The Cockroaches of Stay More Read Online Free PDF Page B

don’t have a Ingledew’s pecker on him! Haw-haw!”
    “Now looky here: I won’t march another inch with you’uns if ye say any jokes about him!” Tish cried, and cast down her eyes and her sniffwhips, afraid to hold them up and see if indeed by some hideous chance her father’s tallywhacker might be extending itself or his tergal gland might be leaking affy-dizzy. She would be mortified beyond hope if he were even involuntarily exposing himself or releasing affy-dizzy in the presence of all these females. Tish could not look, nor smell, and she concentrated upon the steps of her own six gitalongs, lest one of them hit a twig or miss a step, and thus, by ignoring whatever spectacle her sire was making of himself (in time she could no longer hear his voice), she managed to continue with the double parade to its conclusion at the Platform, as they called the one door of the Ford Fairlane which Man had removed from its hinges and laid into the weeds, where it served as a pavilion for dances as well as political rallies and an occasional pulpit for Brother Tichborne.
    Tish Dingletoon at this time of her life was not yet a beauty, still retaining some of the awkwardness of her pre-imago girlishness: you could sometimes see her fifth instar in her cheeks, or her third instar sparkling from her eyes, and even her second instar would flit over the curves of her mandibles now and then. She assumed that she was just one more Dingletoon female, no more, no less: an attractive, even “cute” country girl, but not a “looker.”
    Nothing more was seen, heard or sniffed of Jack Dingletoon in his sportive conduct at the end of the train, and when the parade entered the glade of the Cars, its allotted and magic space (all creatures having a space their very own, wherein they are safe from harm or molestation), the dancing began. The maidens climbed the Platform and formed themselves into “squares” of four and eight for a play-party dance, without partners, or with girl partners, at least in the beginning. Later, when the fumes of the pheromones had settled down, and a virile male could appear without leaking affy-dizzy, the braver, bolder, more self-possessed youths among the idlers and pedestrians might venture to join the girls.
    There was an old story, nearly a year old, that Man had appeared in Carlott one night while a play-party was in progress, had violated the magic space of the roosterroaches, had tripped over the Platform, westering several roosterroaches in the crush of His falling, and then, standing up again, had urinated all over the Platform and environs, westering a few more. But that was long ago, almost a whole year, and none of this generation of girls had been born then. They had been told of it by their mothers as a warning always to fear Man, to obey His commandments, to live righteously in reverence of His wrath. Since lowly Carlotters could not enter Holy House and subject themselves to the possibility of Rapture by bullets, this memory of Man’s violation of the Platform gave some Carlotters the hope and expectation of Rapture by piss.
    Several squares of the play-party were danced by the girls alone, including “Pig in the Parlor,” “Frog up a Stump,” and “Possum Trot,” before the first males appeared as lookers-on. Among these first brave watchers were several sons of the Frockroach preacher, Brother Tichborne, and one of these, a bold swain named Archy, was the first male to climb the Platform.
    “What you fixin to do, Archy?” asked one of his brothers.
    “I got a hankerin to jine the dance,” Archy declared.
    “You’re out of yore fool haid,” said the brother. “What if Paw was to find out?”
    “You aim to tell ’im?” Archy challenged. “Come on, Felix, and the rest of you boys too. Let’s us have us some fun.”
    But none of Archy’s brothers would join him. He turned to choose a partner. The girls waited breathlessly to see which of them he would pick. Tish Dingletoon