The Cockroaches of Stay More (20 page)

The confines of the corridor in which they laid low throughout the hours of conversation had been snug and cozy for a while but had eventually become stifling and dank. There were strong odors of mouse scat, snail-slime, fly-spittle, termite-trail, and ant-spoor; generations of critters had used this corridor for a passageway, and the offensive smells destroyed Tish’s pheromone and were magnified by an increasing humidity because of the rain: yes, the world outside Holy House was being deluged, as the weather station of her sniffwhip told her: a real frog-choker. She loved rain and hated frogs.

She wished Archy would take her out to the porch, such a glamorous architectural wonder, where she had never been, so that the two of them could watch the rain, but she did not suggest it to him. She wondered if he might take her to his home, in the frock, in some distant room of Holy House, and introduce her to his brothers and sisters. Maybe he had sisters who needed comforting because of the loss of their mother. Maybe if Tish comforted them for their loss, they would comfort her for hers. At this thought she had begun to weep, quietly, and finally Archy had stopped talking long enough to ask her why she was crying; had his narration of his childhood and his outlining of his dreams for the bright future made her cry? She could not explain that she was thinking there was no one to comfort her that her mother was west, no one to comfort her that she had foolishly thrown away her virginity, no one to aid her in this time of loss and stress and confusion, no one but Archy, who could only talk on and on about the great world away out yonder that he planned to conquer.

She had fallen asleep. Day was coming anyway, or, if not day, because the stormclouds would never let the sun appear, the time of sleep, almost automatic for roosterroaches, but not quite for Archy, who went on talking for some time before he noticed that she slept, and then he went to sleep himself.

Upon awakening at eventide she had told him that she
must
return to Carlott, to the family log, to see about her brothers and sisters. He had insisted upon going with her, because the rain was still pouring down. They found that three rivers ran around and through Carlott, where none had been before, and no doubt Tish would never have been able to ford these rivers without the help of Archy, who assisted her in swimming across or, in the case of the worse torrent, devised a raft of weedstems and floated the two of them over. The water was nearly up to the level of the Platform, and most of the automotive thingumajigs and doomahitchies littering the ground were submerged. Water was up to the hubcaps of the Lord’s nonjunk vehicle, His Ford Torino. Some of the dwellings of Carlott were underwater or washed away, and the refugees, Tish’s neighbors, were milling in confusion and fright on patches of higher ground above the village. In the distance she could see her home: the log was not submerged, but waves lapped at its door.

“You’d best turn back, and get on home before this rain gets any worse,” she told Archy.

“But I’d be proud to meet yore mother,” Archy insisted.

“My momma has westered, same as yours,” Tish declared.

“Mine?” he said. “What gives ye the idee my momma has westered?”

“You didn’t
see
?” Tish asked, and realized, too late, that indeed he had not watched the shooting of Ila Frances Tichborne and, all this time, had no idea his mother was west. Should she tell him? Yes, she had better: “Last night, didn’t ye notice, the second bullet of the Lord hit your momma and Raptured her.”

“No!” Archy exclaimed. “Don’t tell me
that
! When did you hear this?”

“I didn’t hear it,” she said. “I mean, I didn’t only
hear
it. I saw it too.”

“Are ye certain it was her?” he asked her. “How do ye know?”

“Everybody knows the preacher’s wife,” she declared.

Archy continued to appear incredulous, then became credulous, then grew angry. “Why didn’t ye
tell
me?” he asked.

“I thought ye knew,” she said.

“You mean all this time I been so sweet to ye, all this time I was a-lovin ye and talkin so nice to ye and all, all this time ye
knew
I was motherless?”

Tish could only nod. Then she added, softly, “I’m motherless too.”

Archy snorted a hollow laugh. “I was fixin to ast ye to come and meet my momma tomorrow night and have breakfast with us,” he declared. “But it don’t look like I can, do it?” When she did not respond to this rhetorical question, he said, “Well, I’ll see you around, somewhere, sooner or later,” and he swung his six gitalongs around to decamp.

“Archy!” she called after him, but he did not turn.

Sadly, she entered her home, finding it waterlogged but all her brothers and sisters not only safe but manic with joy, jumping up and down, hugging one another, and babbling about “Partheeny.” The highest up-and-down jumper was Jubal, who exclaimed, “Wal, looky who’s here!”

