The Cockroaches of Stay More

by Donald Harington

  They were sinking together. As he had done in the instant before the Santa Fe tried to seize him, Jack reflected upon his life’s brief moment of glory: how fleetingly he had been allowed to enjoy the privileges of Ingledewidity, how transitory the pleasure of fame. But this time he had neither wings nor courage to save him.

  Josie thought of her daughter Tish. Would Tish know how to receive properly all the guests who came bearing funeral feeds? Would Tish be certain that each child had a proper share of the bits of pie, cake, or cookie? Would she make certain that the log was scrubbed clean and that each child was thoroughly bathed and spruced up? Then, when the funeral feed was over, would she, as Josie had told Jubal to tell her to do, present herself at Parthenon and claim kin to the Ingledews?

  “Tish has got to claim kin to the Ingledews,” Josie said to Jack as they both floundered and sank.

  “What?” Jack wondered what nonsense his wife was babbling in her moment of west. “What’s that got to do with us a-westerin? All I kin think of, is when I git to Hell I’ll have to go to work.”

  Chapter ten

  If a bird gits me, I deserve it, O Lord,” Brother Tichborne said aloud, as the dawn came up. There was not quite yet enough light for a bird to see him, and the earliest bird would get the worm, not him, but he knew that if he kept going in the direction he was heading, he would never get back to the safety of Holy House before he was visible to all daytime creatures, and west in the clutches of a bird or reptile would be no Rapture at all.

  Yes, the Lord still lay. In His profound stupor, He had slightly shifted, no longer flatly supine upon the grass of Carlott but twisted to one side with one of His knees flexed upward toward His chest, and His butt elevated like one of the mountain peaks that rimmed Stay More valley.

  It was this peak that Brother Tichborne boldly climbed, having no trouble gaining its summit but feeling shocked at his own audacity in scaling the Lord’s Butt. At the crest of the bluejeans-covered prat he sat, or crouched, and surveyed the world below and around, slowly lightening in the foredawn. He studied the Lord’s profile: a face never seen so near nor so lit up before. How many of his fellow roosterroaches had ever had such a view? There were certain unholy heathens particularly among the closet Smockroaches, who claimed to have crawled upon the Lord’s person while the Lord was in His bed; but Chid Tichborne doubted that any of them had seen His face with so much light upon it.

  It was a magnificent face, although the strong, firm jowls were hidden beneath a scraggly, gray-streaked beard. Brother Tichborne would have preferred, somehow, that the beard be all white, more in keeping with his concept of a deity, but the several white hairs or whiskers among the darker ones were enough to give the Lord a scholarly look. Some folks claimed there were other Men in the world; although Chid Tichborne preached against this polytheism, he admitted to himself that it was a possibility, even if he had never seen one of the other Men. But surely no other Man was as smart, as strong, and as all-powerful as our Man.

  …Unless, Chid Tichborne thought with a violent shudder, the Lord had westered. Was He stirring at all? Did His chest rise and fall perceptibly with His shallow breathing? In Brother Tichborne’s knees, as in the knees of all roosterroaches, there were special sensors which could detect the slightest vibration in the substratum, but the patch of jeans upon which Chid was perched was totally inert.

  If the Lord were west, what would become of His rooster-roaches? Of course they would not starve, but they would get powerfully hungry, and they would have to leave Holy House. Few of them could forage in the woods, like common Carlotters, eating raw algae and fungi. Most of them would want to invade Parthenon, which is exactly what Chid was planning, although everybody feared the Ingledews almost as much as they feared the Lord. Silly of them, because the two Ingledews were vastly outnumbered, no matter what legendary powers of combat they were purported to possess.

  If the Holy House roosterroaches conquered the Ingledews and took over Parthenon, Chid realized, he would have to make revisions and alterations in his religion. He could no longer preach the Kingdom of Man, but would have to speak of the Queendom of Woman, and he was not certain he could do that. He had nothing against matriarchy itself; he simply didn’t have much use for females. A female, whether Woman or roosterroach, was all right as far as her functions went: bearing and raising children, keeping the house and all, but you couldn’t very easily base a whole system of theology around one of them. Chid tried to imagine himself beginning a prayer “Our Mother who art in Parthenon…” and felt ridiculous.

