The Cockroaches of Stay More (5 page)

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.

“What 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.

The play-party is meant to be an innocent frolic. Compared with the more adult and more exciting square dance, the play-party is supposedly a chaste gathering, approved by the most hidebound Crustians, but still the occasional incident of unrestrained lust will occur, off in the “brushes,” the forest of weeds on the edge of Carlott. The couple abandoning the Platform and giving in to their desires do not reappear during the whole night, for the act of sexual congress is a complicated congeries of anatomical hookups, end-to-end splicings and interconnections, from which the couple cannot extricate themselves until the male’s marble has been thoroughly enthroned within the female’s chamber, a process, literally, that takes hour upon hour.

Thus, tonight, while Tish was still waiting for Archy to take notice of her, and the repertoire of games had gone from “Skip to My Lou” to “Shoot the Buffalo” to “Humpin the Santa Fe” and “Spinnin the Spider,” the party was suddenly silenced by the abrupt appearance of Brother Chidiock Tichborne, who was dragging into view the still-conjoined bodies of a youth and maiden whom he had discovered “making the beast with two heads” off in the brushes.

The unfortunate couple were embarrassed beyond all mortification, not simply for having been surprised in the act by the minister but also for their inability to separate, to unclasp, to unlink, to undo all the various latches, clamps and sphincters that linked them together, tail to tail in opposite directions. The girl was weeping piteously, and the boy was growling in helpless rage, with their faces so downcast as to make them unrecognizable.

“Looky here!” shouted Brother Tichborne in a voice that surely carried all the way to Holy House. “Sinners! Afore the sight of the Lord! All of y’uns bow down on yore knees!”

The assembled crowd of young folks, or at least all the Crustians among them, knelt, or crouched, in attitudes of fear and submission. A few remained flagrantly unbowed at first, but Brother Tichborne’s voice and his lashing sniffwhips soon stunned them into prostration.

“These here play-parties and dances has got to stop!” the minister boomed. He expatiated on the temptations of the flesh, the pitfalls of dancing, and the teachings of our Lord Joshua Crust, who had expressly forbidden any activity that might exalt physical pleasure. But he held his ultimate censure for the end of his sermon:

“And who do we have here?” he thundered, and kicked the offending boy under the chin, and then moved along the length of their conjunction to kick the girl also. “Hold up yore heads!” he yelled at them. “Raise yore faces and let all the world and Man see who ye air!” He kicked them again, and the boy and girl slowly raised their eyes to look woefully at the congregation, who, however, did not need this proof of their identity, having already identified them by smell through trembling sniffwhips. The boy was clearly Isham Whitter, a Carlotter, and the girl was just as obviously Lucy Whitter, his sister.

“IN-CEST!” shouted Brother Tichborne. “He that lieth with his own sister is damned to eternal shame! She that lieth with her own brother shall bear monsters as children! Cursed be them both! No sin is more worser in the eyes of Man!” Brother Tichborne began tripping over his own tongue: “The insectuous incest—the incestuous insect is the low-downest, unmanliest, kickworthiest sinner in the world!” And he kicked the couple again.

The minister could have used the awful example of Ish and Lucy Whitter to harangue and exhort the multitude for the rest of the night, but behold! a sudden blinding light flashed upon the scene from the open rear doorway of Holy House, and there stood the towering silhouette of Man Himself!

If the assembly had not already been overwhelmed by Brother Tichborne, they were petrified by the appearance of Man, and all of them crouched as low as they could get. Then when He moved, they all found their gitalongs and scurried in every direction until they were hidden from the sight of Man, either beneath the Platform or into the deepest forest of the grass and weeds.

Brother Tichborne alone, or rather alone with the offending incestuous couple, who still could not unjoin themselves and flee, or were attempting to flee in opposite directions and thus canceling each other’s attempts, remained on the Platform. The minister genuflected into most devout prayer and worship.

A thousand—nay, two thousand, for everyone has two—sniff-whips and four thousand eyes watched warily as Man came stumbling down the back steps of Holy House and staggered out into the direction of Carlott. Man was not carrying His terrible swift revolver. His hands were empty, and free to swing through the air, grab at the air, to balance Himself, to grope His way out into the darkness.

As He approached the Platform, Brother Tichborne raised his head and clasped his touchers and his fore-gitalongs together in abject entreaty. “Lord, if it be Thy will,” he prayed, “piss upon me!”

But Man did not reach the Platform. He stopped, and held His great hands to the sky. “SHARON!” He called in the most deafening voice, and two thousand tailprongs were lowered away from the sound. Even louder He called again, “SHAY-RONNNN!”

Then He pitched forward and fell headlong into the grass of Carlott, where He lay inert and seemingly lifeless for the rest of the night.

