Sunday Afternoon, Plague of Flies

Though I couldn’t smell it, I suspect that a mouse carcass burst open in some disused room or alcove yesterday, because by mid-afternoon the house was thick with flies. Fat Old Molly was everywhere at once, whipping saucepans through windows, overturning potted plants and tearing doors from their jambs, all in frenzied effort to halt the ghastly onslaught of flies. We needed all hands on deck; I helped with my red flyswatter – until a fly I swatted exploded into a yellow gob of maggots. That’s when I stopped swatting and considered showering. Later, when the flies thinned and Fat Old Molly relaxed at the table with a cold compress and a gin ricky, I heard her tell some poor kitchen sap about the time she almost died in a dairy barn, and woke with maggots feasting on her bare feet. That’s just the kind of crap you learn when you listen at doors.