The Cockroaches of Stay More Read online

  Sam had to chew soap whenever he spoke the wrong word. When he simply misused a word, he was sniffwhipped. On penalty of a severe sniffwhipping, he was told never to use the shortened “roach” as a substitute for “roosterroach,” as Man does, because properly speaking a roach is a small, silvery freshwater fish, Rutilus rutilus, and in its several slang associations it means such things as a roll of hair, or the cut on the edge of a boat’s sail, or the butt of a marijuana cigarette—a form of “roach” which Sam’s mother once took him on a long jaunt to the edge of Stay More to examine, from a safe distance: it was still smoldering upon the ground, and its faint smoke, if allowed to enter one’s spiracles, would make one drunker than Chism’s Dew. “Now, son, that is a ‘roach,’” his mother had said, “unless you ever see the fish kind of roach, which will eat ye quicker’n ye can git word to Man. So don’t never let me hear you say ‘roach’ when you mean us. Us is always ‘roosterroach.’”

  When Sam’s mother westered, he properly grieved for two days, staying awake all during the daylight to mourn, and then he had no further maternal instruction to digest or injunction to obey. His loneliness sometimes compelled him to leave his Clock, whence he had returned to live alone during his fifth instar, and venture out into Stay More to attempt the cultivation of other boys his age, but because he was an Ingledew and destined to be a squire, and because he lived in Parthenon two furlongs away from all the other youth of Stay More, and because he was by nature “different” from other pre-imago roosterroaches his age, he did not succeed in finding a best friend, and the extent of his acceptance by his peers into the youth culture was his learning a few bawdy jokes and bits of gossip about various girls, and learning the practice the boys called “jacking off,” which involved a complicated manipulation of one’s tallywhacker with one’s hind gitalong.

  “Jacking off,” a substitute for the act of mating with a female, caused a spermatophore to burst forth from the endophallus with a high degree of physical and emotional pleasure. A favorite game of the hot-blooded imago males of Stay More involved using the ejaculated spermatophores as small, maneuverable spheres in a contest of sniffwhip dexterity within a circle drawn in the dirt; one’s own spermatophore was one’s “shooter,” and the object of the game was to shoot and capture the other spermatophores. The game was known as “marbles.”

  When he reached the age of imago, Sam indulged in the game of marbles whenever he could find a group playing it, and sometimes he played it alone, by himself, producing marble after marble, and he scorned those Crustians who claimed that the game was sinful, wicked, and could cause one to lose all one’s marbles, or to go deaf, or blind, or to have hair grow on the sides of one’s sniffwhips.

  When he began to lose his hearing, he thought that he had been wrong, the Crustians right, but he learned that none of the other players of marbles were losing theirs. Maybe the other players never played alone, by themselves, as he did. Maybe it really was sinful to play with yourself, and it worried him to the extent that he quit playing the game alone, then quit playing it with others. But still his hearing grew worse.

  Although he told no one, it was very difficult to conceal the fact that he was nearly deaf. More and more he kept to himself and to his Clock. In time he had no friends among the Smockroaches or the Frockroaches. He was the Clockroach, and he could still hear the striking of the Clock. But he missed, he sorely missed, being able to hear the Woman. All of the months of his growing up, he had listened to Her. She talked to Herself. Much of what She said to Herself he could not understand, but most of it he was able to figure out, and Sam felt that he probably knew Her better than any other creature knew Her, certainly better than Man knew Her.

  Once in a while She talked not to Herself but to a black hard plastic device shaped like an oversized ant, which usually rested upon the back of another black hard plastic device shaped like an oversized beetle. Somehow a person’s voice, another Woman, or, very rarely, a Man, spoke through this device to Her. Usually She spoke back to it, and Sam, before he lost his hearing, could listen to the conversation.

  But often She simply twiddled a dial on the beetle and then listened without speaking. Before his hearing began to fail him, Sam had heard a number of these lectures, or whatever they were. A voice would say, “You have dialed Tel-Med program number 147, ‘The Lady Living Alone.’ Through choice or necessity, many women choose to live by themselves. This can result in medical problems as well as social problems. We want to talk to you about them.”

