The loafers saw Her coming back. They were nearly abreast of Holy House, wherein their families were doing whatever they could to entertain themselves through the night, when one of the loafers shouted, “Yonder She comes back again!” and another bellowed, “Let’s us git off the Road!” and all of them scrambled to get out of Her way. One of them, Luke Whitter, was a step too late, and was ground into the earth by the Woman’s shoe. Doc Swain rushed to check him over, but Luke was pretty thoroughly squashed, and was groaning his last. There was nothing Doc could do.
“The Lord giveth, and the Lord taketh away,” said Chid Tichborne. “Our Joshua Crust saith, ‘Be thou faithful unto west, and I will give thee a crown of life.’” And he made a mental note to remember to include Luke Whitter’s name among the several obituaries he would have to deliver tonight at the services.
“Amen,” said the Crustian loafers, and turned Luke’s carcass over into the belly-up position and covered it with blades of grass.
“Wal,” observed Doc, “hit don’t look like the Womarn was aimin to visit Holy House after all.”
Mont Dinsmore announced, “Yonder comes that gal again.”
Tish wanted to enter the forest of weeds to avoid walking through the mob of loafers, but the scent of west coming from Luke’s carcass frightened her, and she passed onward among the roosterroaches.
“That booger still after ye?” Doc Swain asked her.
“Nossir,” she said, smiling, “I reckon he drowned in Banty Creek.”
“You aint a-follerin that Womarn, air ye?” he asked. Tish nodded her head. “Where’d She go? What’s She up to?”
“She jist went to mail a letter,” Tish said. “She mailed a letter to the Lord, and put it in His box.”
Brother Chid Tichborne solemnly declared, “I shore wush they was some way we could find out what-all that letter says in it.”
But not even the most irreverent among them was in the mood for going to the Lord’s Holy Mailbox and attempting to tamper with His mail. Most of them still remembered the story of a family of Ledbetters who had gone to the cartridge case one night, dined on the gray flocking that stuffed the lining of a Jiffy bookmailing bag, and were sound asleep when the Lord surprised them there the next day, and swatted them all west with a rolled-up Gazette.
Instead of venturing onward to the mailbox, the mob of loafers entered Holy House, not through the same hole but through several. At a respectful distance, Tish followed. If nothing else, she could satisfy her curiosity about the interior of Holy House. She might even get some information about her missing parents. She kept as close as she could to Squire Hank, as if she might need his protection, and sure enough, just as she entered the loafing room she was accosted by a large lady roosterroach who challenged her territorial rights.
“Jist who d’ye think you air?” demanded Mrs. Kimber.
Squire Hank placed himself between the two females and said to Mrs. Kimber, “She’s with me.”
“Oh, beggin yore pardon, Squar, I didn’t know,” Mrs. Kimber apologized, and got out of the way.
The loafing room was dark except for one corner, and none of them went near it, for it contained the awake Man. A lone lamp cast its pointed beam upon the pages of a book held in the lap of the Lord. All the air around and over His head was swathed in the fumes of smoke from the cigarette burning between His fingers. On a table beside His Great Cheer-of-Ease was His Great Sacred Crystal Ashtray, a marvelous cube of glass with tapered corners rising to four concave troughs for holding His burning cigarette when He chose to put it down, and the interior of the cube was filled with extinguished butts. On one side of the Great Sacred Crystal Ashtray lay a pair of pencils, long yellow logs with rubber tips and pointed lead ends, and beyond those was a tall tumbler holding ice cubes and amber liquid. And beside the drinking glass was His Terrible Swift Rapturing Revolver Shootin-Gun.
One of the loafers announced, “He aint a-drinkin no beer tonight. They aint been a single blessit can opened out to the cook-room.”
Another loafer observed with an expression of disgust, “Jist that pizen hard stuff. Old Granddad. Westerly as scorpion-piss.”
Another loafer announced, “They’s a couple of Fritos on the cookroom floor. Better hurry.” Several dozen of the loafers decamped from the loafing room toward the cookroom.
Tish whispered to Squire Hank, “I wish there was some way to tell Him He’s got a letter from Her.”
Squire Hank did not respond, but continued observing the Lord. Was he as deaf as his son?
