“He’s not trying to get us,” Tish said. “He’s shot. Somebody is shooting Him.”
“That aint gunfire any more,” Archy declared, knowledgeably. “That’s thunder. It’s comin on to rain.”
“Nobody’s shooting Him?” Tish asked.
“He shot Hisself,” Archy said. “He was aimin right at me but He missed and shot Hisself.”
“Is He west?” Tish asked in awe.
“Naw, He jist blasted a big hole in His gitalong and fell on his loafin couch.”
“But He’s a-westerin,” Tish declared with concern.
“I misdoubt it,” Archy said. “He jist won’t be walkin around much.”
“Then why are we hiding?” she asked.
“It’s still dangerous out there,” Archy said.
A sixth explosion sounded, causing Tish and Archy to jump again and to hold one another more tightly. Even though they knew it was thunder, not gunfire, it was so close, so loud, and so shaking that it seemed as if the walls of Holy House would collapse. There is nothing like danger to promote intimacy, and Tish was surprised to find that she and Archy were such close friends already, almost as if she had known him all her life. Had it been only the night before last that she first saw him at the Carlott play-party, and admired him, and wished he would take notice of her? He was certainly noticing her now. The proximity of their bodies reminded her of that night too, when the two of them had hidden together from the Lord. Was there a cosmic parallel here, that once again they were hiding from the Lord? Or were they only hiding from the thunder? Or from what?
The thunder increased, as if it were seeking them out, and even the confines of the wall in which they hid were no blanket against the flashes of lightning. She could hear now the steady drumbeat of rain high up against the roof and even against the sides of the house and the windowpanes.
After a long time, Tish asked, “Shouldn’t we go see?”
“See what?” Archy asked.
“If Man is all right,” she said. “If He’s not a-westerin.”
“We darsen go nowhere,” Archy said. Then he gave her a little kiss. “Let’s us jist stay here all night.” He gave her a bigger kiss.
Tish was thrilled. One thing Squire Sam had never done, even though he had given her a marble, was to give her a kiss. She thought about Squire Sam, and about last night and this morning. But she did not want to think about Squire Sam at a time like this. Her thoughts were already torn between Archy, so close beside her and so increasingly intimate, and Man, who might be in peril and was at least in agony. Archy had such beautiful big eyes. And such an easy-going manner. For a minister’s son, he seemed almost indifferent to the Lord’s distress and wounding. Or maybe, being the minister’s son, he knew things about the Lord that she did not know. He knew, perhaps, that the Lord was immortal and could not wester.
“If He caint walk, how can He get something to eat?” she asked.
“Who?”
“The Lord.”
“Oh, Him. Is He all you can think about, at a time like this?”
“Like what?”
“Like here and now, like this: I got both my sniffwhips around you, babe.” Archy kissed her again, full on the lips.
Tish had believed the old wives’ tale that once a girl has been impregnated with a boy’s marble, she can’t send out pheromones any more. Thus she was surprised to discover that she was giving off a tiny bit of her special perfume, with which, in the closed confines of this corridor-in-the-wall, she could not avoid gently showering Archy.
“Ummm,” he said, quivering his sniffwhips in recognition of her scent. “Wow, honeybunch, if you aint keerful I’m liable to start oozin some of my affy-dizzy.”
There was one old wives’ tale, however, which was sure-enough no mistake: once a girl has taken a boy’s marble, she can’t take another one. Thus, when Archy’s wings rose to reveal a back lathered with affy-dizzy, she was able to resist the temptation, despite her hunger.
“Come on, sweetheart, try a taste,” he urged.
“Thank you, I’ve done already eaten tonight,” she lied.
“Huh?” He looked at her strangely. “No gal is able to pass up affy-dizzy, irregardless of how much she’s done et,” he explained, as if she didn’t know.
Inside the wall it was so snug and cozy and romantic. Outside the wall the sound of the thunder went on and on and on, and the steady beat of the rain. In all her life, Tish had never heard, seen, smelled, or felt a thunderstorm like this one, and she began to wonder if it was not merely a great raining but something more. The Lord had shot Himself. The world was changing. Perhaps the world was ending. Perhaps all those dreadful sounds out there were not merely thunderclaps but The Bomb.
Almost absent-mindedly she reached out and dabbed at the affy-dizzy and brought it to her mouth.
