Cicada

by Eric, Laing, J.

  “We gonna stop going to church?” Buckshot shouted, hurtling up from the backseat for a split second before another pothole sent him back the way he’d came.“Keep yer seat, son,” John Sayre said into the rearview.

  “Yes, sir.”

  “I don’t blame the Kanes one bit; do you?” Frances continued.

  “I got to run back into town this afternoon. You need anything?” John asked. His foot bore down once more on the accelerator ever so slightly.

  “Can I come?” Buckshot begged.

  “No,” his parents said in unison. They exchanged a glance having done so.

  Almost unbelievably, the sound of the ubiquitous cicadas managed to pulsate just above the engine and grinding tires.

  “I thought we’d have roast for supper,” Frances said as she resigned to stare out the window at the drab cotton fields wavering in the heat. “I’ll roast myself cooking it, but the meat’ll go to waste otherwise.”

  John Sayre nodded his approval wordlessly and tightened his grip on the wheel a little more.

  Chapter Three

  “Sixty-one...sixty-two...sixty-three,” Timothy Buckshot Sayre recited as the pennies slipped from his fingers and plinked onto the kitchen table.

  It was the ninth time he’d counted them in the past two days. Except for the time before last, when he’d somehow gotten sixty-four, he came up with just sixty-three every time. He stared dejectedly at the little copper mound of Lincoln profiles and wheat stalks. Here and there, just a few steel remnants from the war years poked out in contrast. He checked them to be sure they weren’t dull dimes, just as he’d done the night before. No fairy had arrived to perform such a magical exchange, however. Finally, he cupped one hand and bulldozed the lot into the oversized pocket that covered the top of his dungaree overalls.

  He was sure he needed at least a dollar even. He calculated on his fingers to confirm it would take at least another week and a half of saving his milk money to reach that goal. That was a thought his mounting impatience couldn’t bear.

  The scent of the farm—hay, diesel, and manure, among other things—mingled on the air drifting through the windows and kitchen screen door. Somewhere off in the unseen distance, the grumble of a tractor rose and fell as it bullied the earth. Timothy also heard the clunk of his father’s work boots on the floor above his head, so he knew it wasn’t him, but rather Ben, the field hand recently brought on to help out, tilling the soil out in the far fields. His father wasn’t normally so late to rise, but with the heat he’d had to pace himself throughout the day. As a result, he’d fallen behind and begun working after supper sometimes late into the night.

  “How does cereal sound?” Frances asked her son as she sidled through the swinging kitchen door with a wicker basket of laundry on her hip.

  “I want bacon ‘n’ eggs.”

  “Not in this heat. Not on your life.”

  “Fine,” Buckshot moaned and then blurted, “Mama, can I have my lunch money for ta-morrow ta-day?”

  The laundry basket of blue jeans and work shirts, which reeked of the chicken coop, landed with a thud and clatter near the back screen door against the washtub and corrugated tin scrubbing board.

  “To-morrow. To-day,” she corrected.

  “Tomorrow. Today,” he repeated, as he knew she expected him to do. “Can I?”

  “What in the world for?”

  “On account of Bo is gonna beat Casey if he don’t pay up an’ so I was gonna borrow Casey the money.”

  “Timothy David Sayre, you’re going to be the death of me, child,” Frances said.

  She put the cereal bowl, spoon, and milk in front of the boy already tearing into the fresh box of cornflakes.

  “Huh?” her boy asked simply.

  “What does Casey paying off Bo have anything to do with you?”

  “Bo and Casey was playing marbles and Casey said he’d play pennies for points instead of trading aggies, but he done lost an’ it turned out he didn’t really have no pennies at all in the first place.”

  “That so?”

  Cereal flakes spilled over the rim of the bowl and onto the table as the boy went on. His mother took the milk from him to ensure that it didn’t do the same.

  “I figured I’d borrow Casey the money he owed, because he’s my best friend an’ Bo’s gonna tan his ass if he don’t pay up at recess ta-day.”