Chapter seventeen
The deaf son rose long after the deaf sun had set. The Clock had struck the news, “DIVINITY!” a reference not to any Godhead or Manhead but to the divinely delicious confection, white as a newborn nymph, stuffed with chopped nutmeats. Sam felt as if he were stuffed with chopped nutmeats. He required a long minute to realize the lateness of the hour, and the fact that he had done something unimaginable, something totally beyond his normal powers, something wonderful but terrible: he had planted a marble! But where was the girl? Frantically he searched the Clock. What had her name been? Yes: Tish. “TISH!” he called out, and realized that he was simultaneously sniffwhip-spelling it, and remembered the delightful means of communication they had devised. Further, he remembered with a shock that he was in love with her. There was no mistake. It was not simple lust, not merely a desire to give her a marble, nor even a wish to confer upon her the motherhood of the next and possibly last generation of Ingledews. He loved her!
But she was neither in nor around the Clock, and his sniffwhips could find no trace of her, save a faint lingering touch of the pheromone that she had sprayed the morning before. He climbed down from the Clock, and was vaguely disturbed by an out-of-the-ordinary situation: the Woman was not in Her cheer-of-ease, as usually She was during the hour of Divinity; Her stereo phonograph was not playing; Her kerosene lamps were all unlit; Her presence could not be detected within the Parthenon. She was not at home.
Sam rushed into the cookroom, hollering, “Dad! Have you seen a girl?” but his father was not there. It was likely that his father was hanging out, as usual, at Doc Swain’s place. Sam scrambled out of Parthenon and gained the Roamin Road, and headed off toward Doc’s place.
There was nobody there! The nightly Loafer’s Court was not convening. No patients waited to see the physician. Sam felt an unearthly sense of abandonment. Where was everybody? Sam was assailed by a metaphysical qualm: had the world of his ken and kin deserted him because of his sinning with Tish? But had it been a sin? Premarital fornication, yes, but had he seduced her? No, it had been entirely mutual; in fact, her pheromone had escaped before his affy-dizzy had escaped.
He decided to journey onward to Holy House in search of his fellow creatures. In his haste and near-panic, he bumped into a cricket. It is almost impossible for anyone with good hearing to bump into a cricket, because they are the most raucous of sound-producing insects, their so-called “chirp” audible from great distances, eight or nine furlongs. Actually the “chirp” is a monotonous reiterated challenge of the male to his fellow males, an expression, “Shy ye, feller, up,” meaning “You, sir, back away from me.” Unlike the calls of other male bugs, which are meant to attract females, it is meant to scare off the competition, much in the same way that the fighting of horn beetles and stag beetles is simply an elimination of the weaker. The loudest cricket wins. When two male crickets meet, they will holler “Shy ye feller up” at one another insistently until one of them gives way and retreats.
Even if he had not been in such a hurry, Sam Ingledew, not hearing the cricket, would have bumped into him. He gave the cricket a bad start, because no other bug had ever bumped into him before.
When he had recovered, the cricket said, “I say, shy ye feller up.”
“Beg pardon,” Sam returned, apologizing both for having bumped into him and for being unable to hear him. As a general rule, he detested crickets, but he was nothing if not polite.
“SHY YE FELLER UP!
” the cricket repeated, so loudly that Sam couldn’t help hearing him.
“Sorry,” Sam said, and made to move around the cricket, but the hostile cricket shifted his position, blocking Sam’s way. The cricket was not much larger than Sam, although he had the long thick thighs and gitalongs of an athlete; his sniffwhips were much longer than Sam’s, and he had a belligerent expression on his face. “Look, buddy,” Sam said, “if you’ll just step aside, I’ll give you no trouble.” Again he tried to get around the cricket, but the cricket continued to block his way and continued to repeat his mindless warning.
One fact of life which had led Sam to question the infallibility and wisdom of Man—not particularly the Man of Holy House but all Men—was that Man venerated or at least cherished the cricket but despised the cockroach. Crickets to Man were cute, adorable, and charming, and it was thought to be very bad luck to kill one of them. Sam had never heard of a cricket being killed by Man…or by Woman. But cockroaches, of basically the same size, shape, color, and configuration, in fact more sleek and streamlined than crickets, simply because they lacked the stupidity to rub their wings together and make “music,” were therefore not “cute,” but objects of revulsion and enmity. It wasn’t fair; it wasn’t cricket.
