Cicada (2 page)

His voice boomed through the thick air of the modest chapel and knocked stuttering and shuttered eyelids back open with his every exaltation.

“We’ve all witnessed a crow pilfering,” he continued, but then became lost in his own segue amongst the sweat-matted index cards that simultaneously stuck together and fell apart in his damp hands.

Those in attendance who prayed during the service mostly did so to plead with Jesus Christ to send them a ceiling fan or two. More than once over the past several services, smudged notes had been left crammed in the suggestion box to beg that such salvation be purchased from Sears & Roebuck. Both the prayers and printed requests went unanswered, however. Little did the wilting congregation know when they tithed, but the truth was that the minister’s massive gambling debts would be settled long before luxuries such as ceiling fans for the First Baptist House of Worship could be considered.

The minister caved-in to the restless coughing and sighs of discomfort spreading quickly through the pews after a few moments more of his failed attempts to find his place. The women in attendance madly fanned themselves and their antsy children, while the man of the cloth before them flew on by the seat of what some folks called his, “come hell or high-water britches.”

“Y’all seen those crows go at another bird’s nest of fledglings. Eating some, pecking their eyes out first, and then tossing the rest of the babies out when they got their fill. Killing just for spite!” He shouted back open a few more of his charges’ briefly closed eyes. “You’ve probably seen it. That’s evil, friends!”

He was wrong, of course. Although the minister, Joshua Lee Scott, correctly described a common behavior of crows, Minister Scott failed to decipher the true motive behind it. Unfortunately for his flock, his luck at comprehending the Good Book didn’t fare much better.

As even Timothy Sayre knew, crows didn’t kill the young of other birds as an act of malice. They did so merely to cull the population of other species that competed with them for the same limited resources. It was a matter of survival, not sin. He’d read all about it in National Geographic.

“But, man,” the erroneous minister all but sang, and then paused for effect before going on, “isn’t free from the consequences of his evil deeds like the crow is. You see, folks, God made man special. The crow is evil, but he doesn’t know that he is the tool of....”

Here it comes
, Timothy thought from his place on the outskirts of the third row.

“Satan!” Minister Scott roared to the rafters.

Timothy Sayre was doing everything in his power to keep from giggling himself out of his pants at one of the most ridiculous men he knew. Seated between his mother and father, little Buckshot couldn’t understand why the minister pointed his finger towards Heaven whenever he invoked the dark lord’s name. It was one of the many confounding questions that, for one reason or another, the boy would never get around to asking or getting an answer to.

The minister continued, “I’m sure each of y’all has heard of the troubles they’ve been having out over in Ternsville. Them good folks have been suffering quite a great deal. Wrestling with...Satan!”

A few people mumbled, but it was hard to say whether they were in agreement with Minister Scott’s assessment, or whether he’d struck some other chord. Somewhere in the back, a child began to cry as an elderly gentleman began coughing in earnest.

“Now, I don’t claim to know what the good Lord has on His mind. I ain’t privy...to what the Heavenly Father has planned. So it’s not my place to judge those Christians of Ternsville in their hour of trial. But what I do know, friends, is that if we aren’t careful...if we fail to be vigilant...then we just might find ourselves caught up just like they is over in Ternsville.”

He forgot himself, riled up in the moment as he was, and sopped his sweat-dappled forehead with his soggy notes.

“And that’s why I say we need to put a stop to things here and now. I say we let Ternsville keep the disease they’re spreading right there with them where it got its start. The crow doesn’t take up the nest with the mourning dove, and I don’t think them coloreds from Ternsville need bother themselves with thinking we want their kind coming to roost here in Melby.”

A startled murmur rose from the left side of the pews as Peter Kane rose and directed his wife and two young daughters to the door.

“Mr. Kane, the sermon’s not concluded. Won’t you stay to hear God’s good word?” Minister Scott admonished from the pulpit.

Without bothering to look back, Peter Kane said plainly for all to hear, “I don’t reckon I’ll brook your
sermons
no more. Stopped being God’s word about two minutes ago.”

A welcome gust of outside air and the glare of the midmorning sun washed over the congregation as the Kane family exited the church.

