Cockroachboys

by Mark Fewell

     Larry Lederman had tried every manner of fumigation and extermination to get rid of the cockroaches in Apartment 4B.  He had sprayed so often the place smelled like Raid.

     He had sprayed everywhere he found the insects.  And he found them everywhere.  He found them crawling under the card table he used for a kitchen table and three of the folding chairs that came with it; a fourth chair worked as a telephone stand.  Under the battered couch and chair in the living room; they were pieces of furniture his parents had thrown out.  Behind a toilet he didn’t  clean often enough.

     He stopped spraying when he noticed the men.  He felt that he should call someone and tell them about the men riding the cockroaches, but his girlfriend, Susan the Armchair Psychiatrist, would spend two hours analyzing him, not believing the cockroaches existed.  There was no way he’d get her to believe in the little men.

     That left his best friend, Max.  Max would believe him; they had been friends since kindergarten.  He pulled a chair up to the phone and gave Max a call.

     “Hello.”

     “Max, it’s Larry.  You won’t believe what I’ve found in my apartment.”

     “The cockroaches have started mutating.”

     The cockroaches had been mutating in his dreams, building up defenses against his attempts to kill them.  “That’s close.  There’s these tiny men using the cockroaches for horses.”

     “Susan’s right.  You are crazy.”

     “Just get over here.  You’ll see I’m telling the truth.”

     “I wouldn’t miss seeing cockroach cowboys.  Or should I call them cockroachboys?”

     “Just be here.”

     Larry looked around the room for cockroaches, but they and their men had disappeared, not a trace of them anywhere.

     He rose from his chair and flipped off the lights.  He needed the men to reappear.  He needed someone to believe him; he needed Max to believe him.

     He sat in the darkness until someone knocked on the door.  When he opened the door, he  found Max and Susan standing outside.  “What’s she doing here?”

     “She’s your girlfriend.  Where else should she be?  I had to tell her all about the little men.  That, and the fact that her boyfriend may be going insane.”  Max was always doing this to him.

     “You know what it means if you’re hallucinating, don’t you?”  Susan moved past both the men into the apartment, filling the room with the smell of expensive perfume, and plunged herself down into one of the folding chairs.

     “I’ve been reading Freud.”  Larry had never studied Freud, but his answer seemed to satisfy Susan.

     Max walked over to the refrigerator and began searching the barren vastness for a snack.  “It means you’re crazy.”

     “Get out of there.  I’m not feeding you.”  Larry took a step towards his best friend and shut the door.

     “So where are these little men?” asked Susan, staring at her high heels; she always dressed as if she were late for a party.

     “They’re with the cockroaches.  That’s why I had the lights off; I wanted the cockroaches to come out.”

     “If you’d clean this place up once in awhile you wouldn't have cockroaches.”

     “Yeah, why don’t you clean?” said Max.

     “Do you two want to see the men or not?”

     “Sure, where are they?”

     “I don’t know.  That’s why I had the lights off.  I was waiting for the cockroaches to come back.  Now if you’ll let me turn off the lights again...”

     “Go for it,” said Max.

     Larry turned off the lights and made everybody wait for an hour.  When he turned back on the lights there weren’t any little men; there weren’t any cockroaches.

     “I see you’ve finally gotten rid of your cockroach problem,” said Max.  “Who would have thought that making up a story about men riding cockroaches would have worked so well?”

     “Stop trying to be funny.  Can’t you see Larry needs help?  You really should see a therapist, Larry.”

     That’s why he kept Susan around, though he would never tell her that.  “Tell you what. I’ll capture one of ‘em, and show it to you later.”

     Larry had no idea how to capture the men.  The first thing he did was to stop spraying; he didn’t want to kill the men.  For two weeks, he didn’t see the men or the cockroaches.  Whenever he saw Max or Susan, he wouldn’t talk about it.  Whenever they brought it up, he would change the subject.

     Then it happened again.  The little men showed up riding their cockroaches.  Larry got on his hands and knees to get a closer look.  He saw that not all of the cockroaches were ridden by men.  In fact, it looked like the men were herding the bigger cockroaches, the way cowboys herded cows.  Max had called them cockroachboys.  How had he known what to call them unless he had already seen them?

     There was only one thing for Larry to do; he had to confront Max.  He had to make Max admit that he also had men herding cockroaches across the kitchen linoleum. Maybe everybody did.

     Larry sat by the phone and speed-dialed Max.  “You knew about them all along, didn't you?  You and Susan were making fun of me.”

     “Knew about what?” said Max.

     “The men riding the cockroaches.”

     “Why do you say that?”

     “You said they were like cowboys, and you’re right. They are herding bigger bugs.  Just like cowboys.”

     “You’re right.  I’ve known about them all along, but they told me not to tell anybody.”

     “They can talk?”

     “How the hell would I know?  I’m just kidding.”

     “Sure you are.  I know the truth now.”

     “Maybe Susan’s right.  Maybe you do need a therapist.”

     “Thanks, Max.  I got to get back to trying to capture one of these men.”  Larry hung up the phone, and got back down on the floor, but the cockroachboys had again disappeared.

     The apartment door opened while Larry searched under the table.  “What are doing?” asked Susan.

     Larry didn’t stand up or turn around.  “I’m looking for the cockroachboys.  Did you know they can talk?”

     Susan pulled a chair out from under the table and sat down.  “So you’ve talk to them now?”

     “No, not yet.  They’ve vanished again.”

     “If you haven’t talked to them, how do you know they can talk?”

     “Max told me.”

     “He was pulling your leg.  Jeez, Larry, you’re so gullible.”

     “You’ll see.  I’ll have captured one soon.”

     “Not tonight you won’t.”