  Exasperation creased Frances’s soft features. “What’ve I told you about the filth talk?”

  “Daddy cusses.”

  “I beg your pardon?”

  Buckshot heeded his mother’s temper and steered back to the topic of his friend’s dilemma.

  “Bo was gonna beat ‘im just fer playing on a welch, but Miss Kyle done broke ‘em up yesterday. Casey can’t run forever, though. Least, that’s what Bo says.”

  “First of all, you’d be loaning Casey the money, not borrowing,” Frances said. “And secondly, why is it your place to pay off Casey’s debts? Doesn’t he get an allowance?”

  “Yeah, he gets allowance. But he done spent all it pitching pennies at lunch.”

  “That’s not spending, Timmy. That’s losing. For the love of…that child is literally throwing his money away.”

  The boy shrugged and dug into his bowl of cornflakes. Frances took a seat beside him and began to pick the errant flakes from the tablecloth.

  “Son, it’s very sweet of you to want to help your friend. But sometimes the Christian way to help someone is to let them learn how to help themselves. If you go around your whole life letting other folks get you out of your troubles, then what can you do if someday they aren’t around anymore? Understand?”

  He hadn’t been listening. Instead, he was thinking about what he really wanted the money for.

  “Understand?” she repeated.

  “Huh? Oh, yeah.”

  “Why doesn’t Casey ask if he can do more chores at home to get a little more allowance to pay off Bo?”

  “Yeah...he could do that, I guess. But his daddy would beat ‘im even worse than a whooping from Bo if he know’d he was gambling. He ain’t supposed to gamble no more.”

  “Who’s gambling? I know my boy knows better,” John Sayre said as he entered the room. His voice was coarse and sounded angry, as it almost always did whether his temper was riled or not. His sudden and unexpected entrance caused both his wife and son to start.

  “Nobody’s gambling,” Frances sighed. “We’re just having a little talk. Now what do you want for breakfast?” She stood and tried her best to avoid the conversation her husband had begun.

  “Well, somebody sure is gambling,” John Sayre said, cocking his head to give his son the look they both understood. Of late, Buckshot saw it all too often.

  Frances stayed at her son’s defense. “You know what happens when you eavesdrop? You get half the story. And like my pappy liked to say, half a story ain’t worth the spit it takes to tell it.”

  “What with all the whispering between you two, eavesdropping is just about the only way a body hears what’s going on in this house.”

  Buckshot buried his gaze in his cornflakes and shoveled the spoon as quickly as he could swallow. After a few mouthfuls under his father’s hard stare, he caved in.

  “Casey’s gambling,” Buckshot reported.

  “You ain’t pitching pennies with them boys, are you?”

  “Na-uh. Casey lost to Bo playing marbles.”

  “I guess you’ll have scrambled eggs?” Frances tried once more to end the matter.

  “I would a had scrambled,” Buckshot whined. Frances pursed her lips—that was her look the boy also knew all too well—and so he turned back to his cereal.

  “Sounds great, hon,” John Sayre answered while keeping the pressure on Buckshot. “Well, I know you’re not gambling, on account of I done told ya that ya ain’t to be doing such. Right?” A beat passed without an answer. “Right?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  The tractor out in the fields was far off and its toil c
onjoined with the rumblings of even more distant thunder rolling in from the horizon. From the clothesline a mockingbird sang out like the car horn of the Sayre family Buick, giving Rusty, the old tabby on the porch, pause to survey the sky. But the threat of another pecking was just that—no more than a threat—as the bird fell onto the wind and sailed somewhere beyond the grove of oak trees bordering the backyard. With the presence of the approaching thunderstorm pressing in more and more, the mysterious cicadas went silent.

  “So, what’s the count gotten down to?” John Sayre asked his son.

  Buckshot didn’t need his father to clarify. “Three days!”

  “Ya don’t say? Well, enjoy ‘em while they last, ‘cause this summer I’m putting you to work. Time you learned money don’t grow on trees...least, not on this farm, it don’t.”

