Butterfly's Child (22 page)

It had gotten dark, but his hands were too cold to light the lantern. He kept drinking to blot out his thoughts and finally went to sleep.

He woke at first light. The cows were lowing; maybe he should start the milking. She might pay him a little for that. He sat up, dizzy and sick, his head pounding. Just like Frank, he thought.

On the floor beside the cot was an envelope. He ripped it open: Digby's watch fell out. There was a note:
Contrary to your assertion
, it read,
I came this distance to help you out. You may keep this watch, which belonged to my father, who fought valiantly at the battle of Bull Run, or you can sell it for a handsome bonus. Good luck on your journey. Yours truly, Digby Moffett, Esq
. There was a postscript:
I had no choice than to do what I done, since I came this far so late in the year and have to get back quick before the blizzards, but I had your benefit in mind as well. I think you will find I have improved your situation considerably
.

Benji stared at the note, reread the postscript.
No choice … get back quick
. He jumped up and ran to Kuro's stall. It was empty, just trampled straw and an overturned water bucket. “No,” he yelled. “No, no!”

Digby's nag was in her stall. He kicked her door hard and ran outside. The wagon was outside the barn, poles resting on the ground, the box of trinkets on the front seat.

Kuro. He opened and closed his hands. Kuro. He walked in a circle, held to a fence post, pounded it to keep from crying. His loyal buddy. He thought of the day Keast had brought Kuro to the farm; they'd understood each other from the start.

He ran back inside and saddled the other quarter horse—he'd explain later—and galloped down the driveway to the road. The cold air numbed his face. Without Kuro, he had nothing. Alone, his journey over. He couldn't even get to town.

He pressed the horse faster, galloping east, retracing the route they'd followed. He looked for Kuro's tracks in the snow, but it was impossible; the road was blurred with hoof prints. He met several people, farmers, a man in a buggy; none of them had seen a fat man on a black quarter horse, but Digby had set out before light. Benji kept riding straight east, though Digby could have taken a crossroad and hidden God knew where. “Horse thief,” he shouted, his voice ringing across the fields. He'd
kill him, string him up in one of his trees. He'd better not have harmed Kuro.

He rode hard until noon, when his borrowed horse was streaked with sweat. He turned back, letting the horse walk, tears streaming down his face. There was a searing pain in his chest. What now? He'd walk to Ottumwa before he'd ride Digby's nag.

A horse came rushing toward him; the rider had a rifle under his arm. Then he saw it was Mrs. Weber, in a heavy coat and man's hat. She pulled her horse up beside him and raised the rifle. “You're going to jail.”

“No,” he said, “Wait. I'm looking for Moffett—he stole
my
horse. I was bringing yours back.” He took Digby's note from his pocket and handed it to her. “He left during the night on Kuro. Now I'm done for.”

She stared at the note, turned it over, read it again. “You better be telling the truth. Why didn't you ask before taking my horse?”

“I was in a hurry to catch him.”

“How long you known Digby Moffett?”

“I just met him on the road a few weeks ago.”

“That was a misfortunate piece of luck.” She tucked the rifle back under her arm and studied him. “Where are you from?”

“My father and stepmother live in Illinois. I'm on my way to Japan, where I was born—Digby was telling the truth about that. And Kuro—my …” He clenched his jaw.

“You know how to read?”

His face went hot. “Just because I'm Japanese doesn't mean I can't read. I've been to school—I'm in the top grade.”

“Christian?”

“I have three gold stars for Sunday-school attendance.”

“All right,” she said. “You can stay with us for a while, until we find your horse and the worm that's on his back.”

Kate was ill with
mother's sickness, vomiting every morning into the chamber pot beside the bed. As soon as this phase passed, she would leave; she had to leave this place, the gossip, the humiliation, Aimee and her tribe relishing the exposure of the elaborate lies she had told about Benji's origins. She could see them in Aimee's parlor, gathered for the women's circle meeting, their tea growing cold, their eyes glittering as they leaned forward, devouring morsels of fact and rumor. Mrs. Cassidy would declare she had never been so shocked. I always suspected it, Aimee would say, setting off a clamor of excited agreement: Her Christian duty, indeed!

