Fiends

by John Farris

  Marjory returned her attention to the backyard. Enid had (unselfishly) finished doing the dishes and was strolling to the gazebo, accompanied by several cats, theirs and the neighbors'. She had a sketchpad and a box of colored pencils with her. Marjory yawned. A nap began to seem like a good idea. Then she could stay up all night with the lights on and her door locked, and she didn't care what Enid might think. The guest room where Arne Horsfall would be laying his head was right next to hers, while Enid was safely down the hall. Marjory tried to find enough nail on the pinkie of her left hand to nibble. Over by the pond Ted was teaching Arne Horsfall the technique of fly casting. She turned away from the glare of the windows, crept face down onto her bed, and took a pillow soothingly into her arms.

  8

  Marjory heard the train like a ghost in a well and saw, as she sat up in the back of their station wagon, the big, blunt yellow and blue diesel engine coming into view through the trees. The tailgate of the wagon was down, blurry asphalt unwinding behind them. She was apprehensive but not scared; Daddy Lee must have seen the train too, and he wasn't going to let anything happen to them: nothing bad ever happened to a Waller, they all just got very old and died of natural causes. Wizened fruit falling from the eternal family tree. But the wagon was getting closer to the intersection with the shining rails and the oncoming behemoth, its headlight flashing in broad daylight. Daddy, Marjory said, calmly and deliberately, stop. Then he turned his head and grinned back at her and she saw that it wasn't her daddy; Arne Horsfall was driving. No brakes, he said. Marjory began crawling toward the tailgate of the wagon. Behind them on the road Enid and Ted were bicycling, and they didn't seem to realize anything was wrong. They smiled and waved to Marjory. She tried to call to them, but couldn't utter a sound. Of course not, she'd forgotten she had been born dumb. Trouble and woe. Why had she let Arne Horsfall borrow the family wagon? Mama and daddy would never forgive her. He wasn't one of them. He didn't belong. But here he was, causing a peck of trouble after they'd gone out of their way to be nice. All Marjory wanted to do was to roll over the edge of the tailgate before the train hit them. But now, in addition to being voiceless, she couldn't move. Marjory lay on her back staring at the green woods flashing by, and she heard the train again, wild and dismal, she could smell the heat and oil and feel its power, but no thank you, she wasn't going to look—God damn it—

  9

  Marjory, lying on her back on her bed, heart pounding right through the mattress, heard the door of Ted's Firebird shutting and then, a few seconds later, the throaty engine turning over. She felt, for a few panicky moments, incapable of movement, as if she had willed a state of paralysis as a result of the nightmare.

  No, I wasn't there.

  She raised a hand lethargically to her damp face and swallowed several limes as Ted backed around Enid's Corvair to the street. Probably he was working the six to two A.M. shift, Marjory thought. The sun had moved on, it was no longer shining directly into her room, and a whiff of breeze stirred the lace curtains framing the windows. Cicadas were loud in the locust tree that needed to be pruned back from the upper stories of the house; it dragged its branches across the roof and clapboards whenever the wind rose.

  About four hours after the accident, with the house getting crowded, the kitchen table overloaded with all the food brought by the callers (Enid had been hospitalized for shock, but everybody apparently felt little Marj would be ravenous after hearing how mama and daddy had been snuffed out), she had sneaked away on her bike and gone over there to see for herself what it had been like. Carrying grief like weights around her wrists and ankles, a big lead collar enclosing her throat. Pedaling furiously down I he narrow curving road, wind in her face redolent of summer woods and the muddy creek bottom, the light below her handlebars barely peeking into the dark. At the scene of the accident tall corn grew in a wedge-shaped plot hard by the railroad right-of-way, and only in late summer was the view of the tracks obscured on the north side of Doylestown Road. The road was blocked in both directions by the train. Red and yellow dome lights on official vehicles streaked the sides of well-traveled boxcars. Wabash. Santa Fe. Chesapeake and Ohio. There were a lot of men around, some with badges, and one who smoked a cigar that was almost enough to make her sick told Marjory to get lost.