  Frances stood over the stove, a wisp of her once-brunette hair a few years gone gray dangling into her eyes. Her mind had drifted off, but when she heard Buckshot moan at his father’s proclamation, she came to the boy’s defense once more.

  “Timmy gets the first week off, John. That’s what we all agreed. Boy’s got to get some kind of vacation, after all.”

  “Sure, fine. One week to giggle and spit. Then it’s time to get to business.”

  “Rather stay in school for the summer,” Buckshot complained.

  “The trouble them multiplication tables gave you, you near about had to,” Frances said with a scowl. “Besides, you should be proud that your daddy thinks you’re getting to be man enough to pitch in more. Don’t you think?” Frances added as she stepped back from the stove to catch a brief respite.

  “I reckon.”

  “So do I,” the senior Sayre said, leaning to rumple his son’s hair with the small bit of affection he could manage.

  Buckshot sulked the rest of the way through his bowl of cereal as his parents discussed the sort of matters that children tend to ignore. Buckshot was no exception. Somewhere near the last spoonfuls of his breakfast, the conversation veered away from electric and water bills and weekly budgets and back to something the boy cared about.

  “I was thinking of heading over to Wheedling either later today or tomorrow,” John said. “Them tractor parts should be in, an’ I got a few other things there about to tend to.”

  Wheedling was the county seat, some two and a half hours drive southeast over rugged back roads that meandered like cattle trails.

  “Wait fer Saturday, Daddy. I wanna go!” Buckshot pleaded.

  “Sorry, Buckshot. No can do.”

  “C’mon, Daddy....”

  “Ain’t going on no pleasure cruise, son. Got business to tend to.”

  From outside, the sound of more rumbling came, but it wasn’t thunder this time. Two sharp toots of the school bus horn confirmed this.

  “Alright, give me some sugar and git.” Frances slid Timothy from his chair with one hand and passed him his brown paper sack lunch with the other. He planted a peck on her cheek. “And here, this here is for them art supplies we talked about,” she said, retrieving a quarter from her apron pocket.

  “Huh? Oh, yeah. Thanks, Mama! Bye, Daddy!”

  John Sayre was wise to the two of them and shook his head in disbelief. Before he could comment, however, the boy dashed out the door, swinging the screen door wide and letting it go as he leapt down off the back steps. The spring on the door made a little metallic creak as it stretched to its limit before snapping the door back into the frame with a resounding crack.

  “Jesus!” John Sayre barked in shock. “Stop slamming that goddamned screen door, boy!” he yelled after his son.

  “Sorry,” a fleeting cry drifted back.

  Frances spooned a heap of steaming eggs from the skillet on the stove and pushed the plate in front of her husband.

  “Franny, I swear to God, if I have to remount that screen door one more time, I’m gonna flatten the boy’s head and use it to drive the screws.”

  “I need to run into town this morning,” Frances said, finally taking a seat at the table with her own plate of eggs.

  “What fer?” A fleck of yellow skipped onto the table from John’s mouth.

  Frances passed him a napkin, which he immediately tucked into his lap.

  “Whiskey and rifles,” she said, not missing a beat.

  John paused in his meal and looked her in the eyes for a long moment. Even in the early hour, perspiration clung to each of them in little beads and rivulets while the smell of cooked eggs hung on the heavy air.

  “Jars for canning, John. Or don’t you want jam come fall and winter?”

  “Jus’ asking is all. Christ Almighty.”

  John Sayre was born the third son to the son of a farmer. So it was safe to say that the business of working soil was in his blood as much as under his nails. As the youngest of the three sons of James and Molly Sayre, he wouldn’t have inherited his father’s homestead but for his brothers’ bad fortunes.

  His eldest brother, Samuel, he didn’t remember at all, since Sam had perished before John’s birth, the victim of a drunken doctor’s misdiagnosis. The bloodshot physician had proclaimed the youngest Sayre’s illness to be “slap cheek fever,” so named because the child’s cheeks took on the appearance of having been slapped, and “nothing more than a mild infection of no consequence.” Within three nights, however, the boy had gone from raging with fever to stiffening with the chill of death. He’d been just five years old and the loss nearly drove Molly to the grave as well.