Brother Tichborne announced, “The Lord but sleepeth. Let us pray.” He led them in an unenthusiastic prayer, and then he made a few routine announcements: the Crustian Young People’s Fellowship would hold a sunset-to-sunrise hymn-sing Saturday night. And at the Sunday night worship service and prayer meeting, open for the first time to Carlotters, who were free, for the duration of the service, to enter Holy House, there would be a special call to Rapture, right before the very eyes of the Lord Himself. Everybody welcome!

“I’ll believe it when I see it,” a voice said beside Tish, and she turned to see that the roosterroach standing next to her, brushing her body with his own, was Archy Tichborne. He smiled handsomely at her, noticing her for the first time in his life, but she was too bashful even to smile back.

Chapter five

I
f Greg Sam Ingledew’s tailprongs had not been long since stunned into deafness by the continual announcements of his Clock, he might have heard, all the way to Parthenon, the calling voice of Man, who had cried the name of the Woman twice. She had heard it, across those two furlongs of empty town.

Although Sam could hear only the imagined steady locking of his little chateau, his sense of sight and smell were greatly refined in compensation, and he could detect the slightest changes in Woman as She Herself picked up the distant calling of Her name. She was sitting in Her cheer-of-ease, a marvelous piece of furniture with a high back of padded cushions to support Her spine, other cushions to support Her bottom, other cushions to support and rest Her arms, which ended in lovely hands that held a book, in the wan light of a kerosene lamp on a round table beside Her cheer-of-ease. Sam appreciated that She preferred, although electricity was available to Her, to light Parthenon only with the comfortable glow of kerosene lanterns and lamps. It was easy on all four of his eyes; his ocelli, or stargazers, did not alarm the bejoshua out of him every time She lighted a lamp.

When the distant wail, “Sharon,” wafted through the open screen door of Her room, the Woman dropped Her book into Her lap, involuntarily emitted three different scents of fear, annoyance, and excitement, which Sam’s sniffwhips thoroughly perceived and classified, then spoke aloud, after the second sound of Her name, “Oh, for crying out loud! Larry, why don’t you just drop dead?”

Sam did not hear this, but he could clearly determine that She had heard something from afar, that She was disturbed by it, and that She had spoken out against it. She did not immediately resume reading Her book.

Sam’s mother had in his second or third instar explained to him the circumstances, handed down from Grandpa Ingledew, whereby Woman inhabited Parthenon, which, in ancient Stay More, had been one of the general merchandise stores for a whole population of Man, or Men, as well as Women and Children. The ancestor of this Woman, Sam’s Woman, had been a proprietress of this merchandise store, which occupied the central room of her dwelling, her bedroom and sitting room occupying one side of Parthenon. The ancestor-Woman, a fabled demigoddess named Latha, had later abandoned Parthenon, and it had remained unoccupied through countless generations of roosterroaches, just as all the other buildings of Stay More were uninhabited and most of them disappearing through rot, neglect, windstorm and rainstorm, fire and vandalism. A generation ago (a roosterroach generation from east to west is about two whole years), this Woman, Sharon, suddenly returned to Stay More and reoccupied the dwelling-part but not the store-part of Parthenon. Sharon, Sam had discovered before he lost his hearing, was the actual granddaughter of Latha, and the two Women still communicated by the instrument which sat permanently on the same round table which held the kerosene lamp.

Sam had even seen the ancient demigoddess Latha on more than one occasion, when that Woman had come to visit Her granddaughter, and the two had sat together in rocking cheers on the porch in the dusk, although usually when Latha came it was daylight and Sam was fast asleep. But the one time Latha had come at night and Sam had crawled boldly beneath Her rocking cheer to listen to the two Women talk, his hearing had been excellent and he had been able to catch enough of the conversation to deduce that his Woman, Sharon, although She had grown from earliest childhood to adulthood in Stay More, had gone away and lived for years in a city, then in a town, then in a city again, before coming back to Stay More to clean up and fix up the old Parthenon and live in it alone. The grandmother, Latha, had been concerned that Sharon might become very lonely in the dead village, but Sharon had protested that She would not be. This had been before the Man had come.

Because of his lifelong residence in the Woman’s bedroom, Gregor Samsa Ingledew knew a few things that no other roosterroach of Stay More actually understood, and one of these was the name of the Man, which was Larry. Since the only roosterroaches who now inhabited Parthenon were Sam and his father, Squire Hank Ingledew, and since Squire Hank spent most of his waking hours hanging out at Doc Swain’s place, only Sam had been present on the one occasion when Larry had actually come to Parthenon, one night, and had talked with the Woman at length, had argued with Her, and, about the time the Clock struck “TUTTI-FRUTTI,” had removed the garments which covered Her body, had removed the garments which covered His body, and had climbed together with Her into Her bed, where, beneath the quilt required by the chill of autumn, He and She had made movements which Sam could only conjecture about. Then They had slept. Sam had remained awake beyond dawn, waiting for Them to awaken, but he had finally drifted into sleep and had awakened to find the Man gone and the Woman complaining loudly to Herself about Her stupidity and Her hangover and Her need for a cigarette.