The Butterfly (8 page)

"Your
what?"

"You heard me."

"Say, that's a joke."

"I shot you in the butterfly. That's what little Danny's got, isn't it? Isn't that what you did for your country? Leave a poor little kid that's birthmarked like you? Well, you don't do it with my daughter and live to tell about it."

"Kady never done nothing with me."

"I'll attend to her, later."

"You going to attend to Danny?"

"I'll take care of him, anyway."

"You like Danny, don't you?"

"That's none of your damned business."

"The hell it's not. Yeah, you'll attend to Kady. You'll hit her with a harness trace, and put her out, and act just like you always acted, with that religion-crazy disposition you got. But you won't put Danny out, oh no. You'll keep him, and let Jane take care of him, because you're crazy about him. No matter what she done, he's yours. Kady's nothing but a woman, and you never knew how to treat one. But Danny, oh yes, I seen you with him up there yesterday, when Belle was dying. You never seen nothing as pretty as he is, did you? He's yours, no matter what Kady done. He's your grandchild, ain't he? Well now you get it, you rotten, belly-shooting, dumb son of a bitch. He's not yours. He's mine."

"What did you say?"

"That butterfly, yeah, we got a butterfly in my family. But only the men got it, see? If the child's a girl, it skips. It skips to the next boy. He's not your grandchild, Jess, he's mine!"

He raised up on one elbow to shove his face closer to mine, then fell back from the pain and held both hands over his stomach and drew his legs up tight over his hands. "Jesus Christ, stuff is coming out of me!"

"What's that you said?"

"Get a doctor, stuff is coming out with the blood!"

"Never mind the stuff! Talk!"

I got up and hauled off my foot and kicked him where he was holding his hands, but he began to scream and said he'd talk but to get him some water or he can't stand it any more. I climbed down the ladder, dipped up some cold spring water in the bucket, put on my shoes and came on back up. Sweat was on his face when I filled the cup and give it to him to drink. He took it in one hand, then began to puke.

"The stuff that's all over my hand, it stinks!"

"Here."

I held the cup and let him wash out his mouth and drink three or four cupfuls. Then I poured water over his belly to wash off the stuff and the blood and the bugs that had got in it. "Now spit it out, what I asked you, and spit quick."

"I told you all I'm telling you."

"That Danny's your grandson?"

"You're goddam right. We never knew it, Belle and I, for twenty years, that Kady was ours, until Danny came, and we seen the butterfly. Then we knew."

"So Belle two-timed me even before she left."

"The way you treated her why not?"

"I loved her. What more did she want?"

"Yeah, you loved her. If she'd go to church three times on Sunday and pray every night and look at your sour face all the rest of the time, you loved her. Well who she loved was me. Because she liked a good time. And me, I had a banjo."

"That was something, wasn't it?"

"To Belle it was. You bet she two-timed you."

He called for more water, and I gave him some, and he cussed me out, and began calling Kady every dirty name he could think of. "She hated Danny. She hated him because his father walked out on her, and she's been so proud and stuck-up she couldn't stand it she was just a girl like anybody else. But I loved him." And then, after a while: "Belle was going crazy from fear I would spill it to Kady whose child she really was, and if I did, she would hate Belle. So that was late afternoon, and Belle caught the bus, to come up here and kill me. If it had been morning she wouldn't have done it. The fever, it came on as the day wore on. It made her crazy. After she come in my shack that night, and I knew she was going to die, I thought I'd wait till that was over, and then come out with it. It was all I had to live for. Why should I keep my mouth shut? Why should I give a hoot how Kady felt? She never cared how
I
felt. But Belle knew what she could do with me. She got me to come over there, just before she died, after you left and Kady left and they took Danny away, and promise I'd never say anything to Kady about it. So that's what I done. I give up the one thing I wanted in life, to please a woman that was dying, and that I loved. But I made up my mind, if I had to give it up, you'd give it up too. You weren't going to be happy with something that was mine. So I got Ed Blue's gun, and I'd have killed you, Jess. That's the only thing I'm sorry for, that you got me first. But by Jesus Christ, I'm going to take it away from you, that one thing that you want. I never promised not to tell you, and now I'm letting you have it. There's not one drop of Tyler blood in Danny, and you've just been making a fool out of yourself to think there is. Come here, you samsinging bastard, and let me spit on you."

