Lightning Bug

by Donald Harington

  “All right, Every,” she said. “Let’s get married. Soon as we can. But I think I ought to warn you that I might get into one of those ‘trances’ anyway.”

  “How do you know?”

  “It’s happened,” she said. “But it’s not really a ‘trance.’ I just get so carried off when the big moment comes at the end that I just swoon clean away, as if it were too much for a body to bear.”

  He frowned. “That happened…with Dolph?” he asked.

  “Yes. Once.”

  He pondered with a long face for a while before speaking. “Well,” he said, “that was just God’s way of telling you that He didn’t approve of what you were doing.”

  “No, Every,” she said, “It was just my way of telling me that I approved of it so much I couldn’t stand it.”

  He reflected, then he lifted the slab of beef off his eye and peered at her. “You’re hurting me, you know it?”

  “I don’t mean to,” she said softly. “I’m just trying to help you understand.”

  He tilted his head back again and replaced the slab of beef. “Galatians Six, seventh and eighth verses,” he said: “‘Be not deceived; God is not mocked: for whatsoever a man soweth, that shall he also reap. For he that soweth to his flesh shall of the flesh reap corruption; but he that soweth to the Spirit shall of the Spirit reap life everlasting.”

  “I sow to the spirit!” she protested. “It’s not the flesh that makes me faint, it’s the spirit!”

  He whipped the slab of beef off his eye and threw it on the floor. “You don’t have the first notion what the Spirit means!”

  She stood up. “I’m going up the road a little ways,” she said. “To Dawny’s house.”

  “Why?”

  “Just to see if he’s okay. I’ll be right back.”

  She walked rapidly up the Right Prong road toward the Murrison place, wondering again if Dolph might have done something to Donny. But if that were so, the Murrisons would have told Latha about it. Or would they have?

  Rosie and Frank were sitting on their front porch, taking in what little evening breeze there was, but Donny wasn’t with them. Latha stopped at the foot of the porch steps and looked up at Rosie. “Hi,” she said. “Where’s Dawny?”

  “Well, I never—!” Rosie huffed. “Wanting to take up for him all the time is one thing, but wanting to know were he’s at is something else. What’s it to you, where he’s at?”

  “I…” she said, becoming flustered, “we…just missed him this evening, he’s usually always down to the store after supper, you know, and…I just wondered…just wondered why he didn’t come tonight.”

  “Is he supposed to come ever blessit night?” Rosie asked belligerently.

  “No, but this is the first night he’s missed in such a long time, I thought maybe something had happened to him, and I—” she stopped, for she could hear faintly, coming from a room upstairs, a child’s muffled sobbing. “Rosie, is he all right? Tell me,” she said.

  “He’s all right,” Frank said. “’cept for being black and blue all over, he’s all right.”

  “Why, Frank!” Latha said. “What happened to him? Why’s he black and blue?”

  “He got his little hide overhauled,” Rosie said, “for tellin a whoppin lie. Even when I caught him out on it, he wouldn’t tell me the truth, so I really mopped the floor with that little devil. He still won’t tell me, so maybe you better. Whut was he doin down to yore place last night? And don’t gimme no fudge about no bunkin party, neither, ’cause I found out from Selena Dinsmore and Viola Duckworth that none a their kids went to no bunkin party at yore place last night.”

  Latha took a deep breath and said, “All I did was provide him a place to sleep, and tell him some bedtime stories.”

  “Ghost stories, I bet! Skeered him so much he wet his pants, I bet! But if that’s all you did, he wouldn’t a refused to tell me, ’cause he’s tole me afore about them ghost stories a yourn. So you must a done somethin else ’sides that. You must a done somethin real bad.”

  Latha wondered what would happen if she just went into their house and went upstairs and got Donny and tried to take him away. They would stop her, of course. I wish I’d brought Every with me.

  “Latha Bourne, ’pon my word,” said Rosie, “if you don’t tell me, I’ll never let that little rascal come anywhere near yore place ever again!”

