Things That Don’t Keep a Lightning Bug Alive

Last summer before we set out looking for my mother, I let lightning bugs die in jars. I didn’t mean for them to die, they just did. My dad is all the time telling me to get quick to the point, to go way back at the start and tell the long whole thing being a trait I family-inherited. Like how just the other day he was in from work and washing up (he paints houses), and I said, You’ll never guess who I saw today, Dad. I was thinking to tell him of the great horned who sometimes shows herself out of our back woods and who just that afternoon had done so. I saw he was watching me with his listening face so I went on. I was wanting to give him the whole story right up to the surprise of seeing her eyes on me (my dad always calls the great horned a her whether she is or not) and how Harold (that’s our dog) didn’t even bark to scare her away, and I was halfway down the hill (in the story) when my dad said, Who? Who, child? Just tell me who. Which was all of a sudden a pretty good joke, I thought, until my dad’s voice changed, seeing me giggle. Who? my dad said, like a sad hopeful owl. Then I saw, and it wasn’t funny, because it was only the great horned I’d seen. But I acted like it was funny, and said, The great horned! Who, who! And my dad, he acted like it was funny too.