Butterfly Winter (28 page)

An umpire authoritatively calls, “Play ball!” The infield chatter increases as a batter scrapes the earth, digging in at the plate. There is the whir of a pitch, the whap of it striking the catcher’s mitt, the whiff of a bat striking nothing but air.

A mile away a sentry at the Insurgent camp hears the sounds transported through the fragrant air. His ears perk up like an animal’s. He wakes a compadre, they listen, they vanish into the greenery as if breathed in by nature. They creep toward the sounds as if their shoes
were moss. They peek through flowering ginger plants into the clearing that is much lighter now, but stands stark and deserted.

“Who?” the first sentry mouths to his friend, question marks in his eyes.

“Ghosts,” the second man mouths back. He readies his weapon.

Understanding each other perfectly the duo begin to strafe the clearing, the sudden cacophony of sound carrying for miles, causing birds like flashes of colored scarves to rise out of the jungle. From miles away a mortar is fired from the Government camp toward the Insurgent military quarters.

The two men wait at the edge of the clearing. Silence settles down like disturbed water quieting itself. There is the crack of the bat, the excited babble of the crowd. But now the sounds appear to come from inside the jungle not from the field itself. The two men stand, strafe the jungle behind third base where the sound seems to come from. Silence falls again, the sounds begin again, only this time from behind the soldiers. They turn and fire; the sounds move to beyond centerfield. A voice calls clearly, “Slide! Slide!” there is a scuffling, another voice, “Out!” The gibbering crowd turns angry.

The soldiers stare at each other in terror, scuttle back into the jungle, ferns slapping their faces.

In the humid greenery, the baseball bird snickers, makes the sound of a scoreboard emitting whooshing fireworks, hears the soldiers increase their speed, blood on their faces from colliding with knifelike branches. The baseball bird is only a rumor, a rumor that will be spread by the soldiers when they return to the Insurgent camp. The bird, his cool feathers striped like a Yankee uniform, cackles in glee.
Hey! Batta, batta
he says.

T
he Anthurium Rapists were, said the Wizard, one of the most unusual phenomena in Courteguay’s history. Near the center of the island was a small tribe, two hundred people at most; they fished the bayous with wooden spears, snared monkeys, roasted sloth over open fires, ate mangos and coconuts, venerated the Anthurium flowers that grew in sheets across the mossy floor of the jungle.

The males were warlike, but seldom had need to stray more than a mile from their village so were never able to find a war.

That is until the Old Dictator sent troops to train at jungle warfare. That small tribe heard the groaning of machinery, the twig-snapping pop of rifles, and went to investigate. They peered at the strangers through the thick foliage and rejoiced at the prospects of a war, something that their mythology had long predicted. Their mythology had also predicted victory.

They concealed their women and children under reed mats on the floors of their huts, sharpened their spears with slivers of rock, and set out to attack the invaders.

They killed one sentry and wounded two others. This was going to be easy, they thought. Then they advanced on a soldier armed with a rifle; they raised their spears in the attack position; they waited in an almost gentlemanly manner for the soldiers to raise their guns like spears.

Needless to say, there were no survivors. The soldiers scoured the jungle the next day, found the women and children huddled beneath the reed mats. The women were small and excruciatingly ugly; the adult women wore decaying fish scales in their hair as evidence of their desirability and sexual prowess. The soldiers made sour faces and retreated.

The women and children existed for several months, a few children died, the last pregnant woman gave birth, an old woman died, the tribe was headed for extinction. That is until deep in the night, the Anthurium came creeping out of the forest, each rubbery-red flower walking on birdlike legs, with its long yellow and white organ at the ready.

The Anthurium crept into the huts and applied themselves with some vigor to the sex organs of the sleeping women. The women were happy to accept whatever substitute nature had provided for they were used to frequent and passionate couplings with their virile men, and most were in such a state of frustration they had been eying each other with not entirely pure hearts.