  How are you going to keep him from it? she wanted to ask, but she knew that Rosie would tie him to the bedpost if she had to. “You are a mean woman, Rosie Murrison,” she said.

  “’Druther be mean than evil. Just what do you mean, anyhow, temptin a innocent boy to stay all night with you? No tellin whut you done to him, you witch. No wonder he won’t tell me whut you done, it’s so horrible he can’t bear to speak of it.”

  I wish I had more nerve, she thought. But as it is I’m a coward. “Good night,” she said, and began walking away.

  “You just come back here!” Rosie hollered after her. “Latha Bourne, you just better come right back and tell me whut you done!”

  She did not stop.

  “All right for you!” Rosie hollered. “You won’t never see him again!”

  We will just see about that, she said to herself.

  She returned to her house and sat beside Every again on the porch, but she did not say anything to him. She brooded. Out of helplessness she conjectured wild ideas: Every and I will just take Sonora and Donny and go far, far away. But she could not ever leave Stay More again.

  After a while Every asked, “Was he okay?”

  “No,” she said.

  He waited for her to elaborate, and when she did not he asked, “What’s the matter?”

  Should I tell him? she wondered. Can I tell him? She decided that there must be no secrets between them, and that if he was to have her he would have to have her as she really was. “They beat him,” she said, and her tone became fierce, “They beat him up! And it’s my fault! They beat him up because he refused to tell on me.”

  “What was it he refused to tell?” Every asked.

  She had to think about it for a moment longer before persuading herself to tell him, and when she told him she did it defiantly, as if to say: See how bad I am? Now is there any hope for me as a preacher’s wife?

  “Latha, you’re sure lucky Dawny refused to tell his aunt even after she beat him. Do you know what folks would do to you if this tale ever got out?”

  She did not reply. She thought of saying, “I’ve thought about it,” but she did not.

  “I just don’t know what to make of you,” he said.

  “Oh, I’m bad, bad, aren’t I?” she said challengingly.

  “You’ve sure got a lot to learn, is all I can say,” he said.

  “Then teach me, Every! Come on and gospel me!”

  “I don’t know where to start,” he said.

  “Start in the beginning. Start with Adam and Eve. Teach me why they started wearing clothes. I’ve never been able to understand.”

  “Shame was God’s punishment on man for disobeying his commandments.” Every was trying hard to keep from sounding like a Sunday-school teacher.

  “All right,” Latha challenged, “then if we agreed to obey all of God’s commandments, would He let us run around naked again?”

  Every sighed. “You know,” he said, “I sure do hate to get involved in arguments about Original Sin because it’s just about the trickiest thing God ever did. Especially since I caint literally believe in Adam and Eve and the Tree of Knowledge and all that. But just look at it like this: somewhere along the line, man lost his innocence. Losing his innocence made him aware that he was naked. Now our Lord Jesus Christ tells us, ‘Except ye become as little children, ye can in no wise enter the kingdom of heaven.’ We’ve got to regain that lost innocence.”

  “Then I’d think that your job as preacher ought to be to persuade people to take off their clothes and become innocent again.”

  “It’s not so simple as that, Lath
a,” he protested. “Just taking off our clothes won’t make us innocent. We’d still feel shame. We have to live a life here on earth amongst sin and corruption, amongst heathens and transgressors, keeping ourselves pure through the grace of our Lord, who promises us salvation.”

  “We can’t take off our clothes till we get to heaven?” she asked.

  “I never thought of heaven as some kind of nudist colony,” he said, “but you might have a point there. In heaven there’ll be no such thing as nakedness, for we’ll not know that word. We’ll all be clothed with the light of the Lord. There’ll be no light or darkness but the light of the Lord, and in that light all things will be beautiful.”

  “That sounds very nice,” she said. “But what if I already think that nakedness is beautiful. Does that mean something’s wrong with my eyes?”

  “Well, I don’t know about that,” Every said uneasily. “In Leviticus, the Lord spoke to Moses and told him, ‘None of you shall approach to any that is near of kin to him, to uncover their nakedness.’”