They would whisper at church, and Reverend Singleton and his wife would discuss the scandal at their dinner table. If only she had confided in Reverend Singleton, he might be able to help her now, but it was too late. There was no help.

She kept to her room, sleeping much of the day with the aid of the tonics Frank had brought her.

One day she dreamed about Benji, that she had given birth to him herself. He was bleeding from his mouth, and she was covered with his blood. She jerked awake, pulled down the covers, and looked—nothing—then fell back onto the bed. She could hear Mrs. Pinkerton downstairs, cleaning, scraping chairs about. Kate got out of bed, put on her robe, and went to stand by the window, putting her forehead against the cold pane. There was a freezing drizzle, the ice beginning to coat the trees, the limbs shining in the cold light of late afternoon. The garden had buckled, the coneflowers, the black-eyed Susans, the lettuces shriveled. She thought of
Benji huddled against the door of a shop in some strange town. He might die of exposure in this weather; he might already be dead. She felt a wave of vertigo; it was too much to think about. She went back to her tonic and to sleep.

Sometimes Mary Virginia tiptoed into the room and wriggled into bed with her. “All right,” Kate said, “if you be quiet and go to sleep.” Mary Virginia would lie still, her hot sweet little breath on Kate's face, and stare at her. “Is Mama sick?” she said one day.

“No. Mama is just waiting for the stork.”

“Why?”

Kate closed her eyes, saw the air thick with orange butterflies. “Why, Mama?”

“The stork is going to bring us a baby.”

“I'm the baby.” Mary Virginia thrashed and kicked. “I'm the baby.”

“Go on, now.” Kate gave her a nudge. “Go help your grandmother. Mama needs to sleep.”

One evening she woke to see Franklin at the door. He was on his way to bed, holding a candle. His shirttail was out and his trousers were too short. He'd grown without her noticing.

“When is Benji coming back?” he said.

“I don't know.”

“Will he come back?”

“No,” she said, in a sharper voice than she'd intended, and Franklin slid away. “I don't know. How could I possibly know?” she called after him. “Franklin?” When he didn't return, she took out the tonic and drank herself back to unconsciousness.

At night she was wakeful, after her long spells of sleep during the day, but lay turned away from Frank, feigning sleep. When he whispered “Kate?” and touched her shoulder, she deepened her breathing. He disgusted her, the stale smell of his nightshirt, the alcohol on his breath. Often he rose and went to his office or down the stairs. He was miserable too, but she could not help him.

One afternoon Mrs. Pinkerton woke her to say she was worried about Franklin. “He never came back from the milking,” she said. “I've looked for him everywhere.”

Mrs. Pinkerton's eyes and head seemed too large, as if Kate were looking at her through water. She forced herself up; the room was spinning. “He's at school,” she said.

“He doesn't go to school anymore,” Mrs. Pinkerton said. “We can't get him to go. His pony is gone—Frank thinks he's trying to find Benji.”

Kate thought of him at her door in his outgrown clothes, his eyes wide and anxious. It was her fault, her darling boy. “I can't lose him,” she whispered.

“Frank will find him.”

Kate followed Mrs. Pinkerton down the stairs, holding tight to the railing.

They looked out the windows of the dining room and parlor. It was a perfectly still day, the branches of the trees not stirring, as if the world were holding its breath. The house was silent.

“Mary Virginia,” Kate cried, looking around.

“Playing with her dolls,” Mrs. Pinkerton said.

They sat in the parlor, Mrs. Pinkerton knitting a white baby blanket that fell over her knees. It was long enough to be a small shroud.

“I've killed him,” Kate whispered. “I told him Benji wouldn't be back.”

“Hush. It's bad luck to talk that way. And it's none of your fault.” She flicked her gaze up from the needles.

Mary Virginia ran into the room and shoved something at Kate. “Baby,” she said. It was the ugly rag doll that Mrs. Pinkerton had made from a sock.

“They'll be hungry when they get back,” Mrs. Pinkerton said, rising.

“Hungry,” Mary Virginia said. “Me and the baby are hungry.”

Kate put Mary Virginia in her high chair and laid the table, her hands trembling. Mrs. Pinkerton brought corn bread and a pitcher of milk, poured milk for the three of them, then sat with Kate at the table.

