Lightning Bug

by Donald Harington

  Donny came into the store from the side door, rubbing his eyes. “Could you tie my shoes for me?” he asked her.

  “Hot day like this, you could go barefoot,” she said.

  “Okay,” he said, and took off his shoes.

  “Come and I’ll set you out some breakfast,” she said, and led him back to the kitchen. She poured him a tall glass of milk and gave him a plate of eggs and bacon. While he ate, she asked him, “Did you sleep all right?”

  “Just fine,” he said. “But I had a lot of bad dreams.”

  “What did you dream about?”

  “You and that feller Every.”

  “What was bad about it?”

  “I don’t remember.”

  She washed some dishes while he finished his breakfast. Then she said to him, “You’d better go let your Aunt Rosie know you’re okay. I imagine she won’t like it that I fed you breakfast.”

  “She won’t care.”

  “Dawny, you’re not going to tell…”

  “Course not,” he said. “Never.” Then he asked, “Can I sleep with you again sometime?”

  She frowned. “We’ll have to see,” she said.

  He went home.

  There was nothing to do until the mail came at ten o’clock. She sat in the rocker on the front porch. She had learned to sit quietly, doing nothing, she had learned long ago to keep company with herself. Infrequently a wagon would pass, or a rider, sometimes a car, and they would wave and she would wave back.

  Sonora woke up around nine o’clock and got her own breakfast, then took a bar of soap and went to the creek to wash her hair. When she came back, she picked a sunny spot of the porch to sit in, to dry her red hair in the sun. After a while she began to comb it.

  A car passed, its occupants waving. “Was that Merle Kimber in there?” Sonora asked.

  “Looked more like Leo Dinsmore,” observed Latha.

  The cats crawled under the porch to sleep in the shade.

  A wagon passed, and two boys on the buckboard waved. “Is that ole Ralph Chism from Sidehill?” Sonora asked.

  “I believe.”

  “What’s he doing around here?”

  “Guess he’s going up to visit his uncle.”

  A mild breeze came down Swains Creek, bearing the faint sound of the machinery in the canning factory, and the acid smell of boiled tomatoes.

  Folks began to drift up to the store to wait for the mail truck to come. By ten o’clock there were nearly twenty people hanging around the store porch. A few of them bought cold soda pop.

  Rosie Murrison asked Latha, “How was yore bunkin party last night?”

  Latha studied the question for a moment, and studied Rosie’s face before answering, “Oh, pretty good, I guess.”

  Sonora asked, “What bunkin party?”

  Latha said to her, “Hon, you sleep so late of a morning that you miss pretty near half of everything that goes on in the world.”

  Some of the boys on the porch commenced to have a giggling fit, and Sonora pouted and said nothing more.

  Across the road Sammy Coe and Donny were throwing rocks at each other.

  “You, Dawny!” Rosie hollered. “You stop that this minute or I’ll send you home.”

  Doc Swain chuckled, and remarked, “Puts me in mind of old Granny Price up on Banty Creek. Th’other day she come into the room where her granddaughter Sally was a-nursin that big overgrowed baby a hers, and she says, ‘Why, law sakes, chile, when air ye ever gonna wean that youngun?’ and Sally says, ‘Grammaw, I’ve tried and I’ve tried, but ever time I wean him he throws rocks at me.’”

  A small few of the men and boys guffawed, but the main sound was the prim gasps of the ladies.

  The mail truck came at 10:08.

  The driver opened the canvas flap at the end and unwrapped the canvas covering on the ice, and with his tongs lifted two 25-pound blocks of ice and carried them into the store and put them in the soda pop cooler, while behind him at the truck a mob of small boys were fighting over the tiny shavings of ice around the blocks and Donny was screaming because they weren’t giving him a chance to get any.

  “You boys!” Latha snapped at them and they stopped and looked at her. “Give Dawny a piece.” One of the older boys reached in and drew out a big sliver and handed it to Donny, who began happily licking it.