  Marjory just ignored him, and when he wasn't looking she walked along the tracks until she came to the pair of back-to-back diesels a hundred yards south of the crossing. One of the generators was humming on low power. The headlamp was attracting a monstrous swarm of the kinds of bugs you never saw except around intensely bright objects. She walked around to the front of the lead engine, which had a big sooty smudge on it. The odor in the sultry air wasn't only train. Something else, like a barbecue grill that badly needed cleaning.

  The family station wagon wasn't there.

  It was as if she had been told a fantastic lie. Staring up at the dazzling mirrored headlamp that shone down the right-of-way for more than a mile, Marjory knew they deserved a miracle and one had been forthcoming, her parents were still alive. That's when she began to tremble in a kind of ecstasy. The next thing she knew the diesel engines were throbbing with a reciprocal energy that jarred the roadbed and a man who worked for the L and N railroad had come over to lead her off the tracks. He wore an old felt hat like her daddy wore when he was working in his shop.

  "Honey, are you here with somebody?"

  "My name's M-Marjory Waller; do you know where my mama and d-daddy are?"

  She didn't mind that he was holding her hand; he seemed like a nice man and she was still shaking, teeth chattering. The train began to move and Marjory backed away, stumbling over something metallic. She looked down at her feet and saw it: twisted, blackened, but unmistakably part of the grill of a sedan or station wagon. She looked at the man's face. He slowly removed his hat and got down on one knee in front of her, smiling heartbrokenly. Marjory studied the train going by and with its passing realized the diminishing of hope for the miracle; and she felt a bone-deep nostalgic regret, how she'd felt upon finding out, conclusively, that there was no Santa Claus. A big crazed bug flew away from the train and hit her in the forehead hard enough to stagger her. Marjory's eyes got a little bigger, but it seemed futile to cry. She hated the bug, and she hated God, but she could never get even with either of them.

  10

  All the bad feeling from her dream had pooled in the tender places of Marjory's psyche. She rose from her bed, went to the windows and looked out. Arne Horsfall had joined Enid in the gazebo, and both were sketching, Arne with secretive head movements and quick glances into thin air, as if he were soliciting inspiration. Marjory went downstairs to the kitchen and ate a peach. She was thinking about calling someone to pass the time of day when the telephone rang.

  The prescient bump at the base of her spine tingled warmly; she knew it was going to be Rita Sue.

  "Hi, what're you doing?" Marjory said. She spat out the well-gnawed peach pit, caught it with a bare foot, and balanced it on her big toe.

  "Nothing. Brenda McClanahan came over to show off her engagement ring. I never saw a diamond that little, it's only about half as big as bugspit. Did you hear Boyce was cleaning out their garage with his daddy and dropped a big old crankcase on his foot?"

  "Break any bones?"

  "No, but he can barely hobble around and, you know, football practice starts in another week."

  "He'll be ready. Want to play miniature golf?"

  "I guess so." Rita Sue sighed, bored to distraction.

  "Pick you up in ten minutes."

  "Marjory, you know I'm not going to ride around in that old car of yours! I'm so allergic to it, it must have come off a nigger car lot." She sniffed emphatically. "Not that I want to hurt your feelings."

  "You never hurt my feelings, Rita Sue, that's why I'm still talking to you." Marjory flipped the peach pit across the kitchen, missing the opening of the trash can, twenty feet away, by less than an inch. "Okay, pick me up in ten minutes, I pro
bably should get Enid's permission to go out."

  "How come?"

  "We have company, remember? Wait till I tell you about him. But I was acting like a ring-tailed snot most of the afternoon, Enid'll be glad to get rid of me. Oh, can I have my Joplin records back?"

  "Do I still have those? Maybe they're under the bed. I'll look for them."

  In the gazebo Arne Horsfall was bent over his sketchpad, hard at work. He drew almost desperately, hand twisted around the pencil as if it had wounded him. Drawing a barn, or something; but it didn't resemble Crudup's barn across the pond. Marjory, resigned, had the unjustifiable feeling he was like a stray dog that had come to their back porch and was just going to stay on, lurking out of the way and making no fuss.

  Enid looked up coolly at her sister.

