her father, Saultus Bourne, was a subsistence farmer. He died of pneumonia in 1921 and lies buried in the Primitive Baptist Church cemetery on Swains Creek. Her mother, Fannie Swain Bourne, was descended from one of the original settlers of Stay More. She died of apoplexy in 1927 and is interred in the Church of Christ cemetery at Demijohn. Latha has two sisters, Mandy, who married Vaughn Twichell and lives in Little Rock, and Barbara, who lives in California but has not been heard of. Latha attended the Stay More grade school, first through eighth grades, then went to high school at Jasper. She was popular in high school, and at graduation she was unofficially engaged to Raymond Ingledew, a Stay More boy, but he joined the service and was killed in the Argonne—actually, he was only listed as missing, but he never did come back, although some people say that Latha is still waiting for him, which I doubt. Latha had already lost her virginity, at the age of eleven, to some third or fourth cousin of hers. (Well, as they say in this part of the country, a virgin, by definition, is “a five-year-old girl who can outrun her daddy and her brothers,” so I guess Latha was a late-developer or else just lucky—or, from another point of view, unlucky.) There was some gossip that as soon as she learned that Raymond Ingledew was reported missing Over There, she began to carry on again with that same third or fourth cousin, but nobody ever caught them at it. In any case, shortly after the death of her father
, in 1921, she moved to Little Rock to live with her married sister, Mandy. About nine months after that, in May of 1922, she was committed in the Arkansas State Hospital at Little Rock, where she remained nearly three years. Her escape, in March of 1925, attracted some attention in the Little Rock newspapers. Although escapes from the A Ward, the B Ward, and even the C Ward were relatively routine, Latha was (and today remains) the only patient who ever escaped from E Ward. She was never captured. Some folks insinuate that she lived thereafter as a prostitute in some large city, possibly Memphis or New Orleans or St. Louis, but nobody really knows. In any event, she was never seen again until June of 1932, when suddenly she appeared out of nowhere back in Stay More, with a deed to Bob Cluley’s General Store which had recently been foreclosed by the bank in Jasper. Where she got the money nobody knows, though they’ve had a long lot of fun trying to guess. Two years after establishing herself as proprietress of the store, she applied for and obtained the post of postmistress, after the death of longtime postmaster Willis Ingledew, the father of Lola, who wanted the job and will always hate Latha for taking away what she thought was rightfully hers.

  And that is all. Nothing has happened to Latha since. She has received, and rejected, proposals of marriage from the following: Doc Calvin Swain, Tearle (“Tull”) Ingledew, our village drunk, and a five-year-old boy euphoniously sobriqueted Dawny.

  The fight is over. Our boys, as usual, have emerged victorious, bloody but unbowed. The W.P.A. boys are shuffling off up the road, declaring that they are going to a square dance at Parthenon where the real men are and the real gals are, and that besides you Stay More boys fight dirty.

  Junior Duckworth is inspecting his tattered shirt and his dirt-caked abrasions. In front of Snory he holds his arms out as if to display himself, and says to her, “Aw, shoot fire, Snory honey, aint I a sight? I was aimin to take you over to Jasper to the pitcher show, but now it looks like I got to go home and git cleaned up some, don’t it?”

  Junior and his brother Chester get into their car, and Junior sprays gravel letting out the clutch, and shows off some more turning the car around skiddingly like a maniac.

  Earl Coe says to Burl Coe, “You want to see thet pitcher show?”

  Burl Coe asks, “Is it Tex Ritter or Hopalong Cass’dy?”

  Earl Coe says, “Hit’s ole Hopalong.”

  “Sheeut,” says Burl Coe. “Noo, son, let’s see what’s doing up to thet thar squar dance.”

  “Okey doke,” says Earl Coe, then turns to Gerald. “You, Jerl?”

  “Fine and dandy,” says Gerald Coe.

  The Brothers Coe say “See y’all around” to us, and amble off up the road.

  That leaves Hank Ingledew. He spits, shuffles his feet, clears his throat. “Snory,” he says. “You keer to watch that squar dance, or somethin?”

  “Or somethin,” she says, echoing, slightly teasing.

  She stands up, walks down off the porch, takes Hank’s hand.

  “See y’all,” says Hank.

  “Night night,” says Snory.

  “Be good,” speaks Latha. It is a formality; I do not believe she means it. In fact I think she means, “Be bad as you can!”

  Hank and Snory walk off up the road, hand in hand.

  It is easy enough to surmise that a girl of Sonora’s temperament, appearance and popularity might be inclined to promiscuity, but this is not the case. Unless I miss my guess badly, her body, if not her heart wholly, belongs only to John Henry Ingledew. When the other eleven boys are around, he is merely one of them, a rather reserved and inconspicuous member of the gang, but when he is alone with Snory he is her lover. I have watched them make love three times, once in a thicket on the other side of Swains Creek, once in the abandoned tavern up the road from Latha’s store, and once in the corn crib behind Latha’s place. It is a sight to behold. It is beautiful, and it is awesome, and it is only faintly disturbing to a boy of five whose immature penis can only envy such voluptuous recreation.

  I think Latha lives vicariously in Sonora. The younger woman appears, to all intents and purposes, to be the Lightning Bug, but it is the older woman who lives in her and really appreciates it.