  “Takin up for him, are you?” said Rosie to Latha.

  “Somebody ought to,” said Latha, and turned and went into the post office part of the store.

  The driver brought in two mail bags, and she took out her key and unlocked the collars on them. One bag was for Stay More, and she would sort that slowly later on, but one bag was for the south end of Swains Creek Township, and she had to sort the mail quickly for Demijohn, Hunton, Spunkwater and points beyond.

  “Here you are, Ted,” she said, and gave the driver the empty Stay More sack and the sorted sack for the other towns, as well as the sack of outgoing Stay More mail.

  “Fifty pounds on Monday?” he asked.

  “Better make it seventy-five, if this weather keeps up.”

  After he left she sorted the Stay More mail, while the folks congregated near the boxes, waiting. This morning there were two pieces of mail for herself, a letter from her sister, and some business from the Post Office Department. When she had finished all the sorting, she opened and read the letter from her sister. She was only dimly conscious of the sounds around her—other people opening their mail and reading it and sharing whatever news there was.

  Dear Sister—

  Sure is hot and dry here in LR. Wish I could come up to SM and cool off, but I just never seem to get caught up with all there is to do. We take the streetcar out to Fair Park just about ever evening to cool off, but sure is crowded out there.

  Hows my little girl? Sure do miss her. Latha, me and Vaughn have been talking. You know she is all we’ve got in this world. If it doesnt make a whole lot of difference to her or you, I wish she could just come right on back to LR right now, instead of waiting till late August. Do me this favor, and just take her into Jasper and put her on the bus.

  Latha, I sure wouldn’t hurt your feelings for anything. So I dont mean we dont trust you. You swore what you swore, and we took you on your word. So thats that. But I just dont sleep good nights worrying about her. She’s really my little girl, after all, who I brought up and reared with a true Mother’s Love. No telling what all kinds of trouble a girl of her age might get into without proper supervision.

  Also, me and Vaughn dont much like the way she changes after staying in SM. You remember last summer. She come back here to LR talking and acting like a ignorant hillbilly, and it didn’t do her much good at LRHS, the other kids poked fun at her, the way she talked. And she didn’t even seem to care! So me and Vaughn oftentimes have wondered, is SM a bad influence on her. Just another year or so and our baby will be leaving us to get married, and I mean to see to it that she marries the right crowd.

  So I hope you dont think I’m a Indian Giver or Double Dealer or nothing, but I just think we’d all of us be a lot more happy if she come on back home now. Say hello to everbody for me. Hope you are all well.

  Your loving sister, Mandy

  Latha laughed, and she crumpled the letter and dropped it into the scrap box, singing to herself under her breath, Too late, too late, you’re way too late, My darling sister dear….

  Then she opened the other envelope. Usually she never even bothered to read any of the duplicated stuff the Post Office Department was always sending to her, but something in this one caught her eye. It was duplicated too, just a form letter, but there were blanks that had been filled in.

  POST OFFICE DEPARTMENT

  Regional Operations

  Headquarters Office

  Postmaster:

  You are hereby directed to discontinue the post office at Staymore, Ark. on the day of August 1, 1939, and required to account for the fixed credits, all funds and all Government property in your possession. Your f
inal postal account should be forwarded to the Regional Controller’s office at Little Rock, Ark..

  You shall deposit all surplus funds, including paid money orders, redeemed saving stamps, and funds remaining in your various fixed credits in the Federal Reserve Bank, P.O. Box 2744, Little Rock, Ark..

  You shall render a final postal savings report on Form PS 704, The Division of Postal Savings will instruct you as to the disposition of postal savings certificates, records and active accounts.

  Upon receipt of your acknowledgment of this order (please sign enclosed Form OC 526 and return promptly) this office will forward instructions regarding disposition of postage stamps, revenue stamps, money order forms, post office scales, other Government property, as well as your current account book, any cashbooks, bond records, and the mail keys.