  "I suppose it's all right—even though we have a guest. As long as you're back in an hour."

  "I might be an hour and a half. Rita Sue dawdles all over the Pizza-Putt course. Will you be okay?" Marjory glanced again at Arne Horsfall, who paid no attention to either of them. Marjory was convinced that he was more than just a little hard of hearing, as well as speechless. Dissatisfied with what he was attempting to draw, he turned to a blank page.

  Enid nodded as if, on Arne's behalf, she resented the question. Rita Sue had pulled up in her red convertible, radio on, Roy Orbison's unearthly voice filling the ear like clouds fill the sky.

  "You might trouble to put on a bra," Enid said in a low voice, dismissing her. "This is Caskey County, not Woodstock."

  Marjory glanced down at her perceptible nipples. But not all that perceptible—she decided she wouldn't bother with the bra and went running off to join Rita Sue.

  "Marjory, doesn't it hurt to have your bubbies bouncing all over the place like that?" Rita Sue asked her.

  "You'll never know," Marjory said, with a smug look at the nearly vertical front of Rita Sue's sleeveless shirt. She sprawled happily in the seat with her knees up, dialed the volume of the radio higher with prehensile toes.

  11

  The girls stayed out later than Marjory had reckoned; it was almost dark when Rita Sue drove her home. Daylight had faded to a gossamer pink over the steely pond; hoot owls were starting up in the tall trees near the house. The gazebo was deserted. Enid was alone on the front porch. She came down to the car to ask Rita Sue to lower the volume of her radio; they had a guest, Enid explained, and she didn't want him to be disturbed.

  "What happened to Mr. Horsfall?" Marjory asked.

  "He got very tired early and went on upstairs. I heard him snoring a little while ago." Enid yawned. "I think I'll go to bed myself. Are you coming in, Marjory?"

  "I guess so. Want to watch TV, Rita Sue?"

  "No, I need to be getting along home." But they continued to sit in the car for a few minutes longer, listening to the radio, until it was full dark. Rita Sue began an anecdote about one of her redneck cousins. A cat jumped up on the porch railing. Another cat, the one-eyed torn named Zombie, climbed halfway up the screen door after a moth.

  Rita Sue broke off the story she'd been telling and said, "That's a big one."

  "Huh?" Marjory said. She had been trying out pet names for Tim McCarver to call her, in the most intimate moments of their phantom relationship.

  "That moth that's flying around on your porch, see it? There it goes, up by the light."

  "Oh, yeh. Luna moth. Pretty."

  "There's another one."

  "That makes two," Marjory said disinterestedly.

  "Anyway, what I was telling you, there's a saying in the family that Aunt Alma is so tight she can squeeze a half dollar until the eagle moults—"

  "I always thought it was, 'She can squeeze a penny until the President poops.'"

  "That must be one of your relatives, Marjory. Anyway—oh, look, isn't that pretty?"

  A luna moth had touched down on the windshield of Rita Sue's convertible. They stared through the glass at it. The pale green and lavender moth trembled with a delicate energy. There were four prominent spots, like eyes, on the diaphanous wings, darker than the purple margins.

  "They're sort of human, aren't they?" Rita Sue said. "You can almost make out a face if you look long enough—there's another one! Where in the world are they all coming from?"

  "I don't know. I haven't seen so many lunas in—" Marjory flinched as a moth flew into the car, fluttering an inch from the tip of her nose.

  "They don't bite, do they?" Rita Sue asked her.

  "Not that I know of."

  "Just the same, I think I'm going to put the top up."

  Marjory stared at the porch of her house, where the cats were leaping and batting their paws in a blizzard of moths, so many that they had changed the color of the light from the single bulb beside the door to a dismal, stormy green. The moths were flocking around the car, too. Marjory shuddered. She liked her insects small or not at all, and the lunas were enormous, some as big as the spread of her hand. The evening had been humid and there was no wind, but suddenly she felt as chilly as if she had opened a refrigerator door and stuck her head inside.