  Latha and I are alone now. I rock the swing gently, my feet not reaching the floor. Latha holds in one hand a lovely silk handkerchief, which she has been using for the purpose of blotting perspiration from her brow. She stares off up the road in the direction Hank and Snory have disappeared. She raises the handkerchief to her mouth and grips a corner of it between her teeth.

  Clouds march past the moon.

  The blinking, flashing scintillation of the lightning bugs seems to keep a beat with the music from the grass and trees.

  The music runs, and if I listen very carefully I can separate the instruments. They speak to her, my Bug, who does not hear them.

  Only I can.

  The katydids:

  Cheer up, cheer up, Bug. Cheap luck, Bug, Sit your seat, Bug. Sweet seat, seat you sit, Bug. Sitting sucking sweaty sweet silk, sighing, Bug. Sweet sullen suffering Bug, sitting swept by swift Swains Creek. Creak your seat, Bug. Swing, swivel, swoop, sway. Switch, Bug, itch, Bug, twitch, Bug, in this tweeting twangling twinkling twilight!

  The bullfrogs:

  Bug, O come! Bug, a crumb! Drug a mug a some scummy jug a rum! Hump a stumpy rump! Thrum, you smug dumb Bug! Shrug your chummy bumps! Jump the rug’s numb lumps! Bug, Bug, O Bug, become! Hum, Bug, hum with your gums, you sluggish bummy Bug! O Bug, O Bug, O hugging, tugging, thumping Bug so mum!

  The crickets and cicadas, in chorus:

  Were you to stir your blurry fur and purr, O Bug, I would demur to slur you. Such verse is worse than Satan’s curse, but terse as all the universe. Disgust you must such lusty crust, and fussed, and cussed me for it, yet still I trust you will be just, and never bust me for it. Enough rebuff will make me gruff, and puff my cheeks in stuffy huff.

  Sick. sick. sicksicksicksicksicksick.

  Cheap. cheap. cheapcheapcheapcheap dirt-cheap

  Cheer up. cheer up. cheerupcheerupcheerup chirp chirp

  Wish. wish. wishwishwish

  crick critic critter crotch

  O Bug

  “Tell me a story.”

  “Sure, Dawny, but first I have to go out back.”

  She rises. The screen door WRIRRRAARAANGS. She walks through her sitting room, through her bedroom. There is a faint distant wrirraanngg of the spring on the back door. She walks up the path, she climbs a few stone steps, she opens the door of the outhouse. It is, for some reason, a two-seater, I don’t know why. I doubt that she and Sonora have ever sat there together. I have never found them there together. (Yea, in my watchings I have even spied once there. From behind. From below.)

  Tearle Ingledew comes staggering down the road. A man of 48, he is “The Bad Ingledew,” the one out of six brothers who has gone wrong. He has what they call a drinking problem, which means he is never sober. To me he is the Good Ingledew.

  He stops before the porch, spreads wide his arms, and in a thick gravelly voice declaims, “Behold, thou art fair, my love; behold, thou art fair; thou hast dove’s eyes within thy locks: thy hair is as a flock of goats, that appear from mount Gilead. Thy teeth are like a flock of sheep that are even shorn, which come up from the washing; whereof every one bear twins, and none is barren among them. Thy lips are like a thread of scarlet, and thy speech is comely: thy temples are like a piece of pomegranate within thy locks. Thy neck is like the tower of David builded for an armoury, whereon there hang a thousand bucklers, all shields of mighty men. Thy two breasts are like—”

  I interrupt him, “She’s not here just now.”

  “Who’s thet?” he says, dropping his arms and squinting in the dark. “Thet you, Dawny?”

  “Yep.”

  He sits on the bottom step. “Whar’s Lathe?”

  “She’s takin a pee.”

  “Oh.” He puts his elbows on his knees and cradles his chin in his hands. “S’funny,” he muses. Soon he rises up
. “Wal,” he says, “I jest drapped by to give her my love. I’m off up towards Right Prong, to see if Luther Chism’s rotgut is done makin yet. Give her my love. You don’t let them fool ye, Dawny, about them boogers. They aint no sech thing. I know.”

  He walks away.

  Then—a moment later—what seems to be merely one among a million lightning bugs grows brighter and brighter, coming up the road. It is not a lightning bug but a flashlight. The light comes nearer; soon I can make out the arm holding it and then the figure of a man attached to the arm. The flashlight swings upward and plays for a moment upon the center of the sign attached to Latha’s store:

  Then the flashlight beam swings along the porch until it comes to rest on me. I raise my arms to shield my face from the glare. I cannot make out the figure behind the flashlight, but something in me senses that he is a stranger, and I am slightly frightened.

  “Howdy there, sonny,” his voice says, and it is unfamiliar but warm and friendly. “You must be Bob Cluley’s boy…or maybe his grandson.”

  “Nossir,” I reply. “Bob Cluley don’t live here no more. He sold out back in 1932.”

  “Do tell? Why, that was quite a ways back.”

  “Yessir.”

  “I notice they’ve moved the Post Office to here. Is the Ingledew Store gone?”

  “Nossir, but it’s not the post office no more.”

  “Who owns this place now?”

  “Latha Bourne does.”

  Silence. Then in a very low voice, as if not talking directly to me at all, he says, “You don’t mean it.” Then he says, “You don’t mean to tell me.” Then he says, louder, but tripping on his words, “Are you…are you her boy?”

  “Nossir. I live up the road at the next place.”

  “The Murrison place? Then you must be Frank’s boy. You kind of favor him.”

  “He’s just my uncle.”