The Cockroaches of Stay More (28 page)

“We don’t have any time to lose!” I cried. My lieutenants, at a signal from me, began distributing crumbs of chocolate chip cookies, high in energy. Everybody had an early breakfast as I concluded, “Fellows in the vanguard, ladies in the train, children last! Our cry shall be, ‘SAVE HIM!’ Okay, let’s go!”

“SAVE HIM!” shouted the multitude and finished the breakfast, then headed for the exit holes of Holy House.

On the Roamin Road to Parthenon, we did not yet form ourselves into any figure, file or shape, but rushed in a body, myself leading, toward the house two furlongs away. Birds circled over us, and some of them dived for a closer look, but none dared attack. Snakes slithered out of our path. A possum couldn’t believe his luck, but then was afraid to, and scampered off. A tarantula leaped frantically to get out of our way. A praying mantis prayed, but not for prey. We reached Parthenon without the loss of a single roosterroach.

As I expected, Sharon sat on Her porch, in Her rocker, one hand holding a drink, which She raised to Her lips. She was listening to music coming from within Her house, and Her gaze drifted toward Holy House.

Quickly I directed my lieutenants, Archy chief among them, to arrange everybody into a shape:

I myself took the position at the extreme front point of the arrow, with Archy at the lower point flanking my right and Doc Swain hobbling along at the upper point on the left. I counted cadence: “Hup, two, six, twelve! Hup, two, six, twelve!” The crowd yelled “SAVE HIM!” continuously. We moved steadily but not slowly in the direction of Holy House until I was sure we were out of sight, then we broke ranks and rushed back to the yard of Parthenon, reformed, and repeated the whole process. The third time the arrow was formed, I relinquished my position to Archy and rushed to the porch of Parthenon to observe the arrow from Sharon’s vantage, and, more importantly, to observe Sharon, to see what She was doing.

She was doing nothing. If She even saw the arrow, I could not tell. Her gaze was not directed downward toward the yard, toward the road, toward the huge throng of marchers, but rather outward toward Holy House. I thought of rushing up into Her lap to attract Her attention, to shift Her gaze out of its fixation on Holy House and downward, but I decided it wouldn’t work; it would only perhaps scare Her and make Her rush into Her house.

Dusk was rapidly approaching. Soon it would be too dark for Her to see the arrow even if She looked in that direction. I was at a loss, and becoming hopelessly dejected.

Suddenly the entire mob making up the arrow began rushing back toward Parthenon. I thought at first they were coming back to reform one more time. But they were running in fear from a creature who was not intimidated by their numbers or their arrow-shape. A great white mouse.
The
Great White Mouse. And following the mouse was a female roosterroach who, my eyes and then my sniffwhips told me, was you.

Chapter thirty

D
oc didn’t follow. He abandoned his position as leader of the left flank, broke rank, and stood aside on his three weary legs to watch the frantic retreat. He felt rage and helplessness, futility. These folks had not been frightened of the snake, the tarantula, the mantis, the birds, and the possum that had been in the path to Parthenon, and yet they were now running from the Great White Mouse. He didn’t blame them, but Doc had told himself that he would never run from it again. In all his idle hours he had plotted and planned what he would do when he met up with it again, and now he was ready. “Forehead to forehead I meet thee, this third time, White Mouse!” he yelled at it, and stood his ground, albeit standing on only three gitalongs, having lost the other three to the aforesaid Mouse on the aforesaid occasion.

“Don’t skeer all those folks, Hoimin!” a female voice called, and Doc saw that there was a girl standing right
behind
the White Mouse. The girl was Tish Dingletoon, reported drowned days ago; daughter of Jack and Josie (reported westered in a crash days ago); reported sweetheart of Squire Sam, who was now running toward her from the north, also unafraid of the White Mouse; the same Tish who was, Doc recalled, also the reported sweetheart of Archy Tich-borne, who was now running toward her from the south, also unafraid of the White Mouse.

“TISH!” shouted Squire Sam and Archy simultaneously, and ran to embrace her.

The poor girl could not look in both directions simultaneously, but she had one sniffwhip fixed on Sam and the other on Archy. Doc had both of his fixed on the White Mouse, who, however, was not paying him any attention whatever.

Then Tish did a very strange thing. She introduced the Mouse to Doc. “Hoimin,” she said to it, “I want you to meet Doc Swain. You owe him three apologies.”

The Mouse spoke to Doc! “Haughty,” it said. “If ya’ll ponny spression. Please da meetcha. Da lidda pigeon says ta me I should big ya poddon I ate ya legs off. It was mistook identity, belive me. I taught ya was a
edible
bug, ya know?”

Tish and Squire Sam were doing some kind of dance with their sniffwhips. The Mouse kept on talking to Doc. Doc thought he was dreaming. Suddenly from down the Roamin Road came strolling Squire Hank Ingledew. Doc
knew
he was dreaming.

“Like to skeered yore other three gitalongs off, I bet!” Squire Hank said to Doc. “Aint this some critter? Name is Hoimin, which is jist the way he misspeaks Herman. Got a story as long as my right sniffwhip, but he caint talk good English. Lissen to him!”

The injunction was hardly necessary, because Doc couldn’t avoid listening to him; the Mouse wouldn’t stop talking. Every other utterance seemed to be “ya know?” or “if ya’ll ponny spression” and the Mouse kept asking Doc, “Hodda ya like dat?”

“Where did ye find
this
?” Doc asked Squire Hank, and reached out to touch the white fur.

“Tish found him, down the creek a ways,” Squire Hank said. “Doc, I got a long story to tell, myself. But what’s a-gorn on here? What’s all these folks doing? Trying to deliver another message?”