  Mail for the patrons of your office, all records on file pertaining to forwarding addresses, and all records pertaining to registered, insured, and cod mail will be sent to the post office at Parthenon, Ark. at the close of the date set for discontinuance.

  You and your sureties will be held responsible under your bond for the proper execution of these instructions.

  The enclosed notice shall be placed in some conspicuous place available to the public. The post office sign must be removed from the building.

  Form B/A-201, Report of Separation, must be completed and forwarded to Regional Controller.

  Sincerely yours,

  Blakely F. Lucas

  Operations Manager

  Sing before breakfast, Cry before supper. Is that what I am fated to cry about? But she did not feel like crying. She felt like swearing. So she did. “Goddamn those bastards!”

  Doc Swain stepped over. “Which bastards?” he asked. “What’s wrong?”

  She handed him the enclosure. “Here.”

  He read it. Then he read it aloud to the others in the store, his voice quavering:

  NOTICE TO THE PATRONS OF THE U.S. POST OFFICE AT STAYMORE, ARK.

  By order of the Postmaster General, effective Aug. 1, 1939 this post office is discontinued. Patrons may arrange to receive their mail and contract business with the Post Office Department through the post office at Parthenon, Ark..

  At first there was no response from the gathering. The first person to speak was Larry Duckworth, who asked his father, “What does ‘discontinued’ mean?”

  Oren Duckworth looked down at the boy with contempt, and answered, “It means they are closing this here post office, son.” Then to the company at large, he said, “By godfrey, they caint do this to us!”

  “Hell fire, no!”

  “Dadburn em, they caint!”

  “I swan, they’ll never!”

  “Judas Priest, naw!”

  “Who do they think they are?”

  “I, for one, shore don’t aim to walk all the way over to Parthenon to get my consarnit mail!”

  “Nor me neither!”

  “What d’ye reckon has gave them people such a notion?”

  Rosie Murrison pointed her finger at Latha and declared, “It’s her fault! She aint been runnin this post office proper, so they’re closin it on account a her, I just know it!”

  “Now, Rosie,” Doc Swain said. “More’n likely the reason they’re closin it is because this town is simply got too small to have one.”

  “Small, my hind foot!” said Oren Duckworth. “Why, we got a cannin factry, aint we? Do them Government bigwigs know that we got a industry in this here ‘small’ town? How’m I gonna conduct my business, I ask you? Naw, I won’t stand for it!”

  Rosie said, “Let’s have a ’lection, and vote for Lola Ingledew for postmaster, and then tell them people we’ve done cleaned the corruption out of the post office, so’s they’ll let us keep it.”

  “Good idee!” said another woman, but Doc Swain said, “Aw now, postmasters aint ever elected, and besides it wouldn’t make no difference to them people. If they’ve made up their minds, their minds is made up.”

  “You kin talk big, Colvin Swain,” said Woodrow Kimber, “’cause you got a fine automobile to ride over to Parthenon and git yore mail, but most of us folks is gonna have to wear out shoe leather gittin thar!”

  “Not me!”

  “Nossir!”

  “I won’t stand for it!”

  “They can just keep their dadgummed mail!”

  “Keep it till they drown in it!”

  “Aw, listen, folks,” Doc Swain said, “like as not they’ll be sendin out a mail carrier from Parthenon, and all we got to do is each of us get us a mailbox and set it up out front of our house. We’ll just be a rural route instead of a post office.”

  Oren Duckworth moved into the doorway and pointed up the road. “By jiggers, lookee out there! Does that look like any rural route to you? Does it? Don’t it look more like a town to you? Lookee out there, goddammit, and tell me what you see!”

  Sadly Doc Swain said, “I see an old bank building with its window lights bustid out, and I see a few old houses mostly without anybody livin in em, and I see a big old Gen’ral Store that don’t do much business any more, and I see a old barn that somebody has tried to turn into a tomato cannin factry…”

  Oren Duckworth came out of the doorway and thrust his nose up against Doc Swain’s. “Doc, boy, you makin light of me?”

