英语短篇小说赏析-The Cricket War
The Cricket WarBob Thurber
That summer an army of crickets started a war with my father. They picked a
fight the minute they invaded our cellar. Dad didn't care for bugs much more
than Mamma, but he could tolerate a few spiders and assorted creepy crawlers
living in the basement. Every farm house had them. A part of rustic living, and
something you needed to put up with if you wanted the simple life.
He told Mamma: Now that were living out here, you cant be jerking your head
and swallowing your gum over what's plain natural, Ellen. But she was a city
girl through and through and had no ears when it came to defending vermin. She
said a cricket was just a noisy cockroach, just a dumb horny bug that wouldn't
shut up. She said in the city there were blocks of buildings overrun with
cockroaches with no way for people to get rid of them. No sir, no way could she
sleep with all that chirping going on; then to prove her point she wouldn't go
to bed. She drank coffee and smoked my fathers cigarettes and she paced between
the couch and the TV. Next morning she threatened to pack up and leave, so Dad
drove to the hardware store and hurried back. He squirted poison from a jug with
a spray nozzle. He sprayed the basement and all around the foundation of the
house. When he was finished he told us that was the end of it.
But what he should have said was: This is the beginning, The beginning of
our war, the beginning of our destruction. I often think back to that summer and
try to imagine him delivering a speech with words like that, because for the
next fourteen days mamma kept finding dead crickets in the clean laundry. Shed
shake out a towel or a sheet and a dead black cricket would roll across the
linoleum. Sometimes the cat would corner one, and swat it around like he was
playing hockey, then carry it away in his mouth. Dad said swallowing a few dead
crickets wouldn't hurt as long as the cat didn't eat too many. Each time Mamma
complained he told her it was only natural that we'd be finding a couple of dead
ones for a while.
Soon live crickets started showing up in the kitchen and bathroom. Mamma
freaked because she thought they were the dead crickets come back to haunt, but
Dad said these was definitely a new batch, probably coming up on the pipes. He
fetched his jug of poison and sprayed beneath the sink and behind the toilet and
all along the baseboard until the whole house smelled of poison, and then he
sprayed the cellar again, and then he went outside and sprayed all around the
foundation leaving a foot-wide moat of poison. Stop them son of a bitches right
in their tracks, he told us.
For a couple of weeks we went back to finding dead crickets in the laundry.
Dad told us to keep a sharp look out. He suggested that we'd all be better off
to hide as many as we could from mamma. I fed a few dozen to the cat who I
didn't like because he scratched and bit for no reason. I hoped the poison might
kill him so we could get a puppy. Once in a while we found a dead cricket in the
bathroom or beneath the kitchen sink. We didn't know if these were fresh dead or
old dead the cat had played with and then abandoned. Dad cracked a few in half
to show us that they were fresh. Then he used the rest of the poison to give the
house another dose. A couple of weeks later, when both live and dead crickets
kept turning up, he emptied the cellar of junk. He borrowed Uncle Burt's pickup
and hauled a load to the dump. Then he burned a lot of bundled newspapers and
magazines which he said the crickets had turned into nests.
He stood over that fire with a rake in one hand and a garden hose in the
other. He wouldn't leave it even when Mamma sent me out to fetch him for supper.
He wouldn't leave the fire, and she wouldn't put supper on the table. Both my
brothers were crying. Finally she went out and got him herself. And while we
ate, the wind lifted some embers onto the wood pile. The only gasoline was in
the lawn mowers fuel tank but that was enough to create an explosion big enough
to reach the house. Once the roof caught, there wasn't much anyone could do.
After the fire trucks left I made the mistake of volunteering to stay
behind while Mamma took the others to Aunt Gail's. I helped Dad and Uncle Burt
and two men I'd never seen before carry things out of the house and stack them
by the road. In the morning we'd come back in Burt's truck and haul everything
away. We worked into the night and we didn't talk much, hardly a word about
anything that mattered, and Dad didn't offer any plan that he might have for us
now. Uncle Burt passed a bottle around, but I shook my head when it came to me.
I kicked and picked through the mess, dumb struck at how little there was to
salvage, while all around the roar of crickets magnified our silence.
About the author:
Bob Thurber has pub-lished more than 200 short sto-ries and won numerous
writing prizes.
Notes:
assort vt.把...分类;把...分级 vi.1.相配;相称 2.交际;交往
vermin n.虫
squirt vt.& vi.(指液体或粉末) 喷出,喷射 n.1.喷射出的一股液体 2.妄自尊大的年轻人;不知天高地厚的人
nozzle n.管嘴,喷嘴,管口;
linoleum n.油地毯
swat vt.1.重拍(苍蝇等) 2.猛击 n.1.重拍,猛击
freak n. 1.畸形生物;怪物 2.反常的事, 怪事 3.有怪癖的人, 奇形怪状的人 4.对某一事爱好入迷者 adj.反常的, 稀罕的
vi.(使)强烈反应，震惊，畏惧
moat n.1.壕沟,护城河 2.深沟
rake n.1.耙子 2.放荡的男人;舞台等的倾斜度; vt.& vi.1.以耙子耙平(泥土等) 2.用耙子把…耙在一起; 把…耙出来
3.(翻阅旧记录、文件等以)搜寻事实等 4.向(船只等)开枪扫射 5.搜索，梳理;寻找; 擦;刮;搔;抓
hose n.1.连裤袜, 长统袜, 短统袜 2.(灭火、浇花等用的)橡皮管，塑料管，水龙带 3.(旧时的)男式紧身裤 vt.用软管浇[冲洗]
haul vt.& vi.拖, 拉 vt.1.运送 2.传讯 n.1.拖, 拉 2.拖运货物的距离 3.一网的捕获量, 一次偷得的数量
4.大批赃物;大量非法物品 5.很高的得分 vi.强迫(某人)去某处
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