When Squire Hank had been brought up to date on events, he commented, “Now that is the pure-dee dumbest notion ever I heared!” and he turned to his son and said, “Sam, boy, why in blazes didn’t ye jist try writin another message on the typin machine?”

Squire Sam looked blankly at his father, not hearing him. Then the younger squire turned to his girlfriend and asked, “What did he say, Tish?” and Tish waved and wiggled her sniffwhips into all sorts of odd positions, and Sam said, “Oh,” then he said to his father, “There wasn’t time, Dad. And there wasn’t any guarantee the wind wouldn’t have blown the second message away too. We’ve got to get Her attention before dark!”

“Wal, why don’t ye jist run up thar and hop in Her lap?” Squire Hank asked.

Tish seemed to be taking the older squire’s words and translating them into some kind of sign language for the younger squire.

“What good would that do?” Sam said to his father. “You’ve told me never to reveal myself to Her, and if I did, it would just frighten Her.”

Tish spoke, timidly but with conviction. “I have an idea, sirs. What if we had Hoimin march at the front of the arrow? The Woman would see Hoimin because he’s
white
.” As she spoke, she expressed this in her sign language for Sam’s benefit.

The two squires looked at each other, then looked at Doc, and Doc looked at them and then at Tish and at Archy and at Hoimin, who was looking at each of the others in turn and saying, “Hey, ya know sumthin? Da lidda sweety is positively kerspang on da button, ya know? Attawaygo, beby!”

If he were dreaming, Doc did not want to wake up. The reason he knew he was dreaming was that there was no possible way a fellow who had endured all that he had been through for the past several days could even hope to stay awake. He had to be asleep. He hadn’t had a good day’s sleep since the day before the night Lawrence Brace had shot himself in the gitalong. Doc was somewhat ashamed of himself for falling asleep right in the middle of the most dramatic and essential portion of the rescue operations, but it couldn’t be helped. He was asleep, and here was this preposterous daymare of this great nemesis of his, the White Mouse, who was suddenly speaking like a laboratory rat with a Brooklyn accent and who was about to become the hero of the whole affair.

The nice thing about dreams is that you don’t really have to exert yourself and be active. You can sit back and just watch all these things happening to you and to others, and you don’t even have to respond, if you don’t feel like it. Doc wasn’t even required to resume his position at the left flank of the arrow. Squire Hank took that place, and Doc just stood over to one side—or, if he was dreaming, just crouched asleep over to one side—and watched.

The arrow of hundreds of roosterroaches of Stay More, under the direction of Squire Hank and Squire Sam, and Tish, the latter practically riding on Hoimin’s long pink scaly tail, reformed itself in the yard of Parthenon, right beneath the porch upon which the Woman sat, gazing at Holy House. The arrow began moving out across the yard, with Hoimin at the head, or point. “Hey, lookit me!” Hoimin hummed. The arrow followed Hoimin. “C’mon,
Lady
, lookit me!” Hoimin squealed, over his shoulder. “Fevinsakes awready, Lady, willya
lookit
me?!?!”

And the Lady looked at him. When Her gaze shifted downward, caught by a ball of fur hopping, skipping, bouncing, and dancing, someone—it appeared to be Squire Sam—dropped back and arranged the last few hundred roosterroaches into a new formation:

A great philosophical question which had often preoccupied Doc Swain in his casual musings was the possibility that in dreams not only is the dreamer dreaming but also every participant in the dream is dreaming. If I dream that you are there, you in turn are dreaming that I am here.
Therefore
, Doc reflected as he watched this procession,
every last one of those roosterroaches out there is only dreaming that he (or she) is doing this, and also, of course, the Great White Mouse is dreaming
.

…and also, of course, the Woman was dreaming. Surely She Herself had to think that She was dreaming, seeing this strange sight. (I think I dream, therefore I dream I think I am. Et cetera. Philosophy was complicated, Doc realized.)

So the Woman went on thinking She dreamed, as the procession slowly wound its way down the Roamin Road toward Holy House. But then the Woman stood up, unsteadily, and put down the glass of whatever had been responsible for the dreaming. Then, instead of going out into Her yard to follow the arrow to Holy House, She turned, and went into Parthenon. She was gone for a moment, and then returned, muttering loudly to Herself, “Goddamn Newton County Telephone Company!” She raised one hand to become a visor on Her forehead, and peered out across the Roamin Road into the gathering dusk, where the arrow was fading into the direction of Holy House. She took a step down Her front steps. “Gran, I’ve only had four gin-and-tonics,” She said to the air. “Well, maybe it was five. But I’m not drunk. I swear. I know what I’m seeing. Unless I’m dreaming.”

She took the rest of the steps down into Her yard and began walking in the direction of the arrow. “Well, it wouldn’t hurt to just go
see
, would it?” She asked.

“No, it wouldn’t, Ma’am,” Doc said. “You’d be mighty surprised what You would discover. Hurry!”

The Woman began walking rapidly, as fast as She could. Doc followed. Hobbling for all he was worth, he could not keep up with Her. The procession of the arrow had almost reached Holy House. As the Woman caught up with it, it was already at the steps to Holy House, where, as the Woman reached it, the roosterroaches disbanded and decamped. The Woman climbed the porch of Holy House, knocked at one of the three front doors, knocked again, and disappeared inside. Doc had scarcely reached his own clinic, halfway between Parthenon and Holy House, when he watched the Woman enter the latter.

He kept going, but was still a hundred yards short of Holy House when the Woman came out of it again. She looked up and down the Roamin Road as if looking for someone else, but saw no one. Then She began running. Not toward Parthenon but in the opposite direction, toward the Man’s mailbox. But She did not stop at the mailbox. She kept running out into the county road and across the
WPA
low-water bridge.