Locusts

For twelve years not a baby was born in Pardac.  No one could agree on why this was.  A special research taskforce was brought in.  These men, with their stiff Georgian collars and big leather bags, set up a clinic in the high school gymnasium.  They collected sperm samples and did artificial inseminations.  The Winter Creek Catholic Church did their part with a special all-night vigil, with candles and a boy’s choir.  Lectures were given at the Public Library on advanced sexual positions, which the Women’s League officially boycotted, though some of the members sent their husbands.  The city drinking water was analyzed, the air sampled.  A couple of feng shui lesbians came through, measuring people’s walls and rearranging furniture.  The pharmacy devoted an entire shelf to fertility herbs.  People had sex every night, all the time.  You’d stop at the Gas-N-Go and the clerk would be unshaven and droopy-eyed, and would make your change wrong.  At the high school the teachers gave out huge and general assignments and went in the closet to sleep.  Preschools and daycares went out of business.  The IGA, out of stubborn optimism, kept their stock of diapers, formula, and the like.  In fact, they expanded their babycare section, as if a surplus of diapers would, by mysterious economic influences, give rise to babies.

Over time, though, the townsfolk settled in.  The old preschools were torn down.  Except for the babycare aisle in the IGA, people adjusted to the fact that, judging from the news from nearby towns and around the country, the human race had a life expectancy of about 60 years.  Normality had pretty much settled on Pardac by the day The Counselor knocked on Elsie Ferbuth’s door.

Elsie came out of the parlor with a bucket of thick reddish mucous.  Jack took it from her and headed for the kitchen.

“Just a minute!” he called.

In the hall, Elsie closed the door to the room she had come out of and snapped the padlock shut.  From the kitchen she heard running water and the disposal making a wet sucking sound.  She peeked through the closed blinds at the man on the porch.  He was young, with a soft white face framed with curly black sideburns.  He wore little round glasses that made his eyes look small, a suede sportcoat of a pale tawny hue, and corduroy pants of a darker brown.  In one puffy hand he held the “For Rent” sign that had been propped against the old servant’s house.

Jack opened the front door a crack and slipped onto the porch.  Elsie watched from the window.  The young man was very polite.  He told Jack that he needed a place to stay that would double as an office, and that the servant’s house, seeing as it was detached and had its own drive, would be perfect.  He had a way of smiling while he talked that annoyed Elsie, the corners of his mouth curving up into little grooves.

Jack postured and negotiated rent.  He always took up those mannerisms with men: hands on hips, nodding rhythmically while speaking to a point just over the young man’s shoulder.  When Jack asked the young man’s name he said, simply, “The Counselor.”

“Don’t you have a name?” Jack asked, gesturing with an open palm.

“No sir.  I have a function and that’s what I like to be called by.”

Jack shrugged.  “Do you want to see the room?”

The Counselor fetched his bike from the sidewalk and followed Jack around the house.

Elsie let the blinds snap shut.  It was a bad idea, she knew it.  With someone living so close she was bound to be discovered.  Jack had convinced her to rent the servant’s house, saying that she could use the money and there was no reason not to.

In the dark kitchen, Elsie started making supper.  She microwaved left-over chicken, held the Jell-O in the refrigerator light to cut it, and lit a few candles on the table.

The curtains were all shut, the lights off.  No one could know she lived there.  During the day she mostly sat in the living room, reading with a flashlight whose batteries Jack replaced every few days.

Jack knocked at the back door, and Elsie let him in.  He smoothed her hair as she filled his glass at the table, and told her that The Counselor was moving in.  Elsie kissed him and thanked him for handling it.

After dinner and two helpings of Jell-O Jack rose and went upstairs.  Elsie looked on the refrigerator at the sex calendar stamped with the city seal.  It showed that tonight was Jack’s sabbath and tomorrow night he would sleep with Myrlene O’Hare, owner of the local beauty parlor.  Elsie had no idea what Myrlene looked like now, but hoped she wasn’t nearly as beautiful as she was in high school.  She started the dishwasher, checked the locks on the house, and went upstairs.

