The Cockroaches of Stay More (21 page)

No, Man did not care, but there was a godhead greater than Man, some Cosmic Immutable Force Who had planned the whole world more ably than Man could do, and Who had determined that incest was bad for you. This Force was not susceptible to pistol bullets, or even to The Bomb. This Force wanted the roosterroaches of Holy House to move into Parthenon, if need be, after puny Man had westered, or, even if He didn’t wester but took up with the Woman, or, even if the Woman moved into Holy House instead of having Him move into Parthenon…whatever, the Force clearly wanted Chid and his followers in Parthenon.

But Brother Tichborne ought to have his contingencies ready; he ought to know his options and be prepared for the time when he would have to counsel his congregation to cease worshipping Man and begin worshipping Woman instead.

As for himself, what was to keep him from worshipping the Force, calling it God, and reserving to It alone the honorific of “Lord”? He didn’t have to tell anyone else about God. Indeed, it would be better if he kept God as his own private, personal deity, just as Tish Dingletoon had made a personal deity out of the Fate-Thing. The image of God, in Chid’s imagination, was not that of Man at all, but rather an amorphous arthropod with six mighty gitalongs, an infinitely vast head, thorax, and abdomen, and all-knowing sniffwhips.

Would it be hypocrisy for Chid to pay lip service to Man and secretly petition God? All through the night and into the next day, Chid lay in the snug confines of the dirt dobber’s nest and ruminated about this matter. The following night, he left his hermitage: he had to comfort the survivors, arrange for further funeralizations, and confer sainthood upon those westered by bullets. He also had to find a bite to eat.

This latter gave him the most difficulty. Visiting the cookroom, he found that it had been stripped, although several fellows were scrambling about trying to scare up some victuals.

“Morsel, boys,” Chid greeted them. “Slim pickins tonight?”

“Morsel, yoreself, Reverend,” Tolbert Duckworth said. “Aint no pickins of no kind. There aint a gaum of grub to be found nowheres. If rain was syrup, we’d all be gorged, but there aint enough sup to make a housefly floop his snoot.”

“Hasn’t the Lord supped at all?” Chid asked.

“The Lord aint riz, a bit,” Tolbert answered. “He jist lays thar, west to the world.”

“I’d better have a look,” Chid declared, and hied himself toward the loafing room, where the reading lamp, still burning from the night before, cast its beam vacantly out upon the scene of last night’s carnage. The floor was now empty except for the three new bullet holes. Chid peered down into one of them, and stuck one of his sniffwhips down into it, and could detect only the faintest trace of whatever molecules Ila Frances had become. He made the sign of the pin over the hole, and then raised a sniffwhip just in time to detect a roosterroach climbing the side of the cheer-of-ease. The roosterroach had a suspicion of food between his touchers! Chid recognized him as Doc Swain, clawing his way slowly up the fabric on three gitalongs. Chid wanted to call out, “Hey, Doc, where’d you get them eats?” but he held his tongue and decided instead to follow stealthily and see where Doc was taking the provender.

Chid climbed up to one arm of the cheer-of-ease and gazed down upon the cushion, where Doc was urging the food, an ancient sop of bland white bread, upon an injured, recumbent roosterroach whom Chid identified as Squire Sam Ingledew. Squire Sam could scarcely move at all, but managed to raise his head and nibble at the sop and swallow.

Chid realized that injured Squire Sam must have been the culprit who had climbed the Lord’s person, causing the Lord to shoot himself in his own gitalong. Of course! Squire Sam must have done it of a purpose, not accidental-like: his father had been in the line of fire, perhaps the Lord’s intended target.
Hmm
, said Chid to himself,
I should of knowed; nobody but an Ingledew would’ve been both fool enough and strong enough to try a stunt like that. Hmm
, hummed Chid, trying to determine from a distance the extent of Squire Sam’s injuries.
Looks like he’s pretty well banged up. Hmm. Don’t look like he could get up and go back to Parthenon and help his father keep anyone who wanted to from barging in and taking over the place. Hmm. I could round up the deacons and elders of the church and we could just walk into Parthenon and run old Squire Hank off. HHHMMM
.

Chid hummed so loudly that he drew the attention of Doc Swain, who turned and caught a glimpse of him before Chid was able to drop out of sight down the side of the cheer. Well, that was no skin off Chid’s sniffwhip; Doc couldn’t do anything; Doc wasn’t in much better shape than his patient.

