Karl is twelve years old, and he runs across the grass, body weightless, energy boundless, alive in a way that only a boy on the cusp of adolescence can be. It’s night in July, the country air cool but still humid, and his skin is coated with sweat. He’s in the front yard of his grandmother’s house—grass in need of mowing, two oak trees near the road, a cornfield on the other side. Grandma sits in a rocking chair on the porch, watching from the shadows. The yard is lit by fireflies, hundreds of them, drifting lazily on the air, most not going any higher than Karl can reach. He holds a stick, part of a branch snapped off one of the oaks, and he wields it like a club, swatting fireflies out of the air as he runs. Whatever kind of substance it is that makes the insects glow is smeared all over the stick, making it glow too. Not as brightly as the bugs themselves, thought, as if their luminescence can only outlive them for a short time, but that’s okay. There’s a lot more bugs where those came from.
Karl exults in the feeling of strength, of power, imagines himself a giant swatting fighter jets out of the sky, like a behemoth in the badly-dubbed Japanese monster movies he loves so much. When he first started killing fireflies, he’d counted them, but he lost track after seventy-three. He’s killed a lot more since then.
Eventually he grows tired and bored, and he joins his grandmother, sitting on the one step that leads down from the porch to the front walkway, his glowing murder-stick resting on the concrete next to him. He’s come here to spend a week with Grandma while his parents go on a second honeymoon, whatever that is. Karl thinks it’s another way of saying last ditch effort to save our marriage. He figures their odds of success aren’t great. He used to like coming here, but that was when Grandpa was still alive. Grandpa was fun. He told corny jokes and liked to throw a baseball or football back and forth with Karl. Grandma mostly sits and is quiet. She’s not quiet now, though.
“When I was a little girl, my daddy told me that lightning bugs are really angels.”
The rocking chair creaks as she gets up. She opens the screen door, steps into the house, and Karl hears the sound of the spring contracting as the door shuts behind her. He turns to look at his stick, sees its glow is almost gone, and he feels ill. He thinks this is a moment he will never forget.
He’s wrong.
Fucking doctor’s full of shit.
A considerably older Karl stands in front of the shed at the back of his property. It’s dusk on a hot July night and the shed’s doors are open. Karl has rolled a push mower out of the shed, and now he’s bent over the machine, pouring gas into the tank. Off to his left, a lone firefly glows once. He doesn’t see it, and if he did, it wouldn’t mean anything to him. He’s fifty-one years away from the boy who ran wild across his grandmother’s lawn annihilating lightning bugs. He’s forgotten so many things during that time. Why should he recall a bunch of stupid bugs?
I’m sorry, Karl, but you have to cut back on your physical activity. Your heart attack was a relatively mild one, but you need to avoid putting too much strain on yourself going forward. Taking a walk every day? No problem. In fact, I encourage it. But things like mowing the grass? Hire a lawn service instead.
Karl wishes Molly didn’t insist on accompanying him to that appointment. She took the doctor’s words to heart and forbid him from doing anything around the house more strenuous than flushing the goddamned toilet. And whenever their daughter Sarah came over, she interrogated him about whether he was following his doctor’s orders. He wished both of them would mind their own fucking business. He understood that they were only acting out of love, but he knew his body better than anyone else—including his doctor—and he knew what he was and wasn’t capable of. Running a hundred-yard dash was out of the question. But mowing the yard at night, long after the heat of the day? Piece of proverbial cake. Yeah, they had a push mower, and it was old, and it wasn’t power-assisted, so it took some muscle to operate. But that’s what he liked about it. It made mowing a miniature workout.
Look, if you really want to keep mowing the yard yourself, let’s get a riding mower.
He tried to explain to Molly that not only wasn’t their property large enough to need a riding mower, the whole idea of one was insulting. Getting a riding mower would be like admitting he was too old to do yardwork the way he’d always done it.
You’re not old, Molly said. You’re just not strong enough anymore. There’s no shame in that.
“Bitch.”
