years old. They were everywhere. Covering the trees, climbing the outside walls
of the house and barbecue pit, swarming up telephone and electric poles, making their way along the chicken wire around dog
runs. There they erupted from the back of their shells and unfurled wings. Hadn't been there at all the night before. Then
suddenly thousands of them: black bodies the size of shrimp and maybe an inch long, transparent wings, red eyes. The males
commenced to beat out tunes on their undersides, thrumming on hollow, drumlike bellies. As the sun warmed, they played louder
and harder. Dogs, the wild cat that lived under the garage, chickens, mockingbirds, and bluejays ate their fill. People did
too, some places, Dad told me.
People thereabouts still called them locusts. My friend Billy and I collected their husks off trees and the house and lined
them up in neat rows on the walls of our bedrooms. Later I'd learn their real name: cicadas. I'd learn that they emerge in
thirteen- or seventeen-year cycles, coming out in May, all dead by June. The male dies not long after coupling, whereupon
the female takes to a tree, cuts as many as fifty slits in one of the branches, and deposits 400 to 600 eggs. Once her egg
supply is gone, she dies too. Six to eight weeks later the nymphs hatch and fall to the ground, burrowing in a foot or so
and living off sap sucked from tree roots until it's their turn to emerge, climb, shed skins, unfurl wings.
Most of this I learned forty-odd years later.
Not a title — my name, Bishop Holden told me at our first meeting. He and I were of an age. When, after my childhood experience of them, the cicadas
came again, I was in a jungle half a world away and Bishop was in line at the local draft where, told to turn his head and
cough, he instead grabbed the doctor's head in both hands and planted a hard, wet kiss on his lips. He was carried away, discoursing
incoherently of conspiracies and government-funded coups, and remanded by courts to the local psychiatric hospital. He'd been
in and out of one or another of them most of his life. At the last, during convulsions caused by a bad drug reaction, he'd
bitten off the finger of an orderly trying to help him and developed something of a taste for flesh. He'd bagged another finger,
half an ear, and a big toe before (as he said) putting himself on a strict diet.
He had skin like a scrubbed red potato, pouchlike, leathery cheeks. In khakis, cardigan, and canvas shoes, he reminded me
of Mr. Rogers.
"Ready for them?" he asked. Our chairs stood at a right angle, a small shellacked table pushed close in to the apex. I turned
my head to him. His turned to the window.
Ready for what exactly, I asked.
"The cicadas. It's time. I've called them."
Called them up from the depths of the earth itself, he said; and while I was never to learn much about Bishop Holden, over
the next hour and in later sessions (until one bright morning he bit through the chain of a charm bracelet on the wrist of
a teenage girl passing his breakfast sandwich through a carryout window) I learned quite a lot about cicadas.
Now, so many years later and a bit further south, it was time for them again.
Two abandoned shells, spurs hooked into mesh, hung on the screen of the window above the sink when I got up the next morning.
It sounded as though a fleet of miniature farm machinery, tiny tractors and combines and threshers, had invaded the yard.
Thanks to Bishop, I knew that three distinct species always surface at the same time, and that each has not only its own specific
sound but a favored time of day as well. Someone once said that the three sounded in turn like the word pharaoh, a sizzling skillet, and a rotary lawn sprinkler. The morning cicadas, the sizzlers, were hard at their work.
"What the hell is that racket?" J. T. asked from the doorway. I told her.
She came up close behind me and stood watching as they swarmed.
"Jesus. This happen
of the house and barbecue pit, swarming up telephone and electric poles, making their way along the chicken wire around dog
runs. There they erupted from the back of their shells and unfurled wings. Hadn't been there at all the night before. Then
suddenly thousands of them: black bodies the size of shrimp and maybe an inch long, transparent wings, red eyes. The males
commenced to beat out tunes on their undersides, thrumming on hollow, drumlike bellies. As the sun warmed, they played louder
and harder. Dogs, the wild cat that lived under the garage, chickens, mockingbirds, and bluejays ate their fill. People did
too, some places, Dad told me.
People thereabouts still called them locusts. My friend Billy and I collected their husks off trees and the house and lined
them up in neat rows on the walls of our bedrooms. Later I'd learn their real name: cicadas. I'd learn that they emerge in
thirteen- or seventeen-year cycles, coming out in May, all dead by June. The male dies not long after coupling, whereupon
the female takes to a tree, cuts as many as fifty slits in one of the branches, and deposits 400 to 600 eggs. Once her egg
supply is gone, she dies too. Six to eight weeks later the nymphs hatch and fall to the ground, burrowing in a foot or so
and living off sap sucked from tree roots until it's their turn to emerge, climb, shed skins, unfurl wings.
Most of this I learned forty-odd years later.
Not a title — my name, Bishop Holden told me at our first meeting. He and I were of an age. When, after my childhood experience of them, the cicadas
came again, I was in a jungle half a world away and Bishop was in line at the local draft where, told to turn his head and
cough, he instead grabbed the doctor's head in both hands and planted a hard, wet kiss on his lips. He was carried away, discoursing
incoherently of conspiracies and government-funded coups, and remanded by courts to the local psychiatric hospital. He'd been
in and out of one or another of them most of his life. At the last, during convulsions caused by a bad drug reaction, he'd
bitten off the finger of an orderly trying to help him and developed something of a taste for flesh. He'd bagged another finger,
half an ear, and a big toe before (as he said) putting himself on a strict diet.
He had skin like a scrubbed red potato, pouchlike, leathery cheeks. In khakis, cardigan, and canvas shoes, he reminded me
of Mr. Rogers.
"Ready for them?" he asked. Our chairs stood at a right angle, a small shellacked table pushed close in to the apex. I turned
my head to him. His turned to the window.
Ready for what exactly, I asked.
"The cicadas. It's time. I've called them."
Called them up from the depths of the earth itself, he said; and while I was never to learn much about Bishop Holden, over
the next hour and in later sessions (until one bright morning he bit through the chain of a charm bracelet on the wrist of
a teenage girl passing his breakfast sandwich through a carryout window) I learned quite a lot about cicadas.
Now, so many years later and a bit further south, it was time for them again.
Two abandoned shells, spurs hooked into mesh, hung on the screen of the window above the sink when I got up the next morning.
It sounded as though a fleet of miniature farm machinery, tiny tractors and combines and threshers, had invaded the yard.
Thanks to Bishop, I knew that three distinct species always surface at the same time, and that each has not only its own specific
sound but a favored time of day as well. Someone once said that the three sounded in turn like the word pharaoh, a sizzling skillet, and a rotary lawn sprinkler. The morning cicadas, the sizzlers, were hard at their work.
"What the hell is that racket?" J. T. asked from the doorway. I told her.
She came up close behind me and stood watching as they swarmed.
"Jesus. This happen
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