Jenny lay with a paperback novel open across her breast, staring at the lazily swaying leaves above her. She could hear the whine of a remote-controlled plane from across the field, changing in pitch as it banked and swerved. Beyond that came the gentler, resonating sound of a ball striking a bat; the sound of a father playing cricket with his children. On the grass next to her sat Mike with his knees drawn up into arches. He was watching a dragonfly as it flew up the incline, hovered a few feet from his face, then darted away over the trees.

“Dragonfly,” he said.

“Mm?” said Jenny.

“Dragonfly,” Mike repeated.

“What about it?”

Jenny turned her head to look at him through her sunglasses.

“Nothing,” Mike said, “Just I just saw one and it reminded me of when I was a kid, back where I used to live. There was this lake and we used to cycle down to it and sometimes it had all these dragonflies over it, hundreds of them.”

“Oh,” said Jenny.

“I guess they used to hatch there.”

“Yeah,” said Jenny, sitting up. “Pass me that lemonade please.”

Mike passed her the bottle. As she drank from it, through a straw, Jenny watched the plane skitter through the air like some demented insect, all the time droning its mosquito-whine.

“I wish that plane would shut up,” Jenny said, screwing the cap back on the bottle, laying back down.

Mike looked at the plane. He was still thinking about the dragonflies.

“We used to throw stones at them sometimes,” Mike said.

“At what?” said Jenny.

“The dragonflies. We used to throw stones at them, and sometimes we hit them, but usually we missed.”

“Oh,” said Jenny.

A breeze drew back the leaves in the tree above.

“The sun’s moved,” Jenny said, raising her hand to shield her eyes from the glare, in spite of her sunglasses.

Mike looked at her.

“Once there were these two dragonflies fucking, kind of flying around with their tails stuck together, and I threw a stone at them and it hit them.”

Jenny was wriggling back on the grass, trying to get back into where the tree’s shade had moved to. Mike was still looking at her.

“They kind of spiralled down into the water then, like, we used to call them helicopter seeds, what are they?”

Jenny saw Mike was looking at her and shrugged her bare shoulders. One of the children on the field cheered as his brother sent the cricket ball arching through the air.

“Sycamore seeds,” said Mike, “these two dragonflies went spiralling down into the lake like two sycamore seeds that had got stuck together.”

Jenny shuffled, trying to get comfortable. Mike had not moved.

“I guess they drowned or something,” he said. He paused. “Don’t you think that’s cruel?”

“Yeah,” Jenny said, “it’s cruel.”

“But not cruel like this kid Harry used to be though. He caught one of them once and you know how some kids like to pull the wings off flies or the legs off spiders or whatever?”

“Mm,” Jenny said.

“Well, he got this dragonfly and he pulled two of its wings off on one side, and left it with the two on the other side. Somehow that was worse, ’cause it just kind of flapped around pathetically and rolled over. Harry watched it, but I couldn’t stand it, so I got a rock and crushed it.”

The plane banked around again. Jenny propped herself up on her elbow and watched it.

“That was cruel, pulling two wings off like that, wasn’t it?” Mike said.

“Yeah,” said Jenny, “I wish that damn plane would shut up. I don’t get what the point in it is, flying it around and around in circles like that.”

Mike watched the plane and the man flying the plane, and then he looked past him at the father playing cricket with his kids, and then he thought about the two dragonflies drowning in the lake, and about the one broken half-winged dragonfly crushed into the earth.

Tags: distancing, Dragonflies, insects, Quite Short Story, Raymond Carver, Relationships

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