He finishes filling the tank and puts the plastic fuel container down on the grass. He checks the oil then, and though it’s a little hard to tell in the waning light, it looks like the level on the dipstick is in the normal range. He decides to put a bit more in for good measure. He then puts the oil and gas containers back in the shed, closes the doors, and returns to the mower. More fireflies in the air now, maybe a dozen. They still fail to register on his consciousness. He pumps a rubber-covered button on the side of the mower’s engine to prime it, holds down the safety shut-off lever, then pulls the starter cord. The engine shudders and coughs, and for a moment he thinks it’s not going to catch, but it begins to rumble and then roar. He smiles.
“You may be old, but you can still get the job done, can’t you? Same here.”
Molly would pitch a fit if she heard the mower going, would rush out of the back door, hurry over to him, and scold him. But she isn’t here. Her eighty-six-year-old mother in Colorado needed hip replacement surgery—the left one this time; she had the right done several years back—and Molly flew in to stay with her for a couple weeks. Karl remained home because Molly’s mother was not one of his biggest fans, and the two of them couldn’t be around each other for long before they started arguing. Molly was afraid that his presence would only agitate her mother and make her recovery more difficult, so she asked him to stay home.
Like he needed her to twist his arm on that one.
Before she left, Molly made him promise to leave the grass alone.
The lawn service is scheduled to come next Thursday. Leave the grass for them to cut, all right?
Karl said he would.
He lied.
He isn’t sure what he’ll do when Molly returns. Will he tell her that he mowed the lawn? Will he try to get her to forget about the lawn service completely and let him go back to mowing? Or will he keep his mouth shut and do as she wishes from now on, both for her peace of mind and to get her to stop nagging him? Whichever he does, and however it turns out, at least he’ll have tonight, a small rebellion against everything that wants to make him less than he is—his wife, his fucking heart, time itself . . .
He decides to mow the backyard first. It’ll be close to an hour before full dark falls, but the streetlights on the road in front of his house will provide plenty of light for him to see to mow the front yard. Best to make use of what natural light remains and do the back.
He pushes the mower forward.
He likes the sound of the blades shearing through the grass, the vibrations of the handle juddering beneath his hands, the smell of gasoline burning. These sensations are old, familiar friends, and it’s not an exaggeration to say they feel like home. He smiles, but the expression doesn’t last long. The yard is filled with fireflies, bobbing lazily up and down, weaving this way and that, abdomens glowing a soft yellow green. A bit early for so many to be out, isn’t it? Something tugs at his memory then, but whatever it is, it makes him uncomfortable, and he refuses to allow it to come to the forefront of his mind. Given how poor his recall is these days, suppressing a single memory isn’t difficult.
He mows slowly, and he tells himself this is because he wants to savor the chore, and not because he’s wary of putting stress on his heart. He’s going slow enough that any fireflies in his path have plenty of time to get out of the machine’s way, not that he would give a damn if any got caught by the mower’s blades and were cut to pieces. They’re only bugs, after all.
One of them flies too near his face, and without thinking, he removes his right hand from the handle, curls the tip of his index finger to his thumb, and flicks his finger at the insect. He feels a tiny impact, watches the bug arc away, fall, land in the grass. Instead of blinking, its abdomen continues to glow, and he remembers this is what they do when they die. Its light will soon dim and fade away.
Take that, you little bastard.
He feels big, strong, and after weeks of feeling small and weak, the sensation is more than welcome. A memory drifts through his mind then, something about fireflies and running through his grandmother’s front yard. He can’t catch hold of it, though, and another takes its place, this one also connected to his grandmother. He’s fifteen and talking to her on the phone.
Me and some of the guys are gonna go camping the weekend I was supposed to come stay with you. Yeah, I know. Me too. I’ll try to figure out another time I can come, okay?
There was no camping trip. Karl figured that at fifteen, he was too old to spend a whole week with his grandmother during the summer, and he needed an excuse to get out of it. To make sure his parents swallowed his story, he packed as if he was going camping, and then spent the weekend at one of his friends’ houses. He didn’t reschedule his visit to his grandmother, never so much as thought about her for the remainder of that summer. He and his parents were supposed to go to Grandmother’s for Thanksgiving that year, but she died early October. Karl was sad, but not that sad. She was pretty old, after all.
The memory evaporates, leaving him shaken. Was he so cold and callous as a kid? He didn’t think so at the time, but now . . .
