The Cockroaches of Stay More (2 page)

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.”

Freddy was speechless for a long moment before he could say, “Holy Locust! Squire John, you’re a wizard! I reckon you really are a Ingledew, aint you?”

Chapter two

N
o, thought Brother Tichborne, as he approached a choice orifice punctured into the wooden wall of Holy House, beyond which he could no longer hear nor smell the scene of Jack, Freddy, and the Santa Fe, that feller aint any more a Ingledew than I am, so why did I have to go and tell him he was?

He had wanted to get Jack Dingletoon to enter Parthenon, that was why, to get him to penetrate that stronghold of irreligious Ingledews who did not even bow down and worship the Woman who lived there. The Reverend Tichborne had seen Her more than once, from afar, or from not any closer than the front yard of Her house, upon the porch of which She sometimes sat at dusk, after Her supper, the leavings of which, if any, were bestowed only upon those two lucky Ingledews who were the squires of Stay More, just as Ingledews had always been squires since the beginning of time, although, true to the Lord Joshua Crust’s prophecy, they were now fast disappearing, and only two remained: Squire Hank and his son, Squire Sam.

It simply wasn’t fair that those two should have Parthenon all to themselves, as if it were a royal castle. All of the other houses of Stay More had been abandoned by Man, except of course for Holy House, where Brother Tichborne made his residence along with most of the other quality roosterroaches of Stay More, who were reduced to fighting each other for the residues of Man’s table (as well as of His bed, His cheer-of-ease, or wherever else He chose to sit and eat). Brother Tichborne thought it a terrible irony that the Ingledews had the exclusive right to whatever morsels were left by the Woman in Parthenon, although they never prayed to Her. The Ingledews were not only atheists, but it was also commonly known that our Lord Joshua Crust had been pinnified by a person of the Ingledew name, a human person. We all take our names from Man.

We take our names from Man, who is our rock and our salvation, although His wrath is great and unceasing. Man had a habit of routinely taking up and firing a revolver at the roosterroaches who dwelt in His house, with westerly accuracy depending on how much He had had to drink. Other ministers before Brother Tichborne had determined that this shooting and westering of chosen roosterroaches was both a form of punishment and an expression of Man’s love, and therefore the shooting, or the act of being shot, was called not a westering but a Rapture.

There are two forms of Rapture, good Crustians believe: there is the instant Rapture of the bullet from Man, which is a guarantee that one will live upon the right hand of Man in the sweet heaven of the hereafter; but there is also the promise of the Rapture after The Bomb, when Man will lift the righteous off the floor and give them eternal life. The good Crustians will be raptured, but the faithless will perish in that holocaust and go to Hell. Hell, as everyone knows and fears, is a place of work. Unless we are righteous and obey the Lord’s commandments, we will find ourselves in Hell, the dominion of the Mockroach, hard at work.

The bullets which Man fired to rapture the chosen Crustians always pierced the floor as well, the wall, the ceiling, a door, or a windowpane of the house, which was called Holy House because of all these holes. Each new hole created a new entrance for more roosterroaches, but it was not permissible for any “furrin” rooster-roach to enter Holy House. Each hole also created drafts, and this past winter had been terrible, causing even Man Himself to take to stronger drink than beer.

If there was any consolation for Brother Tichborne in the gross injustice of the overpopulation of Holy House and underpopulation of Parthenon, it was that the Woman was such a fastidious keeper of Her cookroom and table that rarely did a crust or crumb fall from her table, lap, plate, pan, countertop, or mouth corner. Our Man of Holy House, by contrast, bestowed upon the multitudes a great continuous feast of crusts and crumbs, to say nothing of the countless dregs of beer that kept most Holy Housers nearly as intoxicated as Man Himself. Brother Tichborne was old enough to observe that Man’s use of beer, and of the more poisonous bourbon, was increasing.

The ways of Man are inscrutable. Man giveth, and Man taketh away. Blessed be the Name of Man (though Brother Chidiock Tichborne, who had a fine old name himself, had to admit that he did not know the name of his Man, nor of the Woman either).

Such were his thoughts as he climbed the pier of native fieldstone stacked into a cube which supported one corner, the southeastern, of the abandoned room of Holy House, a room containing a hodgepodge of relics, junk, castoff effects of generations of Man who had inhabited the house. Among this detritus was a heavy and crumpled frock coat, single-breasted, of black alpaca, narrow lapels, three pockets, which still bore traces of the sacred aroma of the sweat of some Man who had worn it an eon ago, possibly before the time of Joshua Crust. Chidiock Tichborne and his fifteen brothers and sisters had been born inside the folds of this frock. He had spent his first instar exploring the smooth lining of Italian cloth, playing hide-and-seek with his siblings through the tunnels of the sleeves, and visiting with other children who lived in the pockets and beneath the tails, for this frock coat had been home and birthplace not just to several generations of Tichbornes but to the Murrisons, the Chisms, the Duckworths, the Plowrights and other fine families of Stay More who, because they lived closest to the cookroom—much closer than the closet-dwelling roosterroaches who lived in an old smock, not a frock—were the higher strata of society in the village, the most prosperous, and, Brother Tichborne would have you know, the most devout, Crustlike, Manfearing, and faithful.