Butterfly's Child (20 page)

Benji dismounted and went to look at the wheel mired in the ditch. “My horse can pull that out,” he said, “if you can push from the rear.”

They substituted Kuro for the nag in the wagon traces; Benji urged him forward while the man swore at the wheel: Kuro pulled hard, the cords of his neck muscles standing out. “I don't want to injure my horse,” Benji said, but just then the wagon broke free.

“I knew that hoss could do it.” The little man walked toward him, his feet turned outward almost at right angles. He was bald, with an untrimmed reddish beard. “Mighty obliged to you,” he said, holding out a pudgy hand. “Moffett's the name, Digby Moffett, purveyor of fine trees and ornamentals since 'ninety-two. Who might you be? If you're a Chinaman, you must be a rich'un to ride such a horse as that.”

“I'm an American,” Benji said, jerking back his hand, “though there is some royal Japanese blood in my veins.”

“Hey, now, I's just fooling with you. I knew you was a good man the moment I laid eyes on you. Let me pay you something for your trouble.” He dug around in his pocket and extracted a quarter. “Where you headed, boy?” he asked as they exchanged horses.

Benji explained that he was making a cross-country journey with the eventual goal of visiting some wealthy relatives in Nagasaki, Japan.

Moffett whistled. “Holy cats. All the way on your steed?”

“We can make it. I just need to find some work along the way to supplement my capital and a place to winter over.”

“Yes, sir. You've got to settle down before the blizzards hit.” Moffett studied him. “Why don't you ride along with me for a spell? I might be able to help you. I know these parts real well.”

Benji shrugged. “Okay,” he said. He didn't have any other offers.

They started moving slowly down the road, the swaybacked horse plodding along with her load.

Moffett lit a cigar and, gesturing with it, began to talk: about trees—there were your trash trees, maples, and your aristocrats, elm and oak; about his life story—born on a tobacco plantation in North Carolina, migrated early to greener pastures; and about business deals in which he had been wronged.

This man was nothing but a blabbermouth. “Maybe I'd better be getting on,” Benji said. “I've got to find work right away.”

Moffett scratched his forehead delicately with one finger. “Let me make you a proposition. I could use an assistant, late in the year as it is. You know how to plant a tree?”

“Yes,” Benji said, looking at the scraggly collection in the wagon.

“I'll pay you fifty cents for each tree you put in the ground.”

“Planting's hard work,” he dared to say, “especially this time of year.”

“Fifty-five cents, then, plus room and board. I know this route like the palm of my hand. Now, you ain't going to find a better deal than that. Plus which, I'll find you a situation for the winter. And to top it all off”—he gave Benji a wink—“I'll show you some fun along the way.”

For the next few days, Benji and Digby, as he said he should be addressed now that they were partners, made their way south and west through the gently rolling countryside of Iowa. From the crests of hills, Benji could see for miles, the squares of farmland a huge rippling quilt of gold and light-brown stubble and black earth. The only trees were clustered around farmhouses; Digby claimed to have planted most of them himself.

Progress was slow, and sales were scant, in spite of Digby's long conversations with the farm wives, his talk often sweetened with a ribbon or some sparkly thing from what he called his opportunity box. Digby grumbled that some other tree man had beaten his time, and the truth of it was that most people in the Midwest didn't know to appreciate a good
tree when they saw one. By the end of the first week, Benji had pocketed only three dollars and seventy-five cents and again said perhaps he'd best be moving on, but Digby said, “Now, hold on, at the next stop I got a surprise you won't want to miss.”

“What is it?”

“You'll see. Some friends of mine. We'll have a square meal and a fine roof over our heads, for starters.” They had been sleeping in barns and haystacks, and the farm wives who fed them gave handouts at the back door, as if they were tramps.

Benji cantered ahead to give Kuro some exercise and to escape Digby's blather. They were miles from the main road; this had been a mistake. The sky was low and gray, the fields bleak beneath it. Longing for home swept over him: Franklin—Benji had just been teaching him to ride his new pony—Grandmother Pinkerton's chicken and dumplings, the warm parlor stove, his bed with the kimono—he'd never see that kimono again—Flora. He thought of her dark eyes, the curves of her breasts beneath her brown checked blouse. She'd started to put up her hair this year, like a young woman. She'd think of him less and less and then forget.