The next morning The Counselor nailed a sign above his door with his name on it in big black letters.  The sign had stood over seven other doors.  Seven other towns, empty now, wonderfully quiet.

The Counselor got on his bike and started down the road.  It was Sunday morning, and the neighborhood was quiet.  A hairy, noxious orange dog ran from someone’s yard and took up a half-hearted pursuit of him.  A strong breeze brushed petals off the dogwood trees.  Plant Street was lined with rotting Colonial homes, held up, it seemed, only by coats of white paint.  They rolled by on either side in a procession of sagging balconies, moss-covered shingles, and overgrown boxwood hedges.

The road dropped toward Laben Creek.  The Counselor coasted down the hill, leaving the dog behind, and turned into the parking lot of Myrlene’s Hair House.  “We do men and kids, too!” the sign said.

Myrlene was in one of the barber chairs.  On TV a woman with a bouffant clapped her hands and sang “Nothing but the Blood.”

“Morning,” Myrlene called, turning down the TV.  “Hi, come in.”  She started bustling about, picking up magazines off the floor, brushing off the seat of the barber’s chair.  She swept a greasy McDonald’s bag off the counter into the garbage.  A pack of cigarettes fell off the counter, scattering cigarettes on the floor.  “Damn.”  She picked them up and started shoving them back in the pack.  The Counselor helped.  “Want one?” she asked, holding out a cigarette.

“No thanks.”

“Mind if I?”  She popped the cigarette in her mouth.

“No.”

The cigarettes put away, The Counselor got in the chair and let Myrlene, cigarette in hand, run her red nails through his hair.

“You’ve got nice, thick hair,” she said.  “I’ll tell you right now, though, I don’t do dye-jobs on men.”

“I just need a trim.”

“I can do that.”

She took off his glasses and started cutting, alternating a drag on her cigarette with snips of the shears.  The Counselor held his own gaze in the mirror, but watched in the corner of his eye the pursing of Myrlene’s lips around the cigarette.  He saw her squint and the hard set of her mouth.

“I part it on the right,” he said.

“Oh?  You sure?”

“Do you think it’s better the other way?”

“It’s up to you,” she said, dropping her hands.  “Just make up your mind before I cut any more.”

“I’ve always parted it on the right,” he said, watching the shadows deepen around her eyes.  “You must’ve thought it’d look better the other way.”

“It doesn’t matter what I think,” she said.  “How do you want it?”

“Oh, it does matter!  You’re the professional,” he said, without sarcasm.

She parted it on the left, took a drag, and kept cutting.  “Professional, huh?  Nobody’s ever called me that before.”

“How long have you been doing this?”

On TV the woman with the bouffant had been joined by an elderly man with a tambourine.

“About 20 years, I guess.”

“So then you’re not a professional?”  His hair went sliding down the barber’s gown onto the floor.

“I guess so,” she said.  “I just never thought of it like that.”

Through the rest of the haircut, The Counselor drew her out.  He didn’t have much trouble with her. Before long she was telling him about her son, who had died of tuberculosis, and how he speaks to her in dreams, promises her that Jesus is coming soon, and that he’ll touch her above the left eye when he comes.  The Counselor prompted her not with questions, but with silence, and after a drag on her cigarette she always answered.  She talked about her ex-husband, about how he owned, “the nicest car lot in Pardac.  Not the biggest, but the nicest.  He always has lemonade for the customers, and hot chocolate in the winter.”  She admitted how she cheated on him with one of the salesmen in the back of a silver Pontiac Firebird.  “I had always liked that car.  He knew it--the salesman, I mean.”  She had never felt any guilt about it, she said, even when her husband found out.  “I can love one man and sleep with another,” she said.  “I’m very open minded.”

But then she stopped and looked at The Counselor in the mirror.  “I’m shutting up now,” she said.

“You trust me because I’m a stranger,” he said.  They were the first words he’d spoken in nearly half an hour.  “I have no preconceived notions of you.  Also, you have sensed correctly that I have no system of morals to judge you by.”

