The Cockroaches of Stay More

by Donald Harington

“Oh, I don’t know,” Chid said. “Try it and see.”

  Squire John began to suspect that Chid was trying to poison him, but he couldn’t resist the beverage and its scalding bite. Before he knew it, he had magically shrunk the preacher to the size of a third instar roosterroach. “Ex-preacher,” he corrected himself, for it was apparent that Chid Tichborne no longer had a reputable deity to venerate. If Chid gave up preaching and became just an ordinary feller, he might not be such a bad sort, after all. He wouldn’t be any better than Squire John. Already he wasn’t half as big as Squire John. Squire John and him could be good pals, if they gave it a try.

  “Come on here there,” Squire John urged the shrinking ex-preacher, slurring his words, “and try a leetle snort of this here gin yoreself.”

  “It’s all your’n,” Chid declined. “Take the whole drap.”

  “Don’t mind if I do,” Squire John remarked, and proceeded to lap up the entire droplet of gin. The preacher shrank to nothing.

  Nighttime came at broad day. How awful, that a feller in bad need of sleep, and thinking it the west middle of the daytime, should suddenly find it nighttime, after all. But Squire John didn’t care. He just drifted off to dreamland. Blackness surrounded him. Even with his good night vision Squire John could see no trace of the ex-preacher. Jack Orville Dingletoon was Boss Squire of Parthenon and had it all to himself and could dream his whole life there, a cockroach in the Land of Cockaigne, the floors paved with pastry, the walls of barley sugar and cakes and pies.

  When he woke, and discovered that his old head felt as if his sniffwhips had been pulled wrongside out, it was indeed nighttime, or at least completely dark all around him. His supersensitive night vision could see nothing, not even his sniffwhips in front of his face. He could only attempt to feel his way around, and it was hard going, terrible going. He had a vague memory of having been on a countertop in the Parthenon cookroom, but that was not where he was now. He was surrounded by substances. Sticky stuff, gooey stuff, coarse stuff, slime and gaum and gunk and goop and glop: garbage, yes, it was some kind of hodge-podge of sheer garbage that surrounded Squire John. A feller ought to be able to find paradise in garbage, but Squire John thought he had gone to hell. None of this was really edible: coffee grounds, black and damp and murky, foul-smelling. Chicken egg shells. The squeezed pulp and rind of a fruit that he identified as the green stuff the Woman had put in Her drink. Several strands of the Woman’s hair. Floor sweepings of dust, grime, dirt, and only a particle or two of edibles. With his touchers and sniffwhips Squire John explored further and found unrecognizable messy substances and liquids, and he found the body of the housefly he had encountered earlier. It had been crushed by a swatter, and stank to high heaven. Elsewhere in this prison were empty cartons, containers, and crumpled pieces of paper. The walls of this prison were of some resilient shiny smooth material, black as pitch, which Squire John could not bite through. He heaved himself against it, and it gave with his weight, but only slightly, and sprang back, mocking him. He explored in every direction, but the shiny smooth black material had no exit. The one place where it puckered and narrowed to an apparent exit was bound tightly from without.

  “Josie?!” Squire John called, pathetically, futilely. “Chid?!” he wailed. “Anybody?!” he tried. He was alone, and had the worst hangover he could ever have imagined, and although he was not west, he might as well have been, because there was no way out, no escape, no going back to the world of folks and love.

  “What did I do to deserve this?” he cried aloud. There was no answer. Not yet. And then came one. As he crouched in abject despair, convinced that he had gone to Hell, he had his conviction confirmed by the sound. “BOMB,” it said to him. “DOOM,” it added.

  It kept saying the same thing, over and over.