  Part of Sam’s education, before his hearing began to go, was to eavesdrop on these Tel-Med programs. More than once he had heard Number 42, “I’m Just Tired, Doctor”; Number 693, “Weight Control While Quitting Smoking”; Number 694, “Why a Woman Should Quit Smoking”; Number 6, “Breast Cancer”; Number 323, “Are You Afraid of the Dentist?”; Number 35, “Understanding Headaches”; and Number 728, “When Should I See a Psychiatrist?”

  The last program that Sam heard clearly, a month or so before his hearing went, was Number 945, “So You Love an Alcoholic?”

  Chapter four

  As for Carlott, it was…well, the most charitable thing to be said for Carlott is that it was the most natural of environments, but even that is arguable if we agree that the true native habitat of the roosterroach is the household of Man, within Man’s providence, bounty, and grace. It was a rare day indeed when a Carlotter tasted any food provided by Man.

  All roosterroaches are scavengers in the best sense, not of feeding on westered or decaying organic matter, but of cleaning up the leftovers carelessly neglected by other creatures, Man chief among them. But three hundred and fifty million years before Man climbed down out of trees and learned to cook, roosterroaches were finding something to eat.

  The residents of Carlott, though most of them were Crustians and believers in Man, lived on what they could find in the forests, fields, and yard behind and beside Holy House. They never entered Holy House except by invitation from their kinfolk among the Frockroaches and Smockroaches. The Carlott community took its name from the circumstance that its dwellings—rotten logs, hollows in trees and in limbs, concavities beneath old boards and metallic junk—were centered around the rusting hulk of an inoperable automobile, a Ford Fairlane of ancient vintage which was said to have delivered Man to Holy House but was no longer used, and a still operable Ford Torino of more recent manufacture, which Man occasionally drove away and returned in, parking it beside the older car in a small yard in the rear of Holy House. The chassis of the older car was also inhabited by a large nest of Polistes annularis, the paper wasp, who was strictly a daytime creature and never bothered the roosterroaches.

  The family Dingletoon, of whom Jack was paterfamilias, occupied a hollow fallen limb or branch of maple on the weed-forested side of Carlott, within sight of the great ruin of the edifice known as the Three-Hole Privy, long ago abandoned entirely by Man, and the exact purpose of which remains a mystery to modern rooster-roaches, although legends abound, particularly concerning the ancient victuals provided there. Jack Dingletoon remembered as a child hearing Gramp Dingletoon tell wondrous tales of how generation upon generation of Dingletoons were sustained and even nourished by the edibles provided in the cellars of the Privy.

  But Tish Dingletoon, Jack’s eldest daughter still at home, had not cared for these stories of the Privy food; the stories she picked up from her girlfriends concerned the viands available at Holy House and the rumors of incredibly delectable treats consumed at Parthenon, or Partheeny, as it was pronounced. Tish had never tasted a Twinkie, and could scarce imagine it. She was tortured by descriptions of bismarcks, fritters, crullers, Saratogas, danish, and doughnuts glazed, raised, and jellied. The closest she had ever come to sampling any of these was a bit of white fluff given her by a Smockroach swain, Jim Tom Dinsmore, who said it was “Wonder Bread.” Tish had suspected that Jim Tom was simply preparing her with an appetizer, as it were, to entice her to taste the affy-dizzy of his tergal gland, a forbi
dden and dangerous potion.

  Her mother had taught her always to resist the temptation to lick affy-dizzy, as the exudate of the male tergal gland was called. Some of her girlfriends had tasted it, but Tish had not. To reach it, you practically had to climb up on the boy’s back, beneath his wings, and if you did that, he had you where he wanted you, and might make you take one of his marbles. Taking a marble was supposed to be a right smart of fun, but it also meant you’d soon have to carry a big easteregg sticking out of your rear end for several days before you could drop it somewhere.

  Tonight would be a dance. Now as the near woods and the far fields and even the impossibly distant mountainsides began to echo with both the sound and smell of the Purple Symphony, from every covert cranny and hidden nook of Carlott, and down from the holes of Holy House too, crept forth dozens of maiden rooster-roaches, who gathered into two long parallel snaking lines, sniffwhips to one another’s tail-prongs, end to end, two by two, side by side, and began to promenade all over the glens and glades of Stay More, stepping, nearly prancing, in tune to both the smells and the sounds of the symphony.

