“Well…diabolical,” Sam ventured. “Sinister. Fiendish. You could almost pass for a nice guy.”
The stranger scarcely stopped laughing. “I’d like to think that my intentions are benevolent, not evil.”
“You saved me,” Sam said.
“For a while there you were doing just fine, handling whatever came your way. But that bat was a different proposition.”
“Then you’ve been looking out for me?” Sam turned the observation into a question at the last moment. “You know everything that’s going on?”
The Mockroach bowed, and smiled, but said nothing.
“I can’t believe you’re real,” Sam declared. “But here you are, aren’t you? When I was little, I heard the wildest stories about you. I suppose they’re all true. I didn’t believe them, but nobody would believe me if I told them how you scared that bat away.” The Mockroach continued his almost mocking smile. “Can you tell me,” Sam requested, “if Man still lives?”
“Mankind still lives,” the Mockroach said.
“But Lawrence Brace…does He live?”
The Mockroach would not answer. Instead he said, “Behold the bell,” and gestured at it, the huge, bronze, black shape beside them, its shape comparable only to that of certain flowers Sam had seen in bloom, canterburies and lilies, but hard, impervious, and infinitely larger than any flower. “Read it,” the Mockroach commanded him.
Around one edge of the rim of the bell were letters cast into the metal, and Sam read these aloud: “Samuels Foundry Works, St. Louis.”
“Not those,” the Mockroach said. “Higher up.”
Higher on the rim was an inscription in Latin, which Sam could not even pronounce, let alone understand:
Nunquam aedepol temere tinnit tintinnabulum
Nisi quis illud tractat aut movet, mutum est
“Now what does that mean?” Sam asked.
“You’ll find out before this story is done.”
“Story? Is this only a story?”
“Everything that I become involved in,” said the Mockroach “is only a story. To hear them tell it.” He laughed once more, at his own joke this time, and then reminded Sam, “Don’t forget what you came up here for,” and at the instant Sam remembered, the Mockroach flew away as quickly as he had come.
For a long time, before he could continue on the errand that had brought him here, Sam pondered whether the Mockroach had been “real.” But certainly that bat had been real, and Sam would not be “real” himself any longer if the bat had eaten him.
The basic structure of the bell and its housing was much less complicated than that of his Clock: cast into the top of the bell was a large bolt which rested and balanced upon cradles in the mountings at the sides of the bell, from one of which sprang a metal lever attached to the end of the bell-rope, the pulling of which caused the bell to rock back and forth. Its motion was lubricated by grease in the cradles: this grease was very old, and dried, and caked, but the friction of its recent employment had thinned and solved the grease enough that Sam could daub a bit upon his touchers and taste it; it must have been rendered from hog lard; it was rancid and bitter. But he chewed off enough of it to smear along the lengths of his tailprongs. He anointed his prongs thoroughly. Nothing happened. He felt foolish. One of Doc’s old wives’ tales of a home remedy, that was more likely to dissolve his tailprongs than to treat them. Sam wondered how long he was supposed to wait, or whether the treatment required repeated applications at intervals; he became impatient and nervous. Daylight was in full upheaval now; somewhere roosters, toward whom he felt not even the affiliation of part of his generic name, were crowing an announcement he could not hear: WORK THE HERD OF LURKING DIRTY BIRDS!
The long ordeal of his journey to the schoolhouse and up the belfry, his encounter with the Mockroach, and now the uncertainty, took their toll, and he realized how many hours had passed since he had fed, but had nothing to eat now except vintage hog lard. He was hungry and tired and impatient and nervous and felt foolish.
At last he fell asleep, resting upon the framework of the bell housing, and a pigeon flew down and studied him and said to him, “You! You! You!” but Sam did not hear, nor wake. The pigeon decided he was not edible, and did not eat him…or perhaps the Mockroach was still protecting him.
He slept all day, and when he woke at evening, it was because he had been awakened by the music of katydids, and the melodies of cicadas, and, yes, the sweet strains of crickets, and, yes yes, the lovely tunes of frogs, and yes yes yes, even the far-distant aria of his very own Clock calling, “EGG”—the last song it ever sang.
