400 Boys and 50 More by Marc Laidlaw Page B

never been a problem before.
    Jory reached out to flick it off the tomato, but as he did it stuck up its tail and glared in such a way that he instantly felt a little dizzy, sick to his stomach. It was the way the flickering strip lights in the town library made him feel. It wasn’t a greenish-white lightning bug light, either: it had some of the same purplish tint as the tomato. It only stopped glowing when he pulled his hand away.
    Tad was laughing.
    “Tad,” Jory said, “did you see that? That’s no regular lightning bug.”
    Suddenly the younger boy reached for the bug. Jory panicked, but there was no flash this time. The lightning bug lifted from the plant, circled twice, and settled on his brother’s hand. Tad held the bug up to his eyes until he went cross-eyed looking at it. The light in its tail throbbed, but it stayed dim.
    “Da-da-da-da,” Tad sang. “Da-da-da-da-da.”
    That was when Jory felt scared for the first time. It was not the way Tad sang, because babies always did that, and Tad was a regular songbird; it was the way the firefly’s tail light went on and off exactly in time with his singing. Silently, it went da-da-da-da.
    “Stop it!” Jory said, and he struck Tad’s hand. The bug flew off a few feet, circled around, and came back toward them. Jory screamed and batted at it, keeping it away from his brother, as if it were a hornet and not a harmless little lightning bug. “Leave us alone!”
    “Hey, boys!”
    Jory spun around, his hand on Tad’s shoulder, and saw Pop leaning out the back porch door.
    “Get in here and clean this kitchen,” Pop said. “Your Mama ain’t feeling up to it tonight.”
    “Okay, Pop.”
    Holding on to Tad, Jory ran back to the house. He thought he could see the lightning bug flicker once more, but it had taken off. His stomach didn’t calm down until he was in the bright kitchen, but even then he was nervous about looking out the window. He went about his chores slowly, carefully, while Tad sat in front of the TV in the other room. All the time he was thinking that the bug had been acting strange. Maybe the county was right about the sprays. If bugs could do stuff like that—blink on and off in time to singing, and eat tomatoes so hungrily—maybe they should be killed before they could get any stranger. That might be why Pop seemed so anxious to be up and spraying early the next morning. Maybe he’d seen the bugs doing funny things, too.
    Mama was seated in front of the TV with Tad when Jory finished in the kitchen. She looked better, laughing at the comedies, but Tad wasn’t really looking at the TV. He didn’t seem to be looking at anything.
    Jory went out front, and found Pop hauling the canisters out of the truck.
    “Don’t know if this spray is gonna be strong enough,” he said. “County man was trying to sell me a poison one-stronger. Now I’m thinking I should have taken him up on it.”
    “Pop, what kind of bugs are you spraying for?”
    “The bad kind, Jory.”
    “Is there any other kind?”
    “Sure, some bugs eat other bugs and protect the crops. Some bugs like mayflies don’t even have mouths. This year we’re seeing a new strain, some kind of firefly that came up from the Gulf.”
    “I think I’ve seen it. Pop. It’s really bright. Tad was—”
    He stopped, wondering what he was seeing. Pop wasn’t listening to him. A kind of glow was coming from the woods, through the buckeye hedge, and out of the air wherever he looked.
    Fireflies. They were swarming over the sky, rushing over the house from the fields, bright as flying lightbulbs. Jory had to shade his eyes. It wasn’t until they lit in the trees that he could calm down enough to really look at them, and by then Pop was running toward the house.
    Standing by the truck, Jory stared out at the woods.
    The trees were dark now, all the lights extinguished. He waited.
    In an instant the whole farm came alight. The purplish glow coursed through the trees, through the hedges and