I put his jumper over his chest, crossed the arms over his back, and tied them up tight. Then I used them for a handle and began dragging him.

"Stop it! That hurts!"

"It won't, much longer."

"Where you taking me?"

"You'll see."

I drug him to the shaft, and when he saw what I was going to do he began to scream. I slung him in, and he screamed clear to the bottom, but stopped when he hit. I slung Mort's rifle in after him, and stepped back in case it would go off. When it didn't I picked up my own gun and climbed down. He was at the bottom, all crumpled up, beside the bricked-in fireplace of the still. I tied the jumper on him better, lit the lamp, and began dragging him along the tunnel. But when I came to the first of the old entries I turned off, and began dragging him over the jagged rock that had fallen down, and it was the hardest work I ever did in my life. But it felt good, too, to know he was dead, and I had killed him, and I was going to put him where he never would be found, and nobody would ever remember he had been on this earth. I drug him at least two hundred feet. Then there was a swag, and I threw him in. Then I climbed back to the timbered tunnel, went on back to the shaft, took a bucket, scraped up some dirt and put it in, poured in some water, and mixed up some mud. Then I took my fuse, caps, and dynamite, stuck them in my pocket, and went back to the swag with them. The first blister that was hanging down on the other side, between the swag and the worked-out part of the mine, I cut off half a stick of dynamite, made a mudcap against one of the hanging pieces, stuck the dynamite in with a cap in it and six inches of fuse. The blister between the swag and the timbered drift, I made another mudcap, with a foot of fuse. Then I went in, lit the short fuse, scrambled to the next one and lit it, and stepped around to the angle of the timbered tunnel to wait. Why I had done that, I wanted those shots not to fire at once, and then I could check that they both went off. Sure enough, here came the first one. Then I almost dropped dead, because I had forgot the rifle.

I ran to the shaft mouth, got it, and coming back I ran sidewise like a crab, the way you have to do in a low tunnel. Smoke was pouring out of the tunnel, but I crawled in there and gave the rifle a pitch. Before I got to the timbered drift the second shot went off, and blew me right up against the rib. Then I was glad I had had to make the second trip in, for the rifle. Because by going in there I had seen what I'd always have been worried about. That powder had blown down the top until the tunnel was blocked up solid with rock, both sides of Moke, so it would take a hundred men a month to get in there, even if they could ever guess what they were digging for. Mr. Moke Blue could just as well have been at the bottom of the sea, so far as anybody in this world could ever find him.

When I got to the creek I took the empty shell out of my gun, threw it in the water, and put a fresh one in the chamber. Then I cut a switch and peeled it, and rammed a piece of my handkerchief through the bore, to clean it, so it hadn't been fired since it was loaded. Then I went down and pitched it on the truck and started over to Blount, to tell Wash what Moke had told me. I was already halfway over there, before it came to me what it meant, if what he said was true.

She wasn't my daughter any more!

I cut my lights, ran in behind the old filling station again, and hid the truck like I had before. I crept on up the road without making any noise, and the first thing I did was look in the barn and the stable, and all the stock was inside, but they weren't bellowing or anything, and that meant they'd all been fed and the cows milked. I crept on up to the house and peeped in the front room. I peeped in the back room and Jane was there, with Danny in her lap, but no sign of Kady. Pretty soon Danny began to cry, and when Jane bent over him and began to rock him I saw she was crying too. "Little baby, that's always been treated so bad! Ever since his first day on earth he's been put on and stolen and left all alone and kicked around. Don't cry, little boy. Don't you mind a bit, my little Danny. I'm here. I'll always be here, and I'll always love you no matter what your mother does or your father does or anybody does."