  But she was of solid stock and persevered, and a little more than two years later she gave birth to her second child, another boy whom they named Walter. The following year Walter was blessed with a brother to be named John.

  Walter and John Sayre were brothers in the finest sense of the word. They were fast friends throughout their childhood, best friends who did everything together. When they fought—which was seldom—they did so with fervor, and when they made up—which was always—no grudge was held and they were thick as thieves once more. If one was insulted or injured in either word or deed by an outsider to the family, they both took offense. All through their school days, no bully picked a fight with either one, since to do so would mean a beef with both. Sadly, no girl ever came between the Sayre brothers either, only because Walter passed on before the two reached an age where such a thing would’ve been possible.

  Walter was taken from life in a hunting accident, or more accurately, an accident that occurred while hunting, since it might have happened even if no hunting had been involved. His last was a picturesque fall day near the close of September, when the air was cool but without a nip to it quite yet. The leaves were still green, and would be for a few weeks more, although their number was teased by the kind of wind that would soon fell them with the coming season.

  The boys, Walter, just sixteen in age, and John, one full year younger, halfheartedly still-hunted for squirrel, but the limb rats—as the locals called them—were too cunning to be had by the brothers’ lack of effort. The Sayre boys didn’t care about all the ones getting away, though. They were content instead to doze on and off as they relaxed barefoot along the bank of a small stream, letting the languid day slip by with their shotgun breeches open wider than their eyes.

  As night began to tuck the sun away, the two finally agreed to call it a day. With just those words they pulled on their boots and rose from their idleness to go home. The bank along the stream was short but steep, and the stream that gave birth to it was shallow but wide. They followed atop the lip of the bank, joking and joshing as they made their way.

  To this day in his life, John Sayre would say he couldn’t recall what was said in jest that provoked what he did next, but he’d never forgotten his actions. With a playful shove—and it had been playful, not even with the intent to topple his brother as it did, John swore—he sent his brother Walter tripping over the edge of the bank, down towards the stream. The fall wasn’t far or treacherous in any fashion, save one. As Walter tumbled down the li
ttle slope, he crashed into a clump of brush and that was when all hell broke loose.

  Walter had pitched heel over head onto a hive of yellow jackets. The wasps reacted to his transgression as could be expected, falling on him relentlessly.

  “Get in the water!” John shouted. He might have laughed at first, he said later, the whole thing seeming a bit comical at the time. At first.

  But Walter was too disoriented to immediately follow his little brother’s directions. Somewhere between the fifteenth sting and John’s fourth scream, however, Walter gathered his senses and splashed into the water. As he did, he finally dropped his shotgun, a .410 gauge loaded with birdshot. It went off in the concussion as if refusing to be left out of all the excitement. The accidental shot was inconsequential, luckily, and the wasps remained the two boys’ only concern.

  If the stream had been any deeper than just up to his calves, Walter might have been able to escape anymore of the angry yellow jackets’ wrath. Then again, considering his massive allergic reaction to their venom, had the stream been any deeper, Walter likely would have drowned. Regardless, all of that was moot, since, by the time the wasps had finished with him, Walter’s throat was already swollen shut with the onset of anaphylaxis. As John held his brother and wailed to the beautiful shifting hues of the evening September sky, Walter suffocated to death in the stream that locals would go on to call Sayre Creek in his memory.

  Frances Sayre knew the story of how her husband’s older brother died. John had told her of that day—in the nervous voice that comes from such confessions—just as he’d told most of his close friends and family. It wasn’t something he spoke of very often though, and in its handful of retellings there was one detail that he never once admitted to anyone. He never shared that he’d given his brother the shove that sent him into the wasps’ nest. From the first time he cried with his parents, to the last he’d spoke of it over the previous year’s Christmas dinner when he’d recounted that day to his son, Buckshot, John Sayre simply stated that Walter had lost his footing somehow as he walked along the bank.