Free The Cockroaches of Stay More by Donald Harington Page B

with bright yellow wings, and it would be an easy, idyllic existence.
    And if the roosterroach could learn to eat other insects, he could become a praying mantis with long powerful forelegs to seize any small thing that flew his way. He could stay put and not have to run around, and could eat anything that he caught, any insect that flew or crawled, and even lizards, frogs, and small birds! The mantis could eat the grasshopper, but the grasshopper couldn’t eat the mantis.
    Tish paused, and looked around her at her forty-two brothers and sisters, who were hanging on her every word with their mouths agape in wonder and their small brains almost visibly churning. “Children,” she asked them, “which would you choose to be?”
    “The grasshopper!” said Jubal, but he was drowned out by nearly all the others, who were clamoring, “The mantis! The mantis! The praying mantis!”
    Tish would have given her story a different ending, if they had voted for the grasshopper. She would have told how the roosterroach was changed into a grasshopper and enjoyed a truly Arcadian life, which, however, ended when he was eaten by a meadow lark. But because they wanted the mantis, she said, “Okay. The Mockroach changed the roosterroach into a praying mantis and told him to pray to him, then hopped on his back and said, ‘Giddyup! You’ve got to be my horsey!’ and the poor mantis had to carry the Mockroach everywhere he went, forevermore. That’s why Man calls the mantis, ‘devil’s horse.’”
    The children were downcast with disappointment at the fate of the mantis but, Tish was certain as she ran them off to their beds, they would think twice before ever wanting to be changed into anything.
    She herself, if she could be changed, would have chosen to become a cecropia moth, and remain nocturnal. The cecropia had a wingspan of nearly seven inches and was the most beautiful insect Tish had ever seen. But she would wait until the children were older to tell them the story of the cecropia. The best thing about it was that once it was grown up, the cecropia didn’t have to choose between eating vegetables or being a predator. The adult cecropia ate nothing. Its only purpose was love.

INSTAR THE SECOND:

    Maiden No More

Chapter eight

    S am waited in the weeds beside the porch of Doc Swain’s clinic for the Loafer’s Court to break up. He would have been welcome to join them—no Ingledew was shy toward his fellow males the way he was toward females—but Sam didn’t want to have it known that he was becoming progressively deaf. He hated even to let Doc himself know, but that was now inevitable. Sam would wait until the others, including his father, had gone.
    His father was the last to leave, in the wee hours, well past midnight. It seemed he would never leave. Squire Hank and Doc Swain could talk all night, and often did, and often simultaneously, neither listening to the other, but neither needing to, since they agreed on almost everything and never argued. Once Squire Hank had remarked to his son, explaining his nightly attendance at Doc Swain’s, “Hit shore beats listenin to myself talk.”
    In his fifth and sixth instars Sam had sometimes followed his father to the porch of Doc Swain’s clinic, and had listened to them talking with what struck Sam as an uncanny ability to appear to listen to the other’s words while speaking one’s own. At these get-togethers, Sam had learned all there was to know about the glorious past of Stay More, and almost all there was to know about the eventual coming of The Bomb. Sam suspected that Doc Swain knew a few things about The Bomb which he would not even share with Squire Hank.
    Sam could not hear these final words that his father spoke to Doc Swain:
    “Best be gittin on down back. Come go home with me.”
    Nor could he hear Doc Swain’s reply:
    “Reckon not tonight. Stay more and spend the day with me.”
    But Sam had heard this exchange countless times when he still had his