Chapter thirty-five
Eight o’clock, Doc thinks idly, or even unconsciously, or conscious only of the fact that it is the time the Loafer’s Court usually begins to assemble on his porch, but now he has the porch all to himself. Has? “Ortent thet to be ‘had’?” he wonders aloud, trying to get the tense correct. No, he has the porch to himself, and it is the present. The eighth hour, and the night after the leaving of Man, and of Woman. Neither has returned, and the Woman has not been home to tend to Parthenon, to wind the Clock, which is an eight-day affair that was last wound nine days ago, and now, with the strike of “EGG,” has breathed its last.
There is no more time, in the counting sense, for Clocks or roosterroaches, and Doc Swain sits, or crouches, on the porch of his clinic, removed from time, aware that the Loafer’s Court is not convening at its usual hour—or, wait a minute, the days have gotten longer and the nights shorter, and it’s still daylight at eight o’clock, this night in early June, and the Loafer’s Court might or might not come along later. Fent Chism will not be there, because he’s west, and Squire Hank possibly won’t, because Squire Hank, the fool, has gone home to Parthenon and likely got hisself westered by the preacher and his gang.
Nobody but me and the spiders, Doc observes, and even though it is still daylight at eight o’clock, the spiders have gone to sleep for the night. This is the way things ought to be, he reflects. This is how Stay More should be all the time: no excitement, nothing happening, a full belly, and the cool of the evening (but it’s a mite too dry and don’t look like it aims to rain again for quite a while), and the old familiar sounds out there in the yard and the road and the grass a-stirrin themselves up into the Purple Symphony. Doc Swain could just sit here forever, and hardly even breathe. Maybe spit now and again, not to mark his space, nor because he’s chewing tobacco or anything, but just to spit for the pure cussed sake of spitting.
Now that the Clock has stopped, Time is resting. It isn’t the Woman’s fault, for Her failure to wind the Clock well before leaving, nor for Her failure to return and wind it again. In the stillness, Doc reflects that the Woman ought to have returned today, if not late last night, after seeing that the Man was safely in the House Pittle. Is She required to stay in the House Pittle too? Is She giving blood transfusions? Is the Man’s heart hooked up to Hers? Or, perish the thought, if Man has westered, or was already west to begin with before They took Him from Stay More, is the Woman simply busy handling the funeral arrangements, or the arrangements for the shipment of the body to whatever place Man had come from before? Doc cannot understand why the Woman is not returning. He can detect no sign of life over at Parthenon…although he knows that there is some roosterroach life there, Chid and his gang cavorting around and stirring up mischief.
One other possibility occurs to Doc, to explain Woman’s non-return: She is so fond of Man that She is staying by His side. Yeah, that’s probably it, Doc says to himself, and wishes there were others around, any of the old loafers, to say it to.
As if in response to his wish, one of the old loafers appears, but he is clearly more a patient than a loafer. Leroy Sizemore is missing two gitalongs, and dragging two others behind the two that will still work; one of his sniffwhips is cracked in two, with half dangling uselessly across his face. The remains of his wings are in tatters. He cannot even climb up to the porch where Doc is crouching, but hal
ts out in the yard, barely able to raise his head and groan, “Doc, I’ve got some complaints.”
“It shore looks like it, Brother Sizemore,” Doc observes.
“I aint ‘Brother’ Sizemore no more,” Leroy declares. “I aint no brother nothin.” He takes three more steps in Doc’s direction, and collapses into the dust, lacking only the belly-up position to appear completely west.
Doc hobbles down off the porch and feels for Leroy’s pulse, which is still faintly beating. “What happened to ye, son?” Doc asks.
Without raising his head from the dust, Leroy narrates, “We was mobbed by Squire Hank. He come into Partheeny and druv us all out.”
“All seven of you?” Doc asks.
“They wasn’t but four of us,” Leroy protests, as if the reduced numbers made the story more likely. “Not countin Chid’s boy Archy, I mean. Just us three used-to-be deacons, and Chid. The other three used-to-be deacons is used-to-be, period. I reckon they westered in the flood. But just me and Stan and Gene, who aint deacons of nothin no more on account of Chid has done went and did away with religion, and we was about to resign from whatever fellowship Chid had in mind for us, when Squire Hank come back home to Partheeny and threw us all out.”
“Threw you out?” Doc asks.
