Through Caverns Measureless to Man

by D G Rose

  Our father, who we knew was normally even more fearsome than our mother, knelt down to peer into the bamboo cage. He roughly grabbed the tube from our hands and held the bars of the grate up to his eyes. Then he softly poked his pinky finger through the bars. “Ouch!” He cried, pulling back his finger and sticking in his mouth to suck. “It bit me!” He mumbled around his pinky, a little bit of pink foam escaping the corner of his mouth. After several seconds he pulled his pinky from his mouth and held the moist digit, still welling a small bead of blood, to our face. “It bit me!” He shouted. We were about to explain, to apologize, the cricket we had found had bitten our father which was almost as if we had bitten him ourselves and we shuddered to think of the punishment we would receive for biting our father, when he jumped in the air and grabbed our mother by the arms and began to dance around the small room. “It bit me! It bit me!” He shouted over and over, until he began to pant and grow dizzy from his twirling and dancing. Then he came over to us and he embraced us. We didn’t know what to do, since we could never remember being embraced by our father before. In fact, we could never remember any physical contact with our father that was other than a punishment.

  “I did it!” He shouted. “I’ve found the greatest cricket in the world! The Emperor! The very Emperor himself will hold my cricket. Maybe, maybe, he’ll even know my name! Maybe, the Emperor will be so impressed, that he will say, ‘Bring me the man who captured this cricket! I wish to make him a noble!’.” Then our father sat down on the hard, packed earth floor, and then he lay down, all the time gazing lovingly at the mighty cricket as he fantasied about his fame and fortune. “I’ll be rich.” He dreamed. “I’ll be able to buy whatever I want. A big house, a carriage. A concubine! No two concubines!” It was a measure of how lost he was in his fantasy that he failed to notice our mother’s scowl as he said this, although we were certain that he would later be made to pay for his injudicious comments. “The other men in the village will have to treat me with honor and respect.” He continued dreamily. “Or, perhaps the Emperor will call me to the capital!” This went on for quite some time and our mother, uncertain how to act, but not wanting to cross our father, served us sweet rolls as a reward for finding the miraculous cricket on which, apparently, our family’s fortune would be made.

  Eventually, our father recovered enough of his senses to realize that his fortune would have to wait until morning. Our father quickly cleared a space in the center of the table and placed the bamboo tube and its precious prisoner in the exact middle, fiddling with the final placement, as if it had been a sacred relic, the finger bone of some long-dead saint. Finally satisfied, he turned back to face our mother and us, and as he did so, we could see, just for a quick moment, that he too had another face marked out over his face.

  “Nobody touches this cricket!” He shouted. “Not a finger! In the morning, I’ll go get the County Magistrate and show him the cricket, but until then, nobody touches it.”

  “Won’t it get hungry?” We asked.

  Our father slapped his head, as if shocked that he, himself, had not thought of this. “Well, we’ll feed it. What do crickets eat?” He asked.

  Nobody said anything, because what did we know about crickets?

  “Maybe some kind of vegetable?” He mused, rubbing his chin. “Do we have any vegetables?” He asked our mother.

  Our mother shook her head. “Only pickled vegetables.” She replied.

  Our father thought for a moment. “No. I can’t imagine that crickets in the wild eat pickled vegetables. It might give him indigestion.” Our father began searching in the panty, picking up boxes and sacks of various items and discarding each one as inappropriate for his precious cricket. Finally, he shouted. “Ah ha! This is just the thing!” And he held up a slab of dried pork. He saw the skeptical look on our mother’s face. “The little bastard bit me. He must have a taste for meat!” And our father sliced off a sliver of pork and held it through the bars of the little grill. The cricket did eat the meat, and another three slices besides, plus a good hunk of sweet roll. Our father sat back satisfied that the cricket would not die of hunger before the morning and even more satisfied to have been proven right about the cricket’s diet. So it was with some trepidation that we pointed out that the cricket might need water, especially after his meal of dried meat and bread.

  Finally, the cricket was fed and watered and our mother banked the fire and the family prepared for bed. We, the two of us in the one body, were exhausted and we fell asleep almost as soon as we lay down. We woke a little while later, it was still dark, to hear our parents talking. “When I’m a rich and powerful man, a man who knows the Emperor himself, you’ll be sorry that you weren’t nicer to me.” Our father said in a kind of half whisper, but loud enough that he must have known that we could hear it if we were awake.

  “When you’re a rich man, you’ll have your concubines, and I won’t have to be nice to you at all.” Our mother said, not even trying to whisper.

  But then our father did whisper something back, and so did our mother and we couldn’t hear enough to make out the words and we fell back asleep until the sun’s rays in our eyes woke us.

  In the morning, after breakfast, our father dressed in his best suit of clothing.

  “You.” He indicated our mother, “Stay here and watch the cricket while I go for the County Magistrate.”

  “I’m not staying to watch some dumb cricket!” Our mother objected to his plan. “I have work to do. Let the boy watch the cricket. He found it, he can certainly watch it while you go for the Magistrate.”

  And that settled it. We watched the cricket as our parents went out, each to their own destination.