  “Naw, Oren, I’m just makin light of this town.”

  “If it’s too light fer ye, you could just git out of it.”

  “Been here all my life, Oren. Same as you. Gonna be here all the rest of my life, the Lord willing.”

  Latha went into her bedroom and closed the door behind her to muffle the noise of all the bickering going on in the store. She sat at her dresser and got out her stationery box and wrote a pair of letters:

  Dear Mr. Lucas:

  Your communication, incorrectly addressed and mailed, has been forwarded to this office. As there is no “Staymore” post office in the state of Arkansas, an order discontinuing same is invalid and will therefore be disregarded.

  Yours respectfully,

  (Miss) Latha A. Bourne, Postmistress

  Stay More, Arkansas

  Dear Mandy:

  I doubt if Little Rock could be any hotter than Stay More has been lately, around 95° in the shade, so you aren’t missing anything. We are all well, and hope you are the same. Sonora seems to be having a good time. John Henry Ingledew, Bevis’s boy, seems to be her special “beau.” I am sure she would not consider, for even a moment, the dreary prospect of returning to Little Rock prematurely, and I seem to have no inclination toward urging it upon her. Sorry.

  Your loving sister,

  Latha

  P.S. Every Dill showed up in town last night. What do you know!

  She read this letter over again, and decided to remove the postscript. She took a pair of scissors and snipped it off. There would be, she decided, time enough for that news later.

  She returned into her store and mailed her letters at her post office but realized that they wouldn’t be picked up until Monday, because on Saturday afternoons the mail truck did not come back down Swains Creek but went on back to Jasper by way of Highway 7. I might as well go fishing this afternoon, she thought. If Every Dill doesn’t ever show his face, and I could get Sonora to mind the store again, I’d just go up Banty Creek and fish awhile, and I might even run across that fellow Dolph Rivett again.

  Most of the folks had taken their mail and gone on home. A few were still sitting on the porch, arguing about the closing of the post office and wondering what the world was coming to. Latha looked out the window at the road for a while, thinking of nothing, then she got down the big book, u.s. postal code, and blew the dust off of it, and read for a while.

  The Coe triplets came in to get the mail for their father, and then they each bought a Baby Ruth bar and a Dr. Pepper soda pop, and stood around silently munching their candy and sipping their pop.

  Donny came running into the store, yelling, “He’s coming down the road!” />
  Earl, Burl and Gerald Coe said together, “Who is?”

  “Him!” Donny yelled at her. “It’s him, I seen him, and he’s coming this way.”

  “Just be easy, Dawny,” she said, and moved along behind the counter to the window, and furtively looked out. The Coe triplets crowded into the doorway, and watched the road. The men sitting on the porch stopped talking.

  And then he came into view, and it was sure enough him, though you’d hardly know it. He would be almost 40 years old now, and he looked it. He was wearing eyeglasses, too, and with his long sideburns and his hair parted in the middle he looked like…like a drummer, or maybe a preacher, or a county judge or something. But even with those glasses and that hair and those sideburns he was more handsome than he’d ever been, and Latha heard herself sighing at how sightly he was.

  He did not approach the store, though. He just stopped, out in the road, nearer the far side, and after a quick glance at the store he turned and looked at the bank building. She could not see his face then but she could imagine what thoughts might be going through his head as he stared at the empty old bank building with its broken window and its door sprung loose. I bet he is thinking, she said to herself, Did I do that?

  He was carrying in his hands a sheaf of papers. He was wearing a light summer suit, gray-colored, with a white shirt and a necktie. He was a tall, lanky man and the suit hung loosely on him. His brown hair, even though it was greased and parted down the middle, was thick and long, even the heavy sideburns. He had not shaved this morning, and there was a stubble of beard on his strong firmly chiseled jaw. She strained her eyes to see if there was any glimmer from a gold band on his ring finger but that hand was wrapped around the sheaf of papers and she could not tell.