  Chapter thirty-two

  She knew that Archy wanted to take her far away. His belief that the world contained fabled houses far better than Holy House or Parthenon was confirmed by the sudden presence, in and around Holy House, of so many human beings. A dozen or more, she couldn’t count them all. Big and little, male and female, thin and fat, young and old. Tish had grown up being taught that there was one Man, and only one, who was supreme over all creatures. She had loved that Man as her Lord, and prayed to Him, and expected that when she went west she would live on His right hand forevermore. Then she had come to know that Man was just a man, large and drunk and prone in the grass of Carlott, lonely and vulnerable and somehow lovable in a different way. But now Man was west and being carried out of Holy House by other Men, Who looked more handsome and lordly than our Man, and Who lifted Him up and removed His body from Holy House and carried Him out to a vehicle, which took Him entirely away from Stay More, just as His own vehicle had done every now and again, but with Him driving. Now He was not driving, but lay spread out in the back seat of another Man’s vehicle, and the door was closed upon Him, and He was driven away. The Woman got into one of the other vehicles, which another Man was driving, and it too gained the county road and disappeared. One by one, the other Human Beings, hanging back at Holy House to explore it and then to lock it up, returned to Their vehicles and drove away. The roosterroaches of Stay More, and the one rodent of Stay More, watched all this to its conclusion.

  The sniffwhip-spelling sign for “west” is the same as that for “belly-up”: a turning over of the two sniffwhips to signify the turning over of the body into the belly-up position. Tish went up to Squire Sam, who was talking to Doc Swain and his father, and in sign language she asked Sam, “Is He west?”

  With his sniffwhip gestures Sam answered her, “We don’t know. Doc didn’t have a chance to check His pulse before They took Him away. Doc was too busy helping us try to get help for Him.”

  “What are you two talking about, thataway?” Doc asked her.

  “I was asking him if Man is west,” Tish said to Doc, “and he told me that you didn’t have a chance to find out before They took Him away.”

  “But didje notice,” Doc said to others around him as well as to her, “one of them Men who drug Him out of the house had one of these here things around His neck, I do believe it’s called a stereoscope or something like that, that listens to the heartbeat. There’s one of ’em a-hangin on the wall in my clinic, covered with dust. Anyhow, He had the business end of that stereoscope up against Man’s chest, and He was noddin His head yes, as if to say yes, He could hear that Man still had some heartbeat.”

  This information was spread from mouth to prong throughout the crowd, until everyone in Stay More understood it.

  “What d’ye reckon They’re fixin to do with Him?” Squire Hank asked Doc.

  “Where are They taking Him?” Tish asked. She was still busy “translating” Doc’s words into signs Sam could understand, and she was slowly spelling out s-t-e-r-e-o-s-c-o-p-e.

  “Wal,” Doc said, “I’ll tell ye. I used to hear it told that far off and away, beyond the mountains, there is a big old kind of house, not a house where Humanfolks live, but a big house where the Humanfolks take keer of Their sick and the lame and the westerin, and this house is called a House Pittle. I reckon They’ve took Man to the House Pittle, to keep ’Im until He gets better.”

  Tish was aware that Archy stood to one side, watching her intently, curiously, and somewhat jealously.

  Sam too was aware of Archy, and he signed to her, “I’m sure you’ve got things to discuss with him too”—he imperceptibly pointed a sniffwhip in the direction of Archy—“so why don’t we get together alone later? We’ve got so much to talk about.”

  “Yes,” Tish agreed. “I’ve got to tell you how Hoimin helped me hide my easteregg.”

  “Hide your easteregg???” Sam duplicated the signs with emphasis but added three question marks with a rhythmic flourish of his sniffwhip tips.

  In sign language, “See you later” is a combination of the conventional “see” with “you” and a flip of one toucher over the other in a forward direction indicating “later.” Sh
e gave this to him.

  Then she went to Archy and asked, “Do you want to talk?” The last of day was gone now; night, the element of roosterroaches, had come fully again, and they were in it.

  “I caint wiggle my sniffwhips like he can,” Archy said.

  “You don’t have to,” she said. “Because you’ve got good hearing, I reckon.”

  “But I aint nobody around here lately, in all this excitement,” he observed. “Yore squire has been runnin the whole show.”

  “With your help, Archy,” she corrected, trying to be encouraging. “He couldn’t have done it without your help.”

  “And yours, and the big mouse’s,” Archy pointed out. He smiled. “Did ye know, you’re the famousest gal in the whole town, now? You’re quite a shucks. All the other gals is green-eyed with envy.”

  Tish blushed, and protested, “Aw, Archy, they’re all green-eyed anyway.” Which was true, because all roosterroach eyes are that color. But she had to admit to herself that she enjoyed being the center of attention; she relished having these two males competing with each other for her favor. The other girls of Stay More were whispering among themselves all over the place, and casting covetous looks at Tish. Wouldn’t her parents be proud of her! But where were her parents? “Have you seen my folks?” she asked Archy.