Chapter twenty
Mandamn that preacher all to hell, Doc swore to himself, hobbling among the bodies of the injured and the westered. Then he involuntarily chuckled at the awful irony of his own oath: it had been the Mandamning which had done this. Unfortunately the Mandamning hadn’t Mandamned the sonofabitchin preacher but had sure Mandamned the east out of several good folks: there lay the fragmented remains of Fent Chism, beyond all help from Doc. Here were several folks squashed past all recognition, although one of the bodies smelled like old Jonce Ledbetter, and at the edge of a fresh bullet hole Doc picked up a broken sniffwhip and took a good sniff of it and identified it as all that remained of Ila Frances Tichborne, the preacher’s own wife. Where was the preacher? Didn’t he even care? Maybe, Doc thought, that last shot had got the preacher himself. But no, it was clear that the last shot had gone right smack into Man’s own gitalong, between the tarsal and the metatarsal bones; the bullet had passed through the shoe, come out through the sole and left one more hole, a bloody one, in the floor. “Sorry, mister, I caint do a thing fer ye,” Doc said irreverently to Man, who lay in obvious suffering on His couch. “But iffen I was you, I’d git up and put more than a Band-Aid on thet thang.” Doc turned his attention away from bleeding Man to the bleeding roosterroaches, those who still had a spark of east left in them and could use his help. Horace Stapleton had had all his midgut squeezed to soup by the falling revolver-gun and was already west, but his wife Martha was still a bit to the east, her thorax caved in but her abdomen almost intact. Doc soothed her. “You’ll be all right, Marthy. Jist lay easy, and don’t try to move.”
When the fourth explosion sounded, Doc did not twitch, recognizing it for what it was: thunder. Up in the sky. Outside. The greater gods, thought Doc, who believed in greater gods, are firing their pistols. His stargazers were too blind to detect the distant flash of light heralding the fifth explosion, but his main eyes caught it, verifying that it was indeed lightning, and when the boom came, he judged the stormclouds were approaching. We shore need a good sprinkle, he thought. Like any roosterroach he loved rain but hated lightning, not because of the noise but because of the light.
Between the booms of thunder, he heard another sound: a moaning, coming not from Man but from a roosterroach. Another survivor of Man’s wrath or the preacher’s provocation, or both, was somewhere out of sight. Doc tuned his sniffwhips and tried to locate the victim by scent. He was drawn to the proximity of Man’s cheer-of-ease; the scents and sounds were coming from somewhere up among the cushions of the cheer, high above. “Who’s up yonder?” Doc called, then repeated himself, but got no answer. Either the victim was hurt beyond the ability to reply…or else was deaf. More likely the latter, thought Doc. He needed a boost to get up the side of the cheer. He looked around for someone to boost him. Six of Martha Stapleton’s sons, Dick, Vic, Rick, Mick, Nick, and Jick, were gathered around her, and a few other ambulatory survivors were wandering around in a daze, but most of the roosterroaches had decamped back to their frock, smock, or car lot.
Doc would just have to scale the cheer as best he could, unassisted. He reached up with his one good gitalong on the left si
de, took a grip of the fabric of the cheer, and pulled himself up, then gripped with the two on the right side of his tripodal purchase, and slowly hauled himself gitalong over gitalong up the side of the cheer until he reached the edge of the seat cushion and could stop climbing. Winded, and his heart pounding, he prowled around the edges of the seat cushion until, in the crevice at the very back, he found the belly-up roosterroach he had suspected he would find. The boy was still east, breathing, and still intact, with no gitalong or sniffwhip missing, but he had been knocked into a daze, stunned senseless. There was no serious trauma or visible lesions but a flow of ichor from the mouth and around the pedicel of one sniffwhip. Doc took his pulse, which was weak and erratic. “It’s a wonder,” he said, “that the blow didn’t stun yore tailprongs back into usefulness again.” But the poor devil couldn’t hear him. He raised his voice. “THAT WAS A BRAVE SMART THING YE DONE!” he shouted at one tail-prong. “NOBODY ON EARTH BUT YOU WOULD’VE BEEN ABLE TO DO IT.”
The boy focused his eyes and stared at Doc, and tried to smile, then tried to speak, but Doc shushed him. Moving him was out of the question; he would have to remain absolutely still for several hours, which would be critical. “MAYBE YOU’LL STAY EAST,” Doc said, even if it was a white lie, “BUT YOU’VE GOT TO JIST LAY EASY, AND TRY NOT TO MOVE.” The boy let his eyes fade out of focus, and Doc settled himself down into a crouch alongside, where he could monitor the heartbeat and respiration. He wiped away the ichor dribbling from the lips, and was pleased to see that it did not continue to flow. He forced the sniffwhips into the relaxed horizontal position alongside the body, and patted them gently to keep them from springing up again.