  Some of the girls in this double processional tapped their abdomens to the ground to keep a beat for the others to march to; all of them held their heads high and swung their sniffwhips rhythmically to and fro in the air, and their tailprongs from side to side. Their numbers made them into one giant centipede, nay, a millipede, and the authority that towers in numbers frightened off any predator as well as any harmless creature that might stand in the path of this great undulating chain of femininity. Crickets and katydids alike leapt frantically out of their way, and nightcrawlers plowed off the road and into the median strip with cries of “MAYDAY!” and “THIRTY? THREE!” and “BLOOD BOX!” A great warty toad, Bufo americanus, who ordinarily would have made a meal out of several of these girls at one lick, westered of heart failure. Some of the girls giggled at the sight of his hammy legs in the air, still kicking in west.

  The night, and the air, and the music, not to mention the calendar, conspired to make each of these virginal roosterroaches broadcast her own personal perfume, until the downdrifting dew was thoroughly saturated with pheromones, irresistibly sensual, and the mingling of these vampish vapors seeped into every lair of Carlott and hole of Holy House, and even as far away as Parthenon, and all the male roosterroaches banged their heads against the walls of their hiding places in an effort to give themselves the willpower to keep their tergal glands from leaking all their affy-dizzy. For these maidens were only teasing with their powerful pheromones; they did not mean business; they were not ready for mating…yet. The long double chain wound and wound around the hollers and hummocks of the little village.

  In certain isolated coves of the Ozark Mountains, up until the most recent times, the folk (both humanfolk and roosterroachfolk) still celebrated, particularly in May as the earth began to grow, what can only be called Cerealia, rites in honor of Ceres, the godhead above the god of Roman Man, or rather goddesshead: Mother Earth herself, protectress of all the fruits of the earth and from whom the sacred word “cereal” comes. The young of Man had often conducted their “play-party” as a form of Cerealia, and the roosterroaches, following Man in all things, did likewise.

  This double file of promenading females sashayed up and down the Roamin Road almost as far as Parthenon, almost within sight of the Woman, a substitute for Ceres, who sat on the porch of Parthenon, in Her rocking cheer, not Mother Earth but a sort of Earth Mother although She had never had any children herself. From within Parthenon, through the open screen door behind Her, came the sounds of Her stereo, but it was not the source of the Purple Symphony, and indeed She probably could not hear the latter, even with Her stereo off. Nor could She see the hundreds of roosterroaches turning their train around in Her dooryard.

  As the double file of maidens came prancing back down the Roamin Road, one of the females exclaimed, “The Lord-a-Joshuway! Why, Tish Dingletoon, if there aint yore pappy tryin to ketch holt of the end of our train!”

  Tish Dingletoon turned her head at this exclamation and swung her sniffwhips to try to detect the distant tail of the roosterroachipede, where Jack Dingletoon was staggering along in pursuit, seeking to imitate the sway of the girls’ sniffwhips with his own, and doing an awful job of copying their prance and posture.

  Jack’s head was tilted back and he was singing in cadence to the march: “Hi yoop! I aint no Dingletoon no more! By cracky, I’m a pure dee pure blood Ingledew now, and a squire to boot!”

  All the girls tittered, giggled, and pointed, except Tish, in whom a slow heat rose.

  “He’s had too much Chism’s Dew, is all he has,” she said hastily, “and he don’t know what he’s sayin.”

  One of her companions giggled and said, “Bet he don’t have a Ingledew’s pecker on him! Haw-haw!”

  “Now looky here: I won’t march another inch with you’uns if ye say any jokes about him!” Tish cried, and cast down her eyes and her sniffwhips, afraid to hold them up and see if indeed by some hideous chance her father’s tallywhacker might be extending itself or his tergal gland might be leaking affy-dizzy. She would be mortified beyond hope if he were even involuntarily exposing himself or releasing affy-dizzy in the presence of all these females. Tish could not look, nor smell, and she concentrated upon the steps of her own six gitalongs, lest one of them hit a twig or miss a step, and thus, by ignoring whatever spectacle her sire was making of himself (in time she could no longer hear his voice), she managed to continue with the double parade to its conclusion at the Platform, as they called the one door of the Ford Fairlane which Man had removed from its hinges and laid into the weeds, where it served as a pavilion for dances as well as political rallies and an occasional pulpit for Brother Tichborne.