Chid did not even stop to examine the Lord, or give Him more than a glance, just enough to see that He was unconscious upon His couch, sprawled akimbo and supine and agape, an empty bourbon bottle’s neck clasped in the fingers of the hand that had dropped to the floor. For the first time in his life, Chid felt a sort of contempt for the Lord, the drunken fool.

“Wal, Brother Duckworth,” Chid said, back in the cookroom, “I do believe you’re right. The Lord is west to the world, and no tellin but what He might actually and completely wester off.”

“Aw, naw!” exclaimed Tolbert Duckworth. “Aint no chance He could do that. The
Lord
completely wester?!? Why, the whole world would wester afore the Lord Hisself would! Naw, Reverend, He’s jist sleepin another one off, as usual.”

The other fellers in the cookroom, mostly all good Crustians, nodded in agreement but with hesitant conviction, as if waiting to see if the preacher would persuade them otherwise.

“Brethering,” Chid said solemnly, “our Lord is all-powerful, He is mighty, He is our rock and our shield, the Lord is our fortress and our strength, yea, Man abideth though the mountains shake and the waters roar—” The preacher’s words were underscored by a renewed pouring down of rain outside the house. “Our Man is our refuge and our ark, He is our deliverer and our provider and restorer, praise His Holy Name!”

“Praise HIM!” shouted the brethren, and “Amen!” and “Lord be praised!” and “Blessed be the Name of the Lord!”

“But—” Chid interrupted their hosannas, “though He provideth for us everlastingly, yet might not the case be that with His right gitalong shot nearly plumb off they’s
no
way He could git up and feed Hisself, let alone that He could feed the rest of us?” Chid let his question mark hover and flutter and cast uncertainty upon their faces. In one fell swoop Chid was making immortal Man into a mortal, and there was no turning back. “The Man is a worse drunkard than ary a feller amongst us!” Chid pointed out truthfully. “Why, jist in the past twenty-four hours, since He shot Hisself in the gitalong, He’s done already drunk enough hard bourbon whiskey to wester every roosterroach in Stay More! No tellin
when
He’ll wake up! No tellin
if
He’ll wake up! Could be He won’t
never
wake up! Then what’ll we do? Huh? Then where will we be? Huh? I ast you, brethering, what’ll we be without that
Man
?!?”

The roosterroaches silently stared at him and then at one another, with expressions of anxiety and fear, and perhaps with no little wonder or dismay at Chid’s apostasy. One of the younger ones, Jim Bob Murrison, offered timidly, “But we’re all gonna go live on His right hand when we wester….”

“What good’s His right hand gonna do us if it’s westered?” Chid asked. No one answered this rhetorical question, and he continued, “Fellers, I say we had better start thinkin about movin into Parthenon!”

The murmur went through the crowd: “
Partheeny
!”

“There’s scads of room and food galore!” one of them shouted.

“Right!” said Chid. “So what are we waitin for?”

“We’re waiting for the rain to stop, Reverend,” said Tolbert Duckworth. “Aint no way we could make it to Partheeny in this rain.”

Chid sighed. “That’s a fact, Tol. But I’d ’preciate it iffen ye would git all the other elders and deacons together, to have a special meetin with me right soon, tonight.”

The gathering of foodseeking roosterroaches disbanded, to return to their homes in the other rooms of Holy House, in the Frock or the Smock. Their wives and children were greatly disappointed that they returned empty-touchered, without any food. The fellows told their wives of Brother Tichborne’s shocking reversal, but the wives, when they heard of his plan to move into Parthenon, realized that it was not so much backsliding as a new understanding of the Gospel made necessary by the prospect this time of great famine. For his part, Chid hoped he could soon deliver a rousing sermon to one and all, setting forth the Lord’s shortcomings and inadequacies and worthlessness, and explaining the need for worshipping Woman instead. Yes: Chid looked forward to working up a real sniffwhiplashing peroration on the subject.