Mary Virginia held her cup to the doll's mouth. Milk splashed onto the doll and the high chair.

“Stop that,” Kate said, snatching away the doll. “Eat. Be a big girl.”

Mary Virginia drummed her feet against the chair. “Baby!” she cried, then “Frankie!”

“Shh,” Kate said. “Franklin and Papa have gone to a meeting.”

Mrs. Pinkerton gave her a look. The wrong thing to say. But what could she say?

Her mother-in-law lifted Mary Virginia from the high chair. “Bedtime for the big girl,” she said, and carried her upstairs.

Kate took a swallow of milk. It tasted off. She went to the parlor and
picked up her needlework, but her fingers would not move; she was sick with fear.

Finally Frank was at the door. She flew to greet him.

He shook his head.

“Someone must have seen him,” Kate yelled. “Go back. Keep looking.”

“A group of us will go out tomorrow at first light,” Frank said.

Kate let out a sob. Frank reached for her but she pushed him away, ran, stumbling, up the stairs. Maybe she would trip and this would all be over.

The next morning Kate went downstairs when she heard men's voices: Bud Case and his son Eli, Red Olsen, Keast. The men kept their eyes averted from her; she shouldn't have come down in her nightgown, and she with child. What was she thinking?

“We'll find him, Kate,” Keast said, but his face lacked conviction. There were pouches under his eyes; he'd been awake all night too.

Mrs. Pinkerton gave them sacks of food, and they left in a racket of boots and door slammings and horses. Then, silence again.

Kate dressed and walked down the road, then crossed the meadow and followed the edge of the little river. She was light-headed, her first time out in weeks. The water was moving swiftly, foaming around the rocks. Franklin had loved playing here. She thought of the time he'd come into the house shouting and waving a fish Benji had helped him catch.

She'd been fine then, a normal mother. She remembered frying the fish, the oil sputtering in the pan. She held to a plum branch and hung over her reflection in a still pool of water at the edge of the river. Kate. Kate Lewis Pinkerton.

She went back to the house, to her room, and fell into a deep sleep. When she awoke in the afternoon and descended the stairs, there were cakes and pies on the dining room and kitchen tables.

“Is he dead?” she cried.

“No, dear, there's no word yet.”

“Then they shouldn't bring food.” Now they'd be talking about her again; what kind of mother lost two boys? “Has Aimee Moore been here?”

“She brought that pie.” Mrs. Pinkerton nodded toward it. “Raisin.”

Kate crushed the lattice crust with the heel of her hand and threw the pie in the slop bucket.

“Dear, you need to go upstairs. You're going to harm the baby, being so upset.”

Kate laughed. “Good,” she said. “I hope so.”

“Hush, Mary Virginia will hear. Why don't you have some more of your syrup?”

Kate went up to Franklin's room, remade the bed with fresh sheets, dusted his table and desk. Lined up on the desk were small carvings Benji had made for him: an owl, a skunk, a horse, a cat. She should have known Franklin would go after him. She picked up the cat and gouged the sharp tip of an ear against her arm until the spot burned with pain.

It was three days before the men returned. They'd gone all the way to the Mississippi, inquiring at each town along the way, and crossed into Iowa. One woman in Galena thought she had seen him, while she was sweeping her porch, but couldn't be sure.

Kate fainted that night after supper and Dr. McBride was called, against her wishes. She turned her face away from him as he examined her and did not answer his questions. He ordered her to remain in bed for the remainder of the pregnancy.

Hour after hour she lay listening for the sounds of a horse on the road, the silence pulsing in her ears. She could remember Franklin's voice exactly, the way he said
Mama?
with a lilt at the end. Hours and days inched by. She tried to pray.

It was almost Thanksgiving, in the afternoon, when there was a commotion downstairs. Mrs. Pinkerton ran up to tell her. “Praise God, he's been found.”

Kate fell, rushing down the stairs, and slid partway, thumping hard against the edge of the steps.

“Darling.” Frank was bending over her. “The baby …” He touched her belly.

She reached for Franklin, kissed his cheeks, his forehead, his head. His hair was filthy. She smoothed it back with both hands.