  Rita Sue turned the key in the ignition and pressed the button that raised the convertible top. A moth was fluttering in her lap, and she wore another in her pale, bouffant hair. She glanced up as the convertible top rose over them, and threw up her hands in a gesture of panic.

  Marjory had only a glimpse of the dark shape soaring down through the moth cloud, picking off dinner, but she knew what it was and grabbed Rita Sue.

  "It's okay, that's an owl."

  "Marjory, I don't like this!" Rita Sue complained. "Roll up your window!" The edge of the convertible top nudged against the windshield frame and Rita Sue locked it down. No longer enamored of the moths, she batted at one of them that fluttered too close. Then with a look of shock she pressed the back of her hand to her mouth. "I thought you said they didn't bite!"

  There was an edge of hysteria in her voice, and Marjory was concerned; very seldom did Rita Sue lose her poise.

  "Rita Sue, why don't we just—"

  But Rita Sue had started the engine and was backing away from the house and the moths seething around it. She almost hit the oak at the foot of the driveway but veered off into the street, where the car stalled.

  "Hey, c'mon, where're you going?"

  "Home! It bit me, Marjory, I swear! Are there any more in here?" She got the engine started again.

  "Let me see your hand," Marjory said calmly.

  Rita Sue held out her left hand, which was trembling. In the light from the dashboard Marjory couldn't see a wound. But a minute icily gray spot was discernible on the deeply tanned skin near the base of Rita Sue's thumb.

  "I don't think that's a bite."

  "Well, it hurts, it stings me! Marjory, what are you going to do?"

  "What do you mean, what am I—"

  "Just look at your house! Look at all those moths! Some of them are probably getting in."

  Marjory looked, and her throat dried up. Now the lines of the house were indistinct within the nimbus of the luna moths; they stained the moon with their shimmering, unearthly greenness.

  "Good Lord," Marjory moaned. "I wonder if Enid—"

  She opened the car door before Rita Sue could put her foot to the accelerator.

  "Marjory, where do you think you're going, hon?"

  "I live here, remember? You can leave if you want to."

  "Marjory, those moths bite, that's not a lie! It feels like somebody put dry ice on my hand!"

  Marjory got back in the car and slammed the door.

  "What do you think we should do?"

  "I don't know," Marjory said, breathing hard, studying the moth circus around her house. If it wasn't for bad luck, she thought, we wouldn't have any luck at all. "What are they doing here? What the hell do they want?"

  "It's probably just a freak of nature, and they'll go away after a while— don't you think? Look at all the owls!"

  "Something weird's going on," Marjory mu
ttered, in her anxiety rocking on the seat. "I need to get in the house. Rita Sue, drive around back, and maybe I'll go in that way."

  "My car is going to get so stuck up with bugs—"

  "Enid's in the house! She could be—I don't know—will you get going, Rita Sue!"

  Rita Sue backed up and turned cautiously into the driveway.

  "Put on your lights!"

  Moths appeared by the dithering score in the headlight beams; they flew erratically toward the windshield, then veered off into the dark. Rita

  Sue drove around to the back porch, stopping five feet from the steps. The porch light was off and there seemed to be fewer moths here, although the Fairlane's headlights had begun to attract them. Rita Sue cut off the lights and the two girls sat in the dark.

  "Okay, I'm going in now."

  "I don't want to sit her in the car by myself!"

  "We'll both go."

  Marjory breathed deep, opened the door and ran up the porch steps where earlier she had broken off the heel of one of her good dress shoes. Moths fluttered coldly against her face like enormous snowflakes. Rita Sue was right behind her, gasping. Marjory flung open the screen door, waited until Rita Sue ducked inside, then followed.

  "There's one!" Rita Sue said, pointing to the inside of the screen.

  "Go on in the house" Marjory told her. She snatched a broom leaning against the washing machine. Another moth was higher than her head, difficult to make out on the unlighted porch. Marjory brought it down with one hard swing of the broom, then bolted into the kitchen behind Rita Sue. Only when she was inside with the door closed did she pay attention to how cold she felt. The girls clung to each other, hearing only the faint music of Enid's stereo upstairs.

  "I got bit again," Rita Sue said forlornly. "On my cheek."