Butterfly's Child (15 page)

It was his country that was winning the war against Russia, and people in Plum River and Stockton respected him for it. After Benji began—at Keast's recommendation—working part-time in Red Olsen's store, some of the customers, even grown men, talked to him about the fight in the Far East. They said if Japan didn't keep Korea open, it would be bad for American exports, including agriculture. One day, when Father Pinkerton came by the store, he joined in the conversation at the butcher
counter, bragging about the import/export business he'd had in Nagasaki, suggesting that the Japanese ships wouldn't be winning if it wasn't for training by the American and British navies. He'd been an instructor himself, he said, when he was in Nagasaki.

Later that evening, when they were walking up from the barn, Benji asked Father Pinkerton to tell him more about the naval training, but he shook his head and said that the details were secret.

“When you were doing the training—was that why you lived in Nagasaki with my mother?”

Father Pinkerton stared at him. “I don't know what you're talking about,” he said.

The cleared space
around the Pinkerton farmhouse, though large, had for vegetation only trees—including the oaks, apples, and a stately walnut Frank's grandfather had planted—and a thin circle of daisies and sweet william around a neglected birdbath.

When Kate had difficulty falling asleep after an exhausting day of housework and tending to Mary Virginia and Franklin, she'd summon up images of her mother's garden in Galena: in summertime, a sea of flowers on which the house seemed to float. In the backyard was a bed of white flowering plants, designed to show to best advantage in the moonlight from the bedrooms and the sleeping porch at the back of the house. She remembered being put to bed at dusk as a child, in the years before they went to China, how the delicate fragrances wafting up to her room became entwined in her sleep. It would bring her peace, she had decided that spring, to make a garden here.

With the help of a colored boy who worked as a handyman in Galena, Kate transplanted from her mother's house a variety of flowers. By that summer, white lilacs, peonies, fragrant flowering stock, and snowball bushes formed the white garden in back of the house. Coneflowers, larkspur, hollyhocks, and snapdragons flourished along the iron picket fence and near the two-seated glider beside the well. In fall, a variety of asters made a meadow of the yard, along with the goldenrod Kate had planted in spite of her mother-in-law's insistence that goldenrod was a common weed and made her nose itch.

Kate's garden attracted an alarming number of butterflies: black swallowtails
with yellow markings that flitted from flower to flower, tortoise-shells, and an occasional dazzling blue Diana.

Frank was in his office on the Sunday afternoon in early autumn when the great river of monarch butterflies poured down around the house. He glanced out the west window, where only minutes before there had been nothing but the familiar limbs of the bur oak. The branches were covered with orange butterflies—perched on the surfaces of leaves, hanging from the smallest twigs. The wings were veined and rimmed with black, with a pattern of white dots about the edges; those that caught the light were iridescent and silken as a kimono. The tree was alive with their movement. He thought of Cio-Cio's bent legs opening and closing and opening, inviting him in. His heart began to race.

He edged past his desk to stand by the window. The ground was as thick with orange butterflies as if they had been painted there. They lined the iron fence and clung to the milkweed in the ditches; on the dirt road, clumps of butterflies flickered in puddles from last night's rain. The air congealed; he could hardly breathe. He pushed up the window and leaned forward to shake the closest branch of the tree. Butterflies swirled upward, resettled. One lit on his arm. He shook it off, slammed the window down, and, holding on to the desk, returned to his chair, where he sat slumped, head in his hands.

A butterfly was in the room. It swooped before him, inches from his face, then flitted to the ceiling and down to the filing cabinet. He turned, watching it, feeling he would faint. When the butterfly returned to him and sat pulsing on the ledger, he swiped at it, hardly noticing as ink spilled across the page and the edge of the desk, soaking into the leg of his trousers.

Benji was returning from Keast's place when he noticed butterflies floating around him, dipping, dropping onto fences and the leaves of trees. He held out his arm; an orange-and-black butterfly perched on his wrist—a slight tickle. His skin aflame, he reined in Kuro. Butterflies filled the air as far as he could see, like weather in a dream.