  “Now there you go misinterpreting again,” she said. “That means kinfolks, doesn’t it? It means you can’t go around stripping your sister or your mother or your aunt. It doesn’t mean you can’t strip yourself or your girlfriend or your wife, does it?”

  “All right,” he said, holding out his hands as if to ward off blows, “when you get right down to it, there’s nothing I know of in the Bible against being naked, except that a naked woman would cause a man to feel lust, and Jesus Christ has said to us, ‘He that lusteth after a woman has already committed adultery with her in his own heart.’”

  “He’s talking about married women, isn’t He?” she asked, and answered her question, “Sure He is. If a man couldn’t lust after a maid, he’d have no desire to wed her, and where would the world be then? You still haven’t proved there’s anything wrong with you and me being naked to each other.”

  “It doesn’t need proving,” he said. “Nakedness would tempt us into fornication, which the Lord clearly forbids, and no dispute about it.”

  “Every,” she said earnestly, “I don’t think the Lord would consider you and me fornicators. He’d think of us as having been in a sort of common-law wedlock ever since we were about twelve years old.”

  Every smiled. “I like you saying that,” he said. “That’s sure pretty. But the Lord wouldn’t consider you as bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh.”

  “Why don’t you ask Him?” she challenged. “You claim you can talk to Him, why don’t you just ask Him what he thinks of you and me?”

  “He wouldn’t give me permission to lay with you, if that’s what you want.”

  “How do you know? You haven’t even asked Him. Go on, right now, and ask Him.”

  “I would need privacy and meditation to get in touch with Him.”

  “Use my bedroom,” she offered. “Use my outhouse.”

  “Don’t jolly me,” he said.

  “Well?” she said. “Don’t just sit there. Get in touch with the Lord.”

  “I don’t think it would work in such circumstances,” he protested.

  “You won’t even try,” she accused.

  “I just might,” he declared. “But you better agree to accept whatever He tells me.”

  “All right,” she said. “I can do that.”

  He stood up. “I think I’ll just take a stroll down by the creek. I always liked that creek.” He walked down off the porch.

  She called after him, “Watch you don’t step on my cantaloupes.” Then she was alone, alone with herself for the first time in several hours, and glad of it; aloneness was her natural element, she was comfortable with it; there was a great effort to talking so much all of a sudden. Those bugs and frogs out there in the grass and trees were as talkative as all get out. But the lightning bugs never made a sound; just light; and mightn’t it be the light that Every said the Lord would clothe us with in that Gloryland he talked of? The lightning bugs didn’t talk; they were just there. “I’m here, Lord,” she heard herself saying, and wondered why. Then she heard herself asking, “Are you there, Lord?” She even waited, and tried to feel, if not hear, any answer. There was none, no wonder. But still she felt as close to prayer as she had ever come. It was as if, having been talking so much, she had to continue, had to keep talking although there was nobody to listen, save the Lord, if He could, if He was, if He did, and she doubted it. “Listen,” she said, “I don’t believe he can really hear You, but if he can, tell him a thing or two, will You? Remind him he married me, oh, twenty-eight years ago, wasn’t it? Were You in on that one? Then straighten him out. Tell him we’ve got just as much right as any of Your other creatures. Tell him he doesn’t need to be such a Bible fanatic. You don’t really think it would be fornication for us, do You? He says You preach love and mercy. Get it across to him that he misunderstood something important about that time in that Nashville hotel room. You didn’t fix me up because of that ‘covenant’ with him, did You? Then open his eyes. I can stick with him forever if all he wants to do is preach Your love and mercy. But if he wants to stuff us with all this ‘sin-and-salvation’ clamjamfry, why, then I’d have to turn him away once again, and then where would I be? Where would he be? If You actually want him to devote himself entirely to you, then that’s that, and I hope You can use him more than I could. But I just wish You’d give him to me. Now, do I have to say ‘Amen,’ or will You just accept—”

  Hush! she said to herself, and hushed, thinking, There’s nobody listening. Nobody listens to those bugs and frogs except their mates. No reason to talk to anybody except somebody you want. She began to rock slowly in her rocking chair, and let Time fall back into its timelessness.