“Listen, my friend,” Sam said to the cricket, “I don’t want your old lady. She isn’t of the least attraction to me. Fat thighs look okay on a fellow, but on a girl they’re lousy. Step aside.”
If the cricket understood what Sam was saying to him (and Sam doubted their intelligence too), he gave no sign of it, but only continued saying, “Shy ye feller up.”
Sam decided that the only thing to do was to lower himself to the cricket’s level and communicate in his own tongue. “Shy ye feller up, yourself,” he said to the cricket.
This was a mistake. For a moment it stunned the cricket into silence, but then he resumed, louder than ever, “SHY YE FELLER UP!”
“Oh, for crying out loud,” Sam said, and attempted to shove the cricket aside. But the cricket rose up on his long rear legs and cuffed Sam a blow on the side of his head that rang his bell. Sam slugged him back. The cricket punched Sam full in the face. Sam clobbered the cricket on his chops.
This scuffle drew the combatants off the Roamin Road and into the forest of weeds, and thus Sam was not aware that the Woman, Sharon, returning from her postal errand, had passed by, heading home.
Sam and the cricket circled one another warily with their dukes raised. The cricket jumped and bit Sam painfully on the abdomen. Sam remembered that crickets, though usually vegetarian, are capable of being carnivores. The cricket was now screaming at the top of his wings, “SHY YE SHY YE FELLER UP FELLER UP SHY YE FELLER UP SHY YE!!!” Sam lashed him with both sniffwhips, gave him a series of one-two punches with his touchers to the face, then kicked him over onto his back, jumped onto his chest and got in several good pokes into his soft underside.
Undaunted, the cricket arched his back, flipped over and threw Sam off of him, then sank his teeth into Sam’s thorax and held on. Sam clawed furiously at the cricket, inflicting wounds all over the cricket’s body until the cricket released his bite on Sam.
Sam was aware that a number of other male crickets had formed themselves into a ring of spectators around the fighters. Even if Sam was to defeat this cricket, might he not be attacked by the cricket’s kinsmen? For a moment this prospect weakened him, and he caught two hard blows from his opponent.
He went down. Remember you’re an Ingledew, he told himself, and all Ingledews have the power. He struggled to his gitalongs, righted himself, and realized the other crickets were cheering him! “Strike ye, feller, up!” one of the crickets urged. “Hit him, feller, up alongside his head!” another said.
Sam kicked out and tripped his foe off his gitalongs, and as the cricket went down, Sam bashed him a good lick on the side of his head, then a mighty blow on top of the head that plowed the cricket’s nose into the earth. The cricket tried to rise, and made two good efforts at getting up, then collapsed all of a heap.
The other crickets beat their wings in applause. They clapped and smiled and cheered, and Sam took a little bow, then went on his way. The sky, he noticed, was fully darkened by clouds, and the weather segments of his sniffwhips had upped the chances of thundershowers from 30? to 85?.
His fears that he had been totally abandoned were soon relieved by the sight of the interior of Holy House, which was crawling with roosterroaches. The cookroom, which Sam visited first, was aswarm with Frockroaches and Smockroaches battling one another over bits of Frito on the floor, and upon the table there was a mob scene in the arena of a paper plate containing the remains of Man’s supper: chicken à la king on toast. Although hungry, Sam did not join in. He moved unnoticed and unrecognized among the Holy House rooster-roaches. He left the cookroom and entered the loafing room, where a crowd had gathered around Brother Chidiock Tichborne, who was preaching. Sam realized that it was Sunday night, time for the usual Sabbath service, but there was something different about this one: they were meeting right in the presence of the Lord, Who, however, did not seem to notice the hundreds of them gathered together in His Name on the floor around His cheer-of-ease, in which He sat drinking and reading.
“Sinners! Look in yore hearts!” the minister was exhorting the congregation, who were mostly Crustians and did not include those the minister considered true sinners. “Who amongst us can look in his heart and say, ‘Lord, I am free from sin’? Up yonder sits our Lord Hisself, and verily I say unto ye, though He may have a book in His lap, His eye is upon ye, His all-seeing eye is lookin into yore heart, and He knows which of ye have kept His commandments and which of ye have sinned! Repent, for His terrible wrath is soon to be visited upon ye!”
