400 Boys and 50 More

by Marc Laidlaw

  Jory heard the screen door slam, and Tad came around the side of the house, heading toward the truck garden. Jory yelled at him but Tad didn’t seem to hear. Mama was worried that he might be a little deaf. She blamed that on the poison, as well as the fact that he was growing so fast; four years younger than Jory, he was already almost as big, but then Jory was small for his age. “It’s like that with boys,” Pop had said. “First one’s always the runt, brainy type, like Jory here; and the second one shoots up and fills out to make up for the both of them.”

  Jory caught Tad by the shoulder at the edge of the truck garden. Evening was on them, and the first of the fireflies came flitting over the fields.

  “Where you going, Tad? You’re not supposed to leave the house this close to dark. Mama will get mad.”

  Tad pointed at a dwarf huge tomato that looked purple and nasty as a deadly nightshade berry in the dimming light. Sitting on it was a big winged bug, a lightning bug the size of a praying mantis, and Jory could tell that it was feeding. There was already a dark gnawed place in the fruit. Did lightning bugs eat vegetables? They’d never been a problem before.

  Jory reached out to flick it off the tomato, but as he did it stuck up its tail and glared in such a way that he instantly felt a little dizzy, sick to his stomach. It was the way the flickering strip lights in the town library made him feel. It wasn’t a greenish-white lightning bug light, either: it had some of the same purplish tint as the tomato. It only stopped glowing when he pulled his hand away.

  Tad was laughing.

  “Tad,” Jory said, “did you see that? That’s no regular lightning bug.”

  Suddenly the younger boy reached for the bug. Jory panicked, but there was no flash this time. The lightning bug lifted from the plant, circled twice, and settled on his brother’s hand. Tad held the bug up to his eyes until he went cross-eyed looking at it. The light in its tail throbbed, but it stayed dim.

  “Da-da-da-da,” Tad sang. “Da-da-da-da-da.”

  That was when Jory felt scared for the first time. It was not the way Tad sang, because babies always did that, and Tad was a regular songbird; it was the way the firefly’s tail light went on and off exactly in time with his singing. Silently, it went da-da-da-da.

  “Stop it!” Jory said, and he struck Tad’s hand. The bug flew off a few feet, circled around, and came back toward them. Jory screamed and batted at it, keeping it away from his brother, as if it were a hornet and not a harmless little lightning bug. “Leave us alone!”

  “Hey, boys!”

  Jory spun around, his hand on Tad’s shoulder, and saw Pop leaning out the back porch door.

  “Get in here and clean this kitchen,” Pop said. “Your Mama ain’t feeling up to it tonight.”

  “Okay, Pop.”

  Holding on to Tad, Jory ran back to the house. He thought he could see the lightning bug flicker once more, but it had taken off. His stomach didn’t calm down until he was in the bright kitchen, but even then he was nervous about looking out the window. He went about his chores slowly, carefully, while Tad sat in front of the TV in the other room. All the time he was thinking that the bug had been acting strange. Maybe the county was right about the sprays. If bugs could do stuff like that—blink on and off in time to singing, and eat tomatoes so hungrily—maybe they should be killed before they could get any stranger. That might be why Pop seemed so anxious to be up and spraying early the next morning. Maybe he’d seen the bugs doing funny things, too.

  Mama was seated in front of the TV with Tad when Jory finished in the kitchen. She looked better, laughing at the comedies, but Tad wasn’t really looking at the TV. He didn’t seem to be looking at anything.

  Jory went out front, and found Pop hauling the canisters out of the truck.

  “Don’t know if this spray is gonna be strong enough,” he said. “County man was trying to sell me a poison one-stronger. Now I’m thinking I should have taken him up on it.”

  “Pop, what kind of bugs are you spraying for?”

  “The bad kind, Jory.”

  “Is there any other kind?”

  “Sure, some bugs eat other bugs and protect the crops. Some bugs like mayflies don’t even have mouths. This year we’re seeing a new strain, some kind of firefly that came up from the Gulf.”