He charged back to Digby. “I've got to get to a town with a post office,” he said.

“You read my mind. Town is precisely where we're headed. I have some friends in Fairfield—we'll find us some mighty comfortable circumstances,” he said with a wink.

At the end of the afternoon, after a failed attempt to sell some scrawny lilacs, nothing more than sticks now, that Digby insisted had been pre-ordered, they came to a hamlet, just a few stores and houses at a crossroads. Benji scanned the stores—feed, dry goods, a harness shop. There was a saloon but no post office that he could see. On the far edge of the settlement they stopped in front of a small, unpainted frame house. There was a sign in the window:
SEWING, PLAIN AND FANCY
.

Digby rapped on the door, and a tired-looking woman peered out. “Digby,” she said, in a voice that implied, You again.

“Lovely Arabella,” Digby said with a bow. “Can you accommodate two wayfaring strangers for bed and board? I've brought you some lilacs.”

“It's early in the day,” she said, looking from one to the other. Benji felt her taking in his foreign appearance.

“Who's that one?” she said.

“An Oriental potentate,” Digby said. He took out his money pouch. “This is on me, son,” he said to Benji. “You've earned it.”

“A dollar for you,” the woman said. “Including supper. A dollar fifty for the Chinaman.”

Benji stared at the bills as Digby counted them out. It wasn't fair they charged more for him. “I'm not Chinese,” he said.

“Indeed not,” Digby said. “This gentleman is a direct descendant of President Grant's valet, a man of Japanese nobility whom the president found in Jay-pan.”

Arabella gave him a skeptical look.

“And he's very clean,” Digby said.

“He'd better be. Come on in, then.”

There were two women in the kitchen, busy at the stove. The younger one had reddish-blond hair and a face that just missed being pretty. She gave Benji a smile as he and Digby sat at the table.

“You like that one?” Digby said. “You pick any one you want.”

Benji felt a tingling in his groin. “Is this a whorehouse?” he whispered.

Digby grinned. “You bet,” he said.

The younger woman began cooking onions. The smell was arousing. Benji watched her skirt, imagining the buttocks beneath.

When supper was ready, the three women sat at the table. There were introductions: the younger one, Francette, sat across from Benji. Lucinda, the dark-haired one, was across from Digby. Arabella, at the head of the table, passed around beef hash, poached eggs, corn mush. It was like eating anywhere, Benji thought. He kept stealing glances at Francette. Her eyes were nice, light brown, with a tolerant expression.

The women talked about the weather. Digby told a long story about a tornado he'd survived. Benji's stomach felt so excited he could hardly eat, and when the meal was over, he waited until everyone else had stood and turned away before he got up, because his excitement was showing in his pants.

Digby consulted with Arabella, and then he and Benji went out to the side yard to plant the lilacs, Benji digging while Digby smoked his cigar and supervised.

“Your first whorehouse, eh?” Digby said with a chuckle.

“No,” Benji lied. It didn't look like the whorehouses boys at school
claimed to know about—women in fancy underwear, red carpets, a player piano. “It's just not like the ones I'm familiar with.”

“The product is pretty much the same everywhere.” He ground out his cigar in the dirt. “Stamp down those bushes real good. Arabella went out of her way to give us some grub too. She always been partial to me.”

Arabella met them at the door; the other women had disappeared.

“Room two for him,” Arabella said to Digby. “The usual for you.”

Digby led the way upstairs. Benji's heart was pounding.

“Here's your spot.” Digby opened one of the bedroom doors. There was an iron bed with a blue-and-white quilt, a braided rug on the floor. It looked like an ordinary room. Benji sat on the bed and waited, clasping and unclasping his hands. Should he lie down? What if he couldn't do it? Maybe he should tell her it was his first time.

It grew dark. He should have thought to ask for a candle. They must have meant for him to lie down in the dark. He took off his shoes and eased onto his back. He hoped Digby had arranged for Francette to come.