“Hidy, Jubal, how’s stuff?” she said.

“I’ll tell ye how stuff is!” he exclaimed. “Paw aint west! Neither is Maw! Both of ’em is jist as eastern as me and you!”

“
What!?
” said Tish, and began searching with her sniffwhips. “Where are they?”

“They done went to Partheeny to look for you.”

“Me? But I’m
here
.”

“But aint ye been to PARTHEENY? Didn’t ye claim kin to the Ingledews?”

“Well, sort of,” she admitted.

“Aint we’uns all gonna move into Partheeny?” he asked, and the question was picked up and chorused by the assembled brothers and sisters, who kept chanting, “Aint we’uns all?” and “We’uns gonna?” and “Move into?” and “Partheeny?”

“Let me sit down and try to explain,” Tish protested, and crouched to the loggy floor and sighed, “I’m wore to a frazzel,” and asked, “Could ye scare me up a bite of fungus?”

“Fungus, heck!” Jubal said. “Lookee here at what-all we got to eat!” and shooed aside the mob of siblings to reveal the pile of funeral feeds. Tish recognized them for what they were; it is the dream and dread of every young roosterroach to experience the mixture of grief and delight that comes from a funeral feed.

“This is called ‘peanut brickle,’” she knowledgeably explained to Jubal, as she helped herself to a bite.

Not to be out-knowledged, he said, “This is called marshmaller,” and showed her a bit he had been hoarding.

The assorted Dingletoon offspring surrounded the funeral feed and dined, while Tish, between bites, attempted to tell them the story of her visit to Parthenon, omitting, of course, her indiscretion with Squire Sam. When she had finished, all the children rattled and blathered, “When air we’uns gonna move into Partheeny?” and “When air?” and “Move into?” and “Partheeny?” and “We’uns gonna?” Tish attempted to explain that Parthenon was the exclusive domain of the Squires Ingledew, and even if the Dingletoons were Ingledews, they couldn’t just go rushing all of a heap into that marvelous house.

When she had finished the story of Parthenon, her brothers and sisters urged, “Tell us another’n, Sis!” so she told the story of the latest shootings at the church-meetin at Holy House, one shot of which had wounded the Lord Himself. They could not believe that part. Man is bulletproof, they said; Man is punctureproof, He is holeproof. Not so, Tish insisted; she had seen the Holy Blood. She described it. It was
red
. It was thicker than ichor.

She told of the couch on which the Lord lay, and she detailed the character of the corridors inside the walls and the awful smells of the trails and spoors of critters who crawled and crept in the spaces. She made Holy House sound like both a marvelous place and a terrible place, and the children listened with their glossae agape and their tailprongs twitching.

They would have eaten all the funeral feeds if she had not made them draw a line, a literal line which they were not allowed to cross. She explained that the intended honorees of the funeral, their mother and father, ought to have a share of the feeds unto themselves, and that whatever was left over should be saved and used to present as funeral feeds to the survivors of those who had been westered the night before at Holy House, including Nancy Whitter, Luke’s widow and outcast, and the children, including Archy, of Ila Frances Tichborne. She would give Archy the last hunklet of peanut brickle herself.

Near onto dawn Tish talked and entertained her siblings, and then she sent them all to bed. She needed to think. She needed to remember what had been happening to her, and to conjecture what was now going to come of it. The Fate-Thing had plans for her, but she had to make her own as well. The Fate-Thing can make your plans, but you have to carry them out…unless you try to carry out plans the Fate-Thing doesn’t have for you: then the Fate-Thing will stop you.

There was that marble of Squire Sam’s caught and held within her ovary. How exactly had it come to rest there? Dreamily Tish dwelt upon the mood of the long hours of conjunction, the pleasurable shuttling back and forth between the resistance to the bondage and the giving in to it, with the accompanying necessary tension building to a peak. She reflected upon the shape and form of all the instruments of the bondage, Sam’s natural anatomical manacles, cuffs, collars, buckles, trusses, which had gripped and clamped Tish’s natural anatomical latches, hasps, hitches, and hooks, holding her fast and tight.

