Biting flies

Biting flies turn the approach to the Big House at Turpmtine into a struggle against the landscape. In the June heat of Baker County, black flies and other stinging flies attack Charlie Croker and Serena as they make their way from the car, while Charlie’s crutches prevent him from raising his hands to drive the insects away. The scene gives these insects a concrete power over human movement: Charlie’s status and accustomed comfort do not spare him from being bitten, slowed, and forced to endure.

Identity and Varieties

Charlie first corrects Serena’s assumption that a fly has stung her: it was not a bee. He privately considers the likely culprit a black fly, but recognizes that it might instead have been a yellow fly or a horsefly. The distinction matters less to Serena than the repeated attacks, but Charlie’s quick classification shows his familiarity with the local insects and with the different flies that make summer travel uncomfortable.

The flies are described as mottled and mostly black, their swept-back wings likened to those of a jet fighter or a Stealth bomber. That comparison gives them a sharp, purposeful profile; Charlie’s impression is that they do not miss. Yet the scene keeps some uncertainty in the identification: he cannot be sure which of three biting kinds has stung Serena. Their shared effect, rather than a settled taxonomy, is what the walk makes immediate.

A second, contrasting kind appears as the group nears the house: mottled white flies, which Charlie identifies as privy flies. He explains that they swarm around privies, or outhouses, and says they will not hurt Serena. Their presence broadens the scene’s insect catalogue while distinguishing nuisance from injury. Serena finds them disgusting, and the path itself carries a foul odor, so the flies remain unpleasant even when Charlie says they are harmless.

The Walk to the Big House

The biting flies attack during a short but exposed journey. Charlie and the others still have thirty feet to reach the front door when one bites him on the back of the neck; later, with fifteen feet remaining, the group is still struggling through the insect-filled approach. The measured distances make the ordeal feel prolonged: a few steps become a sequence of fresh assaults and frustrated attempts to keep moving.

Serena repeatedly calls out as she is stung again. Heidi carries the baby and says she has chiffon to cover the child’s face, while Charlie tells her to do so. These details show the insects affecting the whole party, not just the man whose observations dominate the scene. Connie, bringing up the bags, mutters as the flies attack him too. Even the practical business of reaching the house and carrying luggage must proceed through the swarm.

Charlie cannot brush the flies away because he is hobbling on aluminum crutches. The limitation is specific and immediate: his hands cannot rise high enough to fend off the insects. His injured leg, which has already changed how he travels, now makes him vulnerable during a walk that would otherwise be ordinary. Instead of arriving in the manner expected of him, he has driven from Atlanta with Connie and must cover the last stretch on crutches, under attack and without his usual freedom of movement.

A Summer Insect World

The flies belong to a larger summer ecology that the scene names in detail. Charlie associates the black flies, yellow flies, and horseflies with Gnats that dive at the eyes and ears. Under the live oaks and magnolias, he anticipates Mosquitoes, including the large swarms around nearby Jookers Swamp. Chiggers wait in the pine tags and on tree stumps, while Tent caterpillars strip a tree and leave droppings that sound like a faint crunching rain. Cicadas rattle in the trees as the June heat intensifies.

This catalogue makes the biting flies part of a seasonal regime rather than an isolated annoyance. The insects occupy the air, shade, trees, ground, and path; their different forms of attack leave little promise of refuge. Charlie’s knowledge extends beyond what the group is experiencing at that moment: he knows where Mosquitoes multiply, when Chiggers are most troublesome, and what follows from resting on a stump or lying in the pine tags. The flies are one element of a world whose conditions cannot be negotiated away by comfort or rank.

Narrative Function

The flies expose the gap between Charlie’s former ease and his present bodily limits. He is accustomed to arriving at Turpmtine by airplane, whether in the G-5 or a Beechjet, but this time has made the long drive from Atlanta because his bad leg makes the Beechjet’s stairs difficult. He privately anticipates that Durwood and the others will notice the change, and feels a powerful urge to explain himself despite believing that he owes nobody an explanation. The insects intensify that unease: the journey is not merely slower but publicly uncomfortable, and his crutches leave him unable to protect himself from the attacks.

The scene’s humor does not cancel its physical pressure. Charlie corrects Serena’s identification of the insect and gives brisk explanations of the privy flies, but the repeated interruptions, stings, heat, and foul path keep the walk from becoming a composed display of local expertise. The biting flies help make the summer setting an active constraint on the characters. At Turpmtine, reaching the front door requires negotiating not only Charlie’s injured leg but also a landscape whose insects dictate the pace and terms of arrival.