  “I think I’ve seen it. Pop. It’s really bright. Tad was—”

  He stopped, wondering what he was seeing. Pop wasn’t listening to him. A kind of glow was coming from the woods, through the buckeye hedge, and out of the air wherever he looked.

  Fireflies. They were swarming over the sky, rushing over the house from the fields, bright as flying lightbulbs. Jory had to shade his eyes. It wasn’t until they lit in the trees that he could calm down enough to really look at them, and by then Pop was running toward the house.

  Standing by the truck, Jory stared out at the woods.

  The trees were dark now, all the lights extinguished. He waited.

  In an instant the whole farm came alight. The purplish glow coursed through the trees, through the hedges and the deep woods, trails of fire following the tangles of branch and leaf. He was reminded of a model of the human nervous system he’d seen in a library book; it had shown trails of light, just like this, but in different colors. The trees above the buckeyes looked like big brains.

  He felt like his feet were trapped in thick mud and he couldn’t run. The lightning bugs began to blink on and off in unison, the whole forest and all the hedges blazing like a wild neon sign, then going dark so that he was blinded, dazzled.

  Pop struck him from his daze. “Get in the house.” He was already throwing the canisters back in the truck. “I’m gonna spray.”

  “Tonight?”

  “Get in, I said. Seal the windows as fast as you can. I might have to spray over the house.”

  “The house?”

  “Get in there!”

  Jory ran.

  Inside, the TV was off. Tad was crying and Mama sat holding him, staring at the drawn blinds that kept getting dark and bright, dark and bright. Jory crawled up beside them on the sofa.

  “It’s all right, Mama,” he said, “they’re just lightning bugs. Lightning bugs don’t hurt anything.”

  But she was whispering prayers, stroking Tad’s hair, and Tad was whimpering: “Da-da-da-da.”

  Jory felt his skin crinkle.

  “Da-da-da-da.”

  He looked at the window.

  “Da—”

  The shades lit up.

  “Da—”

  They darkened.

  “Da—”

  They lit up again.

  Oh, please, Jory thought. Please, God, let it be all right. Don’t let this happen. Don’t let anything happen to my brother or my Mama or Pop or me. Make those bugs go away.

  But all that happened was that he heard the truck tearing away. Everything else went on as before.

  It was a little while before he remembered what Pop had said about sealing the house. Hoping he still had enough time, he ran around checking the doors and windows. When he was at the back door, he heard the plane starting at the far side of the field. He slammed the door and hoped he had done enough.

  “Jory?” It was Mama calling him. He ran into the living room.

  “Yes, ma’am?”

  She looked sick. “Jory, where is your father?”

  Hadn’t he told her?

  “He went out, Mama,” he said in a small voice.

  “Has he gone into town?”

  “I don’t think so. I think he plans to spray the crops tonight.”

  “Don’t be foolish, Jory. How could he do that at night? There’s no moon tonight.”

  “I guess I’m wrong,” Jory said.

  “I guess you are. You take care of your brother for a minute. I’m going to take a peek outside and see where he’s gone. You think he’s in the barn?”

  Jory grabbed her hand as he stood. “You can’t go outside, Mama!”

  “You’re being foolish, child.
There’s nothing wrong outside, the county man told your father and he assured me, everything is fine. The county man said so.” She was opening the front door, and as it opened the sound of the plane became as loud as the fly that had buzzed outside his window last night. It was coming closer.

  “Mama, please don’t.”

  He tugged at her, but she was too strong. She got onto the front porch and stood there looking at the forest, the blinking trees, the sky full of moving fire, and then she said, “What a beautiful evening. I do love the fireflies.” She stepped down to the earth.

  “Mama!”

  The plane was getting closer, and suddenly Jory heard a sound that made him turn back toward the house. All against the rear, along the porch and the kitchen, he heard something like hail or pebbles being thrown against the walls and windows. The storm swept over them, a river of shooting stars pouring toward the forest, and after them—streaking over the roof, over Mama—went the plane, a black bat with glittering mist sifting from its wings.