“No morals?” she said.

“None that you would recognize, at least.”

“Do you believe in God?”

“No.”

She put out her cigarette.  “Then what do you live for?”

“That’s the question, isn’t it?” he said, looking at the mirror, into his own green eyes.  “The final value.  That which has self-evident worth.  There’s only one goal that’s worth serving.”

Myrlene was lathering the back of his neck.  “Yeah, what’s that?”

The Counselor spit hair out of his mouth.

“Well?”

“When you really want to know,” he said, “and I mean the whole answer, not just the fortune cookie answer, I’ll tell you.”

She didn’t argue.  When she was done The Counselor paid her and gave her his card, on which he’d scrawled his new address in pen.  “My services are free,” he told her.

“Thanks.”  She glanced at him coldly and set the card on the counter without looking at it.  Then she pretended to count money in the drawer until his back was turned and she could watch him go.

Myrlene lived in a mobile home on the lot behind her shop.  That evening she skipped the nightly ritual she performed for the men the county sent her.  She didn’t touch the lavender scented powder on her sink, or the lacy orange negligée that hung on the bathroom door.  Instead she opened a beer, lit a cigarette, and read the Bible.

The doorbell rang.  Jack was standing on the deck, hands on his hips.

“Sorry I’m late,” he said, shutting the door behind him.  He followed Myrlene toward the bedroom.  Her house made him nervous, with its pink carpet and walls, powder-blue silk arrangements, dusty curtain tassels, flat Wal-Mart lace.

In her bedroom Jack didn’t take off his shirt, but just dropped his pants.  Elsie undressed.  Jack watched her breasts pop out of her shirt.  No other woman aroused him so much, not even Elsie.

“Take off your damn boots,” Myrlene said.

“Why?”

“You’re not getting on the bed with those things.”

“Then we can do it standing up.”  He shuffled across the room and pressed her against the wall.  She leaned against it and let Jack do the work.

“Why were you late?” she asked.

“I leased the old servant’s house,” he said, moving back and forth.

“Who’s renting it?”

“Weird guy,” he said.  “Calls himself The Counselor.”

“Oh, he came in the shop today.”  Myrlene adjusted her position against the wall, rose up on her toes.  “Do you know anything about him?”

“No,” Jack said, panting.  “Just that he’s weird.”

“I think he’s nice, and cute.”

“He’s a fag.”

“You’re jealous.”

Jack was huffing, concentrating on Myrlene’s breasts.

“Will you hurry up?”

“Sorry.”

On his way out, Jack was looking for a way to stall.  “This deck would look great with a coat of stain,” he said.  “I’ll do it for you.”

“Sure, whatever.”

“Next Saturday!” he yelled through the closed door.

Elsie came out of the parlor with a bucket full of gray mucous.  There was a lot of it that morning, and as she poured it down the sink she heard, over the roar of the disposal, a car drive up outside.

“Who is it?” Jack asked.

“Is that Myrlene?”

Jack went to the window, looked through the blinds.  “Yeah, it is.”

“Wow, she looks better than I remember.”

“Yeah.”

“Breakfast?” Elsie said.  Jack turned away from the window.  She had set out two plates of pastries at the table.  Jack worked at a sweet shop, and they let him take home broken pastries.  The refrigerator was always full of beheaded nun’s caps, crumbling meringues, old chocolates with the white bloom of cocoa butter.

“I’m worried, Jack,” Elsie said, picking up a broken eclair.

“Why?”

“What if someone finds me?”

“You don’t have to stay here.”

“Where would we go?”

He thought about that.  They had had this conversation before.  “Austin,” he said.  “We could stay with my parents.  Board up the house, forget about it.”

“Hmm.”

Elsie and Jack were cleaning the table when they heard Myrlene’s car pull away.