*  *  *

At supper, Grandmother Pinkerton said the butterflies were monarchs migrating south. “I haven't seen them since the year Elmer broke his leg. Usually they pass through east of here.”

“I hate them,” Kate said.

When Frank came late to the table, smelling of whiskey, Kate rose, saying she had a headache, and went upstairs. Frank ate quickly, ignoring Franklin and Mary Virginia's bickering. He asked Benji if he'd done the milking; when Benji said no, he was going to do it soon, Frank said never mind, jammed on a straw hat, and went to the barn.

That night in bed, as Kate slept beside him, Frank cursed the butterflies coating the roof of the house, the ground, the trees. His chest felt odd, as though thousands of tiny wings were fluttering beneath his skin.

He pushed back the covers and went downstairs, out the front door. At first, in the light of the rising moon, he could see nothing but the bulk of the house and the dark trees. He touched a clematis vine on the fence; butterflies rushed up at him. He walked down the road toward the barn, sensing them around him, in the ditches and the meadow grass. They seemed to give off a faint perfume in the night, a dusty sweetness. It was Cio-Cio's revenge; she was haunting him still.

In the barn he leaned against a stall door, opened another bottle of corn whiskey, and drank until the sensation in his chest was gone.

In bed again, he fumbled for Kate.

“No,” she said. “You're thinking of her.”

He yanked up her nightgown.

“Stop.” She pushed at him.

He straddled her, pinning down her arms, and forced himself inside.

When he lay spent, he heard her weeping. He reached for her. “What's wrong? I didn't—” but she flung his hand away. “I'm your husband,” he said.

As he fell into sleep, he felt the mattress shift and then heard, faint, as if from a great distance, a door click shut.

Benji woke from a dream he could not remember. It was nearly dawn, the sky beginning to go gray. He went outside, to the back garden where dark triangles of butterflies slept in the flowers, and knelt among them. His
mother hadn't wanted to leave him, but she had wanted him to come to America. She had put the picture in the kimono so he would know that. When he closed his eyes he could hear her singing—“
Sakura, sakura
,” a song about cherry blossoms, he remembered—and he remembered walking hand in hand with her along the edge of the bay as she sang, her voice as pure and clear as water.

Keast's room was
stifling, with no cross breeze through the windows on the warm Indian summer night, and he lay sleepless and sweating in a bed made uncomfortable by his restlessness. He hadn't had a spell of insomnia since the year after the deaths of Isobel and Horatio. This time the cause was desire rather than grief, but the two states were not dissimilar, Keast thought, as he pitched from side to side, battling his mattress. Longing was a torturous affair, no matter what the cause.

A few evenings ago after supper, as he and Lena sat on the porch looking out at butterflies in the garden, she had touched his bare wrist. He couldn't recall what she'd been saying, but his skin still held the memory of her light touch. Could be it was a message, though likely not. She had taken his arm several times, when alighting from the buggy. And she was a woman who had the general impulse to touch, he had noticed that, smoothing her skirt or her hair, running her hand over a page she was about to read. Still, he should have been man enough to cover her hand with his, lift it to his lips.

He was a coward, and a fool, to entertain the slightest notion that a woman twenty-five years younger than himself might find him suitable as a mate. Even for a woman closer to his age, he would be no prize, with his belly that would press into her, his lumpish, lined face, his tendencies to catarrh and boils, his sour breath. He snored, and his feet were unsightly, with bulging yellow nails and bunions that had to be soaked in vinegar water each night. But he had over the years put aside a tidy sum; he could provide her a comfortable home and respite from her work. Though she might want to continue teaching; she had a passion for it,
one of her finest traits. Her devotion to young Benjamin was touching to witness.

She likely had a passion for life too—he had often thought so—with her strong young body, the firm breasts that it hurt him to think of. Smaller breasts than Isobel's, upturned, he imagined, and milky flanks. He touched himself, removed his hand, and gripped the brass bedstead. It would only increase his longing, and afterward he always felt a twinge regarding Isobel, even though he knew she would bear him no grudge.

