Free The Cockroaches of Stay More by Donald Harington Page A

within range of her sniff-whips, so assumed she had reached Holy House and perhaps actually entered the cookroom. Would she ever see her parents again? She tuned in the area of Carlott where He had been lying, and discovered that still He lay. The night passed on.
    Continually vigilant toward her siblings, she kept count and discovered one missing. She called Jubal to her, and said, “Jubal, I caint find Joe Don.”
    Jubal replied, “Something et him.”
    These were sad words. It was sorrowful news when, if a child westered, the reason was announced as “Something he et.” It was more sorrowful if the last two words were transposed. Tish tuned her sniffwhips and picked up the scent of a green frog, Hyla cinerea , but it was climbing back up whatever tree it had come down out of to make a meal of Joe Don. Tish called the rest of the siblings in out of the yard, and told the ones who did not already know that their brother Joe Don had gone west, into the crop of a green frog. Everyone grieved together for a few minutes, and several of the older children declared, “Hit’s the Lord’s will,” but Tish knew that the Lord’s will, at this moment under the influence of alcohol, wasn’t.
    “Now tell us a bedtime story, Sis,” Jubal requested, knowing they needed something to take their minds off the westering of Joe Don, and the siblings chorused, “Yep, a story, yep a story Sis.”
    She gathered them to her and began, “One time…” She had learned to begin all her stories this way. Such a beginning carried the suggestion not only that the story being told had occurred once upon a time long, long ago, but also that it had occurred only once, a one-time-only unique event. She searched her store of favorite stories, and decided to tell them one about the Mockroach. “One time there was a little roosterroach. He disobeyed his pappy and momma, who told him to be sure and go to sleep at the first peep of light, and to sleep all day. He wanted to stay awake during the day, so’s he could see what was happenin in the world while roosterroaches sleep.”
    And she told how the foolhardy roosterroach sallied forth into the daylight and found himself among the diurnal creatures who prey and eat by light, birds of all kinds who fly by day, and snakes and lizards who roam by day, and four-footed animals like squirrels who prowl by day. All of these monsters would have eaten the roosterroach, but he was protected by the Mockroach, who had a test for him.
    The Mockroach protected the roosterroach so that he could stay east in the daylight long enough to decide whether he truly wanted to be a day-bug or go on being a night-bug as Man had intended him to be.
    The world of daylight was wonderful. Not only was it full of Man, and His Woman and Children, all running around and working and playing in the sunshine, but it was full of open flowers that close at night, and the music of birds that sing only by day, not as sweet as the nightingale but more of them, and there were colors everywhere, not just the hundred grays and blues of night, but yellows and greens and reds!
    The roosterroach thought everything was lovely, but the Mock-roach told him that if he wanted to remain a day-bug he would have to decide to be changed either into a day-bug who eats grass or a day-bug who eats other bugs: a herbivore or a carnivore.
    Of course no roosterroach had ever eaten grass or eaten another bug, at least not a live one. The Mockroach made him try a sample of each. The roosterroach chewed and chewed on the blade of grass, but he couldn’t swallow it and spat it out. The Mockroach gave him the head of a fly to eat, and he chewed it and chewed it, and swallowed it, but it made him sick, and he puked it up.
    The Mockroach told the roosterroach that if he could learn to eat grass, he could become a grasshopper, and dance and sing in the meadows and pastures all day long, all summer long, a happy pastoral life. He could jump great distances and fly