Buckshot squinted, watching his father’s expression in an effort to decipher just what all the commotion was about. He got nothing.

The road back home was hardly that at all. It was a dusty, bumpy, pothole-filled kidney-buster, made no better by John Sayre’s lead foot. Buckshot bounced around the backseat like a careening pinball in an overly-abused machine with no tilt.

“John, can you please slow it down a little?” Frances Sayre implored for the second time since they’d torn out of the church parking lot.

Her husband considered her for a moment. She locked eyes with him but neither of their expressions changed. His wide jaw stayed clenched and some heavy burden still weighed on his brow. Frances looked spent. After the briefest moment, John Sayre huffed out a sigh and let his tight grip on the wheel go limp. He gave up his maltreatment of the accelerator as well, and the speedometer dropped below thirty for the first time in four miles.

“I’m beginning to wonder why we even go to that church anymore,” Frances said after another half mile bounced by.

“We gonna stop going to church?” Buckshot shouted, hurtling up from the backseat for a split second before another pothole sent him back the way he’d came.“Keep yer seat, son,” John Sayre said into the rearview.

“Yes, sir.”

“I don’t blame the Kanes one bit; do you?” Frances continued.

“I got to run back into town this afternoon. You need anything?” John asked. His foot bore down once more on the accelerator ever so slightly.

“Can I come?” Buckshot begged.

“No,” his parents said in unison. They exchanged a glance having done so.

Almost unbelievably, the sound of the ubiquitous cicadas managed to pulsate just above the engine and grinding tires.

“I thought we’d have roast for supper,” Frances said as she resigned to stare out the window at the drab cotton fields wavering in the heat. “I’ll roast myself cooking it, but the meat’ll go to waste otherwise.”

John Sayre nodded his approval wordlessly and tightened his grip on the wheel a little more.

Chapter Three

“Sixty-one...sixty-two...sixty-three,” Timothy Buckshot Sayre recited as the pennies slipped from his fingers and plinked onto the kitchen table.

It was the ninth time he’d counted them in the past two days. Except for the time before last, when he’d somehow gotten sixty-four, he came up with just sixty-three every time. He stared dejectedly at the little copper mound of Lincoln profiles and wheat stalks. Here and there, just a few steel remnants from the war years poked out in contrast. He checked them to be sure they weren’t dull dimes, just as he’d done the night before. No fairy had arrived to perform such a magical exchange, however. Finally, he cupped one hand and bulldozed the lot into the oversized pocket that covered the top of his dungaree overalls.

He was sure he needed at least a dollar even. He calculated on his fingers to confirm it would take at least another week and a half of saving his milk money to reach that goal. That was a thought his mounting impatience couldn’t bear.

The scent of the farm—hay, diesel, and manure, among other things—mingled on the air drifting through the windows and kitchen screen door. Somewhere off in the unseen distance, the grumble of a tractor rose and fell as it bullied the earth. Timothy also heard the clunk of his father’s work boots on the floor above his head, so he knew it wasn’t him, but rather Ben, the field hand recently brought on to help out, tilling the soil out in the far fields. His father wasn’t normally so late to rise, but with the heat he’d had to pace himself throughout the day. As a result, he’d fallen behind and begun working after supper sometimes late into the night.

“How does cereal sound?” Frances asked her son as she sidled through the swinging kitchen door with a wicker basket of laundry on her hip.

“I want bacon ‘n’ eggs.”

“Not in this heat. Not on your life.”

“Fine,” Buckshot moaned and then blurted, “Mama, can I have my lunch money for ta-morrow ta-day?”

The laundry basket of blue jeans and work shirts, which reeked of the chicken coop, landed with a thud and clatter near the back screen door against the washtub and corrugated tin scrubbing board.

“To-morrow. To-day,” she corrected.

“Tomorrow. Today,” he repeated, as he knew she expected him to do. “Can I?”

“What in the world for?”

“On account of Bo is gonna beat Casey if he don’t pay up an’ so I was gonna borrow Casey the money.”

“Timothy David Sayre, you’re going to be the death of me, child,” Frances said.

She put the cereal bowl, spoon, and milk in front of the boy already tearing into the fresh box of cornflakes.

“Huh?” her boy asked simply.

