nature of west and of life, if any, after west. Such meditations naturally introduced one or the other of their two most popular topics, Janus-faced: the glorious history of now-almost-westered Stay More, and the any-day-now (or any-night-now) advent of The Bomb.
Tonight the court lingered upon each subject until it was exhausted. Perhaps it is unfair to call this assembly “loafers,” because all roosterroaches are by nature gentlefolk of leisure, nonworkers, even vagrants, as the name Periplaneta suggests. Especially in contrast to the busy bee, the hyperactive ant, the industrious termite, the various nest-builders, daubers, potters, borers, and biters whose diurnal or nocturnal existence is of ceaseless activity, the roosterroach, once he has found his nightly share of morsels, crust or crumb, does nothing, knocks off, loiters about, putters, piddles, takes his ease without any responsibility other than the heavy chore of finding ways to fill up the time between dusk breakfast and dawn supper.
No wonder roosterroaches are fond of gossip, philosophy, kidding and kibitzing, jokes, stories, tall tales, legends, superstitions, and half-baked religion. In this natural inclination, roosterroaches are ideally suited to imitate the Man of the Ozarks, or at least Ozark Man as He used to be, in the legendary days of Stay More’s past, when Man, although a farmer, and a capable one, devoted only enough labor to His farm to provide food for His family and His devoted roosterroaches, and spent the major portion of His life in unhurried idleness.
Although there was only one Man left in Stay More for these roosterroaches to depend upon and venerate, and although He was not nearly as interesting as the fabled Stay Morons of yore, He was at least, like them, devoted to leisure. He did not work. He did not farm, though there were rumors that He spent a tiny portion of His daylight hours, late afternoon, before any roosterroach awoke to watch, puttering in a tiny vegetable garden across Roamin Road from Holy House. One night a delegation of roosterroaches had gone there and inspected His puny lettuce. The last of the human Ingledews had been gardeners, if nothing else, famed for their ability to grow onions as big as apples, but also pronouncing them “ingurns” as in the first syllable of their name. This Man did not pronounce them that way…or perhaps He did. It was hard to tell, because He never spoke. He had no one to speak to.
The loafers, if we must call them that, admired their Man because He was a total loafer too, but pitied Him because he had no one to loaf with . None of the roosterroaches now living could ever recall when there was more than one Man, and indeed most of the fundamentalist Crustians believed that there was only one Man in all the world, but the old stories which the loafers told and retold on the porch of Doc Swain’s place always involved a Stay More peopled with many Men, and Men (as well as Women and Children) living together and loafing together in an idyllic Golden Age.
The Golden Age of Stay More would remain only the subject of endless legends and embellished conjectures among the tale-telling roosterroaches until after The Bomb, when according to Crustian belief, Joshua Crust Himself would be resurrected from the west and take everyone in a Rapture to live on the right hand of Man in the perfect Ozark Golden Age of yore. Even those roosterroaches who were such infidels that they could not accept the idea of Joshua Crust and His resurrection still believed that life after The Bomb would become a new Golden Age.
Doc Swain alone did not believe this. Cheerful philosopher as he was, he was an utter pessimist on the subject of The Bomb. The Bomb, in his opinion, was inevitable. Whatever catastrophic form it took—asphyxiation, earthquake, famine, or, most dreadful for heat-loving roosterroaches, a big freeze—it would be horrible.
Roosterroaches are omnivorous, but that would do them no good if
Tonight the court lingered upon each subject until it was exhausted. Perhaps it is unfair to call this assembly “loafers,” because all roosterroaches are by nature gentlefolk of leisure, nonworkers, even vagrants, as the name Periplaneta suggests. Especially in contrast to the busy bee, the hyperactive ant, the industrious termite, the various nest-builders, daubers, potters, borers, and biters whose diurnal or nocturnal existence is of ceaseless activity, the roosterroach, once he has found his nightly share of morsels, crust or crumb, does nothing, knocks off, loiters about, putters, piddles, takes his ease without any responsibility other than the heavy chore of finding ways to fill up the time between dusk breakfast and dawn supper.
No wonder roosterroaches are fond of gossip, philosophy, kidding and kibitzing, jokes, stories, tall tales, legends, superstitions, and half-baked religion. In this natural inclination, roosterroaches are ideally suited to imitate the Man of the Ozarks, or at least Ozark Man as He used to be, in the legendary days of Stay More’s past, when Man, although a farmer, and a capable one, devoted only enough labor to His farm to provide food for His family and His devoted roosterroaches, and spent the major portion of His life in unhurried idleness.
Although there was only one Man left in Stay More for these roosterroaches to depend upon and venerate, and although He was not nearly as interesting as the fabled Stay Morons of yore, He was at least, like them, devoted to leisure. He did not work. He did not farm, though there were rumors that He spent a tiny portion of His daylight hours, late afternoon, before any roosterroach awoke to watch, puttering in a tiny vegetable garden across Roamin Road from Holy House. One night a delegation of roosterroaches had gone there and inspected His puny lettuce. The last of the human Ingledews had been gardeners, if nothing else, famed for their ability to grow onions as big as apples, but also pronouncing them “ingurns” as in the first syllable of their name. This Man did not pronounce them that way…or perhaps He did. It was hard to tell, because He never spoke. He had no one to speak to.
The loafers, if we must call them that, admired their Man because He was a total loafer too, but pitied Him because he had no one to loaf with . None of the roosterroaches now living could ever recall when there was more than one Man, and indeed most of the fundamentalist Crustians believed that there was only one Man in all the world, but the old stories which the loafers told and retold on the porch of Doc Swain’s place always involved a Stay More peopled with many Men, and Men (as well as Women and Children) living together and loafing together in an idyllic Golden Age.
The Golden Age of Stay More would remain only the subject of endless legends and embellished conjectures among the tale-telling roosterroaches until after The Bomb, when according to Crustian belief, Joshua Crust Himself would be resurrected from the west and take everyone in a Rapture to live on the right hand of Man in the perfect Ozark Golden Age of yore. Even those roosterroaches who were such infidels that they could not accept the idea of Joshua Crust and His resurrection still believed that life after The Bomb would become a new Golden Age.
Doc Swain alone did not believe this. Cheerful philosopher as he was, he was an utter pessimist on the subject of The Bomb. The Bomb, in his opinion, was inevitable. Whatever catastrophic form it took—asphyxiation, earthquake, famine, or, most dreadful for heat-loving roosterroaches, a big freeze—it would be horrible.
Roosterroaches are omnivorous, but that would do them no good if
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