Black History Moth

Editor's Note: Today's offering is a guest piece by acclaimed fiction writer and illustrator Dave Coates. Dave graciously and laboriously constructed this account of one man's Black History Moth, and now the fruits of his labor are here for all to enjoy. So pull your chair up to the computer screen, and attend the tale of Black History Moth.

Black History Moth
by Dave Coates

Terry stepped onto the porch and lit his pipe. February made his bones hurt. The last, stubborn stings of a wilting late winter cold snap whispered through clicking, skeletal branches, as the seasons struggled to divine a balance. Terry sought a similar balance in his own life, and found within himself a certain stillness during his nightly visits to the porch. Standing, smoking, tossing the gnarled, burned matches in the bucket of sand Joanne had insisted he not only buy and assemble, but use, lest the house they'd worked their entire lives to pay off burn up because Terry's mind tended to wander.

He liked being the only one in the neighborhood awake, watching the moon pull the stars across the sky for an hour or so before getting ready for bed was a good way to sift through those things too frisky to properly address when he was otherwise distracted. The gutters. The transmission. The busted latch on the back fence. He puffed twice on his pipe, enjoying the tiny warmth on his cheek from the crackling tobacco. The smoke curled slowly into a feeble haze, hanging in the air as if it were unsure of how, exactly, to dissipate.

The screen banged against its frame, sucked inward as Joanne pulled open the heavy wooden front door. The porch light popped on overhead. "Terry, the neighbors will think you're a prowler. Come inside." Joanne didn't understand his recent predilection for solitude, and it made her worry.

"I'll be in soon. You go on up," Terry said, still facing the yard. Joanne stood in the doorway for a few seconds longer, perhaps considering whether to worry harder. Just as she had every night for the past few months, she closed the door and left her husband to his business, keeping the light on so if he didn't come in for her, he would at least eventually find himself unable to bear wasting electricity any longer. Terry smiled to himself, thinking of his wife. His pipe crackled, and the wind blew past the front of the house. Somewhere far, a train sounded a low, mournful whistle.

He looked into the frozen midnight at the perimeter of the porch light's range, stoic and immense. He puffed on his pipe, and the smoke again hung near his head, suspending him from the ceiling in a blue umbilicus. He closed his eyes and waited for the wind to blow.

Then: a voice in his right ear, tiny and wet, so soft as to barely rise above the sound of one's own conscience, "Lewis Temple (1800 – 1854) revolutionized the whaling industry with his invention of the toggle harpoon in 1848." The words were slipped into his brain so gently that it took him a full minute to realize this new thought was not his own. Startled, his eyes snapped open. The porch was small enough for him to determine that he was still its only occupant with the most cursory of eye-darting, but he was sure someone had just spoken. He peered over the railing on either side, finding only the garden hose and some empty flowerpots. The porch light flickered, and he looked up.

There, resting flat against the grey vinyl siding next to the bulb was a moth, small enough to be mistaken for a flower petal, were it not clearly a moth. After a brief interval, it spasmed, pushing off the ceiling and batting against the thin yellow glass of the porch light, making a little pinging sound each time it bounced off. Terry thought the weather was much too cold for wildlife to be stirring, but here, just a few feet from his face, was proof he was mistaken. He watched the creature, puzzled. The moth had a gravitas about it uncommon in most insects drawn to Terry's porch light. Until then, the only animal he'd thought to have a quiet dignity about it was the vanishing white tiger of Sumatra.

His eyes, tired from a day's glancing and scanning every single article in the newspaper, strained to stay focused on the moth. One blink, and the moth had vanished, having seemingly folded itself into the last strains of smoke from the dying embers in Terry's pipe. What a strange creature, he thought. What strange markings on its wings, he thought.

"Jazz."

That voice! Terry, his eyes open this time, was positive he was alone. What was happening to his mind? Surely, there were more subtle indications of encroaching madness besides hearing voices. An inability to feel secure in his hands' cleanliness, perhaps, or a growing suspicion of ferns. Disembodied voices were for those who had already displayed a mastery of facial tics, night terrors and a failure to determine whether pants were to be worn over the legs or casually draped across the shoulders. He had only retired two years ago, and had thus far enjoyed good health and zesty regularity. He foresaw the next, dim few years of his life, bumbling along with his brains dribbling out of his increasingly hairy ears until meeting a merciful end after mistaking an open manhole for his missing slipper.
"Jack Johnson (1878 – 1946), the first African-American heavyweight champion, patented a wrench in 1922." Oh, sweet Jesus. Again, already.

The moth fluttered just in front of his face, going about its mothly errands. Just before it left his field of vision, the insect turned towards Terry and, its' soft proboscis unfurling slightly, tooted, "Joseph Winters invented a fire escape ladder in 1878." This struck Terry as somewhat unworthy of historical merit, as every ladder is a fire escape ladder, if leaned close enough to a burning structure occupied by those in need of a less injurious route to safety than falling unguarded to the ground. The moth swam in place in the still night air, as if waiting for Terry to respond.

His scream, hollow and hoarse, could be clearly identified as that of an old man's by anyone within earshot. Younger men's screams can of course be mistaken for foxes, dogs, bottle rockets and a variety of pressure valves, depending on the proximity of the listener, but old men screaming only sound like old men screaming.