  Chid’s sniffwhips caused him to shift his gaze from the Lord’s handsome but possibly westered countenance to the grass of Carlott surrounding the Lord, where daytime life was beginning to stir. A nightcrawler had come to a stop near the Lord’s nose and was broadcasting, “BREAKER ONE OH. HOWBOUTCHA, GOOD BUDDY? GOT A DEAD WHALE TO STARBOARD. TUNNEL SIXTEEN BLOCKED.” This was followed by a buzz of static and then a distant nightcrawler on the other side of the Lord answered, “FOUR ROGER. TAKE A SHAKE TO TUNNEL TWENTY-SEVEN, AND SKIRT THE MOTHER. NO BLOCK ON TWENTY-SEVEN. DO YOU READ?”

  The nightcrawler shifted gears and changed direction, down the length of the earth beside the Lord’s body in search of another hole in the ground, but he had not gone far before a robin swooped out of the sky, took one hop, and seized the entire nightcrawler and lifted it, wriggling rig and all, off into the sky, its pitiful last message rapidly fading: “WE UP AND AWAY TO GLORYLAND, THREES AND EIGHTS….”

  Brother Tichborne scanned the sky nervously for other birds. In the grass near the Lord’s hindquarters Chid saw a lizard, fearsome as a dragon and swifter than a snake, its darting tongue serving as a pronged sniffwhip and already catching the scent of Chid, and approaching.

  “Lord, hear this sinner,” Chid prayed aloud, also silently praying that the Lord was not too westered to hear his prayer, “I have done wrong, I know, Lord, and I confess. I have jined ends with my own sister, Lord, and got her with marbles and eastereggs, and married her. I have jined in adultery with other ladies, Lord, amongst them Josie Dingletoon, who hardly ary feller could resist, but she never tempted me, it was my own sinfulness. Now wilt Thou permit the beasts of the field and the critters of the air to consume me, instead of Thy divine Rapture? Lord, I pray that I be saved, to stay east and preach Thy glories to all roosterroachkind, or, if it be Thy will, to be raptured by Thy hand and Thy sacred shootin-arn. But if I am to be westered off by a beast of the field or a critter of the air, let it be swift, O Lord, swift as Thy rapturing, and take me to live on Thy right hand in the Heaven of Stay More Forever. In Joshua’s Blessed Name I pray, Amen.”

  And behold, the Lord opened one eye.

  Even though the Lord held His one eye opened for only a few jerks of a second and then closed it tightly again, Chid Tichborne took this as a sign that the Lord had heard him and intended to spare him, that the Lord forgave him for his transgressions. A chill shiver ran through Chid; no, he realized it was not his own chill shiver, but one running through the Lord Himself, the Lord’s whole body quivering. Chid saw a bird swooping downward, aimed right at him, but he feared no evil, for the Lord was with him, and the Lord twitched an elbow, which caused the bird to swerve and miss and rise back out of sight. Likewise the lizard in the grass retreated.

  The Lord began to rise. He got His knees up under Himself and spread His palms upon the ground, and arched His back. Chid did not want to fall off into the grass, where lizards, snakes, birds, or Lord knows what-all might get him. He clung to the Lord’s jeans and sought to crawl into the Lord’s hip pocket, but the space was too tight. As the Lord rose to His knees, Chid climbed above His belt to the back of His shirt, and as the Lord continued rising to a standing position, Chid crawled up beneath the back of the Lord’s shirt collar. There, out of sight of any creature, even the Lord, he hid, and hung on, as the Lord staggered around the yard of Carlott for a while, kicking into pieces of car junk, then tottering toward the back porch of Holy Hou
se.

  Although this height and his own boldness made his nerves tingle, Chid felt elevated above his former station in life and almost sanctified, almost possessed of godhead himself. Wouldn’t those infidel Smockroaches be astonished into piety if they could see him? But all roosterroaches had retired for the day into deep slumber, and none were abroad to witness the minister’s daring ride on the back of the Lord’s neck.

  The Lord shuffled along through Holy House to His cookroom. He swung open the great door of the Fabulous Fridge, and a blast of cold air pierced Chid and made his mandibles chatter. The Lord just stared for a long time at the interior of the Fridge, as if trying to decide what to take, or perhaps only checking to see that nothing was missing (no roosterroach had ever succeeded in sneaking into the sealed interior). Then the Lord closed the Fridge’s door without removing anything. He bent low over the double-tub Porcelain Sink, a place of frequent wading parties for roosterroaches, and placed His head directly beneath the Fantastic Faucet and turned on the water, causing a great gush of it to splash all over His hair and even the back of His collar, where Chid crouched, only partially sheltered from the spray. For what seemed like a full minute, the Lord held His head beneath the rushing water, then raised His head and shook it vigorously, as if to dry it.

