Cicada

by Eric, Laing, J.

  “Maybe you should put that away for now,” was all the man could think to say.

  Ben looked over the spectacle playing out before him and seemed relieved to have an excuse to leave it.

  “Let me get that for you,” he offered to the Sheriff’s wife, taking the highball glass and crossing to follow Frances into the kitchen. As he entered he was a bit put off to discover the women gathered there. All their eyes fell upon him in silence and Ben thought they looked like a herd of nervous gazelles uncertain whether he was a predator or no cause for concern.

  “Here,” Frances said as she relieved him of the Sheriff’s drink and led him out onto the porch where they might share some privacy.

  “Ladies,” Ben nodded politely as he passed through with the comfort of knowing he’d not jumped over the devil just to land in hell, as his Uncle Nef liked to say.

  As she was closing the screen door behind her, Frances paused and leaned her head in to address one of the women. “Barbara, Casey’s just out back here. I thought I’d give him Buckshot’s bike. Don’t worry, I got my eye on him.”

  “Oh, umm, okay, that’s fine, I guess.” And then as a quick after-thought, Barbara added calling out through the closed screen door, “Thank you, Franny. That was very sweet of you!”

  Chapter Twenty-five

  The morning following the shooting of Timothy Sayre found Cicada seated alone in the back row of the outbound Greyhound bus, leaving Melby for good in the same way she’d arrived some few months earlier. She’d no idea of the boy’s passing. Word of the tragedy wouldn’t spread into town for another half an hour. Once it did, however, the gossip would roll through like a violent storm. By the afternoon, when the massacre at the Feed ‘n’ Grain had transpired, the levy would break. But that had yet to pass.

  The bus was all but empty. Only Cicada and a young white couple with a colicky infant filled the cracked leather seats to keep the driver company until the next stop in Wheedling where more would climb aboard. Countless stops would fall along the way before Chicago, the final destination. Cicada was certain her current fellow passengers would depart long before then, however. That the couple in front of her was poor was all too evident, him in faded, patched blue jeans, frayed T-shirt and a sparse beard of red prickles, she in a church thrift store dress that had never been fashionable, and the troubled babe, their finest and only treasure in the world, clad only in a cloth diaper.

  Hardly even with the means to flee poverty, Cicada thought sympathetically. She hoped for the baby’s sake that they were off to settle greener pastures. Perhaps with relatives that somehow had managed to eke more out of life.

  The bus shuddered to life and Cicada turned her head to the window and her thoughts to what she was leaving behind. If she’d only been aware of the events that had transpired and those soon to follow she wouldn’t have whispered the carefree farewell she did.

  “Y’all be sweet like tea.”

  It was something she thought her mother used to say, but in truth those were her father’s words, not that it really made any difference.

  …

  “We don’t need none of Mrs. Sayre’s charity, thank you,” Violet Stout, Raymond’s widow, told Ben matter-of-factly.

  “No, ya don’t. But she’s offerin’ it, an’ I don’t see no harm in takin’ it,” Ben said. From off in the front yard children squealed in play. “Wouldn’t hurt for them none neither,” he added.

  “I suppose you gettin’ something out of this all.”

  “Yeah. Yeah, I am. I’m buying fifty acres off her and if you take the rest and agree to it, I keep my job and work the whole farm.”

  “And she’s just gonna give it away to me like that for free? The house, the barn, land, the whole thing?” Violet pressed incredulously.

  “Mrs. Sayre said she got family off in Michigan and don’t want to stay here no more. And, and I guess she figures it might help put things right.”

  Violet stared out the window while Ben waited for her to protest more. When she didn’t, he played the one card he’d held out for last.

  “You ask me, I think she ain’t really doin’ it for you. I think she just be doin’ it to get back at them folks that hurt her. Them folks what don’t want us around.”

  Violet turned to him and steeled her gaze. Ben couldn’t have read her if his life had depended on it. He couldn’t help but startle back when Violet suddenly burst out gleefully like a morning rooster.

  …

  Nugget hadn’t slept and was covered in sweat as he lay atop his bedspread still dressed from the night before. The sound of his mother’s return from her shift at the drugstore diner was nothing unusual, but her animated speech to her husband was.

  “Somebody killed that Sayre boy last night. Shot him like a hog while he sat in the back of his daddy’s truck. Wouldn’t you know it, they was out there with them coloreds.”

  “Probably one of them that did it,” Nugget’s stepfather Earl snorted from his recliner. “That’s what ya get messin’ around with those sorry asses.”

