Anthem of the Locusts

Anthem of the Locusts by Dean Cadle Logan Roberts laid his .22 rifle beside him on top of the flat sandstone rock and lit a cigarette, wondering why people in the camp disliked the sound of the locusts so much. Some of the people said their whirring was like a million rattlesnakes going at once, while others complained that they drowned the singing of birds and that you couldn't hear your own voice. It was true they did make a lot of noise, but their being there had not bothered Logan, and he supposed that was because they were something different . As he sat listening to their shrilling, unvaried rhythm swelling round him like some dizzying new music come to the mountains, he wondered if they did anything besides sing. He had not thought about that before. He knew little about them except that they came somewhat magically about every seven years, that they lived for a few days and sang and then died, and that in a few days, after they had sung themselves to death, the rocks on the hillside and the mountain paths would be strewn with their bodies lying by the thousands in the hot sun like strange seed blown from the trees. "Hello, Logan." He turned. Emily Fletcher was standing a few yards from him, beside a patch of stickweeds. "Hello, Emily. What are you doing up here?" "To hear the locusts." "You can hear them in the camp." "Better up here. I like to hear them." She came over and leaned against the other side of the rock and, with her head lowered, looked up at him. She looked at everybody that way. "Sounds like singing in the trees up here." Logan guessed that the way she looked at people meant little to another woman. She always held her head bent slightly forward, even while walking, and when she looked at a person she did not raise her head but rolled her dark eyes up. A few times he had felt like going up to her and placing an arm around her shoulders and with his other hand brushing the tangled mass of bangs off her forehead and looking into her disturbed 4 eyes and saying, "Emily, Honey, never look at a man that way unless you are ready to go through with everything." "Are you resting?" she asked. "For a few minutes." "Can I rest with you?" "If you'll be very good." After a moment she giggled. Logan turned and looked at her. She had her back to him and was looking down the mountainside. "What have you been doing, Emily?" "Having fun." "Doing what?" "Oh—just having fun." She was barefoot and wore a black dress that was too tight. Logan had never seen her wear a new dress, and seldom anything but the old black one, and the fullness that the two past years had given her body made all the dresses she wore too tight above the waist. Logan moved over beside her on the rock and raised his hand and almost placed it on her shoulder to pull her toward him. Then he checked the impulse and dropped his hand back to the rock. With her back to him she was still gazing down the hillside that fell away from them in the afternoon shade of the trees. Then she stood up and walked over to the patch of stickweeds and pulled off several of the leaves and watched them flutter to the ground. "Would you like to go walking with me sometimes, Emily?" "Oh yes, Logan. I would like to go walking with you. . We could pick flowers and watch the birds. And now we could hear the locusts. I pray that I can, Logan. Can I?" "If you won't tell anybody about it." She had stopped dropping the leaves and stood looking at the ground, and Logan saw that a piece of a smile was playing on her mouth. "You never ask me to go walking with you," she said. "Lots of men in the camp ask me to go walking, and some of them are married. Mom has to run them off at...