The rainfall could be heard now as well as smelled. The thunder went on and on, and the periodic flashes of lightning illuminated the interior of the loafing room, but the omnipresent sound was of the rain beating down. From his position, as the minutes passed, Doc could see Man but not the floor; he could not tell what was happening among the victims and survivors down below, but he could see that Man had rolled over onto His back, on the couch, and had perhaps passed into unconsciousness, from pain or loss of blood. “YOU’D BEST STAY AWAKE!” Doc shouted at Him, and his patient snapped into watchfulness again, and Doc apologized, “I DIDN’T MEAN YOU. I WAS A-HOLLERIN AT THE LORD. BUT COME TO THINK OF IT, YOU STAY AWAKE, TOO.”
“Thanks, Doc,” the patient mumbled.
“DON’T TALK,” Doc yelled. “DON’T EVEN THINK ABOUT TRYIN TO TALK. You jist let me do the talkin. Man is all belly-up yonder on His couch, with the awfulest wound in his gitalong. You made Him shoot Hisself in the gitalong, did ye know that? Shut up, don’t answer. You didn’t do it a purpose, I reckon. When you clumb up onto His haid and made Him miss yore dad and yore sweetheart, you didn’t know that if He missed He’d hit Hisself in His own gitalong, did ye? Hush. He orter known better Hisself, a-playin around with that pistol of His’n the way He allus does. He orter known He’d shoot Hisself if He didn’t watch out. But maybe you done Him a favor. Yeah, maybe He would’ve done somethin worse bye and bye iffen ye hadn’t taught ’im a lesson. All he’s got is maybe a fractured metatarsal bone or two, and no doubt a splintered part of the second and third cuneiform tarsal bones as well, but he won’t be walkin again for a right smart spell.”
As if to give the lie to Doc’s prognosis, Man suddenly heaved Himself into a sitting position, stood up on one gitalong, and hopped, then hobbled, then hopped, right back toward His cheer-of-ease! Doc feared that the Lord would plop His butt right smack down on top of both him and his patient, and he cringed, and debated with himself whether to try to stuff himself and his patient further down into the crevice between the cushions. But the Lord merely came to get His tumbler of bourbon off the table beside the cheer, lifted it to His mouth and drained it off in a couple of swallows, then turned and hopped, and hobbled, not back to the couch but toward the cookroom. He was leaving a trail of blood all over the carpets and linoleum. “YOU EEJIT!” Doc yelled, blasphemy be damned, “GIT OFF THEM GITALONGS! TIE A TURNICUT OVER THET THANG!”
As if the Lord had heard him, when He returned, He was bearing in one hand His unopened new bottle of bourbon and in the other hand a linen tablecloth. Flouncing down again onto the couch, He first opened the bottle and drank directly from it. Doc shouted, “PORE A LEETLE ON THE WOUND, FOR A ANTY-SETTIC!” but he was ignored, or unheard. Man then proceeded to rip the tablecloth into shreds. With one strip of cloth He tied a clumsy, drunken tourniquet around His ankle and tightened it. Then He removed and tossed away His shoe, which bore a gaping bloody bullethole in the instep, another in the sole, and removed His sock, which was soaked with blood. Doc had a fleeting glimpse of the ugly wound before Man began to wrap His gitalong with strips of the tablecloth. Doc winced at the sight of both the wound and the dressing, unsterile rags of linen that would likely establish a colony of staphylococci all around and in the wound, to say nothing of tetanus.
The amateur bandaging finished, the Man took a few more lusty swallows from the bottle, smacked His lips, sighed, then lay back down on the couch and closed His eyes again. Lightning and thunder continued, but the sound of the rain was loudest. A toad-strangling downpour, Doc reflected. He hoped so. He lost no love on toads. He reached out and checked the breathing and pulse of his patient; the breathing was deeper, the pulse was steadier but fainter. The boy was still conscious. Why do I keep callin him boy? Doc asked himself. He’s a full-growed feller, stout as a tumble-turd. “Yeah, maybe you done the Lord a favor,” Doc repeated himself, although he was aware that he was not speaking loudly enough for the deafened tailprongs to hear him, “maybe you done us all a favor, if the Lord has learned His lesson not to fool around with that firearm no more.” Doc chuckled. “Maybe you put the preacher out of business with his Rapture thing and all. And maybe,” Doc paused and reflected on the magnitude of the notion, “jist maybe there won’t never be no Bomb.” He was surprised at himself for having such a thought, which went counter to his usual pessimism on the subject, his unshakable faith in the cataclysm that would obliterate the world as we know it.