It took a few weeks for people to realize that the town was dying.  The obituaries crept across the page, first into two columns, then three, then half a page.  The cause of death was mostly given as, “natural causes.”  Nothing had killed them, it seemed, but the mere fact of being dead.  No one questioned it.  No one was afraid.  The churches still filled on Sundays, and not with wailing penitents but with people who flipped docilely through the hymnals and noticed only that the pews seemed a little roomier every week.

The Counselor noticed it too.  On his bike one morning he saw a neighboring house had been boarded up.  Its furniture was arranged on the front lawn, a cherry coffee table and sofa, an easy chair and lamp in the shade of a tree.  Each piece was tagged with a price and phone number to call.  The morning after there was a sign on the lawn: “Free Furniture, Help Yourself.”

His business was picking up.  Nearly the whole town walked in and out of his office each week.  Elsie sat in the window and saw old high school friends, cousins, ex-boyfriends walk by.  Myrlene came almost daily.  Elsie paid special attention to her, noticing her dark curly hair, her red nails, her tan, her tight jeans and shirt-tails knotted at the waist.  That was also when Elsie started slipping out of the house.  In a hat and dark glasses, she would walk down to the IGA to do her shopping.

The mucous that morning was brown, and Jack followed Elsie out of the parlor with a second bucketful.  They heard a car pull up next door, a familiar sound by then.

“That Counselor guy worries me,” Elsie said over the disposal.  “He’s got the whole town addicted, whatever he’s doing to them.”

“People are just getting scared.  They need someone to talk to.  Jenny, the girl that made the buttercream at the shop.  She died last week,” Jack said.  “The whole town’s going.”

“I bet he’s doing it,” Elsie said.

“Oh, come on!  It’s natural causes, every time.  You know that.”  He pinched her rear.  “Those jeans are tight!  Well, I’ll see you later.”

“Where are you going?”

“Myrlene’s.”

“You don’t have to do her till tomorrow.”

“I told her I’d stain her deck.”  He opened the door.  “I’ll be back this evening.”

Working on her deck, Jack watched Myrlene through the window.  Sweat dripped into his eyes.  He wished Myrlene would look up and notice him.  She was ignoring him, reading her Bible.  She was picturing a desert, no cacti, lots of rocks.  The Israelites were dark-skinned.  Did they have beards?  Wearing things like afghans, and God talking out of a cloud.  What did He sound like?  Walter Cronkite?  Alistair Cooke?  Howard Cosell?

She laughed.  It was not so much a thought as a twinge of suppressed instinct, to turn and tell her ex-husband, Parker, about God sounding like Howard Cosell.  She looked up and only saw Jack staring at her through the window, a smear of oak stain on his cheek.  The Israelites were walking and walking.  She thought about writing a book where the Israelites stop in the desert, build irrigation systems to grow wheat and corn.  They make their own food and let the manna drop on the sand, and when God talks to them out of His cloud they just keep hoeing as if they didn’t hear.

She flipped ahead to her favorite part, where Moses sees God’s back, but is told, “Thou canst not see my face, for there shall no man see me, and live.”  She had written a story in middle school where Moses had accidentally seen God’s face.  It had spikes sticking out of it like Pinhead from Hellraiser, a pig’s nose, and “big green eyes like my cat Lucy.”  Her teacher had loved it, but made her promise not to show it to anyone.

Jack was knocking on the door.  She opened it.

“Done?” she asked.

“No,” he said, stepping inside.  “I’m going to finish tomorrow.”

“Okay.  Well I appreciate it.”

He didn’t leave.

“What?”

“Can I kiss you?”

“Our night’s not till tomorrow,” she said.

“Who do you have tonight?”

“It’s my sabbath.”

“Me too,” Jack said.  “Let’s just switch nights, take tomorrow off,” he said.  “It would be better for me, since tomorrow’s a work night.”

“Fine.”  She put aside her Bible and started unbuttoning her blouse.  Jack took over, garnering a surprised look.

“You’re beautiful,” he murmured.  Myrlene stepped back but over-balanced and slumped onto the couch.  “Myrlene.”  Jack covered her.