  “No, nor mine neither,” he said, with an insinuation of reproach, because he remembered painfully how she had been the one who had informed him of his mother’s west, and she remembered that the last time she saw him she told him that she was motherless too.

  “I heard they went to Parthenon, lookin for me,” she said.

  “Well, that’s a coincidence,” Archy declared. “My dad has gone to Parthenon, too. Why don’t we jist mosey up yonder and see what’s what?”

  So Tish and Archy began a little journey to Parthenon, and it was along the way that he told Tish he wanted to take her not just to Parthenon, but far, far away.

  “I don’t reckon as how that Man will ever come back,” Archy said. “Even if He aint west, They’ll keep Him in that House Pittle for the rest of His east. Even if They let Him go, He won’t come back here. Holy House is a-gorn to be deserted like the other houses of Stay More, and then where would we be? No, I think it’s gonna be every feller for hisself, and Mockroach take the hindmost, and I don’t aim to hang around and wait to see if Man ever comes back.”

  “Just which way do you plan to go?” Tish asked him.

  “I’ve thought about it.” He gestured with one of his sniffwhips toward the mountain, to the west, that some folks had called Mount Staymore. “I’d like to head thataway. I hear tell there’s People up yonder live in fine houses.”

  “I’ve heard tell,” she said, “that the nearest house, up that way, is a dozen furlongs off, and several creeks to cross.”

  “What of it?” he said. “Nobody never got nothing in this world without a little effort. It might take us a week or more to get there, but it’d be a good trip for us.”

  “Us?” she said.

  “Me ’n you,” he said mildly. He stopped. He entwined her sniffwhips almost playfully with his own. “Tish, honey, I wouldn’t even start in to think about going by myself, without you. I’d lief as stay here in Stay More if you wouldn’t go with me.” He studied both her eyes up close, and added, “You will go with me, won’t you?”

  “Why, Archibald Tichborne, you haven’t even proposed to me, yet,” she said.

  “What do you think I’m doing, right now?” he asked.

  “I don’t hear you saying it,” she said.

  “Don’t make me put it in words,” he protested. “I caint jist come right out and speak of marriage.”

  “Why not?”

  “Wal…it’s not…it’s not manly.”

  “Manly?” She wondered if he meant manly in the manner of Lawrence Brace.

  “Aw, heck, shoot,” he complained, and kicked at pebbles with one fore gitalong. “You know what I mean,” he protested. “It aint proper I should git down on my knees and perpose to ye, like folks used to do in the old-timey days.”

  “How do folks do it nowadays?” she wondered aloud.

  “They jist git hitched,” he said.

  “And how do they do that?” she asked innocently.

  “Wal, they find ’em a preacher, and he preforms the ceremony.”

  “The only preacher’s your dad,” she pointed out.

  “That’s right,” he said. “And yonder he is!”

  Their stroll had taken them to the yard of Parthenon, right back to the point where the procession of the arrow had originated, but now, instead of the Woman sitting in Her rocker on the porch, the porch was dominated by Brother Tichborne, who crouched on its edge as if he owned it, and crouching beside him was Tish’s own mother! Keeping to the shadows behind them were three deacons of the church, Brothers Sizemore, Ledbetter, and Stapleton.

  “Momma!” Tish squealed, and ran up the steps to greet her.

  “Poppa!” Archy called, and ran right behind Tish, overtook her, and was the first to embrace his parent. “I didn’t know if you had drownded, or what!” Archy said to his father.

  “I didn’t know if you had drowned, or what,” Tish said to her mother.

  “I shore didn’t know where-at you might’ve drownded yoreself,” Josie said to her daughter. Then she asked, “Where’s all yore brothers and sisters?”

  Tish hung her head. “Jubal and them are down at Holy House,” she reported. “Some of them. There aint but thirty-one left now, Momma. Our house got washed away in the flood, and we lost Julie, Japhet, Jenny, Jick, June, Jay, Jill, Jock, Jarvis, Jewel, Jayne, Junior…”

  “Never mind,” Josie interrupted her, and announced solemnly, “There is worse news. We have all lost your father.”