Finally the door opened. It was Francette, carrying a kerosene lamp. The lamp cast shadows on her face and showed wrinkles on her neck. In the kitchen, she had looked younger. She was wearing a silky white robe with fur down the edges.

“Here I am.” She set the lamp on the table and lay down beside him. “How are you, then?” Her lips and cheeks were red, and she smelled too sweet. She ran her hand down his body and cupped it between his legs. “Oh, my,” she said.

She stood and dropped the robe to the floor. Her underwear was plain, nothing like he'd seen in pictures.

“What do you want?” she said.

“I don't know. Whatever you usually do.”

She smiled as she unlaced her corset. “We'll figure something out,” she said. “Don't worry.” She put the corset on a chair behind her. Her breasts were smaller than he'd hoped, and her ribs showed. When she stepped out of her bloomers, he began to pull off his clothes.

She sat on top of him and he knew what to do. But it was over too quickly, an explosion of pleasure. “I'm sorry,” he said.

She swung her body off him as if he were a horse.

“It's all right,” she said. “You're no different from any other man, even
if you are from China.” She got up and put on her clothes. “You sleep here,” she said. “Digby has paid for that.”

After she left, he went through it all again; this time it lasted longer. He rolled away from the wet spots he'd made on the sheets. As he went to sleep, he thought of Flora, her pretty brown eyes, the little scar beside her mouth. Now he could never write to her; he had lost her forever.

Frank took a drink,
just a small one, and swung up onto Admiral. Someone had to go to the store. His mother refused—she'd have left Plum River by now, she said, if poor Kate didn't need her so badly—and they couldn't keep sending Franklin and the Swede. Last time Franklin had come home crying and wouldn't talk about what happened, though Frank had a pretty good idea.

Away from the windbreak of trees on Plum River Road, the wind was biting cold. Overnight they'd had a light snow, a salting of it on the fields. A jackrabbit flashed across the road. If Benji made a slingshot, he could get his meat that way. He'd likely freeze to death, but he had himself to thank, not giving a turnip's thought to those who'd raised him.

Keast. There was another Benedict Arnold. Knew about the photograph all along, his mother said. Not surprising. Thick as thieves, the two of them, from the start.

He took another nip as he turned onto the main road to Morseville. Lard, flour, vanilla, a rasher of bacon, a bottle of tonic for Kate. She refused to see Dr. McBride. No point trying to convince her; she'd always been headstrong. If she hadn't begged so hard, he never would have taken her to Japan, and they wouldn't be in this predicament.

In Morseville, Frank paused at the store. That Norwegian whose name he never could remember was going in, gave him a sly grin over his shoulder. Son of a bitch.

He'd go pay a visit to Keast first, give him a piece of his mind. Maybe two pieces. He'd be in now, Saturday morning, snoring like a hog.

He hitched Admiral in front of the boardinghouse and went around
back, out of sight of Nellie Bosley. She'd already be spreading tales from here to kingdom come. Nothing like a spurned woman to trade on your bad fortune. On the stairs he uncapped the flask and took a long draught, then another when he reached the upstairs balcony.

He pounded on Keast's door. There was a clatter, something rolling across the floor. Then silence. He rapped again. “Keast?”

“Pinkerton?” Keast said from the other side of the door. “Any word of Benji?”

“Come out and I'll tell you.”

Keast cracked open the door. He was still in his nightshirt.

“Why didn't you tell me about that goddamn picture?”

“The boy took me into his confidence. I'm sure he meant no harm.”

“Harm?” Frank could hear his voice, high and sissy. “Tell my wife that,” he said in a lower voice. “I hold you responsible, Keast.”

“I didn't sire the boy.”

Frank shoved him, knocking him into the room, and gave him a jab in the gut.

A woman screamed. Over Keast's head, he could see a form wriggling deeper into the bedclothes, a rabbit gone to ground.

“I'll be damned,” Frank said, grinning.

Keast yanked his arm, pulled him outside, shut the door behind him. His hair was sticking up all over and he smelled of sex. Frank took a swing. Keast shoved him, grunting, and Frank fell against the porch railing. There was a cracking sound. He looked behind him—a long way down.