All right, she thought.  She had played this game before, with other men.  “Jack, I want you,” she moaned, a bit flatly.  He didn’t seem to mind.  He had her shirt off, running his mouth laboriously over her stomach.  “Oh Jack,” she said.

He had never been so elaborate.  Myrlene found herself half-dozing before he was done with her, not evening bothering to moan by then.  When he finally did sigh and pull away it was not to gather his clothes and go.  Instead, he just lay beside her on the couch, one arm thrown across her.

“Jack?” she whispered.

“Hmm?”

“Jack, are you done?”

“Yeah.”  He nuzzled into her neck.

“Then I guess I’ll see you tomorrow.”

Jack popped up on his elbow.  “You want me to leave?”

“You’ve never stayed before.”

“But after...after that?  You want me to go?”

Myrlene sighed.  “Jack...”

“Just let me stay,” he said.  “Let me hold you.”

“All right,” she said.  “Whatever.  But this is the only time.”

Back at Elsie’s house there were sounds from the parlor, a deep hum and sometimes hissing.  Elsie stood in her dark living room, naked, waiting for the self-tanner to dry.

When Jack woke, Myrlene was dressed and finishing her coffee.  “Where are you going?” he asked.

“To see The Counselor.”

“What for?”

“We just talk,” she said.

“About?”

“Whatever I want to ,” she said.  “He says that happiness is in recognizing full freedom of the will.”

“What’s that mean?”

“That I could kill you if I wanted to.”  She smiled with perfect teeth.  “Or burn down my house and live in the woods.  Whatever.”

Jack grabbed her hand.  “Why don’t you stay here?”

She pulled free.  “Bye mister.  You gonna finish my deck?”

Elsie hadn’t bothered to clean up that morning.  A rust-colored sludge oozed from beneath the hall door.  She was wearing tight jeans and a T-shirt.  Her face was deep orange, but there were places--near her hairline, under her eyes--where she was still pale.  She watched Myrlene drive up, walk to The Counselor’s door.  This morning it was the tight jeans again, a red flannel shirt with mother-of-pearl buttons, and red pumps.

The phone rang.  It was Jack.

“I’m sorry,” he said.  “I should have called last night.”

Elsie tugged at the seat of her jeans.  “Where are you?”

“Me and Myrlene switched nights,” he said,  “so I can stay with you tonight.”

“Well, okay,” she said.  “If you want to.”

“I’ll be by this evening,” he said.  “I still have to finish her deck.”

“Okay, bye.”

All day she watched people come and go from The Counselor’s office.  She kept a list of people she recognized so she could look for their names in the obituaries.  That afternoon she put on her hat and dark glasses and went to the IGA.  She bought a Fancy Beef Broil, tiny red potatoes, macaroni, cheddar, colby, and Monterey jack cheese, sparkling white grape Jell-O, a bottle of cold duck, and paper napkins with a floral print.  She had five full bags and had to push the shopping cart home, which she parked behind the house, deciding to worry later about returning it.  Inside, she called Myrlene’s house and Jack answered.  She told him she was making dinner, and he said he’d be home in a few hours.

Everything was ready by seven.  At 8:00, when Jack still wasn’t home, she put out the candles and ate a little macaroni and cheese.  At 9:00 she put everything in the fridge, put on her hat and glasses, and headed for the IGA before they closed.

That night the sounds from the nursery were louder--a thrumming and sputtering, broken by sudden silences.  A chemical smell came from the upstairs bathroom, along with sounds of running water.

Jack’s truck was in Myrlene’s rear-view mirror.  He had finished her deck the evening before, and then talked her into letting him stay, again.

“Don’t you have to work?” she had asked him as she dressed that morning.

“I’m quitting,” he said.

She told him that he needed to go, that she wanted the day to herself.  She planned to work in the shop for a little while and then go home to her Bible and a beer.

She passed the yard with the furniture and pulled into The Counselor’s drive.

“You following me?” she asked Jack as they both got out of their cars.

“No, I’m not stalking you,” he snapped, heading for the main house.  “I’m checking the house.”

