Let There Be Night by Paul Bogard

Author:Paul Bogard
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780874179279
Publisher: Chicago Distribution Center (CDC Presses)

NOCTURNE WITH MOTHS

ROBERT MICHAEL PYLE

“Maaar-tiiin!” The mother’s voice, more exasperated than angry, hung on the evening air. “Come on home, son. It’s time you got inside.” But as far as her son was concerned, it was never too late to be out.

For Martin Greenstock, the night was always the best time. As early as he was allowed, he stayed outside well into the mellow Denver dusk. He and his big brother, Toby, stalked the alleys of their old neighborhood with a bag of gnawed-on spareribs after dinner, tossing them over fences to all the dogs on their route, on the monthly or so occasions they dubbed “Dog Day.” When a little older, they roamed the streets of their raw new subdivision at the edge of the plains, now and then breaking into the Tarzanian falsetto ululation that they designated “the call of the Catman.” From there it wasn’t long until Jackie Wilson’s “Night” on the AM radio station resonated directly with his developing gonads. Van Morrison’s “Here Comes the Night,” Bob Seger’s “Night Moves,” and Bruce Springsteen’s “Because the Night” and “Something in the Night” would reinforce those dusky sympathies in years to come, cement that tug in the gut that every nocturnal animal knows. And when he walked the streets in the springtimes of high school, sniffing the sweet scent of maturing Hopa crab apples on the warm air and psyching himself up for the morrow’s track meet; or cruised the backroads of Arapahoe and Adams counties on his green Allstate Vespa motor scooter, inhaling the heartbreaking tang of cut wheat and hay, well, that was it: by then Martin had been irrevocably recruited to the legions of the night.

His parents seldom worried. In those days, there was nothing unusual about boys—or even girls—possessing a kind of “freedom of the day”: after their light chores were done, “Bye, Mom, see you at dinner” was a common salutation. And after dinner, even deep into dimity, neighborhood games of hide-and-seek kept the kids out-of-doors. No one worried about abductions then. True, a few of the lads took advantage of the lack of a curfew to indulge in vandalism and light larceny, but the dark side of darkness never held any charm for Martin, beyond the possibility of meeting girls out late. Happily, one of his chief daylight delights carried over past twilight. Like many a kid in those pre-video days, he’d caught bugs, first in a jam jar and then in nets of his own device. By the age of eleven, butterflies netted most of his attention. It didn’t hurt that, unlike the birds with which he’d briefly flirted, they tended to get up late, as was his own summertime wont. He learned the local species well, and occasionally thrilled to a novelty that evoked the interest of serious lepidopterists at the museum and the university, who served as his mentors.

Most of his friends preferred sports or scouts to chasing bugs, but one of his classmates, Dominick Richards, was intrigued. He fashioned his own net and tagged along.

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