Since Lena had touched his hand, he had evaded her, staying out on his rounds long past the usual hour and reading the newspaper at breakfast. He had likely missed his opportunity, not taking her hand, not speaking for all this time. If she had meant what he hoped, she would think him disinterested or timid. Tomorrow she was going to Joliet to visit her mother, not to return for a week, he had heard her telling Mrs. Bosley in the hall. Her voice had sounded so cheerful and full of music that he wondered if a young man waited along with her mother. On several occasions she had alluded to a friend in Joliet.

In the distance was the long throaty call of a horned owl, a sound lonely as a train whistle, and, farther off, a faint response. There would be love somewhere this night in Morseville.

He thrashed out of bed and went to look out the front window. Across the street, the saloon was closed; a drunk Injun lay on the board sidewalk. Otherwise the town was empty, the rutted street and closed shops a desolate scene in the sharp light of the moon, deep shadows in the alley beside the dry-goods store. If she should leave this place, he could not bear it.

He struck his hand against the window sash. He should ask to drive her to the train station. By golly, he would. She would have made other arrangements, but should she be willing to alter them, that would be a sign. He swallowed down his queasiness and sat at his desk, now afraid to sleep, lest he should miss her departure.

She wore a dress that favored her green eyes, and she smelled of lemon soap. Mrs. Bosley had planned to take her to the train station, but Lena seemed pleased by the new arrangement. He wished he had thought to wear his new shirt. At least the buggy was presentable.

The ride to Stockton was short, just under three miles, but he lengthened
it, taking the back road. They were mostly silent. She mentioned a book she was reading. Her profile was lovely in the dappled light as they rode beneath the trees.

He had loaded three valises into the back of the buggy, surely more than necessary for a week.

“Will you see your friend, then?” he said.

“I have many friends in Joliet,” she said. “It's my birthplace.”

“They're fortunate to know you.” What a thing to say.

“You look weary, Horatio. I hope you'll take care of yourself.”

He glanced at her hands, folded in her lap, and pulled the horse to a halt. His heart was going like a bellows at Christmas. There were purple asters in the ditch. He sprang out and picked a handful, stood by her, and presented them with a bow.

She looked astonished. It was hopeless. But he had begun.

“Lena—would you consider an old man for a suitor?”

She met his eyes steadily. “I don't think of you as old, Horatio.”

Sweat rolled into his left eye. He took out his handkerchief—none too clean—and wiped his face.

“Do you mean,” he said, “a possibility?”

“Yes.” She smiled and swung her legs over the side of the buggy. He lifted her down and kissed her.

He was in a daze for the remainder of the ride, holding her hand until they came into Stockton, seeing her onto the train, a proud man, a new man, blowing a kiss to her at the window, watching the handsome train recede. As he rode back toward Morseville by the same road that had altered his life, the world seemed newly alive and he was part of it. He skirted the town and, before starting on his rounds, drove out to the cemetery to tell Isobel.

“
You always were
impulsive, Kate,” her mother said, embracing her. “But of course I'm delighted. I hope you're planning a long stay. What about the children?”

“They'll manage,” Kate said. “Frank's mother will be glad to have free rein.”

They sat in the parlor with tea and cookies. The room hadn't changed over the years, each piece of dark furniture in the same place where it had first been planted: the brown velvet love seat on which her mother perched, crocheting a doily, chairs of punishing horsehair, end tables cluttered with memorabilia from China. A photograph of her father in his clerical collar looked benignly upon them from the mantel. In one corner of the room was the spinet piano where Kate had practiced Bach airs and inventions, the sheet music still on the stand, as if she had left home yesterday instead of twelve years ago.

Her mother sipped at her tea, cast a glance in Kate's direction. “What's wrong, dear?”

“My life is unbearable,” Kate burst out. Tears sprang to her eyes. “Frank …”

Her mother went still; she set down her crocheting and stared at her, blinking. “What is it?”