Lightning Bug

by Donald Harington

  Before leaving the room, she turned and cast an affectionate parting glance at the small boy asleep in her bed, and felt a momentary anxiety, a fleeting self-reproach: I oughtnt’ve allowed him to do that. Fool girl, you are going to step too far sometime. Then she turned back from the door and walked quickly to the big four-poster and leaned down to kiss the sleeping boy on his forehead. He did not wake; he would sleep a long time yet.

  In the kitchen she took a platter of day-old pork-flavored biscuits from the food safe and carried them out onto the back porch and threw them one by one to her cats, saving the last one for herself. She munched it slowly and lingered to watch the cats fighting over the biscuits. She stayed even longer to watch the cats loll in the early morning sun and lick themselves and each other, then she returned to the kitchen and got her milk pail and filled it a quarter ways with water dipped from the water pail. She carried this up the hill to the cow lot, pausing only briefly at her backhouse. She squatted by the Jersey’s flank, not needing a stool, and after washing each of the teats carefully with the water in the pail, she swirled the rest of the water out of the pail and began to milk.

  The milk was good; Mathilda had been grazing lately on the orchard grass, free of the lower pasture’s bitter weeds that gave the milk a pungent taste. The pesky flies of July bothered Mathilda, and she fidgeted restlessly while she was milked. “Saw, Jerse,” Latha would croon at her, “saw.” Latha closed her eyes while she milked and enjoyed the feel of the long cool dugs. She filled the pail and carried it down to the springhouse to crock it and leave it to cool.

  By this time her free-ranging chickens had assembled in a packed flock around the back steps of the house. She walked through them to the back porch and scooped into the feedbag and flung several handfuls into the yard. The chickens made a racket.

  Then she took down the slop bucket hanging from the porch ceiling and carried it to the sty, for her four Chester Whites. Pigs were her favorite animal, not alone for the ebullient gratitude they showed for the garbagey swill she showered upon them, but for the noises they made, which seemed to her an expression of basic life forces.

  Now for a moment she spoke with these hogs in their own language of intricate reiterated snorty grunts. Then she chanced to look up and catch sight of a redbird in a tree. Quickly she made a wish, and waited. Soon the redbird flew down to a lower limb. If it had flown upward, her wish would have come true. But I really didn’t mean that wish, she decided, I don’t honestly want for that to happen.

  The animals all taken care of, it was time for the vegetables. She returned to the house and consulted her calendar and discovered it was turnip-planting day. Personally she hated turnips, but you always plant turnips on turnip-planting day. She entered her store and took a package of seeds from the rack. Then she gathered up her hoe and her rake and headed for the garden across the road. This land belonged to whoever still owned the abandoned house beside the garden, but she had raised a garden here every year for the past eight years, and nobody’d ever said anything about it.

  Crossing the road she saw Penelope sitting in the road. Penelope was one of her cats, an all-white. To see a white cat sitting in the road is good luck. So there, that takes care of that down-flying redbird.

  She planted the turnips, reluctantly. Sonora likes turnips but she’ll be gone back to Little Rock before they’re ready. Well, I will make a turnip pie for Tull Ingledew. Or will Sonora be going back? I wonder if Every likes turnips. After the turnip seeds were in the ground she took her hoe and chopped weeds out of the lettuce and cabbage and beans, chopping hard, working up a sweat, a real lathering sweat.

  She began to sing:

  Well met, well met, my own true love

  Long time I have not seen thee

  Well met on such a shining day

  but stopped, shocked at herself, stopped hoeing too, stood still and remembered: Sing before breakfast, Cry before supper. It means I will be crying before this day is out because I haven’t had my breakfast yet. Well, it’s likely I will. Serves me right. It’s like as not I’ll have more than enough reason for crying before suppertime.

  She resumed chopping weeds, with a vengeance. Accidentally she decapitated a cabbage. Still she kept chopping, until her shirt was soaked through with sweat. She grabbed up the cabbage head and ran back to the house. She went to her room and got a towel and a dress. The boy had rolled over, embracing the place she had left, but was still sound asleep. She left the house once more, crossed the road once more, entered the garden once more. At the end of the vegetable rows, beyond her tall corn, is a dense line of trees, bordering Swains Creek. She went into these trees.

