May 2008

In the springtime, the rains began and the creek filled to overflowing and Marilyn Stringley, who was eighty-seven years old, lifted her head from the pillow and said, “Tell Tom to bring the clothes in off the line, would you?” Then she closed her eyes and died. Her son and her daughter were at her side, and beneath her bed there was a cricket who had hopped in through the open front door the day before.

That night, the cricket began to sing and Marilyn’s daughter got up out of bed and walked through the house, searching and searching but could not find it.

“What are you doing?” said her brother. He was sitting at the kitchen table, looking out the window into the darkness.

“Don’t you hear that noise?” she said. “There’s a cricket in here.”

“Leave it be,” he said, “they’re good luck.”

The next morning, the cricket was still somewhere in the house, singing, and the neighbors started dropping by, with casseroles and desserts and Marilyn’s daughter took aside a small girl who lived two doors down, and handed her a jar and said, “Look, there’s a cricket in here and he’s driving me crazy. I’ll pay you if you can catch him and take him out of the house.”

The girl took the jar and went searching, looking under the beds and the couches and in the corners and the closets and finally located the cricket behind the stove. “Come here,” she said. She picked him up and felt him pulsing like a light in her cupped hands. She walked out the door and down the sidewalk and although she could have let him go then, she kept walking. She went all the way down to the banks of the creek, and bent down and slowly, slowly opened her hands.

The sun came out from behind a cloud and the creek suddenly became an astonishing ribbon of brilliance. The cricket did not move but stayed there, balanced, in the girl’s palms. Together, the two of them held still and considered the light stretched out before them.