  Two things happened at the same time. The forest light shook and lifted in a single cloud, rising in front of the plane. And Jory’s eyes began to sting, his throat to burn, so that he could not see anything more: it looked like the world was dissolving. But he could hear the plane’s engine die in mid-air, and seconds later he clearly heard the crashing, crunching, and snapping of branches, as if a hundred trees were being trimmed all at once, until the impossible clippers snarled in the wood and were thrown down with a distant, hopeless scream.

  Then his mother began to cough. He walked out into a hot mist and stumbled over her. All he could see of her was a white struggle of blurred arms and legs; her brown dress made her one with the earth, and her hair covered her face. She made no more noise when he knelt beside her, but who was that laughing?

  Sniffing, he wiped his eyes and looked back at the house. Tad was standing out on the porch steps, his arms open to the sky, head thrown back, his tongue stuck out to catch the last faint falling of mist as if it were snowflakes.

  “Stop it, Tad!” he shouted.

  The little boy cocked his head toward the woods, tilting it from side to side like a curious dog, then he ran past Jory down the road.

  Jory looked at his mother, but she wasn’t moving, and even though he wished he could stay with her, he knew that she would want him to go after the little one. Feeling torn apart inside, he got to his feet.

  He couldn’t believe how fast Tad ran. It seemed like it hadn’t been that long ago that he was only learning to walk; now Jory felt like the clumsy one. He kept tripping in the ruts of the road.

  The woods were glowing as if a campfire burned in their depths. Against that light, Tad’s shadow practically flew over the road. Then his baby brother turned aside and headed through the trees.

  Jory’s lungs burned, and one of his eyes hardly saw at all, but he followed as best he could.

  It was harder going between the trees. He lost sight of Tad, and only the light guided him, but when he finally came to the bright place, there was no sign of his brother. The trees were full of clustered purple glare. In the middle of broken trunks and branches, a clearing, the wreckage of the plane lay smoking.

  They’re only lightning bugs, Jory told himself.

  “Pop?” he called.

  The light seemed to vibrate to his cry, and that made him want to keep quiet.

  He walked through the broken trees until he came to a twisted wing of the plane. He could see the cockpit, and the top of his father’s head down inside. He climbed onto the wing, hopeful.

  “Pop?” he whispered.

  His father’s head hung funny. Jory swallowed. Broken neck. He backed down, not wanting to look too long at the wide eyes.

  He heard a new sound, like singing, and looked to the edge of the clearing. An arm reached out along the ground from the roots of a toppled tree. The small hand settled to the leaves.

  He climbed to the fallen trunk, peered over it, and saw his brother lying naked among the roots and branches, curled on his side. His eyes were wide, and so was his mouth.

  “Tad,” Jory said. “Whatever happened to your clothes?”

  He jumped over the trunk, but his foot snagged on a bit of broken branch and he half fell sideways. Twigs broke as he caught himself, and there was another, softer crackling. He came up thinking that he had barely missed landing on his brother, but he was wrong.

  He screamed and stepped back, tearing Tad to shreds as he tried to get out of his body. The husk, still wet, stuck to his shoes.

  Jory cried up at the trees where the light looked almost merciful, except that it lit what lay below.

  But in time with his scream, the brilliant forest went black. There were no stars, no moon, nothing to light up the thing that came buzzing and laughing toward him, sounding too big by far to be his baby brother.

  * * *

  “Shuck Brother” copyright 1986 by Marc Laidlaw. First appeared in Night Cry, Winter 1986.

  FAUST FORWARD

  Old Rotcod’s cottage rose like a tombstone at the edge of the Merry Meadow, casting its gloomy image over the otherwise cheerful face of Glamorspell Pond. When the fairykids came down to frolic in the mud, they always kept to the stretch of shoreline farthest from the sagging gray house—not that they would ever say a word against it. When they saw old Rotcod himself scowling out through a dust-bleared window, they would wave and call for him to strip from his strict black garments and come join them for a naked swim in the crystalline pond. No one was offended when he ignored them, or made a face and pulled the blinds. Only the most radical fairies hinted that it was just as well he kept to himself, that his presence might dim the blue water like a bottle of black ink spilled into a sacred well. And not a fairykid took offense when, coming down to the pool on a hot day with their picnic baskets and water nymphs, they discovered that in the night the pond had been surrounded by a barrier of fairy-proof iron-thorn shrubberies. Instead, they shrugged and giggled at Rotcod’s humor, then wandered away in search of another spot in which to pass the afternoon.