  Sometime later a figure riding a mule came trotting by, and turned down the main road into the village, spurring the mule for all it was worth.

  As the mule and rider disappeared into the darkness down the main road, Every reappeared.

  “Who was that?” he asked, jerking his thumb in the direction the mule and rider disappeared.

  “I think that was Sarah Chism,” she said. “Yes, it looked like Sarah Chism.”

  “Hmmm,” he said. “A woman riding a mule. I wonder what that signifies?” He came and sat back down in the chair he had vacated some time ago.

  “Sarah Chism riding her mule signifies Sarah Chism riding her mule,” she said. “Though I’ve never seen her out at night before.”

  “Hmmm,” he said. “Is that a fact? Then it must signify something.”

  “Maybe the mule needs exercise,” she said. “The way she was running it, she really looked to be giving it a work-out.”

  “Hmmm,” he said again, and seemed to be in deep thought.

  After a while, she asked, “Well, did you reach the Lord?”

  “I did,” he affirmed. “But He sure didn’t have much to say to me.”

  “Who can blame Him?” she said. “The poor Fellow’s trying to get some rest in preparation for His big day tomorrow of listening to billions of church services.”

  “Now you just might be right,” he said. “Leastways He didn’t seem much inclined to give me any of His time.”

  “What did He say?”

  “Strangest thing,” he said. “I presented the case to Him just like you suggested. But He just said one thing. All He said was, and I quote, ‘Straightway will I show thee thy true vocation.’ That’s all. Now what do you make of that?”

  “Oh, come on, Every,” she said. “You’re just making that up.”

  “No, now,” he said. “I swear. I heard it in me as clearly as I’ve ever heard Him in me. And that’s what He said, word for word. Straightway will I show thee thy true vocation. As if I hadn’t already found my true vocation a long time ago. What do you reckon that could mean? That He was going to give me some kind of sign right away? Then what kind of sign is Sarah Chism riding a mule?”

  “Maybe He wants you to be a muleteer, maybe, or a mule trader,” she said, thinking, I’d lots
rather be married to a mule trader than to a preacher.

  “Why would he want that?” Every said, in an obvious turmoil of perplexity. “What does He mean by ‘true vocation,’ anyhow? I’ve got a true vocation, darn it, and why doesn’t He know it? Unless…maybe now…yes!…maybe He knows I’ve got a true vocation, and he’s going to prove it to me by putting temptations in my path to see if I can withstand them. Yes now, that’s it, I bet! He’s going to have you tempt me and try me to see if I can stick to my true vocation.”

  “Now I know you’re just making that up,” she said. “You just made that up so you could get yourself excused from having to make love to me.”

  “I tell you, I swear, just as sure as I was born, that He said those exact words to me. ‘Straightway will I show thee thy—’” Every suddenly sprang up out of his chair. “Land o’ Goshen!” he cried, pointing. “Yonder she comes again!”

  Sarah Chism on the mule came back up the main road, riding not as fast as she had headed into the village.

  Latha said to him, “Maybe the Lord wants you to be a veterinarian.”

  Sarah caught sight of them silhouetted against the light of the windows and turned her mule toward them and rode up to the porch.

  Sarah squinted at him and asked, “Is that you, Every? Is it shore-enough a fact what they say, that you’ve become a preacher?”

  Every seemed reluctant to answer, as if to do so would bring down upon him that awful sign he anticipated. Finally he mumbled, “Yeah, Sarah, that’s right.”

  “Then pray fer us all!” Sarah wailed. “My man Luther’s done went and shot a revenuer! I’ve went to git Doc Swain, and he’s a comin to try and fix him. He aint kilt dead, but he’s all full a buckshot. Pray fer im, preacher! Pray fer us all!”

  She jabbed her heels into the mule’s belly, and rode away.

  “Tarnation!” Every exclaimed.

  “That’s it, Every!” Latha said to him. “That’s your sign. That’s what the Lord wants you to be.”