The force of Terry's yelp sent the moth tumbling end over end for a few feet, before it could right itself and make its way back to Terry's still-screaming face. The pipe fell from his mouth, crumbling tobacco erupting as it punctuated the moment with an exclamation mark, clattering to Terry's feet.

The moth struggled back to its place in front of Terry's face. "Where did you come from?" He asked the creature. The moth said nothing, and after a few more seconds, turned and flew away into the midnight horizon beyond the reach of the porch light. Terry stood, baffled at what had just transpired.

Just then Joanne came to the door, terrified. "Terry? What on earth happened?" She had fear in her eyes. Terry snapped out of his confused fog and attended to his wife, reassuring her that he'd just had a bad cramp in his side, like he sometimes got when he stood for too long. He knew that whatever had just happened wouldn't be understood in the next few minutes, if ever, so he chose to keep the mystery to himself for now, and try solving it tomorrow, or maybe the next day. He followed his wife inside, then up to bed, sneaking downstairs once her breathing become low and even in deep sleep to turn the porch light back on.

The moth returned the following night, informing him just as he was about to give up waiting for its arrival and head up to bed that Jan Ernst Matzeliger (1852 –1889) invented the Shoe Lasting machine, which connected the upper part of the shoe to the sole. This invention revolutionized the shoe making industry. He turned his head to face the moth, which was at his left ear, but as soon as he did, the creature fluttered off, leaving him alone with this latest factoid. Perhaps the running theme of African-American historical figures in each of the milestones was the key to the puzzle, perhaps not.

As the February nights fell into one another, Terry's interactions with the moth were no less frequent, but no more involved than every previous night except for the first. He learned that Quincy Jones' middle name is "Delight," and that Minnie J. Lee Elders (1933 – ) "Jocelyn" Elders was the first African-American to serve as the United States Surgeon General -- her term lasted for 15 months (1993-1994), but nothing about the moth: the greater cultural significance of these figures and their accomplishments, the issues that existed then and now that made their odds-beating resolve and unwavering dedication remarkable and astonishing, respectively, and how what the moth had to share was supposed to change anything, even though he couldn't fault its validity or right to share and tout, tout and share. He sometimes felt, though, that the moth's regular visits were lapsing into shallow ritual.

Still, a moth so full of facts and so committed to inspiring a continued bridging of racial divides wasn't something he minded having around, really. But he didn't see what Queen Latifah had done to deserve a mention.

Eventually, Terry felt the moth sort of ran out of steam, and while it visited him nightly, it seemed like it had noted the predictable hat trick of heavy hitters, Rosa Parks, Malcolm X and Martin Luther King, Jr. early on, quickly came to never manage to inspire more than a passing "You don't say" as the month wore on.

The days were growing slightly longer with each sundown. It was not an easily perceptible change, but as Terry spent a good portion of every afternoon at his desk reading the paper, he noticed that he had to switch his reading lamp on later and later, and it wasn't too far a logical walk to figure out that more light outside means less light needed within. That, and he'd lived plenty of years. Some days, he felt like too many. He'd had all the time in the world to get a sense of how things worked.

Tapping the tobacco from his pipe on his wrist one night, Terry was surprised to notice that the moth, who was usually so prompt and persistent with his arrivals, had failed to show up yet. It was much later than the moth had ever arrived before, and Terry began to worry.

An hour later, he was beside himself. He'd never meant to take the moth for granted—what it represented, the progress, the setbacks, the struggles and triumphs— honest, he didn't—he had just begun to develop admiration fatigue.

Terry made it a point to not go out after supper, a mindset that grew out of the days when the kids were little. Errands and social calls on weeknights served only to take him away from his family, so he simply resolved not to allow the outside world to ever come before those under his roof. As he'd grown older, this rule had grown more expansive and oddly restrictive, keeping him not only from going into town, but more and more, keeping him from even leaving the porch.

Though he'd never admit it to Joanne, he stayed close these days just as much out of habit as because the world beyond the glow of his porch light seemed different and more menacing than the world with which he'd always felt such a kinship. He didn't see the light of commonality in peoples' eyes, even at church. He didn't see people even bothering to be decent to one another anymore. And the cars on the road that ran in front of his house went so very fast, even though there were children in the neighborhood. Damn teenagers.

Without thinking, he walked onto his lawn, looking for the moth. It was still mighty chilly, but the moth had braved much worse for little else than a quote from Al Sharpton. Terry crisscrossed his yard until his neck hurt from looking at the sky for so long. He stopped on his driveway to rub it, slowly rolling his head from side to side. It felt good, and when he closed his eyes, he could see a reverse cutout of the stars in the sky on the inside of his eyelids, fading and red. He held his hand over the back of his neck, pushing his head gently downwards in order to better stretch his neck muscles.

Then, without even the tiniest sound of dusty, panicked wing-beats or smallest movement of air around it to give away its approach, a moth moved in close to Terry's ear, and told him, "In 1960, Jacqueline Cochran broke the sound barrier by flying an F-86 over Roger's Dry Lake, California, at the speed of 652.337 miles per hour. Eleven years later, she flew at a speed of 1,429.2 miles per hour, more than twice the speed of sound."

Terry's eyes snapped open behind his reading glasses. Women's History Moth had arrived.