Unless…and this was another, different thought…unless this event now, tonight, was The Bomb. Perhaps The Bomb was just this one pistol shot into the gitalong of Man, that would start Him westering, if not wester Him off completely for good for once and for all, so that He would no longer be here to provide for His roosterroaches, who would have to seek their salvation elsewhere or starve to west.
“Theology is really complicated,” Doc Swain said to his patient, remembering again but not caring that his patient was too deaf to hear him, and as the night hours passed he went on talking. The patient kept his eyes focused on Doc Swain’s face almost as if reading his lips, and kept his useless tailprongs erect, and gave the semblance of listening. Doc Swain talked about the Stay More of old, that he had never known but only studied and still diurnally dreamed of, the Stay More populated with almost as many Men, and Women, and Children, as there were now roosterroaches remaining with the one Man. This Man, our Man, was not even of any kinship to those ancient folk of Stay More; He was a furriner, from distant parts, an outlander, a newcomer, even if He had lived in Holy House longer than all but the oldest roosterroaches could remember. Doc Swain was one of these: he could remember, as a child, nearly two years before, watching Man move into the old Stay More Hotel, which had once been the home for human Ingledews before becoming a hotel, and had been abandoned for years before Man moved into it and installed the Fabulous Fridge and the pantry and breadbasket and grocery sack and other good things. Although the Man did not dress like the ancient Men of Stay More, or talk like Them, or practice Their customs, He was still Man, and the only Man we had. He might not be as Almighty as the Crustians thought He was, but He was the Lord.
“LORD, DON’T PASS OUT!” Doc Swain called, because it was evident that He intended to anesthetize His pain into oblivion with the bourbon. Doc was tempted to make his way over to Him, climb on Him, tickle Him, try
to keep Him awake and conscious, or, failing that, persuade others to join in the effort. To do so, he would have to leave his patient, and as far as he was concerned, even apart from the sense of loyalty to his own kind, if Doc had to choose between Man and Sam, he would pick Sam, any old day.
It was day now. The rain was letting up, but only for a moment, as if pausing to catch its breath before trying harder.
Chapter twenty-one
Hit’s pourin down pitchforks, cats and dogs!” Jack observed, flinching from the pelting rain. He didn’t mind the wet, which couldn’t penetrate his cutin, but the force of the heavy drops kept knocking him off his gitalongs, and the drops were cold.
Josie thought, which kept her from minding the long hike. “Do some folks think that cats and dogs fall with the rain?” she asked, and belched.
“Huh?” said Jack. “Naw, that’s jist one a them ole sayins, pourin down cats and dogs. You ever see a dog fall from the sky?”
“I aint never seen a dog,” Josie said, and tripped over a pebble of sandstone and fell down.
“You still drunk as a fiddler’s bitch?” Jack asked her, helping her to her gitalongs. He wasn’t exactly sober himself, but they would never get home if his old lady didn’t stop falling down and asking dumb questions and burping like a grasshopper.
“What’s a fiddler’s bitch?” Josie asked.
“Aw, that’s jist a breed of dog,” he said. “Now shut up, Maw, and watch where you’re going.” He raised a limb of grass to clear her sniffwhips, then passed under himself. It was hard going. Ever since the previous night, except for the bright daylight hours which had forced them to seek darkness in an abandoned ants’ burrow, they had been making their way slowly homeward from the Lord’s Garden and Refuse Pile, where they had been lost for the entire length of time it took them to sober up enough to walk. Jack would never forget the terror of those impossibly long moments he was airborne, inside the beer can hurtling into the unknown, the dregs of beer swirling all around and over them and getting into their mouths and spiracles, and the weightlessness that went on and on, until, with a horrible jolt and crash, the can landed amidst a pile of other cans, not just empty beer cans but cans of emptied pork and beans, cans of emptied pineapple, cans of emptied ravioli, cans of emptied 30 w motor oil. If I hadn’t of been a Ingledew, Jack told himself, I would of been westered shore as shootin. They had spent hours recovering from the crash, sustained by nothing more than whatever beer remained in the can, quite a lot of it, and then they had found their way out through the opening of the lid of the can, which fortunately lay on its side, and had found themselves among all those other cans, the exploration of which, and the escape from which, had consumed all of the rest of their night.
The Cockroaches of Stay More Page 14