It Happened One Summer
by Blanche Day Manos
All Rights Belong to the Author
In my neck of the woods, everything gets ornery in the summertime. Critters, humans, even bugs are easy riled. There’s nothing like the heat of a white-orange sun blazing down from a copper-colored sky to make varmints out of the most lowly of pesky, everyday things, particularly flies.
To illustrate my point, there is the case of a backwoods friend of mine, Sog Johnson. Sog used to be as right as a rainfall on the roof during a night in July. That was before the sizzling summer of ’75. One day during that memorable summer, Sog changed. I know ’cause I was there when it happened.
We had the kind of heat that year that scalded scorpions and toasted terrapins. One Sunday afternoon, I decided to saunter across the hill to visit Sog. He and I were sitting on his front porch watching heat waves bounce off his cornfield when the caper started.
Sog sat in his favorite rocking chair with a rusty old fly swat in his hand. Now and then, he’d take a swing at a winged pest. The first thing I noticed that was unusual was when a black speck showed up right on the end of Sog’s nose. He brushed it off and in a minute, it was back. It was just a common, ordinary house fly using the hook at the end of Sog’s nose as a resting place.
The third time the fly landed on Sog’s elongated sniffer, he sort of raised his brows and stared cross-eyed at the little nuisance. The fly stared back. Sog edged one hand up behind that fly. A few inches from his nose, Sog whomped his hand over the pest then carefully spread his fingers and peered through them.The fly zoomed out of Sog’s hand, did a couple of somersaults, and returned.
All this time, Sog was trying to carry on a conversation with me, just run-of-the-mill talk, nothing very deep. But when a foreigner takes up habitation on such a sensitive part of the body as the nose, it is distracting. It sort of shook my concentration too, but being brought up proper, I didn’t laugh at Sog’s predicament.
“My corn down by the river is all that’s going to be left this summer,” Sog said, twitching his upper lip. “How’s your cows standing the heat?” He whooshed a stream of air up toward the fly’s feet.
“My old Jersey cow is about dried up,” I answered. “Sog, I never did see a fly cross its legs before.”
I swear that’s what the plague-taked insect was doing. With that, Sog gave up trying to be nonchalant. He whacked his nose so hard with the swat that I jumped. Then, he looked down his face, his eyes all red and watery as that fly just pulled itself through the mesh of the swat and spiraled above Sog’s head. It hung there for a few seconds then looped around the man’s ears. Sog flailed at the fly while it maneuvered between his fingers like an acrobat. Next, it climbed through the hot, sticky air, banked sharply and hovered just out of my friend’s field of vision. Sog sighed and settled back in his rocker.
We had just about solved the country’s economic problems when the fly came alive again, swung lazily past Sog’s head in a few practice dives, then settled comfortably on Sog’s breathing apparatus.
The rest of the episode I watched from the safety of Sog’s yard. Sog went wild. He jumped out of his chair and swung at the tiny varmint. “You little devil!” Sog shrilled. “I’ll get you yet!” He snarled and swung, knocking rockers, porch swing, and a pot of petunias out of his way. Whacks, thuds, smacks, yells of pain and rage filled the air–plus a few other things unfit for tender ears.
That fly put on the prettiest aerial show I’ve ever seen. It whizzed past Sog’s frothing mouth, did a beautiful turn, then dived right down through the mane of Sog’s bushy hair. A self-administered blow in that direction nearly addled him, but his tormentor climbed out of the tangle with the alacrity of an athlete. Finally, it settled on the arm of Sog’s over-turned rocker.
“I’ve got you now!” Sog screeched, picking up a stick of firewood left over from last winter.
“No, Sog! You’ll break…” I yelled. Too late. The chair crashed into splinters.
Sog stood over the wreck breathing hard, his eyes blood-shot, his nose flaming.
I couldn’t believe it. From the debris, a lone speck emerged, shook itself, climbed through the dust and settled victoriously onto Sog’s flaring snout.
What happened next is incredible but I record it here just as I heard and saw it that day. Sog slunk down on the porch steps and whimpered. Between gulps of air, he whined, “It’s her. It’s my mother-in-law. She swore she would be with us forever. She’s back to haunt me and make life miserable, shore as the world.”
Then my poor neighbor started talking to that fly. “Marthy,” he said, “I know you and me never got along but maybe we could work something out.”
I had heard and seen enough. I shook my head and turned to go back across the hill. As I left, Sog was still talking and the fly was still listening.
black-eyed Susans
Sometimes, I go back to visit Sog just to keep him company. Not many folk go see him any more. It’s just him and his wife and his permanent guest. When anybody comes to see Sog, he always points to a fly somewhere nearby and says, “I don’t care how many bugs you swat while you’re here, but just be mighty careful you don’t go near that fly. We’ve come to an understandin’. She don’t bother me, I don’t bother her. Why, next time she might come back as a mosquito.”
And Sog will grin vacantly in the direction of a small, winged insect delicately cleaning her wings in a spot of golden sunshine.
–The End–
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