“Yeah, sort of. He flang ole Gene right out the door, and picked up ole Stan and chunked him off the porch, then he lit into me, and I was stupid enough to try to fight back, and look what he done to me!”
“What did he do to Chid?” Doc asks.
“Lord knows,” Leroy says. “Naw, the Lord don’t know, does He? Wherever He is. Archy says some human beans come and took His body away. He aint in Holy House no more, is He?” Doc shakes his head, and Leroy asks, “Do you think I’ll easter long enough to see Holy House again, and my wife and kids?”
“You ort to be in the House Pittle,” Doc declares.
“Say what?”
“Let’s see if we caint git you inside, so’s ye can lay easy and rest a good bit,” Doc says, and helps Leroy struggle up the porch and into the infirmary. A canopy of cobwebs rises above Leroy’s bed, but the spiders have gone to sleep for the night, and they won’t bother Leroy anyhow. In fact, those ordinary house spiders will help, because the sticky strands of their webs are good for binding and dressing Leroy’s wounds.
Before the night is over, Doc has two other patients in his house pittle, ex-deacons Gene Stapleton and Stan Ledbetter. The former lapses into unconsciousness and possible coma, but the latter is able to talk enough to corroborate Leroy’s story of the eviction of the three of them from Parthenon by Squire Hank, and, although he had not witnessed it, the presumed banishment of Chid too.
“What about Archy and Tish?” Doc asks.
“Him and her is hitched,” Stan declares, “so the Squire tole ’em they might as well stay in Partheeny for their honeymoon.”
Doc does all he can for his patients, although it appears that Gene Stapleton is a goner. Doc wishes he had a nurse or two to help out. What’s a house pittle without a nurse? Doc doesn’t even have a receptionist. In his mind’s eye he sees the House Pittle where Lawrence Brace lies, attended and waited on by a receptionist, a secretary, a registered nurse, a practical nurse, a nurse’s aide, a respiratory therapist, a dietitian, and the health insurance officer, not to mention twelve different kinds of doctors, and an orderly. The human race is quite a bit advanced over the roosterroach race, Doc reflects, and allows himself a fleeting moment of self-pity.
But there isn’t all that much to be done in his house pittle, and he knows it. Once the missing gitalongs are swabbed and cleaned and wrapped in cobweb to regenerate (or, like Doc’s own unregenerate legs, have healthy stubs), and the patient is made comfortable and given an occasional temperature check and pulse check, there really isn’t much to do. Often Doc can return to his porch and watch the world go by, or what little of it happens to be going by on this dull, still, typical lazy night. A youth, Freddy Coe, is ambling along the way, and he pauses just long enough to wave his whips and say, “Morsel, Doc.”
“Morsel, Freddy,” Doc returns.
The boy stops, and twitches his whips. “You got some sick folks in thar, smells like?”
“Yeah, got me a regular house pittle,” Doc says, with no little pride. A thought occurs to him. “How’d you like a job, as orderly?”
“Job?” says Freddy. “Orderly?”
“It don’t take much,” Doc assures him. “I got three fellers banged up kind of bad, and I need somebody to help me look after ’em.”
“Maw says I’m right disorderly,” Freddy confesses.
“Wouldn’t ye like to be a doctor when you grow up?” Doc suggests. “I could train ye how.”
“Grow up?” Freddy says, offended. “Doc, I done reached my imago last week, didn’t ye notice?”
Sure enough, the boy is full grown, in imago, but it’s hard for Doc to realize that children like Freddy, who had been coming to Doc for treatment ever since Freddy was in his first instar, have a habit of getting mature and old. “All the more reason I can use ye,” Doc says.
“Wal, I reckon there are worse things to do,” Freddy allows, and climbs the steps.
And Freddy is right. There are worse things to do. Thus childless Doc Swain, without sons of his own to follow in his footsteps, acquires a protégé, pupil, and intern. His first night on the job, Freddy is green and slow to learn. He wonders if he should remove the cobwebs from the house pittle, and has to be instructed in their uses. He is told the names of the sleeping spiders but is not eager to be introduced to them when they wake. He is shown the store of edibles and given a feeding schedule for the three patients, or rather the two who can eat, but he is not able to resist consuming a share of the food himself. But the patients like him, and they ask him to run an errand for them: go to Holy House and summon their wives and children to come to the house pittle during visiting hours.
