The Regal Darner
by Jeffrey Greene
Part 1 appears in this issue.
conclusion
During these absences, which Mr. Kitchens never explained, Lloyd often came to prowl the yard for specimens but also to commune with the restless and elusive spirit of the man who, as the days passed, seemed ever less likely to return to his modest little house in Jackson Park, as if he’d settled here on a whim that he already regretted.
And then one day the old blue Dodge would be back in the driveway, the man himself in his usual baggy slacks, buttoned-up long-sleeved shirt, and leather slippers, asking and answering questions on stars, tornadoes, lightning, alligators, the chemical weaponry of plants and insects, atomic radiation, fungi, bacteria, viruses, and the vast unknowns of existence. He was as different from all the adults Lloyd had known as he felt himself to be different from most of his peers.
Following a particularly violent thunderstorm one Thursday afternoon in late July, Lloyd, who hadn’t seen Mr. Kitchens for two weeks, wandered over to his house, walking under dripping trees and stomping through puddles, the street littered with small oak and pine branches, and as usual made himself at home in the yard.
Mr. Kitchens’ car was there but clearly hadn’t been driven for a while, so covered was it with dirt, oak leaves, small twigs and Spanish moss. This was unusual, since no one seemed to be home but, not wanting to be caught snooping, Lloyd decided to contain his curiosity and stay away from the windows.
He had already collected a big black horsefly that landed on his bare leg, swatting it just hard enough to stun but not damage it, then quickly popped it into the killing jar. A Giant Swallowtail butterfly prettily fanned its five-inch wings splashed with diagonal patterns of black and yellow as it fed on the nectar of red hibiscus blossoms and, with a twinge of regret — perhaps for the first time in his collecting career — at the thought of taking the life of something so beautiful, he readied his net.
It was then that he heard a low, murmurous buzz, sounding a little like a swarm of bees that might have taken up temporary residence in the branches of the big live oak overhanging Mr. Kitchens’ house. Lloyd couldn’t spot the variously shaped, forbidding cluster of thousands of intensely purposeful insects and, after listening closely, began to think that the drone was coming from inside the house.
What troubled him most was its tone, much lower than any buzzing wasps or bees he’d ever heard. Had a swarm of something unknown to science gotten into the attic during Mr. Kitchens’ absence? The thought excited him. Deciding for once to let the swallowtail go in peace and, instead, to investigate this more interesting problem, Lloyd squeezed as quietly as he could through the dense cluster of azalea bushes girdling the south end of the house then stepped close to an open window and looked into a tiny bedroom very much like his own.
The bed was out of his line of sight, but the foot of it was reflected in the mirror mounted over the dresser on the wall opposite the window. About four feet to the left of the dresser was a door opening onto a darkened hallway, only a portion of which was visible from where he stood.
What first drew his gaze were several large, glass-enclosed insect collections mounted on virtually every square foot of the wall on both sides of the mirror, insects from all over the world: beetles, butterflies, moths, mantids, cockroaches, stick insects, true bugs and many more, some much larger than anything he’d seen in Florida.
A few, like the huge Atlas Moth of Southeast Asia and the African Goliath Beetle, he recognized from pictures in books. Others were entirely new to him. But as he peered through the horizontal blinds into the sunlit room, his attention was gradually drawn to a reflection in the mirror of something on the bed, something he couldn’t identify.
His first impression was of a large, cylindrical suitcase or duffel bag, one end of it, anyway, with a smooth, shiny brown surface that looked like leather. As he continued to stare at it in the dusty mirror, however, he began to feel apprehensive, and not merely because the deep droning buzz was growing perceptibly louder, originating, apparently, from somewhere in the house.
What he’d initially thought were vertical lines of stitching in the leather now more closely resembled the symmetrically curved ends of tightly interlocking segments, and the glistening brown material of which the object was made, though organic in appearance, was certainly not leather. The segmented portion that he could see was tapered, coming to a blunt point.
Lloyd leaned into the screen and strained his eyes to get a better look, and as he did so the thing on the bed suddenly moved in a contracting, upward curl, the tapered end visibly quivering. At the same moment, the sound in the house changed from a steady, neutral drone to a much louder buzz of alarm and anger. At the far end of the dim hallway, he glimpsed something man-sized and darkly mottled moving in furious, scrabbling jerks toward the room.