  “What?” Nugget said, although he’d heard every word of it.

  “Well, if it ain’t sleepin’ beauty,” Earl crowed.

  Nugget put one hand out to steady himself against the living room archway and asked again. “What happened?”

  “One of them coloreds shot a little boy in the back of his daddy’s truck last night,” his mother said as she waved him off dismissively with her cigarette. “The Sayre boy, Birdshot, or whatever fool thing they called ‘im.”

  “Ought a hang the bastard out to dry when they catch ‘im. I told ya they trouble,” Earl said. “Didn’t I tell you?”

  Nugget only needed four minutes to make up his mind. His mother was cleaning a chicken to fry for lunch and his stepfather was getting drunk in front of the television when Nugget snipped the cord leading to the phone. Neither noticed. Nor did either of the two think anything of it as he walked past them carrying a grocery bag and went outside.

  “What the world does he think he’s doin’?” Nugget’s mother exclaimed as she saw him drive off in her car.

  Minutes later, Earl picked up a cinder block—one of the many objects of refuse that littered the front yard—and hurled it down the road in anger. Nearby, beside a rusted washing machine, his truck’s mangled distributor cap sprouted up like a little black octopus amongst the weeds.

  He went on to tear apart the trailer when he discovered the phone line was cut as well.

  …

  Cicada had been dozing on and off when she woke as the bus pulled into a small town she didn’t recognize. The bus only paused long enough to pick up a single passenger. She wouldn’t have paid him much mind, except she was surprised to recognize him as someone from Melby.

  “This is the bus for Chicago, right?” Nugget asked the driver as he boarded.

  “All the way,” the driver said.

  “Can I sit wherever I….”

  “Wherever you want,” the driver said, closing the door behind him and ferrying the bus from the curb.

  As Nugget came down the aisle, he was shocked to see Cicada, who smiled at him in her own nervousness. She was relieved when Nugget tucked in his chin and looked to the bus floor as he turned away, abruptly sinking into his seat never to look back. After several hours and many other passengers came along, Nugget was no more than the back of a company of heads for the rest of their journey. At some point along the way, he disappeared entirely.

  …

  It was a Tuesday, six weeks after John and Timothy had been laid to rest, three since Frances had left, and two since Violet Stout had brought her children to their new home, when late one afternoon Peter Kane arrived with the black community’s reverend, Isaiah Cole.

  “Minister Joshua Lee Scott has been asked to step down,” Kane explained to Ben and Violet. “Mr. Cole will be taking his place. Church board decision.”

  “We’re come around to invite one an’ all to form a new congregation in the name of Christ
,” Cole beamed.

  “One an’ all?” Ben said, almost in disbelief.

  “One and all,” Kane confirmed with a nod.

  Two hours later, out in the far field perched atop his tractor, Ben caught himself chuckling at the thought and repeating the words. “One an’ all. Like musketeers….”

  As he did, he spotted a green Chevy pickup truck driving up to the house from the blacktop. He didn’t recognize it and that troubled him enough to turn the tractor around and head in. The lone driver had gotten out and disappeared around the side of the house before Ben had made it halfway back.

  Violet was out in the backyard as the truck pulled up and probably wouldn’t have known of its arrival if not for the dog barking an alarm.

  “Hol’ up there, Buttercup,” she said. John’s old dog, that had only ever been called ‘dog,’ obeyed and wagged its tail passively and nosed at her hand, seeking praise for having done its job.

  “Sorry to come out uninvited,” Dennis Hart said as Violet met him at the side of the house. “I’m a friend of Ben’s. He about?”

  “He is. An’ who are you?”

  Dennis, one hand to his heart and the other to his head, yanked off his cap. “I’m sorry, ma’am. Name’s Dennis. Dennis Hart.”

  Violet smiled in relief. “Why, I know you, Mr. Hart. You the caretaker out to the cemetery. You buried my Raymond.”

  “Yes, ma’am. Well, no. Not anymore. I quit that job.”

  “Oh?”

  “Yes, ma’am. I can’t do that no more. I figured on I seen enough death. I was wonderin’ maybe if Ben has any work for me. I might come on an’ learn how to get some life out of the earth instead of placin’ the dead in it. Least ways, that was my thinkin’.”

  “Well this here ain’t Ben’s farm. This here is the Stout farm, and I’m Violet Stout.”

  By the time Ben rushed into the living room, Dennis and Violet had settled with their lemonades along with Nef and Saul and all of them were admiring the aquarium.