The yard is silent. Without realizing it, he released his grip on the safety shut-off lever, and the mower stopped. Normally when he mows, he keeps focused on the task—he isn’t one to let his mind wander. Tonight’s not normal, though, is it? He can feel it. He restarts the mower and resumes his work. Several moments later, a firefly drifts too close to his face, and he knocks it away with the back of his hand. The instant his flesh comes in contact with the insect, he experiences another flash of memory.
You’ll call me tomorrow, right?
Sure thing.
He’s seventeen, and he’s standing next to Suzy Dorna’s bed.
He zipped up his pants, pulled his T-shirt over his head. Suzy, still naked, lay on the mattress, sheet pulled up to cover her breasts. He didn’t know why she bothered. It wasn’t like he hadn’t seen them—and done all kinds of things to them—for the last half hour. He slipped on his socks and shoes, in no hurry to get out of there. Suzy’s folks were playing cards at a friend’s house and wouldn’t be back for hours. But he did what he came here to do, and he saw no reason to stay any longer. He didn’t even give Suzy a kiss goodbye.
He didn’t call her the next day or the day after that. He avoided her at school. She’d been good in bed, but not so good that he wanted them to be boyfriend and girlfriend. Sometimes when he walked past her in the hallway, he noticed her eyes glimmered wetly, as if she was about to cry. He wondered what she was sad about, but he didn’t care enough to stop and ask.
This memory ends as swiftly as the first, and it disturbs him just as much. How could he have treated her with such disregard? She was a person, for Christ’s sake.
He doesn’t know what’s going on here, is afraid that maybe his doctor, Molly, and Sarah were right, that he shouldn’t be exerting himself like this. Are these memories signs that he’s about to have another heart attack or maybe a stroke?
Be tough. Power through it.
So his mind is wandering a little. No big deal. Nothing to be afraid of.
He keeps mowing.
Fireflies continue coming into contact with him, bumping against his cheek, brushing the back of his neck, landing on the back of his hand. Each touch brings another memory. The dog he hit one night when driving home drunk, the one he didn’t stop to check on because he was afraid of getting caught. Derek Masterson, his competition for a managerial position at work who he beat out by starting a rumor that he was dating a high school girl. Derek quit when he lost the promotion, and Karl despised his weakness. When a man fell down, he should get back up, dust himself off, and get back in the game, not give up like a pussy. The time not long after Sarah’s birth when Molly had been too sore to have sex, and he’d said, If you can’t fuck, what good are you? The dozens of times Sarah had asked him to play a game with her and he told her he was too busy, when the truth was just didn’t feel like playing with the kid. When Sarah was a freshman in high school and started dating a senior—a girl senior. During one visit to his home, Karl had taken the girl aside and whispered in her ear. I will never accept you. She broke up with Sarah not long after that.
And there are more, so many more, all moments when he was a bastard to someone, a family member, friend, co-worker, complete stranger, whether through action or inaction. He remembers that night in his grandmother’s front yard when he smashed fireflies with a stick.
When I was a little girl, my daddy told me that lightning bugs are really angels.
These fuckers aren’t angels. They’re demons who’ve come to mentally torture him as payback for hurting so many of their brothers and sisters long ago. What else could they be? Well, screw ’em. However they’re doing what they’re doing, in the end they’re just goddamned bugs, and he’s a man. He stops the mower, goes inside the house, and heads for the garage. Once there, he roots around in some junk until he finds what he’s looking for: a pair of tennis rackets. Years back, he and Molly took lessons—she was big on them doing things as a couple back then—but they never played much after that. They kept their equipment, though, more because they’re lazy packrats than anything else, and he’s grateful for that now. He grabs one of the rackets, goes inside, then returns to the backyard. It’s filled with fireflies now, hundreds of them, their combined illumination so bright that it hurts his eyes to gaze upon it.
“If you thought I could do some damage with a stick, wait til you see what I can do with this.”
He raises the racket, gives it a shake. The fireflies do not seem particularly impressed.
