Virgin With Butterflies (11 page)

Well, this bustle was like that, only it wasn't for the same place where a real bustle is made to go. No, this
bustle sits right up on your chest, and another bustle sits right up on your shoulders in back. And the prince made big eyes, and he said we was sinking down. Not in the ocean he didn't mean, not yet, but I guess sinking down even in the air is a pretty bad thing to be doing. So no wonder his brown eyes was big.

And Aunt Mary, she was as calm as any princess that ever died for her country. She sat there by me, next to the window in her bustle. “Listen,” she says, “if we hit the water,” she says, “the plane will float for a little while, so we can get out of the emergency door. Now don't get scared, I've done it before,” she says, “only in a big storm. This is a calm sea,” she says.

“Then why can't we settle down on the sea and just go ahead like a boat?” I says. “I've seen 'em do that on the lake.”

“Because this is a land plane and has only got wheels—they don't run very well even on the smoothest water,” she says.

“What do we do?” I says, and I had to laugh. “It sure looks like you was right and I am going to turn into a water lily after all.” So we both laughed a little.

Mr. Bosco saw us laughing and he came over to us. He smiled at me over his little bustle.

“There are a lot of ships,” he said, “mostly German,” and he looked as pleased as if he had said, “Nice dinner, Italian cooking.” But then I thought, “What's it to him? He ain't at war with Germany. He'll go free and we'll all get shot—if we ain't drounded or crack our skulls when she hits, like Tyrone Power when his did.”

Now the copilot come back and yelled something.
The prince said something to the copilot, then came to me and took both of my hands.

“When she hits,” he said, “I must save you. If everybody dies you must be saved.”

“Thank you,” I says, “but if I get saved Aunt Mary's got to be saved, too.”

“You are not afraid?” he says.

“What of?” I says, and his mouth stayed open.

“No, I mean it,” I says. “Getting scared sure won't save any of us.”

“You do not blame me?” he says.

“For what?” I says.

“For bringing you.”

“Forget it,” I says. “I was glad enough to be invited.”

“My life I would give to save you from danger,” he says, and he meant it. He would have, and as it turned out he nearly did later.

Now the copilot come in again and just stood there looking at us. “This is it” was written all over him.

We all buckled our belts like he had shown us and like we always did when we landed, but this time it looked like we was going to do it just like always, only without the land.

We could hear the water coming up to meet us, or maybe the sound of everything changed as we got nearer the water. Anyway you could just about tell when we were going to crash onto it by the different sound the engine made as we got nearer and nearer. We were still going forward, but sinking down at the same time. You could feel us sinking in the air and, like I said, the ocean coming up to meet us.

Suddenly there was the prince, out of his safety belt. His arms around me were strong, and he braced his feet. He was nearly in the seat with me, holding me against the jolt of however we hit.

“Get in your seat,” I yelled.

Everybody was yelling now except Aunt Mary and Mr. Bosco.

“No,” he says, “I must save you, I must be with you.”

The copilot yelled at him, and he said, “No.”

One of the four sweets said what must have been something like, “Please, prince, if you get killed we'll lose our jobs because there won't be anybody to sweet for.”

But he said right back at 'em, with a tight little smile, what I guess meant, “God bless you boys, but you won't be fit to sweet for nobody when the bump and splash is over.”

So we all sat tight and waited for that splash.

It took about a year, and while we sat there time just stopped.

And I let my mind run on to where it wanted to because I didn't want it to run on to what was about to happen. And then it did happen. We hit the water, and it was like when I was at the Springfield Fair riding on one of those pop-the-whips and I got jerked around a corner. Well, we was sure jerked around a corner.

It was like one wing had hit that big rock that you see pictures of that has got Prudential written across the front of it. But it sure gave us a jolt. And it put the prince right in my lap, still protecting me with all his might.

Well, what happened could only be explained by
somebody that knows about miracles, because I guess that's about what it was.

A long time after this, I asked a nice English boy I was on a raft with if he thought it'd been a miracle, and he said that of course it was, and that miracles happened so often to everybody that flew in this war that the only times they got surprised was when a miracle didn't happen. But he was pretty feverish by that time from loss of blood but still he'd sure seen a lot of miracles. To tell the truth, him and me had just been through one at that time, that's how we got on that raft.

But I'm getting ahead of myself—I was trying to tell what happened between Natal and Dakar. The wing must have hit a wave because there was this jolt that loosened your wisdom teeth. Then we turned a corner, like I said, and the plane shook and righted itself and shuddered. Our ears were nearly split a second later by a new roaring—one of the engines that had quit working was working again. It kept on doing that, and so we got to Libeeria.

Aunt Mary and me stayed in a hotel and there was a young man we met there who worked for Firestone tires. He kept looking at me—he was a college boy, I guess. Anyway he said he was a friend of the actual Firestone boys, and there seems to be quite a lot of 'em. Five, I think he said. I thought all this time that Firestone was something strong that the tires were made out of, and come to think of it, maybe I was right at that.

Well, he got me to one side and talked a lot, with his hands clasped so you could see the knuckles greenish-
white pressing together, and he said he was lonesome so far from home.

He told me he wasn't the usual kind that tries something the first minute he meets a girl, and something about his pink eyelids reminded me of that Presbyterian minister that was always burying his cold nose in my neck. And then he got to talking about me and he asked who I was traveling with. I told him and then it seemed like he went kind of crazy. So I tried not to listen to all the names he called the prince and his sweet, but he wouldn't stop and kept on and on. Then I got mad.