Myrlene started for The Counselor’s door.  Today was the last lesson.  He said she was ready for it, the final exertion of will.  She hoped it was something wonderful, that maybe he would even touch her.  She imagined, half to amuse herself, some kind of ritual sex, The Counselor giving instructions in his high girlish voice.  He was so slender--she could probably pick him up.

A woman stepped out of the bushes, into Myrlene’s path.  She wore a hat and dark glasses.  Beneath the hat, her hair was bruise-colored and frizzy, her face streaked with tan.  She wore tight jeans, a red plaid shirt, and red pumps.

“I need to talk to you,” Elsie said.

“Who are you?” Myrlene stepped back.

“What does he do to you?”

“Why are you dressed like that?”

“Please, what does he do?”

“Who?”

“The Counselor.”

Myrlene gulped air.  “Nothing,” she said.  “I mean, we talk.  There’s lessons, a whole program,” Myrlene said.  “Who are you?  Why--”

“What are the lessons about?” Elsie asked.  “Please, it’s important.”

Myrlene stared.  “The point of life,” she said.

“Which is...?”

“Well, I don’t know,” Myrlene said.  “I haven’t got to that yet.”

“Don’t go in there,” Elsie pleaded, “please.  Just go home.  I’ll send Jack to you.”

“How do you know Jack?”

“He’ll be right behind you.”

Myrlene rushed for The Counselor’s door.  “Go away,” she said.

“Please!”

The door opened, framing The Counselor, his wavy hair (parted on the left,) his soft face, the tawny suede jacket.  He let Myrlene in, glanced at Elsie, and shut the door.

Elsie went in her house, found Jack climbing the stairs.

“There you are,” he said, starting back down.  “What’s with the hat?”  He kissed her quickly.  She moved toward him but the kiss was over.  He was looking at the sludge seeping from under the parlor door.  “What’s that?”

“Just leave it alone,” she said.  “Can we really go to Austin?”

“What happened to your hair?”

“Jack!”

His gaze was searching.  “Okay,” he said.  “Sure, we can go.”

“Let’s leave tomorrow.”

They spent the day packing.  Elsie sat suitcases and boxes at the front door and Jack ran them to his truck.

Myrlene didn’t leave The Counselor’s house until dark.  When the lesson was finally over he opened a leather case and took out a tiny white pill.  Myrlene received it in silence and went to her car.

The packing done, Elsie and Jack had dinner in the dark.  Jack went straight for the Jell-O, not touching any of the leftover roast, while Elsie spoke dreamily of their new life, of going to the mall and the public pool.  Jack hadn’t noticed her new tan.  She was going to surprise him, make him look for her tan line.  After dinner they did whisky shots.  When Elsie pushed him onto the couch and started undressing him, Jack pretended to pass out, and then actually did.

Later that night the sounds from the parlor woke him.  “What the hell?”  There was a sputtering punctuated with belching noises.

Elsie was asleep on the floor.  Jack buttoned his shirt and rushed out of the house.  Still a little drunk, he got unsteadily in his truck and drove down Plant Street, past the lawn with the furniture.  It was all still there and the lamp under the tree was burning.  He sped down the hill, swerving around a dead dog in the road, pulled through the parking lot of Myrlene’s Hair House, and into her driveway.

Myrlene didn’t answer her door.  Jack turned the knob.  It wasn’t locked.

At home, Elsie was just waking to find Jack missing.

Jack wobbled a little, and stepped into Myrlene’s living room.  A lamp was on.  Myrlene was in a chair, her eyes open.  Jack nudged her cheek with a finger.  Her head rolled to one side.  Jack grabbed the phone and dialed the operator.

Elsie knew where Jack was.  She also knew, with some certainty, what he had found.  She started for the phone, but the sounds from the parlor made her pause.  She stepped into the hall.  The whole hall was full of orange sludge.  She unlocked the parlor door and pushed it open.

“Oh God!”

In a few moments she was banging on The Counselor’s door.  He appeared in the doorway wearing a long-sleeved white nightgown.