  You know what? Watching a cricket in a cage is boooooring! I mean, we had been excited about the cricket last night, although not as excited as our father, but the excitement of finding a champion cricket is about a million times better than just watching one in its cage. A caged cricket doesn’t do much of anything.

  So, we thought, ‘You know what is more exciting than a cricket in a cage? A cricket out of a cage.’ We figured that there was no way the cricket could get out of the house, so the house was just like a cage only bigger and then we could play together. We were a little afraid that the cricket might bite us like it had done to our father, but what’s the point of being a kid if you’re afraid of a little cricket bite?

  We took the cage off the table and unwound the string that kept the grate closed and we let the grate swing down. We waited a long time for the cricket to emerge, several seconds at least, but it stayed inside the cage. We put our finger inside the cage hoping to prod the cricket to leave but rather than jump out of the cage, the cricket stepped carefully onto our finger. We pulled our finger out of the cage, with the cricket on board. This was cool! So much better than just watching the cricket in his cage!

  We brought the cricket on our finger close to our face. It was fascinating! All shiny black and brown with long antennas in front and powerful spikey legs behind.

  Now, it should be remembered that crickets were a rarity in our part of the world. The difficulty we had had in even finding a cricket points out the scarcity of crickets, and thus should also point out the likelihood that we would have much personal experience with crickets. So, what happens next was a surprise to us. Not just in the sense that we didn’t anticipate it, but in the larger sense that we didn’t even know it was possible.

  What happened next was this: The cricket bit us on the nose. That didn’t surprise us, it had, after all, bitten our father just last night. Then it flew out the window! We hadn’t known that crickets could fly!

  At first, we just sat there in shock, amazed that the cricket had flown away. It didn’t even seem like the kind of thing that it should want to do. Then we realized what had happened. “Oh fuck!” We said and we ran for the door!

  We ran around the house to where the window was located and looked frantically for the cricket. There! We saw it
just a short distance from the house! We ran! If we could catch it and get it back in the cage before our father came back with the County Magistrate, we could pretend like nothing had happened at all. We found the cricket sitting on a blade of grass, swaying softly in the gentle breeze. We crouched down, our cupped hands held in front of us, and slowly crab-walked towards the cricket. Slow. Slow. Just a few inches more. Almost there. And… Now! We clapped our hands together, careful to leave a space in the middle so the cricket wouldn’t be crushed. But when we held our hands up to our eye to look through a hole between our fingers, nothing!

  We looked around and spotted the cricket a little further away. Again we crept, again we clapped, and again we had nothing. Each time we spotted the cricket just a little further away and each time we tried again to capture it. Finally, the cricket settled on the lip of our old well. We thought that might be a good chance to catch him, although we were afraid that he might fall into the well and be beyond all reach. We hadn’t forgotten that he could fly, we were just worried that he might get confused by the darkness and not be able to find his way out.

  So, we crept and we cupped and we slapped and we looked. Nothing! Where was that cricket? Ah! He was on the gable! We climbed up onto the lip of the well and steadied ourselves. He was just a few inches from our hands. Slap! We could feel him! He was trapped between the gable and our hand! We had done it! Then our feet slipped on the lip of the well and we fell into the darkness.

  CHAPTER 22 - Where the hell did that rooster come from?!

  As we fell we clutched that stupid cricket in our little fist. We expected to die. We knew that the well was deep and we knew that the well was dry. So, imagine our surprise when we woke up. We were not in the well. No, the bright sunshine was clue enough to tell us that. We were, instead, in a jungle. Surrounded by trees. As we looked around we realized that we had no idea where we could possibly be. There was nowhere near our village that had trees like these. These trees were tall and thin and the trunks were bright green. Looking up we realized that the trees had no leaves. They were just straight shafts shooting up overhead and waving in the steady wind. We thought it would be a good idea to climb a tree to see where we were, but the trees had no branches. We did see one tree that had notches in its side and thought that maybe if we jumped we might be able to grab a hold of a notch and from there climb to a higher notch and maybe get some idea of the extent of this forest.

  We edged back a step and prepared to jump. Then we jumped and it was nothing like what we had expected! We jumped much higher than we had ever jumped before. So high that we soared past the notch that we had aimed for, over the top of the tree and found ourselves flailing in the air looking for anything we could grab onto to stop ourselves from crashing to the ground! As we reached the top of our arc, we spotted a tree that we should pass on our way down, determined to grasp its pointed top and save ourselves from a second painful fall. And reach out we did and to our complete surprise, our hand clung tight to the side of the tree, as if the tree were coated in instant glue, and our other hands and feet quickly and easily found the tree and also stuck fast to its side.

  Wait a moment, our other hands and feet? That didn’t sound right. Since we were safe in the tree, we took the opportunity to look at ourselves. Our hand was hard and shiny and black and totally lacking in fingers! We looked at our leg, also shiny and black and oddly covered with sharp spines and hairs and bent backwards at a strange angle. And as we looked around at the trees, it became clear that we were in a field of grass. Somehow the fall into the well has transformed us into a cricket! What to do? We had to get home! If only we could get home we could maybe get our parents to take us to the old priest who lived on the outskirts of the village. Everybody said that he was a fraud, but we weren’t so sure. We remember him pulling a bronze coin from behind our ear and we also remember that once he cured a lame cow when the farmer was sure it would have to be slaughtered. Anyway, he was our best chance.