I was sorry afterward that I had slapped him so hard, but it did get his attention and made him stop. So then I told him a few home truths.

Well, sir, instead of making him mad, or to go away like it ought to have done, it just made him feel that we was well enough acquainted for him to quit holding on to himself. I felt sorry for him and so I let him hold on to my hand and tell me all about how he was saving himself for the girl he married, but couldn't he kiss me just once. But I didn't let him and I decided to slap him again—hard enough to knock his hornrims off, but they didn't break. He came at me again, and that made me remember Pop and me sparring under a big elm tree at the Lutheran picnic, and me in my plaid taffeta and Pop saying, “Even a little quick punch in the stomach with your left will make his face come over toward you, and then you'd be surprised what a little uppercut on the point of the chin will take all the fight right out of him.”

Well, like always, Pop was right.

And that's all I remember about Libeeria.

But it made me feel somehow different about the poor little prince and not the way this college boy wanted me to feel at all.

It seems that there is a real place by the name of Timbuktu. I had always thought it was just a made-up name, but it's not, because we flew right over it. Mr. Bosco was sitting with me then and he told me.

We got to talking about the prince, and Mr. Bosco said that he and his brother and his father owned just about everything where they lived except for money. He said money is not always easy for rich people to get, which I didn't know before because I always thought being rich meant you had money, but it don't.

And that's why the prince brought all of that stuff and had sold it. And he was going to sell this special piece to the Soodan king to get the rest of a lot of the money. The prince wanted to use the money for something that had to be used right quick, before the war went any further. That's why Mr. Bosco had been visiting in Rio and why we had to fly all that way out of our way to get him so he could come back and help the prince's brother do whatever it was he was about to do.

“Who was the brother about to do it with?” I says. And Mr. Bosco says, “With the Japanese.”

So I asked Mr. Bosco if the brother was fond of the Japanese and he said, yes, he was, and that he didn't like the English at all. But it seemed to me that the English people were on our side, so I got more worried if the prince was collecting money for our enemies. But I didn't say anything to Aunt Mary because she had enough to do, sending pages out of her little book.

There was one place we got to where she couldn't send them, and it seemed to worry her a little. So I didn't tell her these things that Mr. Bosco told me all the time.

I guessed it was because Mr. Bosco thought I was going to marry the prince that he talked to me that way. “Well,” I thought, “Mr. Bosco can't know about Pimples and why I'm here, and if he wants to think that way, let him.”

But as it turned out, anybody that thought there was anything Mr. Bosco didn't know just didn't know Mr. Bosco.

So, after awhile, we got to a place that's called Khartoum, and it was just like the movies—if I'd ever saw one.

Khartoum was full of all sorts of people and swagger sticks that I never saw before, and they used the sticks to push people out of the way if they got in it.

Aunt Mary stopped in a bazaar where we was buying some riding things for me—because of camels and elephants we might have to be riding on—and she looked at me.

“Pimples is in jail,” she said.

“What for?” I says.

“I don't know,” she says, “but he is.”

“You sound like a spiritualist medium,” I says, “that's had a vision in a little glass thing.”

“That's what I am,” she says, “only I get my visions by code,” she says, “from cables sent by a young man that's pretty sold on you.”

“Jeff?” I says.

“Not Jeff,” she says. “That boy that you call Carbuncles or whatever it is, and who I call Ted Swift,” she says.

“What did he say?”

“Just that,” she says, “‘P
IMPLES IN JAIL
. H
OPE FOR CONVICTION
. P
ALS LATER
. G
IVE
S
NOW QUEEN INFORMATION AND MY LOVE
.' That was all.”

“Does that mean I can go home?” I says, while the little man that was fitting my britches was sticking pins all over me.

“It certainly means that the time is coming when you can think about it,” she says, “if you want to.”

“Listen, Aunt Mary,” I says, “this is all a lot of fun, and I can tell my grandchildren things they sure won't believe, like you said. But if I don't hurry and get back, my job will be gone,” I says, “and who knows where they might send Jeff?”

“They might send Jeff right to where you're going,” she says.

“Honest?” I says. “Oh, Aunt Mary, could they, might they?”

“Yes,” she says, “they might. What would you say to that?”

Well, what I said was, “Ouch,” because at that second the little man stuck a pin in me, in a very bad place.

On the way back to the plane, she put her soft hand on mine and said, “Listen, child, I'm sure you know there's more to all of this than keeping you from a few curbstone bandits in a bad neighborhood back in Chicago,” she says.

“How do you mean?” I says.

“You are just a decoy,” she says.

But I didn't know what that was, so she said it was a duck made out of wood, that floats on the water.

“Don't I ever get on dry land?” I says. “First I'm a water lily and now I'm a wooden duck like the one I once saw Donald riding on the back of because he didn't have any mother.”

So she laughed.

“Try to keep on trusting me,” she said. “There's something we've got to find out in India,” she says, “and when we find it out, our work will be done and then you can go home the quickest way.”

“But what does a decoy do?”

“Well, it was pretty important for me to be near enough to know what a certain gentleman was up to. But there was no way to do that once he took off over that Mexican border. And then a way was found by a very bright young American boy.”