The moonlit jungle was alive with the moans of passion. In the final moments before dawn the Anthurium padded away and as the sun rose, were to be found in their usual places in shady spots on the edge of dewy footpaths and along the edges of bayous, like drops of blood splattered among the abundant foliage. Months later many of the women gave birth to babies with red, leathery skin, who were otherwise perfect. Boys outnumbered girls ten to one.

T
he ruse worked. Julio, dressed as a Cardinal and with Esteban as his assistant, were not only allowed into Courteguay, but met by a limousine and police escort and transported with honor to San Barnabas.

Once inside the palace, with a minimum of security present, Julio drew from beneath his robes a gun and a machete and sliced off the head of Dr. Noir’s press secretary. Esteban killed the three nodding security guards, and as they discarded their robes they made their way down long flights of stairs in the direction of the wound factory.

They found Quita, unconscious, more dead than alive. Julio took her in his arms and made his way to the nearest exit, while Esteban followed behind, blasting his weapon at anything that moved.

As they made their way across the grounds toward the street a soldier appeared on the steps of the capitol and raised his powerful rifle. He was immediately impaled by a sleek blue heron, and the first shot that had been aimed at Julio’s head discharged into the empty sky.

As they headed through mango and guava orchards, making their way in the direction of a hospital, Julio stopped for a moment to rest.

“Where is that confounded wizard when I need him most?”

Quita stirred in his arms. She opened her eyes.

“You’ll never make love with anyone but me,” she whispered, as Julio cradled her in his arms.

Julio thought at first it was a question. Then he decided it was not. But was it a request?

“Of course not,” he said.

It took great effort for Quita to speak. Julio took a cool linen handkerchief and wiped Quita’s brow. He bent low and kissed her cheek, the tip of her nose.

“You mustn’t think …” said Quita. “I don’t mean for you to …” she sighed and the warm arm she had clamped around Julio’s neck dropped away. “You’ll understand when you have to …” she whispered, her breath shallow and rapid.

“Never anyone but you,” said Julio. “Never.”

And Quita was dead, light as a bird in his arms, the smell about her not of death but of sweet spring earth, water-sopped, sun-warmed, swelling toward birth.

Julio screamed his rage into the sky. He shrieked of the revenge he would take on Dr. Noir. He carried Quita’s body through the streets of San Barnabas, marching down the middle of the road, making eye contact with soldiers at checkpoints, daring them to interfere with his mourning. The soldiers, superstitious, shy of death, allowed him to pass.

He carried her to his mother’s house in San Cristobel. There he collapsed in sorrow. Fernandella washed Quita’s body with Julio’s tears. In the morning Julio set out for the valley of the butterflies. He carried Quita wrapped in a simple white sheet. The valley was orange and black, the scattered trees at the foot of the mountain covered completely with the velvety horde, looked like butterfly cones. Julio laid Quita’s body down on a cushion of orange and black, then he lay beside her and waited to be covered by the gentle blanket. “I will never rise up,” Julio thought. “Here I will stay forever with my beloved. My own life will ebb until we are equal in death.”

Julio slept for many hours. When he awakened the butterflies were stirring, beginning a slow tremble that turned to a vibration, then to
definite movement. Millions of them began to raise Quita off the earth and into the air. The butterflies, so soft, so gentle, so compassionate, were barely up to the task, but as Julio watched in stunned fascination they carried her aloft, at first only a foot or two from the ground, then to waist height, then to eye level, then treetop height. As Quita ascended to the throb of butterfly wings, it appeared to Julio that she took the shape of a beautiful blue heron and, slowly rising above the cushion of butterflies as if suspended in midair, she suddenly took flight and disappeared into the darkening sky.

Julio snuggled back down into the comfort of the butterflies and slept until dawn. When he awoke his energy had returned and instead of wishing himself dead he thought of what lay ahead, of how he would somehow avenge Quita’s death, how he would make Dr. Noir suffer as the monstrous doctor had made Quita suffer.

Q
uita had barely departed for the sky when clouds swept in from both directions, from Haiti and from the Dominican Republic, and though it was not the rainy season, the rains began, constant and unrelenting. Weather forecasters around the world were puzzled by the thick layers of soot-like clouds that covered only Courteguay, ending at its borders, dropping not one raindrop on Haiti or the Dominican Republic. The clouds stayed. The rain, slanted and cruel, torrential in volume, continued for weeks as the skies mourned.