Chapter twenty-four

D
oc, you know I can’t hear, so just answer some yes-or-no questions for me, all right? Just nod or shake your head. First question: am I going to stay east?” A nod, belated and hesitant. “How long do I have to keep lying here? No, that’s not a yes-or-no question. Do I have to stay here all of tonight?” A nod. “All of tomorrow night too?” Another nod. “All of the night after that too?” A shrug, a shake of the head, a nod of the head, and another shrug. “Well, have I got any permanent injuries or impairments?” A nod. “What? Where?” A touch of the sniffwhip to each tailprong. “Oh. My prongs. They were already impaired. Nothing else?” A shake. “Doc, did I cause the Man to miss His aim? Did he hit my dad?” A shake. “Did He hit Tish?” A shake. “Why isn’t He sitting down in this cheer any more? Why am I staying here, when He might come and sit down on me and squash me? That’s not a yes-or-no, is it?” A shake. “Has He left Holy House?” A shake. “Is He out in the cookroom?” A shake. “Is He in His ponder room?” A shake.

“SAM…” Doc shouted at his tailprong, then pantomimed what he wanted Sam to do: wiggle his fore gitalongs. Okay. Wiggle his middle gitalongs. Okay. Wiggle his hind gitalongs. Okay. All six of his gitalongs could wiggle. “NOW SCROOCH OVER THIS AWAY, REAL EASY AND SLOW,” Doc ordered him, and led Sam very slowly and carefully to the edge of the cushion, a distance of several inches, inches of agony and pain. Then Doc pointed. From this vantage, Sam could see out across the room, he could see the Man’s couch, with the Man supine upon it, akimbo and agape.

“Is He just west drunk?” Sam asked. Doc shook his head. “He’s not
west
, is He?” Sam asked. Doc shook his head, then brought two sniffwhips close together, to signify “a little” or “near” or “almost.” Doc pointed to his own gitalong, then pointed at the Man. Sam looked. The Man’s gitalong, divested of His shoe, was swaddled in strips of cloth, soaked with blood. Sam understood. “The last bullet…” he said. “The last bullet didn’t hit Dad or Tish but hit Him in His own gitalong?” Doc nodded, he nodded and nodded. And smiled a bit. Sam couldn’t help grinning a bit himself. “I see,” said Sam.

In a flash the scene of the night before returned to him, the impulsiveness of his own deed, the precariousness, the harrowing moment: the quick dashing climb straight up the Man’s back, across His collar, up through His hair to the summit of His head, then clutching onto His forelock until just the right moment, when he dropped down, at just the right angle, to seize the eyelash and then the eyelid, hoping that the right eye was the
right
eye, the sighting eye, not the left, as is sometimes the case with binocular shootists, and then the awful stunning pain of the back of the Man’s hand slamming against Sam, knocking him off, and through the air, and into the cheer, where he had lain ever since. The Man had been his adversary, and still was, and Sam shouldn’t feel any pity for him, but still there it was: this wave of fellow-feeling.

“Isn’t it dangerous for Him to be in a coma from booze when he’s so badly hurt?” Sam asked Doc, and Doc nodded vigorously. “Can you do anything for Him?” Doc shook his head, sadly. “Couldn’t you go and tell others what the situation is, and maybe get some help to try and wake Him?” Doc slowly nodded his head. “Where’s my dad?” Sam asked. “Find my dad, and get him to help, too.” Doc nodded, and then lay his sniffwhips down heavily upon Sam’s, indicating he should rest and be still. Then Doc left.

Only after Doc had gone did Sam begin to think of an endless string of additional questions that he wanted to ask. Did anyone else know that Sam was convalescing up here? Where was Tish? What had become of her after the incident? She had been with Archy Tichborne; had she fled with him? What had become of Tichborne’s father, Chid, who had instigated the disaster? Perhaps “instigated” was the wrong word; yet Sam, being able only to watch but not hear the minister’s ranting exhortation of the mob, had had the impression that Chid had
willed
the shooting.

Sam began to feel sorry for himself, not so much because he was weak and unable to get out and discover what was going on in the world, but because he was deaf and had no business trying to discover, let alone control things. He should remain an observer, not be a participant. But if he had not acted when he did, either his father or Tish might be west at this very moment. How had he known that the third bullet was directed at one of them? How had he known the instant when he needed to spoil the Man’s aim? Maybe, he told himself, there
was
a Fate-Thing, and he had been acting as the Fate-Thing’s agent.

If so, it was not his father but Tish whom the Fate-Thing was protecting. The Fate-Thing had great plans for her. If nothing else, she was destined to become the mother of the next generation of Ingledews, perhaps a generation of Ingledews who would lead Stay More through the post-Bomb period and pave the way for a new Golden Age. Perhaps his job, his whole reason for existence, had been simply to plant that marble in her. Perhaps all the countless meals he had found and eaten had been simply sustenance to keep him alive for that responsibility of propagation.