The Lightening Bug

The Lightning Bug

The old woman kneeled in her garden, speaking into a cordless phone, her wide hat concealing her wrinkled face from the bright April sun. "Of course I will not go," she said, pulling a long weed from the side of the pomegranate tree. She was on her knees, cradling the telephone to her ear with her shoulder. "No, I did get the message from her, but I have a lot to do out here in the yard, so I better just stay in tonight." She took off her gloves, allowing her wet palms to breathe the spring air again. The lady on the phone must have finished saying what needed to be said, because Mary pressed a button on the phone and laid it down in the grass beside her.
She rose, slowly at first, pulling on the cane, until at last she stood, taking the back of her arm to wipe the sweat from her forehead. She stepped back from the flower bed, to gaze intently on her progress. Actually, there was nothing more to weed; she had just unintentionally told a lie on the telephone. She left the phone and the gloves to rest in the bright green of the grass and she headed over to the porch.
Climbing the steps, she easily grew tired, and decided to rest her body in the little chair inside the screened porch. The porch faced the yard, and a side of it faced the little carport and the other two sides were actually walls of the house, covered over with vinyl siding. On the carport, shaded grey by the screen, there sat parked a white Chervrolet. Beside the car sat a little food dish, full of kibbles for the old birddog named Sylvester. Her husband had given her Sylvester as a gift on their fiftieth wedding anniversary, which had been at least fifteen years ago, she reasoned. She, sitting in her little chair, away from the gnats and bugs whizzing through the air just above the tulips. Staring at the foodbowl, she thought back, to a summer night a while ago.
It had been a May evening, maybe June; and she had just come up to the carport from the lower yard, with her grandson, who at that time was around five years old. He was a wet tangle of blonde curls in a dinosaur tshirt. With his big black eyes, he spotted the lighteneing bugs emerge from their hiding places into the pale pink sky. He skipped off, back into the yard to chase a few, leaving her standing on the cement of the carport with wet garden clogs and a runny nose. She pulled out a tissue, to graze her nostrils with, and half mindeldly she glanced to the corner of the carport, beside the Chevrolet. There she saw Sylvester's bowl filled with stale dogfood. She sat on the half wall that marked the boundary of the carport and the yard, and she listened to her grandson huff and threaten with the delight the lightning bugs, as he jumped over tree stumps and daisies to catch just one of the little creatures. Out of the corner of her eye as she sat there, on the halfwall, she caught a rat. He was about the size of her foot, she reasoned, as he sneaked out from under the Chevrolet. She did not scream, although she had license to do so; as many people do when frightened by pests on their carports. She smiled to herself, proud that she had not screamed, and she glared curiously at the little intruder, who next stepped over to the foodbowl and proceeded to grab a single chunk of the dogfood. He turned it over in his little hands, inspecting it. Suddenly, from under the car yet again, there emerged another rodent. This one, slightly smaller; but for all it lacked in size, it certainly made up for in sass as it rushed over to the other rat and grabbed the chunk of dogfood. A round of squeals and tumbles ensued, with the smaller one making off with the kibble at last. The old lady heard her grandson coming nearer to the porch. The large rat looked stoically after his lost kibble. The grandson soon was visible in the corner of the yard, with his hands cupped, and squealing in delight. The old lady smiled at the rat, partly out of sympathy. The rat turned and finally saw her; stopping for a moment to look upon her muddy pants and linen shirt, stained with sweat, and her face, etching itself with wrinkles. He seemed to know she was a friend, not an enemy, perhaps by the glisten of love in her eye. He calmly grabbed another chunk of dogfood from the bowl and made off with it through the yard, just as her grandson came clunking onto the cement with his sneakers covered in claymud.
That day had been a while ago, she reasoned, as she sat in her chair in the screened in porch. She tried to count how many on her left hand. She reasoned about six years; because she remembered another day too.
She had been down in her garden, when her now deceased husband came storming off the porch; it's screendoor slamming madly behind him. He flailed his arms, which was the only reason she looked up, and so she stood quickly to see what was the matter. His face was aghast as he reached her. He would later remark that he hadn't ran that fast since WWII. He cried as he babbled about a schoolbus and a drunk driver, and little Anthony, their grandson, crushed in the road at his home in New Haven. She stood up. She felt a clod of dirt rise up in her throat as she slapped him. "Shut up old man!" She cried, beating the old man's chest with clenched fists until she fell into his arms, with an angry frown covering her face, and tears of loss as they began to stain her cheeks. She cried out to God, for it not be so; for some mistake to have been made. Her husband let a tear fall down, and she saw it, and he knew she had seen it. She knew nothing would be the same between them ever again, as he quickly left her, and turned to tinker in the garage. He would grieve the way he had been raised.
On the day of the funeral, they drove back to the house. Her husband came around after he had parked the car in the carport, and opened her door, helped her out. She could feel more tears coming on when she noticed her mother's little, blue green, depression glass jar sitting silently on the halfwall. It was dusty from the gravel driveway, but clean enough that she could make out the carcass of a lightning bug inside. Surrounded by a few lonely blades of beige shriveledged grass, the brown carcass stared at her.
That night, she and her husband sat on the porch together after dinner. They were together, and alone, for the first time since the death. Saying nothing, she wondered if the large rat would come and gather a kibble. When she broke the silence, she asked if he had seen the rat. He remarked yes, that he had indeed seen "the whole lot of 'em. All under the porch, and in the shed. They've been getting into the dog's food," he said. He then detailed that yesterday he had left out poison for them while she was at the funeral home for the receiving of friends over the body. He'd found a large one, "About the size of your foot, Mary, under the car, dead this mornin'."
Now, as she sat inside the screened porch in her little chair, she couldn't believe how long ago it all seemed. The rats, the bus accident, the funeral, her husband's suicide. She glanced over to the new Chevrolet, where the dogbowl still sat, as loyal as it ever had been. The dog had been gone for a month now. The food in the bowl was stale kibbles that she had replaced the day before, as the other had turned to brown mush, from the rain filling it in Sylvester's absence.
She slowly made her way inside and took a shower, fixed her hair, and came out and climbed into the new car. As she backed out of the driveway to meet her friend who'd called earlier about a dinner at the church, she noticed a small rat come to the dish and grab a small chunk, and climb up onto the halfwall that seperated the carport from the yard. It ran along the length of the wall, accidentally knocking an old jar off the ledge. A lightening bug carcass blew out of the shards of glass with the soft breeze the old woman created as she drove down the gravel driveway.