  She began to remove her sweaty clothes, but noticed for the first time that she had her chambray shirt on wrongside out. Oh, great gracious sakes! she sighed. Isn’t this just dandy? Anybody knows that if you accidentally put something on wrongside out, the only way you can keep from having bad luck all day is to keep wearing it wrongside out until bedtime. But this shirt was all dirty and sweaty, even if it was fit to wear for company coming.

  She continued unbuttoning it. Latha dear, she said resolutely, once in your life you’ll just have to quit being so all-fired superstitious. And while she finished undressing, she reflected upon the nature of superstition, and remembered something that nut doctor in Little Rock had tried to get her to believe: “Superstition is the harmless but invalid attempt of the individual to cope with the unknowns and intangibles and the factors in fate and environment over which he has no control. Superstitions vanish as the person becomes more civilized and develops more sense of control over his fate and environment.” Remembering this, Latha laughed, but reckoned it was true.

  Now in her nakedness she stepped through the thicket and slipped into Swains Creek and lay down in the shallow water, and cooled. She loved her body; that was her one certainty; not the sight of it, nor even the feel of it, but the it of it, the itness of it, that it was there, that it was hers, that it could feel something like cool creek water swarming around it and washing the sweat from it, that it could sweat, that it could be cleansed, that it could tingle. I am a jar of skin, a bottle of flesh, a container. All the things I contain….

  She leaned her head back and gazed up at the sun rising above Dinsmore Mountain, and gauged it. It was about five-thirty. Stay More was waking up. Tull Ingledew was just going to sleep, but the others were beginning to wake. Lola Ingledew with a goose feather was tickling the soles of the feet of E.H., her brother. Stanfield Ingledew was exaggeratedly imitating the snores of his brother Odell, in an effort to waken him. In another room, Emelda, the wife of Bevis Ingledew, was crowing into Bevis’s ear an excellent imitation of a rooster. Their son, John Henry, would sleep for another two hours; he had been out past midnight, shagging Sonora Twichell three and a half times.

  Retired physician John Mabrey Plowright was stepping out onto his front porch and hollering across the road at Doc Colvin Swain’s house, “How’s yore goddam arthuritis this fine mornin, you on-scruplous young horse doctor?” And Doc Swain was stepping out onto his porch and hollering back at his nearest neighbor, “A damn sight better’n yore putrid rheumatism, I reckon, you frazzled old sawbones.” From the creek Latha could hear the distant sound of their imprecations.

  In the rough homestead in the timber atop Dinsmore Mountain, Selena Dinsmore, whose man Jake went to California three years ago and has not returned, was banging the dishpan with a large spoon, and with each clanging stroke calling out “Hubert! Sarah! Clovis! Lorraine! Tommy! Vann! Jelena! Doris! Willard! Ella Jean! Tilbert! Norma! And Baby! Y’all all tumble out!”

  Luther Chism went out to his smokehouse where the revenue agent was tied, and asked him, “How you lak yore aigs cooked?” The agent complained, “How’m I gon eat any aigs with all this here rope on me?” Luther said, “My gal Lucy’ll feed em to ye. How you lak em cooked?” The agent said, “Turned over.” Luther said, “You take sweetenin in yore coffee?” The agent said, “Some, I thank you.
” Luther said, “Yo’re welcome.”

  Oren Duckworth, finished with shaving, took down the leather strop and lined up his four boys, Junior, Chester, Mont, and Larry, ranging in age from 19 to 9, backsides to him, and tanned their hides. It was for whatever mischief they might have gotten into the night before. Then, because tomorrow was Sunday and he would not lay the strop to them on the Lord’s Day, he tanned their hides once more, for whatever mischief they might get into tonight.

  Frank Murrison woke to discover he had a morning hard, but Rosie protested, “It’s Sattidy. My day off.” He waited for it to subside, and when it did not he went to the barn and used a ewe.

  Ella Jean Dinsmore came running into the kitchen, hollering, “Maw! Baby Jim fell through the hole in the outhouse!” Selena Dinsmore smiled absently and said, “Aw, just leave him go, Ella Jean. It’d be easier to have another’n than to clean that un up, even if we could git him out.”