Without Quita, Julio thought only of baseball and revenge. All through the rest of the season he lived like a monk, scarcely speaking to anyone but Esteban, avoiding his fellows, sportswriters, and especially women. He wore a black armband on his uniform, lived principally on cornbread, which Fernandella baked and had the Wizard mail to him weekly, and was in bed alone by 9:00
P.M
. each night.

Esteban was completely unused to being allowed in his own room night after night.

Once, an opposing catcher remarked on the armband when Julio came to bat, actually he only inquired, if profanely, on why Julio was
wearing such a thing. Julio, misunderstanding the gesture, interpreted it as a slight against his lost love, whipped off the catcher’s mask and beat him about the head with it, causing him twenty-seven stitches worth of discomfort, and earning himself a fourteen-day suspension.

“Time heals all wounds,” was the best even the Wizard could offer in the way of comfort.

“Something good will come out of it,” offered Esteban. “Trust in the Lord, for he works in mysterious ways.”

“Things will get better,” said Fernandella.

“You are all fools,” said Julio. “My life as a man is over. I am now only a baseball player. Baseball is my avocation, my philosophy, my wife, my God.”

As if in response to his new dedication, the sidearm curve began to break about two inches more; it now not only broke in on the bat handle, it either rose or dipped as it did so. It was not unusual for a player to have more than one bat shattered in his hands, and many players bailed out, taking a called third strike in preference to having their hands shattered. A sportswriter nicknamed Julio “Robot-o” and broadcasters picked it up. By the All-Star break he was 13-1 and was named to start for the American League, and once again he failed to play as organized baseball never fully comprehended that Julio would pitch to no one but Esteban.

O
nce, in the distant past, said the Wizard, continuing with his oral history of Courteguay, a famous hotel chain decided to expand into San Barnabas. But they did far more than build a brick building, a mansion with many rooms, as it were. They brought with them foreign customs. Like entertainment. San Barnabas had never experienced a lounge singer. But I suppose it was all right, for only visiting foreigners could afford to stay at the famous hotel chain, whose son and heir had once been married to Elizabeth Taylor. I have seen
National Velvet
many times and have dripped tears each time even though I know that a happy ending is imminent.

The staff would stand about the mostly empty lounge, leaning against the velvet-curtained walls and snicker at the sleek singer with the slippery hair and shiny suit who crooned untranslatable songs. The singer resembled one of the thousands of bright little chameleons that blended with the walls and ceilings, there would be white chameleons on the linen tablecloths, and pink ones on the sleazy singer’s pink piano. It was in Courteguay that the term
lounge lizard
was coined.

“Cultures do not mix well,” the Wizard said to Julio, who was sitting at the Wizard’s feet listening absently to this seemingly endless reminiscence. A sign on the marquee read:
WELCOME MAGICIANS
.

A further sign near the front desk, and another near the entrance to the lounge, read:

APPEARING NIGHTLY
THE MAGICIANS OF ARKANSAS
.

“No, thank you, we won’t need any keys for our rooms,” the handsome leader of the magicians said. He was perhaps fifty, with hair the color of spun silver, long but immaculately styled.

“Do you always wear a hamster in your blazer pocket, miss? Ha-ha,” a second handsome magician said to the young desk clerk, who stared uncomprehendingly at the small rat-like creature he had pulled from her pocket.

A trail of red dust, fine as an eye vein, followed the tallest of the magicians toward the elevator.

The actual entertainment was another matter. The Magicians of Arkansas danced on stage and each began doing tricks: one produced an endless supply of playing cards from thin air, which he scattered about the stage, the second pulled yards and yards of light bulbs from his mouth, each one blooming like a tiny sun, the third had a way of seeming to extract doves from his nose. As he released each bird it fluttered over the walls of the set, where a young man whom they had seen loitering in front of the hotel had been hired to catch the birds and return them to their cages.