“What does Casey paying off Bo have anything to do with you?”

“Bo and Casey was playing marbles and Casey said he’d play pennies for points instead of trading aggies, but he done lost an’ it turned out he didn’t really have no pennies at all in the first place.”

“That so?”

Cereal flakes spilled over the rim of the bowl and onto the table as the boy went on. His mother took the milk from him to ensure that it didn’t do the same.

“I figured I’d borrow Casey the money he owed, because he’s my best friend an’ Bo’s gonna tan his ass if he don’t pay up at recess ta-day.”

Exasperation creased Frances’s soft features. “What’ve I told you about the filth talk?”

“Daddy cusses.”

“I beg your pardon?”

Buckshot heeded his mother’s temper and steered back to the topic of his friend’s dilemma.

“Bo was gonna beat ‘im just fer playing on a welch, but Miss Kyle done broke ‘em up yesterday. Casey can’t run forever, though. Least, that’s what Bo says.”

“First of all, you’d be
loaning
Casey the money, not
borrowing
,” Frances said. “And secondly, why is it your place to pay off Casey’s debts? Doesn’t he get an allowance?”

“Yeah, he gets allowance. But he done spent all it pitching pennies at lunch.”

“That’s not spending, Timmy. That’s losing. For the love of…that child is literally throwing his money away.”

The boy shrugged and dug into his bowl of cornflakes. Frances took a seat beside him and began to pick the errant flakes from the tablecloth.

“Son, it’s very sweet of you to want to help your friend. But sometimes the Christian way to help someone is to let them learn how to help themselves. If you go around your whole life letting other folks get you out of your troubles, then what can you do if someday they aren’t around anymore? Understand?”

He hadn’t been listening. Instead, he was thinking about what he really wanted the money for.

“
Understand
?” she repeated.

“Huh? Oh, yeah.”

“Why doesn’t Casey ask if he can do more chores at home to get a little more allowance to pay off Bo?”

“Yeah...he could do that, I guess. But his daddy would beat ‘im even worse than a whooping from Bo if he know’d he was gambling. He ain’t supposed to gamble no more.”

“Who’s gambling? I know my boy knows better,” John Sayre said as he entered the room. His voice was coarse and sounded angry, as it almost always did whether his temper was riled or not. His sudden and unexpected entrance caused both his wife and son to start.

“Nobody’s gambling,” Frances sighed. “We’re just having a little talk. Now what do you want for breakfast?” She stood and tried her best to avoid the conversation her husband had begun.

“Well, somebody sure is gambling,” John Sayre said, cocking his head to give his son the look they both understood. Of late, Buckshot saw it all too often.

Frances stayed at her son’s defense. “You know what happens when you eavesdrop? You get half the story. And like my pappy liked to say, half a story ain’t worth the spit it takes to tell it.”

“What with all the whispering between you two, eavesdropping is just about the only way a body hears what’s going on in this house.”

Buckshot buried his gaze in his cornflakes and shoveled the spoon as quickly as he could swallow. After a few mouthfuls under his father’s hard stare, he caved in.

“Casey’s gambling,” Buckshot reported.

“You ain’t pitching pennies with them boys, are you?”

“Na-uh. Casey lost to Bo playing marbles.”

“I guess you’ll have scrambled eggs?” Frances tried once more to end the matter.

“I would a had scrambled,” Buckshot whined. Frances pursed her lips—that was her look the boy also knew all too well—and so he turned back to his cereal.

“Sounds great, hon,” John Sayre answered while keeping the pressure on Buckshot. “Well, I know you’re not gambling, on account of I done told ya that ya ain’t to be doing such. Right?” A beat passed without an answer. “
Right
?”

“Yes, sir.”

The tractor out in the fields was far off and its toil conjoined with the rumblings of even more distant thunder rolling in from the horizon. From the clothesline a mockingbird sang out like the car horn of the Sayre family Buick, giving Rusty, the old tabby on the porch, pause to survey the sky. But the threat of another pecking was just that—no more than a threat—as the bird fell onto the wind and sailed somewhere beyond the grove of oak trees bordering the backyard. With the presence of the approaching thunderstorm pressing in more and more, the mysterious cicadas went silent.