Red Wasps

Poor Jones Kirby! He sat by the front window in his little flat mournfully gazing down Maple Street. But it wasn’t the street that made his shoulders droop or caused the sad, wistful look on his face – though any one who would have happened to have known Maple Street in its more flourishing days would have seen plenty to mourn for. There wasn’t a house for four blocks that had been painted since the war – nor was the gate in front of the house opposite the only one that was sadly in need of repairs. Even the elms wore a dejected air.

A lizard popped his head above the fense and a smile shown slightly around the corners of Jones’ mouth.

“Poor creature, what have you to worry about? You –“

Buzz! A red wasp lighted on the windowsill; instantly the smile on Jones’ face gave way to a frown – a frown that closely resembled a thunder-could. With an impatient brush of his hand he chased the wasp away; then he got up and paced the floor restlessly. –‘Twas three weeks since Jones had eaten one hearty meal or slept one good nights sleep. –It wasn’t dyspepsia either that had kept him from eating or insomnia that had kept him from sleeping. No, something else had made him miserable and had taken the joy out of life and made those three weeks seem like an eternity. To go back to the beginning: It was that very same wasp that had so lately been forced to vacate the windowsill – or at least one exactly like it (it mattered little to Jones so long as it was a wasp) that had started the whole affair. Pearl – that was Jones’ wife had been dusting the shabby little sitting room, that she called the parlor, when one of those dreaded insects (Red Wasps) had flown into the room and frightened her. No it didn’t sting her.

“If it had” Jones told her, when she had stopped screaming and was huddled in one corner of the room – “If it had o’ stung you, there might o” been some reason for you to holler”. Jones was excited and didn’t choose his words very carefully, “The neighbors ‘ll think I’m a-killin’ you.”

As for Pearl, well her temper came to her assistance and she retorted,

“Well Mr. Jones Kirby, I don’t guess there’s any law to prevent me a-hollerin’ when I get ready to holler. And I just know he’d a-stung me if I hadn’t a-hollered” Pearl didn’t choose her words very carefully either. “As for the neighbors, I don’t care what they think; I don’t guess they think its any worse for me to holler once in a while when a wasp gets after me, than it is for you to lazy around the house trying to sell your crazy old novel when you could be working so you could buy some screens for them windows then them horrid old wasps couldn’t get in and try to sting me”.

“Now Pearl” Jones weakly defended himself, “You know if that company will only buy my novel I’ll buy you a new parlor suit and screens ‘n everything.”

Jones’ literary ability(?) was the only friction that kept the Kirby’s married life from running smoothly. For five weeks Jones had done little else but walk to the Post Office after each train had deposited its scanty bag of mail at the dilapidated station, - and walk back again.

But Pearl’s ire was aroused and promises where but a plaster on the ugly sore that was growing deeper each day as the check from the editors failed to arrive.

“Yes if they will buy it, its been fourteen weeks now, counting the nine weeks it took you to write it, since you’ve had that excuse, I don’t believe you’ll ever get anything for it anyhow – you’re just lazy that’s all” she finished wrathfully. Whereas Jones retorted just as wrathfully and there followed one of those sickening quarrels such as only two people who know and love each other can carry on – who know just where and how to jab each other to make wounds more treacherous than any ever caused by the sword, - wounds that they may carry to the grave, unhealed. So they quarreled on though each knew there was nothing to quarrel about but each unwilling to let the other have the last word, ‘til Pearl, dashing away the angry tears fled to her room.

Jones heard her opening and shutting drawers and closet doors then he heard her coming down the hall. She was carrying a suitcase and, yes she was dressed in her last years “best” dress and hat. Then Jones Kirby did the meanest act of his life. Perhaps if he hadn’t known that her mother lived the next station, five miles down the railroad, and that she was undoubtedly going there, he would not have sat so still, but sit still he did – so still that he didn’t move a muscle until he heard the distant whistle of the train as it pulled out of the station. Then he arose, closed the doors and windows and went “down town”; that is he walked two blocks north and found himself in front of a two story building, a gaudy sign in read and yellow, on the upper story, portraying the fact that drugs were sold within. The lower story was a combination lunchroom and general merchandise store. Jones entered the latter, and ordered two sandwiches and a cup of coffee.

“Saw your wife leave on the 4:27” observed Brown, the storekeeper, “Is her mother ailin’ or somebody?”

“No, she’s just gone on a visit” replied Jones. Then he paid the man and left the store. He walked slowly home. His anger had cooled and left him in a quiet mood. He entered the deserted house and without lighting a lamp, went to bed. But he couldn’t sleep; he lay wide-awake staring at nothing. This had happened over and over again during those three weeks; the only moments that furnished anything near to hope was the three times each day when he ask for mail and three times each day he was rewarded with no letter from Pearl and no check from the editors.

At first he thought maybe Pearl might write but she didn’t and Jones couldn’t write to her without asking her to come back, and he simply couldn’t ask her to come back until he could get screens and before he could buy screens his bank account, which wasn’t at all, had to be lengthened.

“But I ain’t fit to work anyway” Jones told himself “and someway I believe I’ll hear from those editors” Jones told himself this on the particular evening that he did hear from those editors, but in the way of a bulky package – not a letter and the bulky package happen to be his novel!

Written by Ida May Schaffer