A Lightning Bug for Evangeline

My beautiful Evangeline came marching through the cypress trees with a glass jar.

It was May. Hundreds of irises bloomed along the swamp. They were violet as the sky and growing strong in the unrelenting heat. Most of us were resting on their petals. I watched the others laze throughout the arching chordgrass, their lanterns glowing with less mirth than when the early risers began the holiday in April.

Her arrival pushed the tired flyers on a current toward the swamp like shy dancers put on the spot. But we were revived by her presence and swept up in the whirlwind storm of her joy.

She dragged her arm across her sweating brow. Her lungs panted hard from the sprint. We greeted her with a cheerful flickering light, but she was distracted, my Evangeline.

The jar had slipped from her palms when she tried to twist off the top. She made a swipe for it between her bare feet while we adorned her spanish moss hair. Evangeline sorted herself out before she set her mind to trying again. She tossed back her curls and our golden jewels along with them believing the wild length had gotten in her way. This time she used her linen skirt to grip the top better. It came off with a [i]pop![/i] and when she looked up with such satisfaction I simply loved her.

A game of tag began. Evangeline leaped to and fro like she was born with a white tail, trying to catch us in her glass jar. I wanted to join in.

The other lightning bugs showed off their finest tricks but none of them could get into the jar. She waved it around with dusk blazing like a wild fire in her eyes. Every time she clapped the lid down fast and found the jar empty, my Evangeline’s heart broke a little more.

We wanted nothing more than to be loved by her. Every one of us. But the jar sailed through the air, too fast for any one to bring her joy. I realized there was no choice but to wait.

All that jumping tired her out, and to my fortune, my glowing comrades were seeking petals and drooping leaves to rest their wings.

Evangeline wilted on the grass, staring hard at the bayou. She seemed to believe it had rejected her. Though her limbs were too heavy to throw a fit, she sat in stillness and silence. The wetlands carried on the celebration without her. Toads croaked drunken tales for the nosey owls hooting in the shadowed trees. Only we had paused with her, suspended in time while tears streaked her cheeks. She didn’t move a muscle or utter a sound. Now was my chance.

I drifted along the humidity to the open lip of the jar and crawled inside. The glass was slick. I lost my footing and dropped straight to the bottom. My leg snapped on impact. Tink!

Then she looked down on me with eyes holding the heart of the swamp. Vibrant green and specks of our light dancing merrily in whiskey summer shadows. I saw myself in paradise, glowing brighter than ever.

She smiled, my beautiful Evangeline, and covered the top with the lid.

My new home was an antebellum mansion tucked within hanging moss and cypress needles. Its stucco face and elegant pillars presented a quiet dignity when pit against the swamp’s attitude. Try as it might to hold any authority, the mansion lived in denial of its losing battle. The elements stained the white walls with mud and algae. The wetlands had grown up against its foundation, climbing rotted railings until it swallowed half the building.

“Daddy’s restoring it,” Evangeline told me. I counted the crumpled cigarettes overflowing from a cat bowl left beside the worn sofa. There was a man sprawled on the cushions, sweating through a dirty paint stained shirt. Apparently he’d been defeated by the oppressive heat. Evangeline did not wake him, but tiptoed up the grand staircase as quiet as a mouse.

Down the east hall, the third door on the left, was Evangeline’s room. She had many extraordinary things. Books filling shelves that stretched from one wall to the other, a small army of dolls dressed in finery, and a dollhouse built to look like a polished version of the one she lived in.

My place was on her bedside table. She kept the lights off as she clambered onto the bed and laid her head on her pillow.

“Glow,” she commanded. So I did happily.

She counted the times my light filled her room. She stayed up for hours watching, and so long as she was I would not sleep.

She needed me, my Evangeline.

In the dull glow, I saw the same quiet that had passed over her face by the swamp. Her heart cried with a sadness that only my light seemed to console. I tried to conserve my energy so that when her eye turned my way I could make her smile, but she rarely did, and when I dimmed she shook my jar.

The next night passed in much the same manner. I noticed she was more subdued in her castle than she had been at the swamp. She didn’t speak much while banging noises and frustration echoed in the halls below, but when all was quiet and she settled into bed to watch my glow fill her room she told me wonderful stories of a humble prince splitting the sea and a boy king killing giants with pebbles.

For hours she whispered about ancient structures built on mountains in the clouds and desert flats with pink water. She dreamed of crossing oceans to paint hot air balloons floating over a desert city and following cats through colorful, narrow alleys by sapphire seas.

“Don’t go to sleep,” she pleaded and shook my jar, but I had grown too tired to glow.

“Are you okay?”

I wished that she would continue with her stories. It was a great pleasure to hear about the things that interested her, but she wouldn’t continue. Periods of silence accompanied a darkness that laid on me like the heat. When she shook my jar again, I found that I could not even fly.

“Wake up! Please? Please, wake up!”

She began to cry, my beautiful Evangeline. More than anything I wanted to see her smile again.

“Don’t leave.”

From her window we could see the swamp below. Amongst the grass and the blooming irises, the lightning bugs drifted across the water in the moonless night. She gazed out into the world. Silent and still as she watched the abundant glow across the wetlands. They had always been there, even without her glass jar.

I think my Evangeline understood then, she had nothing to fear of losing me. My light would always be there to put a smile on her face, even while the piece she kept would never glow again.