  There are no morning bells, no matinals, in Stay More. Instead there came the chime of hammer and anvil in Lawlor Coe’s blacksmith shop. This morning it was answered, once, by the distant anvil in Dill’s wagon shop, deserted these many years.

  Latha, in the water, sneezed. And recited to herself:

  Sneeze on Monday, sneeze for danger

  Sneeze on Tuesday, kiss a stranger

  Sneeze on Wednesday, sneeze for a letter

  Sneeze on Thursday, sneeze for better

  Sneeze on Friday, sneeze for sorrow,

  Sneeze on Saturday, a friend you seek

  Sneeze on Sunday, the Devil will be with you all week.

  What day’s today? she asked herself. Why, I believe it’s Saturday. Yes, I’m almost certain it’s Saturday. She lay in the slow-running green stream but a few moments more, then got up and waded out, and toweled herself dry. She put on the dress, a blue one with small yellow daisies printed on it, and carried her work clothes bundled in the towel back to the house.

  She started breakfast. The woodbox was near about empty. She went out to the backyard and chopped an armload of kindling slowly so as not to sweat again. She stuffed half a dozen sticks into the stove, poured some coal oil over them, and lighted it. She filled the kettle and put it on.

  When the coffee was making, she noticed that the coffeepot was rattling on the stove. That was sure enough a sign that a visitor would come before nightfall.

  She ate her breakfast alone, and left a platter of eggs and bacon and biscuits on the warming shelf for Sonora and Donny.

  Then she unlocked the store from the inside. Jesse Witter was already sitting on the front porch, waiting to hire folks to help pick his tomatoes.

  “Mornin, Jesse,” she said.

  “Fine mornin, Latha,” he replied. Then he asked, “Could you let me have a plug a Brown Mule and I’ll pay ye after I’ve took my tomaters to the cannin factry?”

  “You want me to bring it out to you, or you want to go in and get it yourself?” she asked, smiling.

  He snorted. “Aw, shoot, I can git it myself,” he said, and got up off the nail keg he was sitting on and went into the store and behind the counter and reached up and got the plug of chewing tobacco and unwrapped it and bit off a chaw.

  Then she took him by the hand and led him over to the corner where the feed bags were stacked and made him lie down on the pile of feed bags and unbuttoned his pants and groped around inside until she found his dood and pulled it out which was limp and floppy as a hound’s ear but she worked on it with both hands and got it perked up enough so she could lift her dress and sit down on it and get it well in and then pretend she was on a galloping horse going faster and faster bouncing up and down and Jesse Witter had to turn his head to one side ever now and again to spit tobacco and she had to point out to him the sign KINDLY DO NOT EXPECTORATE UPON THE FLOOR and he said “Goll darn it, Latha, the least you could do is keep a spitoon over in this corner so a feller could take a spit while you was diddlin the daylights out of him” and she said “Shut up and wiggle your rump” and he did and she galloped faster and finally came

  “How many hands do you need today?” she asked him.

  “Aw, I reckon five or six ought to do her. Aint but about twenty short rows left in that patch.”

  “Those W.P.A. boys aren’t working on the bridge today. Maybe a couple of them could use some extra cash.”

  “I wouldn’t hire a W.P.A. boy to break rocks or tie string.”

  Latha went back into the store and got her turkey-feather duster, and dusted her three show cases. Her small store was stocked to capacity, using every inch of space. There was this difference between hers and Lola’s; that Lola’s seemed empty because it was so big for what little was in it, while hers seemed full because it was so little for what a big lot was there. There was also another difference, not to mention the post office: Latha kept a Coke cooler full of soda pop and ice, and on these hot days she made a good profit. Lola claimed it wasn’t worth the cost of the ice, but she was wrong.

  Latha’s staples were lined up in neat clean rows: baking soda, sugar, salt, flour, crackers, and some canned stuff, Vienna sausages and such. She carried hardware too: files, and bolts, plowshares, axe handles, horseshoes, four different sizes of hemp rope in large neat coils. And fresh things: eggs, butter, bread (both store-boughten light and her own), and home-made sausage.