  “No!” Tish cried, and searched her mother’s face for the truth of this, but her mother lowered her eyes. Tish looked to the preacher, who was solemnly nodding.

  “The Woman destroyed him,” Brother Tichborne announced. “She westered him, and threw him out with the garbage. I saw Her do it with my own eyes. Let us pray,” he automatically added and lowered his head in prayer but instantly raised it again. “Wait a minute. There aint nobody to pray to. Man is west, aint He?” He glanced at his son.

  “They don’t know,” Archy said, and related to his father the recent events at Holy House. “Didn’t you’uns see the arrow? Didn’t you’uns see the Great White Mouse?” he asked his father, the deacons, and Josie.

  “Arrow?” they said. “Mouse?” they said. Archy explained. Archy’s father appeared to be distressed at the news that Squire Hank was still east.

  Archy concluded, “Dad, didn’t ye hear the bell ring? When the bell rung, it brought Human-people from all over the mountains down into Holy House, to get the Man and take Him to a House Pittle. It’s jist like I been tellin ye, Dad, there aint one Man but many of ’em. The world’s full of ’em!”

  “I know, I know,” Brother Tichborne said solemnly. “And Women too. And Woman is the worst. Before He drunk Hisself silly and shot Hisself in His own gitalong, Man was great, Man was good, Man was our King. But Woman…” The preacher’s eyes shone with malice and there was a murderous rumble in his throat. “Woman is vile, and evil, and unmanly; She is not a Queen, but a Witch. I won’t never worship Her.”

  “Then you aint a preacher no more?” Archy inquired of his father.

  “I’m afraid not,” Chid said. “I’m fixin to stay right here in Parthenon, but I won’t never bend one knee in worship to Woman! I won’t never go back to Holy House! I am now the Boss Squire of Parthenon, and I don’t aim to let the Ingledews git it back! I will—”

  The preacher ranted onward, but Tish could not listen. All she could think about was her westered father. She discovered that she was weeping.

  When the ex-preacher paused to catch his breath, Archy interrupted, “Dad, if you aint a preacher no more, I don’t guess you can marry me and Tish. If you aint a preacher, who is? How are
we gonna git married?”

  Chapter thirty-three

  Chid was stumped. Not by the question of his no longer being of the cloth, as it were, nor by the question of who else might still be a minister—Chid assumed that elsewhere in the world there were other ministers, albeit of different religions, Hindoo and such, none of them Crustian. In Stay More, Chid had been the only minister, the only direct spiritual descendant of Joshua Crust Himself. If he denied Man, wasn’t he denying Crust also? This was a tricky question, but it wasn’t the question that stumped Chid. The question that had Chid stumped was how his son could get married to Tish Dingletoon, who was, all unbeknownst to him, his sister, or at least his half-sister, offspring of that long-ago congress between Chid and Josie.

  But what was wrong with that? Somehow, incest didn’t bother Chid the way it had when he was still a parson and servant of Man. Now that he didn’t have any evangelical responsibilities, it seemed to Chid that incest was just fine. Sisters and brothers, fathers and daughters, sex was sex, and a heap of fun. Thinking of it, he became impatient to enjoy his rights and privileges as Boss Squire of Parthenon, including his right to move into Josie’s boudoir and act out that sexual paradise he kept conjuring up in his itching fantasies. He sure would like to give Josie a marble. For that matter, since he was going to enjoy le droit du seigneur, or Jus primae noctis, among his other rights as lord of the manor, he wouldn’t mind giving a marble to Tish too, who was a whole lot younger and fresher and prettier than Josie. Chid licked his chops, appraising her.

  And then he said to his son, “Well, Archy, I don’t reckon I’ve forgot how to do a weddin. After all, I’ve married everbody in Stay More that ever got married, for the past year or so. If you and her aim to jine in wedlock, I can give ye the bonds of matrimony right here and now. Only it won’t be holy matrimony. Might even be unholy matrimony, ye might say.”

  “Whatever’s legal,” Archy said.

  “Son, anything I do, from here on out, is legal,” Chid declared solemnly. “Okay. Dearly Beloved, we are gathered here tonight, not in the sight of Man, who is west or leastways gone off some’ers, nor in the sight of Woman, who—”