  In the dim recesses of his cottage, Rotcod waited until the sounds of merriment had expired in the depths of the forest. It was too much to hope that they had been devoured by carnivores, or snatched by starving fairy-traps, though the thoughts made him chuckle. “Maybe now I can get some work done.”

  His ponderous desk was covered with immense volumes whose pages he had stained with his lunches or crumpled in his frustration. He opened one at random, a bright blue tome whose milk-white pages were covered with glittering golden calligraphy that began to incant in angelic tones as his eyes fell upon the first paragraph:

  “By the power of Nazacl, the Archimage may easily acquaint himself with all the heavenly vaultings up to and including the sixteenth, which surpasses the common intelligences of invisibility, omniscience, clairvoyance, clairaudience, teleolofaction, levitation, immortal—”

  “Oh, shut up!”

  He slammed the book silent in mid-syllable. Rising from his hard, creaking chair, he began to shove the books to the floor. Many cried out at his handling, and one in particular—a text of practical magical philosophy, which had often warned him against studying forbidden things—began to weep like a sentimental idiot.

  “Oh Rotcod!” it wailed from the floor. "Rotcod, turn back before it is too late. Correct your behavior, 1 beg you. Bend diligently to your astrology, take up your thaumaturge’s tools, call upon the elements and —"

  Rotcod stepped squarely on one flickering page of admonitions, then stooped and tore the book in half along the spine. There was a chorus of screams from the other books as he tossed the volume into the squat black furnace he had forged himself from unholy iron, having found no fairy-smith able to do the work without contracting a devilish dermatitis.

  “What good is magic?" he demanded of the leaping flames. He swept his stern gaze over the rest of his library, but the surviving books lay timid and sullen now, infected with his ill humor. “I h
ave practiced demonology for thirteen hundred years, with nothing to show for it but a horde of mindless slaves who are powerless to think for themselves. I’ve sucked the juice from all forms and colors of magic —black, white, purple, and plaid. I have a Phoenix that craps molten gold in my hands. Immortality, invisibility, lead into gold into lead again, and it’s all worthless. These are things any man can accomplish. Any man? Hah! Any fairy! Even the lazy fairies live forever.”

  He began to stalk around the room, kicking through books, searching for one in particular.

  “I know you’re here. You've kept silent all these years because of that damned philosophy. It’s gone now, do you hear? It can’t bully you anymore. Speak up. You whispered to me once, I remember. You said there was something more than magic. I was half asleep with boredom from that astral sex manual, but I came wide awake and you fell silent.”

  There was a muted gobble, but the other books hurried to quash it, spreading their leaves over the spot. Rotcod dug into the heap of gilt buckram and dragonscale, at last emerging with a slim black volume nipped in his nails.

  “Don’t say a word!” cried three sequelae to the book he had burned.

  But the black book squirmed in his hand, dryly rustling, fluttering its pages like a bird about to take wing. Dust drifted over his sleeve.

  “At last,” it whispered, opening flat on his palm.

  “Yes,” said Rotcod. “You are the one, aren’t you?”

  “No, Rotcod, no!” cried the others.

  “Be silent or I’ll use you all to warm the cottage."

  The black volume settled down into the wrinkles of his palm, emanating a darkly prosaic light as it found its voice for the first time in years. He could no longer remember how he had acquired the book. Aeons ago, perhaps, he had picked it up from the estate of a wizard moving on to a higher plane. In his youth it would have meant little to him, for in those days all magic had lain before him, unfathomed, unfulfilled; that was before he had tired of the world and its limitlessness. He had gorged himself on the fattest books, while this one resembled nothing so much as a pamphlet bound in human skin.