  Now that we knew what we were, we abandoned the plan of climbing in favor of jumping. We would jump as high as possible and look around, then turn in another direction and repeat the jump to see if we could find anything we recognized. Our vision didn’t seem as good as we remembered and, of course, everything was out of proportion.

  We jumped and the jumping was pure joy! We jumped and we forgot our plan, we didn’t look for anything, lost in the honest pleasure of being a cricket jumping in a field on a sunny day.

  Days passed and we learned what crickets eat. Days passed and we learned to make music with our wings. Days passed and we learned to fly! We learned to defend our territory from other crickets and we learned to hide from birds. We began to think that we must have died and come back as a cricket. Something the old priest had always said might happen if we were bad. But we began to think that we must have been good, because coming back as a cricket was open bliss.

  One day, as we napped in the heat of the noon sun, we felt a mighty shaking of the earth. “Earthquake!” We shouted in cricket language. But it wasn’t an earthquake. It was just a man walking in the field. Our fears assuaged, we returned to our nap. Oh, foolish cricket! No sooner had we drifted off than we found ourselves stuffed into a bamboo cage! It was different from the inside. What had seemed cozy and cleverly made when we were a child, seemed crude and uncomfortable now that we were a cricket and a captive.

  We jounced along for quite a while, our little cricket face pressed up against the grill of the cage, hoping to see where we were going or who had captured us or anything, but nothing we saw made any sense to us. Finally, we heard a door open and we found ourselves inside a building. We heard people talking but we had lost the talent for human speech and it was all gibberish to us.

  The cage was placed on a table and we had to laugh, remembering the night we had brought our own cricket back home and how it had ended up on the table. Some food was pushed through the grill and we ate it, even though we didn’t know what it was. Then some water and we drank it and then, there being nothing else to do, we dozed off.

  We stayed in the cage on the table for a long time. The cage was small and we were bored. We missed the field. The jumping and the flying. The only pleasure left us was singing, so we sang.

  “What’s making all that noise?” Asked a voice. We were stunned into silence because we had heard and understood the human words.

  “Don’t you touch that cricket!” Shouted another voice. “He’s worth a fortune.”

  “What are you going to do with him? Fight him?” Asked the first voice.

  “Nah.” Replied the second. “Fighting’s too risky. What if he gets killed? Then I’ve got nothing. Besides, you need a stake to enter him in a fight and we haven’t got a copper between us. No, I’m going to sell him to a guy in the village.”

  “Why would some guy in the village buy a cricket from you?” Asked the first voice.

  “Don’t you pay attention to nothing?” Asked the second voice. “This guy bragged to the County Magistrate that he had the best cricket in the county. A cricket worthy of the Emperor! And the County Magistrate even went to this guy’s house just to see this supposed mighty cricket and when they get there, no cricket!”

  “Is that the father of the boy who fell down the well?” questioned the first voice.

  “That’s the one.” Said the second. “And the Magistrate ordered him to find a first-class cricket or take 20 lashes. So, he’s buying up all the crickets he can find! And paying top price!”

  “I think it’s sad that his boy hasn’t woken up after all this time. And I don’t think it’s right for you to profit off of his bad luck.” Said the first voice.

  “Ah. What do you know?” Replied the second and the conversation was at an end.

  It seemed that we were going home after all. Even if only for a short time. Just long enough for our father to sell us to the County Magistrate and from then to the Emperor. We wondered if we were as big and strong as the cricket t
hat the moon had found for us. We must be if this man was sure that our father would buy us from him. A first-class cricket, he’d said!

  In the morning our cage was roughly stuffed into a bag and we bounced around in the dark for a long time. When we arrived at our destination, our captor pulled our cage from the bad and set up with a thump on a table. We rushed to the grill to see, but we couldn’t make out any details. The table top was all we could see clearly and to a cricket all table tops look pretty much alike.

  A face appeared in the grill. Was it our father? We looked but couldn’t be sure. From our perspective he was all pores and hairs and greasy skin, with nothing that could be resolved into recognizable features.

  “He looks pretty small.” Boomed a voice. Maybe it was our father. “I’m not sure he’s what I’m looking for.”

  We felt our cage lifted up and shaken. “He might be small, but just look at him! He’s full of energy and see how he’s all striped with red? That’s the sign of a mighty cricket! Of course, if you don’t want him…” The voice of our captor trailed off.

  “No! I didn’t say that. Let me look at him again. Those red stripes are interesting. They make him look fierce.” And our father and our captor fell to bargaining. We decided not to listen, since we didn’t want to hear our father trying to value us for less, while some stranger extolled our virtues. In the end, a deal was struck and we heard the clink of coins changing hands.

  We heard the door open and close and we felt our cage lifted up. “You better be the fiercest fucking cricket in the world!” Our father said, and we were shocked to hear him use a word that our mother had always forbidden him.