Virgin With Butterflies (20 page)

Well, that gave me enough to think about all the way to Australia and back, if I had of rode the whole journey on a lame Kangaroo. But I had to stop thinking for awhile—or anyway to put it off till another time—for there was Sergeant Boggs saying, “Got some letters, huh?”

“From my Pop,” I says.

“Everything all right?” he says.

“Sure,” I says.

“You flown before?” he says.

“A little,” I says.

“How much,” he says, without the “h.”

“Well,” I says, “Chicago to Mexico City, to Rio, to Natal, to Liberia, to Khartoum, to India, and now this,” I says.

“Gawd,” he says.

“Why do you ask?” I says.

“I just wanted to know whether to bring you a cup of tea or a paper bag,” he says.

“Tea,” I says, and he brought it. So, after he took the cup away and before he could get back, another boy sidled in beside me. He was the other passenger to Australia. He had a uniform and wings and ribbons and a kind of a cowboy face.

“I'm Cecil Dillon,” he says, and he was like a mixture of the kind of an Englishman that Roddy was and the kind of a Cockney that Boggs was, but better educated than one and maybe not quite as much as the other.

“Hello,” I says.

“Got letters from home?”

“Yes,” I says.

“I'm going to Sydney,” he says.

“Who's that?” I says, and he laughed and told me that was the name of a town in Australia, only he called it just Strylia. He showed me what he called the wife and the kids, and they sure looked sweet. Cecil, the boy, took after him, and Nell, the girl, after her.

He had to pick up his family at his mother's place in another town (that I forgot as soon as he told me) where they were waiting for him, and they would all go back to Sydney for his leave.

He had been flying out of England over the channel for ten months now, and he said there wasn't much danger of any sort of a show on this jaunt we was taking. But he was jumpy, I guess it was from what he called channel-hopping, and kept on looking out of the plane, like something might be following us.

Cecil had long legs and big hands like Jeff. He said his father was in sheep, and showed me a picture of a lady that was called the mater, and she had three plumes
in her hair and a very old-fashioned satin dress and long gloves. He said she had had to go to court and that the picture was taken before she came out, but I didn't like to ask what any of it meant. I was glad for him to talk because once he got started that's what it seemed like he had been busting to do.

After he talked I don't know how long, just suddenly in the middle of a word he was asleep and all the tightness and braveness had gone out of him. His head slid over onto my shoulder, and I kept real still so he could rest. And I'm so glad now I did, especially when I think of that little folder with the pictures floating on the water where I couldn't reach it with the piece of propeller.

So now at last I had a minute to think about Jeff's letter and Pop's.

I knew how slim my chances were of getting to the place Jeff was coming to. And Pop's letter—saying that he was in the hospital and was sick, which he had always been but must be worse now because he'd graveled-in the low place on the south side of Aunt Helga's yard.

I could see me and Willie sitting there when it was damp, like it always was there. Aunt Helga said it was nice because things grew in that spot that she couldn't get to grow anywhere else on the place. But I took Willie there to try and teach him about the toadstools that would pop up after a rain, that they were poison and he shouldn't touch them and then put his thumb in his mouth.

That was when he was little and we'd go to see Aunt Helga on Sunday before our house burned up. And Pop, what a one he was to know things, and me thinking I
was the only one that knew it. But he must have known it all the time, or he would never have said that about filling it in with gravel to let me know he knew, and Aunt Helga saying our family was always in the paper and she sure was right.

I could see Aunt Helga now, at Uncle Ulrich's inquest, sitting there as placid as Saint Ann in the picture, answering questions. Then this city doctor asked if he could ask the widow a few questions.

And the coroner said, “Certainly I am sure the widow will not mind. Go ahead, doctor.”

So then this young doctor, he asked all over again everything the coroner had asked. He would have heard it before if he hadn't been so late. He asked what they had for supper. Bean soup and coffee, whole wheat muffins, cabbage with vinegar, some of the beans strained out of the soup and the steak.

“That was all?”

“That was all.”

“Was there butter with the bread?”

“Well, yes, I forgot that.”

“Any preserves?”

“They was there, but nobody ate any.”

“Any sauces for the steak?”

“No, sir, he never liked those bottled sauces.”

“Any pickles?”

“No, sir, I hadn't opened any.”

“Just the steak, plain.”

“Just the steak, plain, with the mushrooms.”

At that the doctor sat up in his chair. He wanted to know how the sauce was made. But it wasn't exactly
a sauce. It was more like just mushrooms, fried in butter in a pan.

No, Uncle Ulrich never liked to carve, he got so tired cutting meat in the shop, so she always put it on the plates in the kitchen and brought it in.

He wanted to know where she had gotten the mushrooms.

She said Uncle Ulrich had brought them home with the steak.

That would do, ma'am, he said, and he thanked her very much.

So then we all had a cup of coffee and waited for the verdict. It came back accidental poisoning, and we all got apologized to. They said it couldn't have been helped, because there must have been a bad mushroom or maybe a toadstool on the steak. But whatever it was, it must have been just one and it got onto Uncle Ulrich's plate, and that's why nobody else had been poisoned to death like Uncle Ulrich had. And it was sure a regrettable tragedy, him just about to become an alderman, and they were sure sorry to disturb a lady at such a time, but the funeral could be the next day and we had their deepest sympathy.

Aunt Helga was right, our family does get in the papers, but sometimes we don't when we might, and those are the times when it's a darn good thing we don't, and that time was sure one of 'em.

Roddy got relieved from his piloting and came and sat with me, after Cecil woke up.