Freddy asks Doc, “What did ye say the name of this business is?”
“House pittle,” Doc tells him again for the third or fourth time.
“Okay. When is visiting hours?”
Doc hasn’t decided, and he tries to decide, but remembers that Time is resting, the present tense is with us, and we are stuck in the here and now, without any hours. “Oh, just whenever,” he tells Freddy, and Freddy receives permission to run his errand.
Almeda Sizemore comes from Holy House with her twenty-three children to visit Leroy, Claudine Ledbetter brings her seventeen children to visit Stan, but poor Gene Stapleton the goner is also a bachelor and has no visitors except his old mother, Hester. Even villains have mothers, not to mention wives and children. Did you ever think of that?
“What?” says Freddy.
“In any story,” Doc tells his pupil, “the bad guy, regardless of how bad, still has mothers and sweethearts and wifes just like all the rest of us, jist as much as the good guy, if not more so.”
Freddy mulls over this philosophy. With the house pittle full of visitors, he would just as soon sit out here on the porch with Doc, watching the world go by and mulling over philosophical thoughts. “You may be right,” he allows, to his teacher.
The world goes by. A stately, strong-looking roosterroach comes up the road, his head held high. “Morsel, Doc,” he says, and climbs the porch.
“MORSEL, SAM,” Doc says, raising his voice so much that Freddy jumps. To his student he explains, “Squire Sam is deef as a post.”
“What’s a post?” Freddy wants to know.
“A figure of speech,” Doc says. He asks of Squire Sam, “HOW’S EVERTHANG OVER AT HOLY HOUSE?”
“I haven’t been over there since last night,” Sam says. “I thought maybe you could tell me, but I see you’ve moved back to your clinic.”
“IT’S A HOUSE PITTLE NOW,” Doc declares, and attempts to pantomime the care and treatment and feeding of patients. Freddy joins in with the pantomime, especially the feeding part, but is overdoing the pantomime to the point
of clowning. “He’s just deef, Freddy,” Doc cautions. “He aint stupid.” To Sam he invites, “COME LOOK WHO WE GOT.” He leads Sam into the house pittle and shows him the three villains.
“What happened to them?” Sam whispers,
Doc does not whisper. “YORE DAD WHOPPED THE SOUP OUTEN ’EM.”
“Oh,” Sam says, and manages to figure it all out, without any further yelling from Doc or pantomiming. The ladies are looking accusingly at Sam, as if he were the assailant who had mutilated their loved ones. Sam returns to the porch, and crouches. He stares in the direction of Parthenon.
“His sweetheart is up yonder at Partheeny,” Doc explains to Freddy. “Squire Sam don’t know it, but his sweetheart has done went and married another feller, Archy Tichborne, the preacher’s boy, and they’re up yonder honeymooning at that house.” Doc raises his voice and asks Sam, “YOU FIXIN TO GO HOME?” Sam doesn’t answer for a while. Doc says to Freddy, “I don’t know if I should warn him, or not.” Freddy shakes his head.
“Maybe not,” Sam says at length. “Maybe I ought to just go live in Holy House, and watch out for things in this corner of Stay More.”
“GOOD IDEE,” Doc says. “YORE CLOCK HAS DONE STOPPED ANYHOW.”
“Yes,” Sam says. “I know.” Doc wonders how he knows. Has someone told him? He can’t hear the Clock striking, or rather he can’t hear the Clock not striking, which is even harder to hear than the Clock striking. Sam adds, “We’re stuck in the present tense.”
“That’s what I figured,” Doc agrees. “But maybe not forever. Maybe the Man and the Woman will come back.” He realizes he isn’t raising his voice, that he has wasted his words. He starts to repeat himself, “THAT’S WHAT I?” but Sam interrupts.
“The present tense can’t be cured by starting the Clock again, or by restoring what has been lost. The present tense always creates a mood of expectancy. But maybe expectancy sometimes lasts forever.”
“Freddy, are you payin attention?” Doc asks of his protégé. “That’s pure-dee genuine philosophy, and Squire Sam is going to be our philosopher. We’ve had enough of preachers and religion. Now we’re going to have some philosophy!” Doc wishes he could volunteer to be a deacon in whatever kind of church Sam is going to establish.
The Nearly Complete Works, Volume 1 Page 149