  “Isn’t so nice the way he has all those speckles on just one side?” Violet was remarking as Vitamin D—now known as Pretty Boy—swam in excited circles expecting someone might feed it.

  “He’s very nice,” Dennis said. “Very nice.”

  “Beautiful,” Saul agreed from the couch while Nef nodded off half-asleep beside him.

  Violet went on, “Mrs. Sayre left him here for me. All set up in his tank just like that. Wasn’t that nice? I might buy a few more to keep Pretty Boy some company when I next go to town.”

  Ben rushed in and stopped short. “Oh, Dennis…hey, it’s just you then,” Ben rasped in relief as he leaned to the wall to catch his breath and wipe his brow.

  “Benjamin, good,” Violet celebrated with a few claps, in no way acknowledging his harried state, “Mr. Hart needs a job. Now what do you two know about honey bees?”

  …

  “What’s that?” Dennis asked as he put aside his smoke can and gloves to join Ben on the porch. An errant bee clung momentarily to his flannel shirt before alighting to find its way back to the apiary.

  “Letter from my sister in Chicago,” Ben answered, shuffling the pages away into his pocket in exchange for the sandwich on the plate beside him.

  “Cicada?”

  “Mm-hmm.”

  They were quiet then as both took up their lunches and began to eat. After several mouthfuls, Dennis made small talk.

  “So, what’s she have to say? Any exciting news?”

  “She’s gettin’ married. Wants me to be sure and not mention it to John.”

  “John?” Dennis asked, pausing between bites.

  “Mm-hmm.”

  And then Dennis understood. “Oh….”

  …

  On the television of the nursing home dayroom, a pancake-faced sports announcer excitedly offered his predictions for what sounded to be the end of the world. Several residents were circled about the screen as if it were an electronic campfire, yet only one of their number—a wizened and wispy-haired gentleman leaning in on his aluminum cane—actually focused on the program. At the periphery of the small gathering a plump little girl, perhaps nine or ten years in age, crinkled her nose as she sat beside her grandmother holding the woman’s hand. The heavy smell of disinfectant was making the girl ill. She cut her eyes to the clock on the wall opposite the television and heaved an audible sigh to know she still had another half hour to go. She tightened her grip on her grandmother’s hand—something like a road atlas with its veins of blue and red, she thought—and sat back to daydream and worry about the future.

  “Would you be a dear and push me outside,” Frances, seated nearby, asked her, one hand trembling as she pointed to the sliding glass door that led to a sun-dappled patio.

  The girl nodded and carefully freed herself from her grandmother, placing the woman’s delicate hand in her own lap before rising to help Frances. The girl didn’t need to be told how to unlock the wheels of Frances’s wheelchair, but the old woman waved wordlessly to direct her all the same as she did.

  “You’re certainly a very pretty young lady…and so sweet,” Frances complimented her as she slid the glass door back.

  The girl blushed but remained stoic.

  “This is fine,” Frances said and moved to pat her arm as the girl reset her wheelchair locks.

  Still without a word, the girl pulled shut the door and rejoined her grandmother, leaving Frances to herself. The patio was screened but a light breeze still managed to push through. A mockingbird perched, cocking his head from side to side as its shining eyes searched for insects in the freshly-mowed lawn. But only for a moment, as the lawn sprinklers, set to a timer, popped up and sprung to life from amongst the blades, sending the bird on its way.

  Although Frances cherished the happier memories of her lost son, and thought about him daily for the rest of her life, she could not bring herself to do the same for John. But then, neither did the widow Sayre cultivate resentment or bitterness for her husband. After she’d left Melby, it did take several years for Frances to leave John behind as well; for how could she keep a hold of Timothy without recalling her husband’s part in the child’s death? Eventually, Frances did, however, as she merely allowed a barren place to grow in her heart and mind where John had been. In so doing she eventually forgot the man altogether, and for many years John’s memory was abandoned.

  That late afternoon, as Frances knew she was in her final days, and after all that effort to be free of such memories, she purposely returned to thoughts of her lost husband.

  Wondering if she had come to peace with all things at last, looking out across the lawn on what would be her final summer, Frances considered John Sayre that evening as twilight crept up. She wasn’t sure if it was the warmth of the day, or perhaps the smell of the cut grass that triggered her reverie, but she welcomed it all the same.

  Despite everything she’d thought she’d known and understood about her husband, or even herself, Frances Sayre came to realize there at the end of things, that there would always remain so much which was unfathomable.

  “Mountains but for sea,” she whispered to the rapidly gaining night. “Mountains but for sea.”

  END