Roddy acted a little smartalecky again, but nice too, and funny, talking like I had learned to expect from his
kind of English by referring to big things as if they were little, calling Lady B. The Perfect Picture of the British Unicorn, which I sure had to write down not to forget it. He said this was a picnic that he had taken a few times but never with such dainty supplies.

The others heard this, like he meant them to, so they called out jokes about him not overstaying his leave from the controls while he was inspecting the cargo. But they were nice, and we all had sandwiches that were sure good. By now there was nothing to see but sky up there and water down there and us. And then for a long time just clouds and no sky and no ocean—just us.

So we stopped at places and I got so I could understand Cockney just like a native, except when it was too Cockney. But I'd say, “Hey, Boggs, remember I ain't educated in English,” and he'd laugh and talk slow like to an idiot. And it was like a game, whether I could or couldn't understand.

He said Cockneys are called Tommies—all of 'em that are not N.C.O.'s, I didn't know what that meant, but didn't want to be always asking him.

Wherever we stopped was English, at least there were a lot of Tommies, and did they open their eyes when a regular big army plane came down and landed and then I stepped out of it. I was glad I was dressed in the same color as them. So they thought at first that it was a uniform, but when they found out it wasn't, they thought I was what they called a Musical Gel and they wanted me to sing or dance.

Roddy was a wonderful boy. He tended to every
thing. He was friendly with the men, as he called 'em, and was what the English call cheeky to the senior officers and red hats.

Singapore was a fort, like on an island, and absolutely safe so they didn't have to worry about the war.

So I told Roddy what Lady B. had said that day to Mr. Bosco about Singapore singing about the wave and forgetting about the sky. And he looked at me hard, and “Don't tell that to these red hats,” he says, “or we'll get court martialled.” Then he drank his Scotch, which he could sure store away and never fall down flat. And he grinned, slow, and he says, “That old tea cosy,” meaning Lady B., “knows nearly as much about British weakness, my pet, as the Japanese army does.”

And he gulped down the last drop, and we went out and climbed in, and off we went.

The equator is not like they taught us it was at all. I remember my teacher saying “The equator is an imaginary line around the center of the earth that divides the northern hemisphere from the southern hemisphere.”

Well, that's a lie. For I looked and we all looked when we crossed it and no imaginary line could any of us see, even with opera glasses.

I liked Boggs, he was my friend. He had lost everybody he'd ever had, his wife and his father and three kids—all except one brother that was in prison when the Germans laid eggs on the East End, as he called London. When he found out I had a brother that had been like his, he quit thinking I was a society toff, as he called 'em, and we was good friends, and I won't never forget him. And certainly I won't never forget that stocky little
man standing there on one leg on the top of that wing of our plane that was sinking fast and looking back at Roddy and me through the fog. Roddy, far gone as he was, guessed what Boggs was going to do, and yelled all the English cuss words for him to please come back and let us all take our chances together.

But Boggs looked at us and grinned, and “Ow far is it to Margate?” he called, and stepped off of the wing into the water. He came up and waved his hand once and then swam out, rising up on top of a wave as big as an Indiana hill and going over behind it, till we couldn't see him for a long time. Then I saw him up on top of another. I yelled at him to come back but Roddy quit yelling because he saw it was no use. I saw him once more, and I knew he couldn't go on with his leg shot full of bullets like it was. And then I didn't see him anymore, and that was all. Just Roddy and me in the fog, watching the plane sink.

I guess I've got to tell about it, as near how it happened as I can. But I can't remember except little bits. We were flying in a fog and I was writing the English words that I wanted to remember in my book. Suddenly somebody yelled, and there was a roar right on us nearly, and something going pop, pop, pop, pop.

I looked and there was a flash of flame like a burning house falling through the sky and nearly going to hit us, and something out of it spitting more fire. And Boggs yelled. “That's it, mates, I got it.”

And before I could say, “What?” Cecil lay flat on the floor, facedown like a train had run over him. All the time that streak of burning fire kept coming at us a mile
a minute and shooting past the windows as we bumped and started going over sideways.

By then I seemed to know that the thing burning and falling out there was another plane on fire, but it was shooting the hell out of us as it went down. We heard it hit the water, and boom, one big flash of light.

About that time we hit, and everything got all mixed up together. I remember Roddy climbing back to me as I searched through my bag to save something, and I was so relieved when I found it. And then I don't remember anything till I was in the water just coming to myself and Roddy pulling the last of me into that little rubber boat.

He told me afterwards that the bigger boat got sunk with the plane. Just the tip of the wing was above the water now, and it was just before this that Boggs had done like I said, and was in the water, and Roddy yelling, “You bloody, bloody fool, come back here.” And he sure was right, I never saw so much blood as was on Boggs. But Boggs wouldn't come back, because it was just the little boat, instead of the big one.

The wing tip disappeared and I saw Roddy's arm, all bloody and hanging wrong. It was just us in that little rubber boat with some stuff floating around us. I used the piece of propeller and tried to reach that little leather folder with Cecil's Australian kids floating away in it.

Then I tore strips off my skirt until I was nearly naked to twist a tourniquet around Roddy's arm. It made Roddy faint with how it hurt him, but it sure stopped the spurts of blood just like that Scout master told Willie it would.

So there I sat, sort of laid down with Roddy in my
lap pretty near, and before I knew it, it was dark, and was I ever seasick. And days of two people together like what we were, delirious and sun-blistered and talking, gets you to be good friends or bad enemies or first one and then the other till you get rescued or die of exposure or anyway of embarrassment.