It made a lump come in my throat, but I went down to the truck and got in and drove to town. When I got near the White Horse I parked, and went to a window and looked in. She was there, like I knew she would be, dancing with a man I had never seen, and plenty drunk, by her looks. I rubbed my hands on my coat, to wipe off the sweat, and went inside. I didn't pay any attention to her. I went to a booth and sat down. When a waiter came I ordered a drink and when he brought it I took a sip. Pretty soon I could feel her standing beside me. "Well this is quite a surprise."

"Oh. Hello, Kady."

"What are you doing here, Jess?"

"Just having me a corn and Coca-Cola."

"Since when did you take a drink?"

"Sometimes you need it."

"When, for instance?"

"Like when you expect to give a girl away, at her wedding, and she runs out on you and leaves you holding the bag there at the church and don't even come around to tell you why, then you feel like you could drink quite a little."

"You were at the church?"

"If you were eloping, why couldn't you tell me?"

"I didn't elope."

"All right then, get married somewhere else."

"Does it look like I got married?"

I cut out the thick talk then and really looked at her, and made her sit down across the table from me, and ordered her a drink.

"Kady, we got our lines crossed somehow. I been sick all afternoon, that you would just go off and leave me after all we'd been to each other, but if you didn't get married, it don't square up with what I thought. What happened?"

"We'll begin with what happened to you."

"Nothing happened to me."

"You were to follow us in to town in the truck, and instead of that you just disappeared and I can't get it out of my head that you doing that has some connection with what happened to me."

"Didn't you see me wigwag?"

"I didn't see anything."

"I went down to get myself a flower to put in my buttonhole from the woods across the creek, and I slipped on a stone and got mud on my shoe. If it was some other time I'd have given it a brush and a grease, but for your wedding I wanted a shine. But when I got back to the house Liza Minden was there, and I knew if she ever saw me I'd be an hour getting her to go, so I went inside and went to the window, where I was behind her and you could see me, and wigwagged at you I was going to town now, instead of later."

"If you did, I didn't notice it."

"You were looking right at me, and nodded."

"Why did you take the gun?"

"Just in case."

"Case of what?"

"After what they did yesterday at the funeral how did I know what they might try? It didn't cost anything to pitch the gun on the truck, so I did. It's still there."

"...Did you see Wash?"

"It's like I told you. I went in to get a shine, and where I got it was a barber shop. I had me a haircut too, and by then it was getting on to one o'clock. I supposed he had started by then, so I went on around to the church to wait for you and him and Jane, when you got there. Nobody was there, but I didn't think anything of it, and sat down. I waited quite a while before I began to get worried. Then I went around to his hotel and asked for him."

"When was that?"

"About two o'clock."

"What did they tell you?"

"That he'd left, with a lady and gentleman."

By her face, I knew that stead of not believing what I was saying, she was believing it. I shut up then, and talked when she talked to me, for fear I'd overplay it.

"You thought that was me?"

"I thought I wasn't good enough for you."

"It was his mother and father."

"I still don't know what happened."

"He just didn't come."

"Why not?"

"Do I know?"

"He just walked out on you?"

"I know what happened. Of course I do. They talked it over one last time, his father and that awful mother he's got, and changed their minds once more."

"Hasn't he got a mind of his own?"

"He thinks she's wonderful."

We each drank our drink, and had a couple more, and she sat there with a sour little smile on her face, looking into her glass. "Funny life, isn't it, Jess?"

"Treats you funny all right."

"Who gives a damn?"

"I don't like to hear you cuss."

"Come on, let's dance."

"I never danced."

"I'll teach you."

But I didn't need much teaching, because all we did was stand in the middle of the floor in each other's arms and swing in time to the music and touch our faces together and sometimes walk around a little bit. She had a hot place around her mouth that crept out until her whole cheek felt like she had fever. I inched her along till we were next to the side door and then I lifted her so we were dancing on the parking lot outside and then instead of our cheeks rubbing it was our mouths.

"Jess, let's go to a hotel."

"I'd be afraid."

"What of?"