Comrades in Arms By Laura J. Oliver

Things that hop, dart, scurry or slither, are okay outside the house, but inside the house their natures are entirely changed. Crickets. Mice. Spiders. Amphibians. Reptiles. A salamander once ran in the front door and straight into the hall closet where he hid behind the vacuum cleaner for hours. Presto-chango. Was cute. Now scary. And my mother once pulled a hot cranky snake out of our clothes dryer along with the sheets. 

Then there was this.     

The storm had been gathering all evening and bursts of lightning flashed brighter and brighter as the August sky darkened. The children’s father was in Western Australia on America’s Cup business. I was seven months pregnant and, for several weeks, the sole caretaker of our two small children. As I climbed the stairs to bed, I carried an oil lamp and matches with me in case we lost the electricity.  My uncharacteristic forethought made me feel self-sufficient, like the grownup in charge, and I liked knowing that Audra and Andrew were safely asleep in their beds as the rain and thunder finally began.

Setting the oil lamp on the bedside table, I slipped under the sheets comforted by the thought that there were many nearby trees taller than our house to deflect the lightning. As if to prove the point, a brilliant bolt of electricity slammed into a 48-foot maple in the front yard and in the aftermath of the explosion the hum of the clock and the air conditioner fell silent. With the wind knocked out of her the house was unable to take her next breath. 

As I lay in bed collecting my wits in the dark, a small form materialized by my side. My seven-year-old daughter wanted to join me until the storm was over. I threw back the sheet to welcome her, turning my back to the wind and rain now pounding at the window.  Wedging pillows under the weight of my pregnancy, I fell asleep grateful for the sweetness of her company. 

About 2 a.m., I awoke. Outside, the lightning and thunder had stalled directly overhead. Inside, the house was hot and unnaturally still. I rolled belly first out of bed, opened two bedroom windows, and a rain-freshened breeze immediately filled the room. Having built the house ourselves we still had no screens, so I vowed to close the windows as soon as the room cooled off.

I had been back asleep for only a few minutes when I sensed that someone or something had slipped into the room. Above the bed, a clicking sound had abruptly stopped then started again, this time closer. In my half-dreaming state, I imagined that a gigantic dragonfly had flown through the window. I considered going back to sleep in spite of the noise, but its strangeness compelled me to identify the intruder. Lighting the oil lamp, I turned to see what was making menacing shadows dip and sway against the wall.

A bat, its bony wings spread like a black cape, plunged towards my sleeping daughter, missing her face by inches, then careened toward the ceiling only to dive again. With a yelp, I shoved Audra off her side of the bed, grabbed her hand and a cotton robe, and together in the flickering light that made the peonies on the wallpaper dance, we made an awkward, weaving dash for the bedroom door. 

Bursting into the hall, I turned to see that I had left the flaming oil lamp burning next to the bed, and three bats were now strafing it like F-14’s in a dogfight. With no other choice, I took dipping, ducking steps back into the room, fending off the bats now flapping in a frenzied circle like moths in a jar. Lamp in hand, I made my way back to the hall and pulled the door closed again, worried that the wooden frame had swollen in the humidity, preventing it from closing securely.

With the bats contained at least until morning, Audra and I padded barefoot down the hall to sleep in the pink and white sanctuary of her room. I decided, with all the clarity of pregnancy-brain, to permanently seal off the master bedroom. Audra and I had each taken a twin bed in her room when a tight, high voice rang out. 

“Mommy—a bat’s flying down the hall.”

“No, Audra, just a shadow,” I assured her, as the baby inside gave my ribs a wallop. 

“No it’s not, Mommy! It’s here! In my room!”

We exited as if by osmosis, slamming the door almost before we were through it, and went to wake 5-year-old Andrew. Disappointed that he’d slept through the excitement, but impressed by our situation, he joined us, and we crept downstairs, the flaming lamp held high.

With its high ceilings, polished oak floors, and night-black windows reflecting the flames, the whole house had become a cavern in which shadows flew ominously over us. Instinctively, we reached for each other, seeking and offering protection in a single gesture. We moved like one body, each hanging on to some part of the other—an elbow, a hand, a ruffle of nightgown—taking comfort in a connection with one another we could feel but not see. In an ungainly procession, we bumped our way into the kitchen. 

By now it was 3 a.m., the storm still raging, I was heavy with pregnancy and exhausted. Two children were helpfully suggesting we call Daddy, who was 9,800 miles away, the electricity was off, and all my clothes were in a room filled with bats. The family cat, cross and bedraggled, appeared at the sliding glass doors, and we stared at her a minute, then lumbered over as one entity to let her in. No one was willing to function independently, even for a minute. Equally helpless, we felt braver as a unit.

With sudden inspiration, I picked up the phonebook and looked in the Yellow Pages under Exterminators. Unbelievably, there was a listing under the subhead “Bats” with a 24-hour emergency-service number. “You’ve got to help me,” I pleaded, explaining the crisis when a man answered. If he were nice to me, I knew I would cry. 

“Well now,” he theorized, “I’ll bet those bats rode the current in when you opened the windows. Bet you’ve got a dozen up there by now. If you wait until the storm ends, they’ll probably ride the breeze back out. I can come look for them in the morning, or you can save yourself $150 and look on your own, but be careful! A bat with an 18-inch wingspan folds up to the size of a mouse when he’s sleeping. They get behind picture frames, in folds of clothes hanging in your closet, just about anywhere.”

I hadn’t heard much after “rode the current in,” but he had more good news. “You think they’re gone, but they come out again when it gets dark. But they’re nothing to be afraid of,” he concluded with good cheer. “That’s a myth that they’re going to make a nest in your hair.”

I eyed the car keys and hung up. A short field trip, en masse, into the living room, procured sofa cushions and a blue and yellow afghan my grandmother had crocheted for me before I was in charge of small people. Dragging our provisions into the kitchen, we arranged ourselves on the floor like an intricate puzzle. The children were unusually kind to each other and if one of us moved, we all changed position to maintain our connection.

In the morning, with the electricity restored, I made coffee, told the children they could stay home from school, and called a friend. Armed with a broom and a cardboard box, she searched the house. The bats were gone she reported, swept back into the night on the breeze that brought them in. I wanted to believe her, but I poked all my sundresses with a hanger and kept a tennis racket by the bed for a week. 

The children’s father returned and six weeks later we welcomed another daughter into our family. Life returned to normal, but the children loved to tell the bat story to guests. They’d interrupt each other to embellish the details, gleefully recounting the invasion and our retreat, the delicious danger. They were now veterans with a war story they would tell for years to come, just as I am telling you now. 

It’s still easier to be brave as a unit. And I hope the instinct to be kind to each other in a crisis remains with us always. 

What happens to distress decades after the event that caused it? What of our life’s dramas falls away and what resides in our hearts forever? 

You tell me.

Because when we tell the bat story to visitors, we no longer remember we were afraid. We only recall we were comrades in arms, who served each other loyally, in the darkness of the night.

Laura J. Oliver is an award-winning developmental book editor and writing coach, who has taught writing at the University of Maryland and St. John’s College. She is the author of The Story Within (Penguin Random House). Co-creator of The Writing Intensive at St. John’s College, she is the recipient of a Maryland State Arts Council Individual Artist Award in Fiction, an Anne Arundel County Arts Council Literary Arts Award winner, a two-time Glimmer Train Short Fiction finalist, and her work has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize. Her website can be found here.