Reeling back from the window, Lloyd tumbled over the bush behind him and landed hard on his right shoulder. In a panic, he sprinted for home, forgetting his net and killing jar. Avoiding an encounter with his family, Lloyd cowered in his room with the door locked until called to dinner. It was some time before he began to feel reasonably sure he had not been followed.
Due to his wise or foolish decision to keep the whole business of Mr. Kitchens to himself, he couldn’t share his experience with anyone, which was probably fortunate for his future credibility, though it resulted in several unsettling dreams and one full-fledged nightmare over the next few weeks.
He was as concerned about the welfare of his teacher as he was torn by doubts and a dread-imbued curiosity over the things he’d seen and heard in the house on Washington Court, but it was days before he could bring himself to even walk past the property. And then the shock of loss outran his surprise, for the blue sedan was gone, the house dark, and a For Sale sign was back in the front yard.
Already the high grass was beginning to seed, the stinging nettles, beggar-tick, and sand spurs springing up again from the sandy soil so felicitous to fire ants, and the vines had commenced their patient creep up the walls. Feeling lonelier than ever, Lloyd retrieved his net and killing jar and circled back toward home.
* * *
It was a month or so later, in September, and he’d just started fifth grade. The school was only three blocks from his house, and weather permitting, he always walked to and from class. Washington Court, shaped liked a horseshoe with both ends connecting to Flowers Avenue, the larger street running past his school, was part of his route home, though the former Kitchens house was on the opposite end of the shoe.
He was rounding the curve, sweating in the mid-nineties heat, when a car, turning from his street onto Washington Court, passed by him at an unhurried pace, long enough for him to get a clear view of the driver. It wasn’t a car he’d seen before, a white foreign compact, but the man behind the wheel was undoubtedly Jonas Kitchens.
Lloyd whipped around, his arm shooting up to wave, but something he’d seen arrested his action, and he dropped his arm and watched as the car ambled up to the stop sign at Flowers Avenue, then turned right and drove out of sight.
Children are the worst judges of age, but Lloyd had excellent eyesight, and if he had no doubts as to the driver’s identity, the passing years made him less sure of what at the time had seemed a certainty: that this Mr. Kitchens was many years younger than the man with whom he’d regularly interacted. The dark eyes and complexion, the gently amused expression, were the same, but this man wore a suit and tie, and his hair was parted on the side.
Although he must have seen Lloyd as he passed by, there was no sign of recognition in the eyes, with their kind, abstracted air. After a few moments Lloyd resumed his way home, confused feelings roiling his insides.
As he turned onto his front walk, he saw a square package protruding from his mailbox; it was addressed to him. He took it into his room and locked the door before unwrapping it. Mr. Kitchens’ parting gift to his pupil was a glass-topped, balsa-wood box containing two fresh, beautifully mounted specimens: a dragonfly nymph and an imago, both identified as Coryphaeschna ingens and, under that, in his precise, unmistakable hand, “Regal Darner, Jackson Park, Florida, August, 1962.” There was no accompanying note.
* * *
Lloyd’s lifelong habit of keeping secrets began that summer; he chose to hide Mr. Kitchens’ gift from his parents. When, some time later, his mother found it and asked how he came by it, he told her he’d sent off for it in the mail, paid for by saving up his weekly allowance, which she either believed or pretended to believe.
The case of specimens outlasted Lloyd’s two marriages and his rather brief passion for insect collecting. What he chose to interpret as the layered intentions of his mentor’s gift, and the ambiguous things Mr. Kitchens had shared about himself on that single occasion, troubled him for many years, and taught him, perhaps more than anything else that happened in his childhood, of the unbridgeable gulf between nymphs and imagos, or children and adults, if one preferred.
But he always honored its giver for reminding him of what they’d briefly had and possibly still shared: a joyous obsession, a secret, and a warning heeded, and he never told anyone what he had seen and heard on that summer day, fifty years gone.
Copyright © 2019 by Jeffrey Greene