  Things hung from the ceiling, like stalactites in a cave: lamp chimneys, hickory handles, horse collars, harness straps. And she kept things for the womenfolk too: all kinds of thread, needles, Putnam dyes, and several bolts of bright gingham and flannel and even rayon. And she dispensed Lydia Pinkham Remedies, and Carter’s Little Liver Pills and other medicines. And four brands of snuff, six of chewing tobacco, seven of smoking tobacco. It was rare that somebody asked for something she didn’t have.

  Last year she had cleared a net profit of $438.

  On the front porch were three of the Dinsmore children, with the oldest, Lorraine Dinsmore, as their spokesman, bargaining with Jesse Witter:

  “How much you payin today?”

  “Seven cents a bushel.”

  “Maw said not for us to do it for less than nine.”

  “Eight is the most I could ever hope to give ye.”

  “Is they first-picks or pickovers?”

  “Some of it’s pickovers, but they’s a good few fresh rows.”

  “Enough for till sundown?”

  “I reckon not, but leastways till six or so.”

  “Okay. We’ll do it for eight. Miss Latha, you heerd him promise us eight, so we count on you to keep him to his word.”

  “Git in the wagon,” Jesse said. “We got to see if two or three more show up.”

  It was nearly seven o’clock, and Jesse Witter was fidgeting with restlessness, before Dulcie Coe came and offered to pick. Right behind her came Estalee Jerram, the schoolteacher, unemployed for the summer.

  “Doggone,” said Jesse Witter, “I wush I had me a couple of stout boys ’stead of all you gals.”

  Lorraine Dinsmore said, “You aint payin us by the hour, noway. I kin pick fast as ary boy you’d find.”

  “Well, let’s git on with it,” said Jesse and the six of them got into his wagon and he turned it into the Parthenon road.

  Then Latha was alone until eight o’clock, when the candy drummer from Jasper drove up. He was a new fellow. “What happened to Mr. Clinton?” she asked him.

  “Aw, he got hisself into some trouble down towards Hunton, a-foolin around with the storekeeper’s daughter. Only way to stay in this business is behave yoreself. But I do declare, lady, it’s shore gonna be mighty hard for me to behave myself with a pretty thing like you.” And he winked big before turning back to his car to get his sample case and order book.

  A little while later, inside the store, he said, “I caint hep but notice, ma’am, that you aint wearin no weddin ring.”

  “And I cant help but notice that you, sir, are a good bit fatter and unsightly looking than Mr. Clinton was, and I will bet
anything you can’t last nearly half as long, but come on anyway,” and she drew him over to the feed sacks and yanked down his britches and took a sad look at his sorry little pink dinger and had to gobble it and lap on it and draw on it and nearly swallow it for a long time before it got sturdy enough and him standing there eating one of his own candy bars and then when she’d gone to all that trouble to get it ready he wouldn’t let go of her but grabbed her by the hair and dove down her throat and spewed a half-pint and shoved his candy bar up her thigh and into her Every Dill Every Dill O Every

  “I will take a box of Baby Ruths, a box of Butterfingers, a box of Powerhouses, and a box of those round pink-goo peanut blobs, whatever you call them.”

  “I couldn’t interest you this mornin in some Tootsie Rolls or some Hershey Bars?”

  “In this weather?”

  “You could cool em in with your sody pop there.”

  “I’ll do that when you invent a waterproof wrapper.”

  “Well, how bout some orange slices? They’ll keep in any weather.”

  “They’ll keep forever, too, because nobody around here eats them.”

  “All right. How bout me’n you seein the pitcher show over to Jasper tonight? That’s my own car out there.”

  “I thank you. But I’m already set up for tonight.”

  “I bet he don’t have his own car.”

  “No, but he’s got something a durn sight prettier than any car.”

  The candy drummer stared at her for a moment, and then he blushed from his tight collar to his brow, and said, “Haw.” Then he said, “Well.” Then he closed his order book and headed for the door. “Feisty gal,” he mumbled. “Good day, ma’am,” he said and went to his car and drove off.