Why that need for bondage? Did the female have to be restrained or did she
want
to be? At no time during the process had Tish felt an actual urge to disjoin and decamp, so why had Man created her body, and Sam’s, with all those fasteners? Why was it so pleasurable to be seized, grasped, clutched, held?

Holding is all. All: to hold is to wish to be held. To be held is to hold. To embrace is to enchant. Making love was like making stories, storyteller Tish realized. The story that enchants also embraces. The storyteller wishes to be embraced, as the lover wishes to be loved. The genital clasper grabs hold as the story grabs hold. The story expects resistance, and the resister disbelieves in order to be won over. The holding back, the resisting, the subjection and seduction….

Tish realized that her easteregg was growing within her, starting from nothing as a story starts from nothing, and needing to be fertilized by a touch from the other: Sam’s marble released the first of the many copies of himself that it contained, baby Ingledews having a family reunion with their longlost kindred Dingletoon cousins. Even if she could never dwell in Parthenon, now Parthenon dwelt in her.

And began to protrude.

Her thoughts were interrupted by a strange sensation in her body, a rocking motion, an unsettled feeling in her six sensitive knee joints which told her that the substratum was in upheaval.
Is this what pregnancy feels like?
she wondered. Did the protrusion of the easteregg cause the floor to tilt?

“Tish!” cried Jubal, rushing into her room and into her reverie. “Our house is floating away!”

Chapter twenty-three

G
odhead above my Man, are you there still?” Chid whispered, and listened, but heard nothing, save the endless droning drumbeat of the rain upon the shingles of the roof. This sound was so loud because he was right next to it, up there alongside the rafters, in the place that he thought of as his private refuge, secret and safe. If he had known of Tish’s fondness for Hinglerocks, he would have understood it, for this abandoned dirt dobber’s nest served the same function for him: a quiet and magical place to meditate and try to come to terms with the great mysteries of life. For Chid, a central mystery of life was whether or not there might be some force greater than Man, some Absolute Mover and Shaker more Infinite and Omnipotent than Man, some Everlasting Eternal Being who did not drink bourbon or coffee, smoke cigarettes, pass out, fire pistols, write love letters, and urinate. This Supreme Soul Chid envisioned as dwelling somewhere far overhead, somewhere that not even Man could reach. Thus the abandoned dirt dobber’s nest up under the roof of Holy House was closer to the Entity whom Chid was inclined to call, for want of a better name, by the name that Chid had heard Man Himself use, when, most lately, He lay on His couch of suffering, pain, and blood, and cried, “Oh,
God
.”

Chid had for several long moments refused to accept the possibility that Man could have shot Himself, that He was not only mortal but woundable, bleedable. And once this possibility had established itself in Chid’s consciousness, blotting out even the awful event of the atomization of his wife Ila Frances, he had fled, upstairs, upattic, up and up to this haven, this hermitage of rest and contemplation.

The dirt dobber, also called mud-dauber (
Sceliphron coementarium
), is a wasp who makes not the paper nest of the poliste or the hornet but a grouping of cells of clay, or, in places such as Stay More, where there is little natural clay, just dirt and dust from the earth moistened into mud and overlapped into tan tubules. Therein, the female lays her eggs, along with the bodies of spiders caught and paralyzed for the larvae’s nourishment. Dirt dobbers had rid Holy House of spiders, and, although they were not above dining upon a roosterroach when they could, they were strictly diurnal and only killed the occasional roosterroach found wandering after dawn. Once a nest has served its function for one generation of wasps, it is never used again, and the rafters of Holy House were encrusted with abandoned nests. Chidiock Tichborne could easily crawl into one and feel snug and safe and meditative.

If the truth be told, his lamentation over his wife Ila Frances was not as great as his grief for poor Josie Dingletoon, who had been, albeit briefly, the true love of his life, at least in terms of compatible sexuality. Ila Frances, after all, had been his own sister, although no one knew this except the two of them.

Sometimes Chid questioned whether Man really cared that Chid had been incestuous. Even Joshua Crust, as far as Chid could recall, had never spoken out against incest. Why, then, did Chid decry it? Because the roosterroach populations of Stay More would decline into no better than termites if they continued breeding incestuously.