He stalks into the yard and begins swinging the racket back and forth, taking out swaths of bugs with each stroke. Luminescent goo quickly gathers on the strings, and he feels as if he’s some fantasy warrior wielding a magic weapon. He can’t remember the last time he felt this strong, maybe not since he was thirteen, and he laughs. He runs across the grass, swings harder, heart racing, sweat pouring off him. In the back of his mind, he thinks that this is when his heart will give out on him. He’ll fall to the grass, dead, and the fireflies will hover above his gray-lipped corpse, their revenge complete. But that’s not what happens. He stops running, winded, bends over, hands on his knees, gulps air, drips sweat. His chest feels a bit tight, but there’s no pain. Nothing to get alarmed about. The remaining fireflies—and there are plenty of them—keep their distance, but they don’t leave.
When Karl’s caught his breath, he straightens. He looks at the glowing mess on the racket strings, reaches out, draws his fingers across it. Hundreds of incidents—some big, some small—flicker through his memory, all times when he hurt someone without knowing it or, if he did, without caring. And with these memories comes understanding. He knows why the fireflies haven’t fled, despite how many of their kind he’s killed this night. When he killed them as a child, he imagined he was a giant monster who possessed the power of life and death, a cruel and whimsical behemoth who dealt out unwarranted suffering according to his own unknowable motivations. He thought he was a god. And that’s exactly how the fireflies see him. They haven’t come to harm him. How could they? They’re just a bunch of bugs. No, they’ve come to worship him, to bask in his glow, to touch him and know him.
He raises the racket high, and in his mind he hears a chorus of cheers.
He knows what he really is. He’s a small man who’s led a small life, a person who’s hurt others as he’s blundered along over the years, without any real thought or consideration to his actions. That doesn’t make him a god. It makes him human. A shitty one, sure, but human still. These tiny things view him as something much greater, though. He doesn’t feel weak or ignored or dismissed around them. He doesn’t feel old.
It’s nice.
“Come to me, my children.”
As the fireflies surge toward him en masse, he wonders if they aren’t going to get their revenge after all. Ultimately worshippers hold their gods captive, refusing to allow them to be anything other than gods. You will accept our love and adoration whether you want it or not. You have no choice.
The angel-demons land on his skin in large flashing clusters, burrow into his flesh, and fill him full to bursting.
Molly is pissed. Karl was supposed to pick her up at the airport, but he didn’t show, and he didn’t pick up when she called him multiple times. She ended up calling an Uber and paying far more than she liked for a ride home, and now she’s lugging her suitcase onto their front porch. She notices the lawn needs cutting, and she smiles. She’s surprised, and relieved, that Karl was able to resist cutting it. She’s still mad at him for not coming to get her, but maybe not quite as much.
She opens the front door—it’s not locked—and goes inside.
“Karl? Are you home? Where the hell were you?”
No answer.
She’s starting to worry. She leaves her suitcase in the foyer and heads for the kitchen. He’s not there. She checks the living room, the family room, the garage. His car’s still there, so she knows he didn’t go out. She also knows a friend didn’t pick him up and take him somewhere. He doesn’t have any friends.
Almost panicking, but not quite, she steps out into the backyard. She sees the mower sitting on the grass, can tell that Karl attempted to cut it but quit less than halfway through. The shed door is open, and she has a very bad feeling about this. For a moment she’s torn. Should she go to the shed first or call 911? She doesn’t know if she can bear to find Karl’s body lying inside, especially if he’s been there several days, cooking in this godawful heat. Without any conscious decision on her part, she starts walking toward the shed. When she gets there, she’s relieved to see Karl sitting cross-legged on the floor, his back to the entrance.
“What are you doing in here? Are you okay? Did you stop mowing because your chest hurt? Did you take the medicine the doctor prescribed?”
Karl doesn’t answer her right away, and she begins to have a nervous crawly feeling in her stomach. But then he speaks without turning to face her.
“I’m sorry for everything I’ve ever done that hurt you. All the times I ignored you, brushed you aside, belittled you, made you feel less-than. I suppose I did it because I felt so small inside and wanted to make myself feel bigger. But that’s no excuse.”
With a bemused smile, she says, “What brought this on?”
Karl turns to look at her over his shoulder, his eyes gleaming yellow-green. He smiles, and she thinks she sees small multilegged things moving behind his teeth.
“I guess you could say I saw the light.”