     “And why not?”

     “It’s Friday; we always go to the movies on Friday.  And then we go back to my place for some you-know-what.”  Susan wiggled her body.

     Larry stood up and sat down in the chair across from his girlfriend; he couldn’t believe this tall, good-looking, rich, intelligent brunette was his girlfriend, though he could have done without the way Susan and her therapist kept telling him how to live.  It was easier to believe in men riding cockroaches.  “Can’t we skip the movies and the you-know-what, just this once?”

     “No, we can’t.  Let me tell you what my therapist says about a steady routine.  She says...”

     Larry blanked out the rest of Susan's speech.  He had started blanking out Susan’s therapist ever since being told he needed be more assertive.  He even blanked out the movie, the kind of tearjerker Susan liked to watch.  Larry could never understand why anyone would want to watch a movie without Arnold, Jean Claude, Bruce, or Mel in it.

     When they got back to his apartment, Larry kissed Susan outside the door.  “You’re not going to invite me in.  I thought we came back here instead of going to my place because you wanted us to make love in your bed.”

     “Not tonight.”

     “Don’t tell me you’ve got some little men you need to talk to.”

     That had been exactly what Larry had been about to tell her.  “It’s just that I’m really tired tonight.”

     “Okay.”  Susan leaned over and gave him another kiss before turning around and walking away.

     Larry unlocked the door and walked through the living room, nearly tripping over an object in his path.  He turned on the lights, leaned down, and took a closer look at the contraption on his floor.  It was a cockroach corral, made of toothpicks and other odd splinters of wood.  Larry went back outside and yelled for Susan, but she had already left.

     He sat down on the floor, crossing his legs.  He wanted to get a better look at the corral.  Four cockroachboys were herding the big cockroaches into the corral.  “What are you doing?”

     The men didn’t speak a word.

     “Come on, I know you can talk.  Max told me you could.”

     The men still didn’t speak.  Of course, Max hadn’t said anything about them speaking English, and Larry wondered if Max spoke any other languages.  How well he did he know Max anyway?  Max hadn’t told him about the cockroachboys.

     Larry stood, being careful not to step on any miniature life forms.  He had told both Max and Susan he would catch one of these men, and he had a chance to do it since the cockroaches weren’t scurrying away, trying to hide from the light.  He moved into the kitchen and grabbed a plastic cup from one of the cabinets.  He got down on his knees and one hand, holding the cup upside down in the other.  He had planned to use the cup to capture one of the cockroach-riding men, but stopped when he heard the buzzing.  He had never heard cockroaches buzz before.  He bent his ear closer to the floor, and heard words within the buzzing.  “Please, buzz, don’t hurt us.  Buzz.  We can talk.  You aren’t suppose to be here.”

     “Hold on just a minute.  This is my apartment.”

     “Yeah, but you were suppose to stay at your lady friend’s place.  Isn’t that what you usually do on Friday night?”

     “How do you know that?”

     “Can’t tell you that.  Who’s Max?  He that other big’un we been seeing you with?”

     “He’s my best friend.”  Larry got off his knees and sat on his but.  “What are you anyway?”

     “I reckon we’re cockroach movers, being that is what we do.  We move cockroaches from one apartment to the next, from one house to the next.”

     “Max calls you cockroachboys since you herd cockroaches the way cowboys herd cows.”

     “Ain’t heard of cows.  Must be big animals.  Don’t much deal with big animals.”

     "Why are you moving cockroaches through my apartment?”

     “We ain’t moving them through.  We’re moving them out, and if we spend too much more time yakking, you’ll be getting us way behind schedule.”

     Larry threatened the cockroachboy with his cup.  “Why are getting rid of  my cockroaches?”

     “Do you want to keep them?”

     “Well, no, but I would like to know what’s going on.  My friends think I’m crazy.”

     “Seem pretty sane for a big’un to me.  Besides it’s that woman you’ve been seeing spends all her time with therapists.”  The other three cockroachboys continued herding insects into the corral.  “Anyway, it’s like this.  There can’t be too many cockroaches in one home; they have to have plenty of chances to scuttle away when the lights are turned on.”

     “How do you know when a apartment has too many cockroaches?”

     “That’s a BIG SECRET.”

     Larry slammed the cup down within a centimeter of the man. And Susan’s therapist didn't think he could be assertive.  He’d show her how assertive he could be.  “You can tell me.”

     “Okay, okay, just don't hurt me or my friends.  We get our orders off the fax machine back at the ranch house.”

     “You have a ranch house with a real tiny fax machine?  Did this fax machine tell you about my activities with Susan?”

     “Yep, sure did.”

     “Why is your fax machine such a big secret?”

     “That’s not the big secret.  The secret is we don’t know where the orders come from.”

     “That’s not your fault. But haven’t you ever tried to find out where your orders come from?”

     “Nope.  We were put on this Earth to do a job, and we do our best to do it well.  Now can we get back to work?”

     “I have two more questions first.  Where are you taking the cockroaches, and when will you be out of my apartment?”

     "We’re taking them to Apartment 4C; they just don’t have enough cockroaches over there, and we’ll be a memory by the time you wake up tomorrow morning.”

     Friday night came, and Susan showed up for the movies and you-know-what.  “Did you capture any of your little men?”

     “They’re aren’t any little men,” said Larry.  “I made them up.”

     “Let me tell me you what my therapist has to say about that.”

     “You know, Susan, I don’t care about anything your therapist has to say.  I don’t care about anything you have to say, either.”  Larry shut the door.

     He had one more thing to do that Friday night.  He had to call Max, and tell him all about his conversation with the cockroachboys.  Maybe after the call, they could go out for a beer.  He and Max had been friends since kindergarten.

END

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