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The Sting of the Wasp
- Appalachian Heritage
- The University of North Carolina Press
- Volume 10, Number 3, Summer 1982
- pp. 63-67
- 10.1353/aph.1982.0038
- Article
- Additional Information
- Purchase/rental options available:
or The Sting ofthe Wasp jo by John D. Douglass Epigraph "Discourse dissipates the murmur, but without it it could not speak." Michel Foucault, Les Mots íes Choses, a translation of The Order of Things, in Chapter 4, "Speaking," p. 120. I remember it all too well. I was headed home, down the mountain, wild-eyed, drunk, and half-blind. Fd just left a roaring party up on top, the good-times. I was returning to an empty apartment, my wife having left me, gone home to her parents: she'd had enough. Eunis had grown weary. Tired. And I was all alone; divorce was imminent—certain. The apartment loomed in my inner vision. I approached the first hairpin turn, where over the edge it was 2,000 feet straight down through space to the valley below. I also remember how the tears welled up in my eyes as I realized that no one really cared. And I remember deciding to take the short cut home. And I cut the wheel. I too had grown weary—tired. Chased by a wasp and didn't know it. And like a smashed arrow, my Comet had nosed over the edge, down fifty yards, and speared into the snowbroken sandstone bluff, to wedge between a sturdy, lone evergreen and the cliffside. I had scrambled out, bottle in hand, and I had stood, high but unsteady , on the tilted door of the passenger 's side, when up above the ledge I had heard voices. The cop nearest the lip, leaning slightly over, with an air of familiarity, having dealt with drunks before, asked from atop the ledge, "Need any help?" "Naw. I'll make it." Then going back to look for skid marks, he had asked from the centerstripe , "What are you trying to do, good buddy?" "Rock this damn thing over," I slurred. "Why's that?" he asked, coming to the edge and starting down the bluffface . "Cause that's the shortest way home." The cops took me home that night, back to the apartment. And on Sunday, I called a wrecker, to cabledrag the Comet home. And on Monday , I taught English Literature, as if nothing had happened. But when I lay in bed, sober, staring at the ceiling, late at night, I knew that I had meant to do it. Only this 63 time, I had been caught, by the arms of an evergreen and the shoulders of a cliff. I had been there before. And I still didn't understand it. And that's a problem. The first time, she had pointed her long, legal, arthritic finger at me and said, "John David Stewart, if you're in my court again within six months, on the same charge, you'll get time in jail! Do you understand?" And she had waited for an answer. And I had nodded yes. And here I was again: in her court, cited on the same charge, and it was less than a month. Now that is a problem . But I did have a chance. I had a letter. The Judge was perched up behind her platform bench, the Commonwealth flag on one side, the Stars and Stripes on the other. Everything was so orderly, so oppressive and suffocating. Then the Court Stenographer, in a drumming voice, called my name. I got up slowly, making my way up the aisle, toward the judicial bench, where the Judge waited. The bench was dark and heavy with handstains, humanoil. I slowed and stopped, in front of the Judge, as she began to read the charge, her voice booming. Surely a sense of decency demands that she read the charge quieter. This is a private matter, I thought. When she finished reading, our eyes locked in anger, and she asked flatly, "How do you plea? Guilty? Or not guilty?" My lawyer stepped forward, "Your Honor, may I have a word with you?" "Request denied," she snapped. I couldn't believe her. She's got to at least listen, I thought. She asked a second time, her voice growing thin with irritation, "How do you plea? Guilty? Or not guilty?" "But your Honor," I said quietly, "will you at...