  Tish Dingletoon at this time of her life was not yet a beauty, still retaining some of the awkwardness of her pre-imago girlishness: you could sometimes see her fifth instar in her cheeks, or her third instar sparkling from her eyes, and even her second instar would flit over the curves of her mandibles now and then. She assumed that she was just one more Dingletoon female, no more, no less: an attractive, even “cute” country girl, but not a “looker.”

  Nothing more was seen, heard or sniffed of Jack Dingletoon in his sportive conduct at the end of the train, and when the parade entered the glade of the Cars, its allotted and magic space (all creatures having a space their very own, wherein they are safe from harm or molestation), the dancing began. The maidens climbed the Platform and formed themselves into “squares” of four and eight for a play-party dance, without partners, or with girl partners, at least in the beginning. Later, when the fumes of the pheromones had settled down, and a virile male could appear without leaking affy-dizzy, the braver, bolder, more self-possessed youths among the idlers and pedestrians might venture to join the girls.

  There was an old story, nearly a year old, that Man had appeared in Carlott one night while a play-party was in progress, had violated the magic space of the roosterroaches, had tripped over the Platform, westering several roosterroaches in the crush of His falling, and then, standing up again, had urinated all over the Platform and environs, westering a few more. But that was long ago, almost a whole year, and none of this generation of girls had been born then. They had been told of it by their mothers as a warning always to fear Man, to obey His commandments, to live righteously in reverence of His wrath. Since lowly Carlotters could not enter Holy House and subject themselves to the possibility of Rapture by bullets, this memory of Man’s violation of the Platform gave some Carlotters the hope and expectation of Rapture by piss.

  Several squares of the play-party were danced by the girls alone, including “Pig in the Parlor,” “Frog up a Stump,” and “Possum Trot,” before the first males appeared as lookers-on. Among these first brave watchers were several sons of the Frockroach preacher, Brother Tichborne, and one of these, a bold swain named Archy, was the first male to climb the Platform.

  “Wh
at you fixin to do, Archy?” asked one of his brothers.

  “I got a hankerin to jine the dance,” Archy declared.

  “You’re out of yore fool haid,” said the brother. “What if Paw was to find out?”

  “You aim to tell ’im?” Archy challenged. “Come on, Felix, and the rest of you boys too. Let’s us have us some fun.”

  But none of Archy’s brothers would join him. He turned to choose a partner. The girls waited breathlessly to see which of them he would pick. Tish Dingletoon took notice of him, a fine strong handsome boy, and she told herself that her chances of being chosen as his partner were slight, and thus she did not, as some of the other girls were doing, primp and pose and prettify herself.

  Sure enough, he did not even seem to notice Tish but selected Spicy Bourne, another Carlotter, like her sisters a feisty beauty and, also like her sisters, rather conceited and smug, but a vivacious dancer.

  Archy’s appearance emboldened several other males, who climbed the Platform and joined sniffwhips in a ring for the singing and dancing of “Skip to My Lou”:

  Flies in the buttermilk, two by two,

  Flies in the buttermilk, shoo fly shoo,

  Flies in the buttermilk, two by two,

  Skip to my Lou, my darlin.

  This was not a “square” so much as a circle, everyone ringing around the dancing couple, who one by one drew others into the center of the circle. Tish hoped she would be drawn by Archy, but she could only stand at her place in the ring, all six of her gitalongs tapping expectantly to the beat of the dance, and fix her eyes and her sniffwhips steadily upon him while he danced with Spicy Bourne. Like most males, he did not devote his attention to his partner; in fact, he seemed to ignore Spicy with his eyes and sniffwhips, which kept roaming around the circle in search of another girl, but the girl he picked was not Tish but Rosa Faye Duckworth. Tish could only wait until he was once again through with his partner and chose a new one.