  The Lord stumbled against the cookroom table, and in doing so jostled a pile of books stacked on the table alongside an opened beer can. Some of the books fell to the floor but the beer can only tottered; the Lord grabbed it and raised it to His lips. The Lord took a lusty swallow. The Lord gagged, coughed, opened the door leading from the cookroom to the front yard, drew back His arm, and threw the beer can and whatever contents remained across the yard, westward across the weed-grown Roamin Road and into the edge of the Lord’s Garden and Refuse Pile.

  Then the Lord made Himself a pot of coffee. The aroma offended Chid, who had once attempted to eat a ground of coffee and been sickened by it. The Lord poured himself a large cup of the stuff, then took down from the cupboard a box and out of the box He drew an oatmeal cookie. Crumbs fell to the floor, and Chid fought the great temptation to drop down from the Lord’s collar and help himself to the food on the floor, but it was full daylight now, and no roosterroach ever dines after dawn.

  With His cookie and coffee, the Lord left the cookroom, crossed the eating room and loafing room, and entered the ponder room. Usually all the Lord ever did in this room was sit in a swiveling chair at His desk and stare out the window and ponder. Occasionally the Lord was known, at night when roosterroaches could observe Him, to take one or more or several of the many books which lined the walls of the ponder room, and sit in the loafing room and read. One of the first lessons that roosterroaches were taught in the second or third instar was to leave alone the tempting glue in the bindings of these books. Edible though it was, nutritious though it was, tasty though it was, the consumption of bookbinding glue would be a serious offense unto the Lord, an unforgivable sin, and no rooster-roach bothered the books.

  But this morning the Lord neither pondered nor read a book. He sat at His desk, at the machine which was called, from the label Chid deciphered on it, Selec Trick, referring perhaps to the tricks which the Lord made it do, usually by tapping the beast’s fifty eyes, which caused a dancing globe to spread words upon sheets of yellow paper. But this morning He chose white paper and put it into the Selec Trick.

  Resisting the powerful urge to scamper down and fetch one of the several crumbs of oatmeal cookie which continued to fall from the Lord’s hand, and trying to avoid the fumes of coffee that insulted his sniffwhips, the Reverend Chidiock Tichborne sat on the Lord’s shoulder and watched Him perform tricks on His Selec Trick.

  The first letters were the day of the week, Saturday, no problem for the minister to decipher. These were followed by the month, May, and the date, and the year. The Lord pushed and poked eyes on the Selec Trick which made its dancing globe run and bounce. And the Lord typed: “Dear Sharon,” and paused but the briefest moment, then did tricks all the morning long, and much of the afternoon.

  Chapter eleven

  Surely, thought Tish, as she woke at the first dim of dusk to find that her parents had not returned, they will come home any minute now that the sun is set. She made all the children wait, before foraging for the night’s first meal, in order to welcome the return of Daddy and Momma. But the full dark came, everyone was ravenous enough to eat dirt, and still there was no sign of the parents. The older children kept their sniffwhips finely tuned in search of the first hint of Jack and/or Josie Dingletoon, and eager Jubal received permission from Tish to leave the log and walk out across Carlott in the direction of Holy House to reconnoiter the expected return. When Jubal did not come home after an hour, Tish went out in search of him, and found him sitting atop the deserted Platform, staring toward Holy House and swinging his sniffwhips slowly but steadily in every direction.

  “Reckon ye might as well come on back home, Jubal, boy,” his elder sister said to him. “They’re not a-comin tonight, it don’t look like.”

  The boy rose up and glanced around. “Where did the Lord lay?” he asked.

  “Right yonder,” Tish pointed a sniffwhip. The impress of the Lord’s body was still detectable in the grass. “His head was there, and His feet were way over there, and out yonder is where I touched His finger.”

  The boy climbed down from the Platform and walked slowly homeward beside his sister, retracing their steps. After a while he raised his bent head and with upturned face, with stargazers and big eyes alike, he gazed at the stars, whose cold pulses were beating amid the black hollows above, serenely removed from these two wisps of roosterroach life. Jubal asked Tish how far away those twinklers were, and whether Man was Lord of all those worlds as well as of this one.