“Myrlene?” he said, putting on his glasses.  “Wait, who are you?”

“Are you a doctor?”

“I know a little about medicine,” he said.  “Are you hurt?”

Elsie was running back to the main house.  The Counselor followed.  “You live here!” he said as he followed her inside.  “What’s that sound?”  He stopped at the edge of the hall, looking at the slime just inches from his bare feet.

“Oh, sorry.  Hold on.”  Elsie ran up the stairs.  “What size shoe do you wear?” she called down.

“Eight and a half.”  He looked into the dim parlor, where the sound was coming from.  It was like a group of men belching in chorus.  “What’s in there?”

Elsie came back down with a pair of blue galoshes.  The Counselor put them on.  He followed her into the room.

In the center of the parlor was a crib.  Above the crib a brown object the size and shape of a watermelon was pressed to the ceiling.  There were a number of round openings on its surface.  The belching sounds came from these, along with bursts of multi-colored mucous.  The thing’s tough-looking skin pulsed irregularly, as if it were breathing.

“What is it?” The Counselor asked.

“My...child,” Elsie said.

The Counselor swallowed.  “Has it always been like, like this?”

“It only just started floating.  That’s what I’m worried about.”

“So you’ve adopted this thing?”

Elsie shook her head.

“You gave birth to this?”

She nodded.

“Oh my,” The Counselor said.  “I don’t know what to do with it,” he said.  “I don’t even know what it is.”  He leaned against the crib, not caring that it was covered with mucous.  “Does anyone else know?”

“Just Jack.”

“You’ve kept it a secret.”

She nodded.  “The story is that I died giving birth,” she said.  “The baby too.”

“That’s the story.”

She nodded.  “So you’ve never seen this before?”

“Never.”

Elsie leaned against the wall, holding her forehead.  The Counselor looked into a corner, his eyes moving.  The thing on the ceiling belched mucous across the side of his face.  He wiped it slowly away with his handkerchief.

“Locusts,” he finally said.

“What?”

“Locusts!”

Elsie looked up.  “Locusts?  Are you saying it’s a bug?”

“No,” he said.  “It’s human.”

Elsie shrugged.  Her perm had relaxed a little, and her hair drifted dryly in the air.  She didn’t really look like Myrlene, but she didn’t look bad either.

The Counselor reached for the thing on the ceiling.  “Can I touch it?”

“Sure,” Elsie said.  “It’s really slimy.”

The Counselor stood in the crib and grabbed the thing at both ends.  Its belching stopped.  He pulled it down from the ceiling about a foot and let it go.  It drifted back up like a helium balloon.  He grabbed it again and climbed down from the crib with it.

“Come on,” he said, carrying it toward the door.

“Where are we going?”

“Outside.”

Out on the front lawn, The Counselor held Elsie’s child out to her.  “Take it,” he said.

Its flesh was slick and cool under her hands.  It throbbed faintly but was silent.

“Go ahead,” The Counselor said.

Elsie met his eye.  He smiled.  Elsie held the thing above her head and let it go.

Bobbing back and forth, it rose slowly.  Just before it cleared the trees the wind picked up and blew it into the branches of a dogwood.

“I’ll climb up,” Elsie said.

“No, wait.”

The brown thing hummed and belched once.  The branches shook.  It belched again, mucous arcing across the grass, and was free.  It seemed to gain speed as it rose, and was dwindling fast.

“So tell me,” Elsie said.  “What’s the purpose of life?”

The thing was just a speck, almost gone.

“That’s the last lesson,” The Counselor said.

“So?  Go ahead and give it to me.”

The speck vanished.

“The purpose of life,” he said slowly, “is the continuation of life.  Somewhere.  Somehow.”

The town was quiet.  Elsie could see the lamp burning in the neighbor’s yard.  It seemed to her that they were all alone, that the whole town was empty.  The Counselor knew better, but it wouldn’t take much longer.  A month.  Maybe two.

“Can we talk?” Elsie asked.  “In your office?”

“Of course.”