Of course Sam could hear none of this, but he was impressed with the minister’s ability to hold his audience, who included, Sam was startled to notice, his own father, Squire Hank, crouched at one edge of the crowd, almost unnoticed except by a girl whispering at one of his tailprongs. The girl, Sam was further surprised to discover, was Tish, his own beloved. Why was his father here? Why was she here?
“Oh, what a blessed privilege it is,” the minister went on, “for us pore sinners to come together tonight right smack dab in the Lord’s Own Mighty Presence, where few of us has been before, to lay our hearts bare before Him and invite His judgment. Repent, I say, for the hour of reckoning is at hand! No one of ye is free from sin! Who amongst ye has tasted of the crumb when the crust would do? Who amongst ye has jined in lust and sin with thine own kindred in incest? Who amongst ye has adulterated? And who amongst ye has fornicated?”
Though Sam could not hear, he could see, and he saw Tish trembling. Was she a Crustian? He recalled her belief in the Fate-Thing, such a naive but passionate conviction, and he wondered if she had room in her heart for belief in the Crustian drivel espoused by Chid Tichborne.
“Oh yes, my friends, don’t ye doubt for a minute that He won’t rise up against the sinners in yore midst and smite them! He will smite thee with his bullets! His Holy Revolver is loaded and ready! Hit’s up yonder right alongside His Great Sacred Crystal Ashtray, and it’s ready to use! Look in yore heart, I tell ye, and ask: Is it me, O Lord? Am I the one who deserves Thy punishment? Have my sins offended Thee, O Lord?”
Sam was tempted to join his father and his beloved. He noticed that his father was the only member of the audience unaffected by the preacher’s oratory. The others, including Tish, seemed to verge on hysteric frenzy. Several had bowed their heads to the floor in abject propitiation. Others, mostly males, were rising up and wringing their sniffwhips together in anguish. Still others, mostly females, were raising both touchers and sniffwhips in the direction of Man, in imploration. All of these prostrated themselves when the minister shouted:
“Let us pray! Almighty Man, our Father who art Lord of all the world, we beseech Thee to heed our solemn prayer.” So loud was Chid’s voice, with his face turned upward toward Man, that one would have th
ought that Man, if not Sam, could have heard him. Indeed, Sam could catch a word or two here and there. “All of us are guilty of wickedness! And transgression! And iniquity! And unrighteousness! And evil! O Lord our Man, if it be Thy will, rise up against these sinners and smite them with Thy Holy Gun!”
And verily, the Lord rose up. He put His book down and stood. But He did not lift up His revolver. He lifted up His empty glass and took it to the cookroom, for a refill. He had not even appeared to notice the assembly of worship on the floor of His loafing room. Many of them had scrambled and scurried for the nearest hiding place at the instant the Lord’s knee-hinges straightened Him upward. But most of them had remained crouched where they were, increasing the fervor of their prayer.
Tish, Sam noticed, was among those staying in place and praying almost aloud. Sam’s father, he saw, was looking at her with pity.
Chapter eighteen
Chid was disappointed. It had been one of his finest sermons, and one of his most eloquent prayers, inspired not only by the occasion of their meeting for the first time at the Lord’s gitalongs but also by Chid’s having Squire Hank himself in the audience, though only on the fringe of it, not down front among the oldest elders and deacons, where he could rightfully crouch if he so desired. What was the Squire, that infidel, doing here, at all? Hoping to see Chid make a fool of himself? Well, the Squire would be surprised. Even if the Lord had not risen up with His revolver, as Chid had been almost certain He would do, the night was still young, the worship service was just getting started, the Lord hadn’t consumed more than a halfpint of the quart He usually drank, and Chid, if he used his best devices, might yet get a rise out of Him.
“Brethering and sistering,” he addressed the crowd, attempting to summon back those who had fled, “the Lord goeth away, yea, He goeth to His cookroom to open His Fabulous Fridge and get more ice cubes, but He shall come again! Be ye faithful and watchful with me, friends, ere the Lord returneth. Meanwhile, a few announcements.”
The Nearly Complete Works, Volume 1 Page 136