  “Did ye tell me wunst the stars are worlds, Tish?” he asked her.

  “Yes.”

  “All like ours, with roosterroaches all over all of ’em?”

  “I reckon so, Jubal.”

  “Do they all have to go west, everywhere, jist like us?”

  “Everything goes west, sooner or later. Even those whole stars, each and ever, sputter and go dark and go cold and go west.”

  Jubal grew very reflective. “And is our world ever going to go cold?”

  Tish realized that Jubal was too young to remember the last winter. She herself had been still too young during the worst part of it to realize its severity. “Yes,” she said. “It will become very cold.”

  “When we go live in Partheeny, can we stay warm all the time?”

  “Why, Jubal, what gives ye the notion that we could ever go live in Partheeny?”

  “If you was to marry a Squar Ingledew, we could!”

  Tish could not suppress a great laugh. “I’m not about to marry no Squar Ingledew!” she said. “Whatever give ye such a notion?”

  “Momma said.”

  “Huh? What-all did Momma say?”

  “She said if ever anything happened to her and Daddy, you was to remember that the Dingletoons was actually Ingledews, and that you orter go and visit the squires and claim kin.”

  “Claimin kin is one thing,” Tish told Jubal. “Gittin married to one of ’em is a gray moth of a different color. Besides, if we was kin, it’d be incest to marry one. And Brother Tichborne says there’s nothing worser than incest.”

  “When will ye claim kin?” he wanted to know.

  She was confounded, nay, dumbfounded, by the prospect. From the woods all around came the opening bars of the Purple Symphony, but she mistook these sounds for strains in her own heart: someone had told her that when you hear the Purple Symphony it makes you yearn for something. The lower bristles of her sniffwhips tingled with the scent of pining, and even though she realized the scent was coming from herself, it still meant good luck. Would she have good luck if she tried to claim kin to the Ingledews?

  “When will ye claim kin?” Jubal intruded on her reverie once more, and Tish discovered herself back home
in the rotlog hovel, surrounded by her siblings, all of whom were picking up Jubal’s question and drumming it at her: When will ye claim kin? When will ye claim kin? When will ye claim kin?

  Tish suddenly felt overwhelmed by her responsibility, her duty, and the burden of the knowledge that they were Ingledews. Why had this knowledge come so abruptly, almost as a foretokening of tragedy? If her father had not discovered, on the same night of his westering, that he was an Ingledew, his children would have faced the vicissitudes of their lot in life with the same resignation and the same acceptance of reality that all roosterroaches possess. They would have been content to go on living as Dingletoons. Somewhere, somehow, Tish might have crossed paths with Archy Tichborne again, whom she had encountered so fleetingly at the play-party. “Just to think,” she said to herself morosely, “only last night I danced and laughed!” Now, as the oldest survivor among the Dingletoon children, she had to take over the household…or find a way to move to Parthenon.

  “Better claim kin tonight,” Jubal prodded. “Grab time by the sniffwhips, as Momma allus said. The early worm fools the bird.”

  “Just leave me be!” Tish wailed, and fled from the house. She climbed the Great Rock to the north of Carlott, a boulder almost as high as Holy House itself, which was in its shadow. On the top of this Great Rock was a small level place, which Man Himself had never visited and could scarcely reach, where a group of small rocks, column-like, had been arranged, some flat ones, post-and-lintel, capping and spanning others, into a circle. According to legend, powerful rooster-roaches years before the time of Joshua Crust had placed the rocks into this circle, although it was not conceivable that any roosterroach, not even a crew of mighty Ingledews, could have budged or nudged any of these stones. Still this circle of stones was a special place, pagan, non-Crustian, and perhaps witchlike, where few roosterroaches ever went any more. One had to traverse deep mosses to reach it. It had been called Hinglerocks, long ago, and Tish knew the name but had never heard anyone else speak of it, or go there. To her Hinglerocks was a private ruined temple, where she could go to escape the puzzles and vexations of life, or, now, to mourn the westering of her parents and try to give herself nerve to claim kin to the Ingledews. Because nothing except moss grew there to tempt any food-searching creature, she was never molested, except en route, when she might encounter a hostile cricket, a Santa Fe or scorpion, or meet up with some fat nightcrawler whose lingo she could not fathom.