“You must give the Death Mask to me, no one else. If you do not, you will suffer the punishment of Itzam-Ye,” she had said without any emotion to it. This wasn’t the Magali I’d seen before.
“The Maya people will soon have the Death Mask. You can take it up with them. I don’t have it any longer nor do I believe in your gods and I do not answer to them. Tell your god, Itzamná, that he is weak and has no power against our Christian God. Our God is one of forgiveness, not vengeance. I do not listen to a god that rules by fear.”
She swore something in her native tongue and dropped her staff to the ground. I glanced at Gabor. He was locked on me and his ears were back.
I slipped the safety off the shotgun I had resting between me and the pommel of my saddle. I lifted it and rested the butt on my thigh. I didn’t think I was getting through to her and being the pragmatic man that I was, I tried one more time. “Magali, let’s not do this again. Remember, it did not end well for you the last time.”
I was getting nervous at the change in Magali and the fact that she had a machete by her side in one hand. Spirit or not, she could kill me.
A sense of déjà vu came over me as Gabor crouched in the dirt ready to spring. Sally reared in panic and tried to turn and run.
With one hand I brought the shotgun back across me as Sally spun and I dropped the Jaguar in mid-air and still managed to stay in the saddle. I pumped another shell and brought Sally back around to face Magali. She was unfazed by what had just happened to her jaguar. She kept walking at me. When she raised her machete, I shot her once again and then the rattlesnake that trailed behind her.
I dismounted Sally and walked over to the jaguar. He had not gotten up like the last time. I heard Shane call my name from below. I walked over to the rim and cupped my hands and hollered down to him that I was okay.
I went back to the black jaguar and noticed that Magali’s body was gone. Her bloody snake was still there so I stopped and cut off his rattle. The Comanche believed the rattle of the snake was powerful medicine.
Magali had never said why the jaguar traveled with her or what the significance of the capstone was to him. He was a magnificent animal. I hated killing it. One of the reasons I had admired the spotted jaguar was because Buster confirmed for me that animals were a lot smarter than we gave them credit for. Of course, Buster was inhabited by the spirit of a young Mayan boy and was not a true animal in the sense that he relied on his animal instincts alone, like the black jaguar seemed to do. I never sensed the human Gabor in the black jaguar. Buster had the advantage of being able to reason when it came time to choose the manner and time of his own death.
I thought that had made Buster unique, but then I remembered a dog I used to have when I was a young boy. When it was his time to die he just got up and whined at the door to be let out and I found him curled up in the barn between two hay bales the next morning. At the time I was devastated that he had not chosen to be with me in his last moments. I knew he was dying and had brought him inside to take care of him over the protests of my father. After my father had gone to bed, I pulled a cushion off the sofa so that he’d have something soft to lie on and I brought his water bowl into the living room so he wouldn’t have to walk into the kitchen for a drink. I was young then and didn’t know that men and animals handled the moment they knew they were going to die in their own way, if they had a choice. When my time came, I planned to die in my own bed. I chastised myself for having such morbid thoughts before bed time and letting my mind wander while sitting next to Sunny and engaged in conversation with her.
“I think Ariana is going to move back home this week,” Sunny said and broke through my thoughts.
I let go of the Magali once again, but not before wondering how long this was going to continue. I figured it would have been over by now what with the presentation ceremony in the Guatemalan capital coming up. I still hadn’t made up my mind whether to go or not. James Lee seemed like he wanted to be out in front of the Death Mask now. It was his take charge nature. As long as Hannah got the credit due her, I didn’t care.
“We knew it was coming. She has to get on with her life,” I said.
“She never speaks of Kevin,” Sunny said and sighed.
“They were young, Sweetheart. Too young. Maybe they realize that now.”
“Do you think they’ll stay married?”
“I don’t know. I kinda doubt it, to be honest.”
“I wish Kevin would call me.”
“I know you do. He will when he’s ready.”
After Sunny went inside to warm her tea, I texted Kevin’s brother, Nick: “TELL YOUR BROTHER TO CALL HIS MOTHER TONIGHT OR IM GOING TO SELL HIS TRUCK IN THE MORNING.”
. . .
The next morning, I awoke early. Sunny lay beside me wheezing the way she did when she slept on her back. The room was already light from the sun still below the eastern horizon. I nudged her over on to her side and snuggled up to her backside for a moment. “I love you,” I said to her and she wiggled her body into me as we had done a thousand times before the day grabbed us and shook us out of the bed.
I was feeling tired still and wanted to linger and fall back asleep next to her, but the mockingbird that staked a claim to our side yard and called the bush beneath our window home was calling me to get up and get going. It wasn’t like I had anything special to do that morning, so I did.
The Monarchs had come a little later this year than I’d expected and I had a desire to be outside and in the Butterfly Pasture again when they took off that day. It was like I imagined Grand Central Station to be when the temperature over the field reached the magic degree that told them to get going on the next leg of their journey. It had been a sight to behold for the past two mornings. I got up slowly so as not to wake Sunny, dressed in silence, and snuck past the doors to Katie’s and Ariana’s rooms, and out the front door.
The sun burst over the horizon as I walked down the dirt two track road to the Butterfly Pasture. I had a sense of time beneath my feet and while I couldn’t recall the specific image in my mind, I knew my brother Bryan and I had walked down this road with my mother to gather agarita berries for jam. I also imagined my grandfather over a century ago riding this same road on horseback. It would have been just a trail then, back when he’d wrestled the land from the Comanche who still made raids into the Hill Country then.
In my mind, our boyhood dog ran along ahead of me and Bryan, zig-sagging from one side of the road to the other, and his nose to the ground. It was summer, we’d finished our chores, and we had the whole day until supper time to avoid our father. We were headed for the spot where we had all of our arrowheads and spear points hidden. We traded them at school for things that our father wouldn’t buy us. It was time to check on them in case those sneaky Comanches we’d read about in the dime store novels hidden away in the tack room had come looking for our treasure.
I smiled at the memory. Bryan, like my mother, was no longer a person I could see in my memories. I could no longer visualize his face or my mother’s in the images that still rattled around in my old brain; I was just aware of their presence. I could, however, remember the sounds of their voices as they spoke to me in the memories and dreams. My father’s image had faded long ago too, until a few years ago when I’d found the remains of my mother buried on the ranch. Now when I thought of him and what he had done, I not only felt a new rage and hatred for him, I could see his face as plainly as if he were standing right in front of me.
“Why do you think that is?” I said out loud to myself. “I can’t remember the faces of those people I loved, but I can sure remember the face of a man I despised.”
I stopped at an old dried out creek bed and looked downstream. That was where Bryan and I had hunted for arrowheads, as well as James Lee, Barbin and Sarah, my grandsons Bryan and Andy, Kevin and Nick, and now Katie. I smiled. It was still as much fun as it was back when Bryan and I were kids. Every heavy rain and resulting gulley washer brought new hidden tre
asures to the surface from beneath the rocks in the creek bed and were there just waiting to be found by a new generation of Howards.
I had to smile to myself at the thought of the Howard family dynasty that was now in place. I was born George Maxwell Kuehler and had legally changed my last name to my mother’s maiden name as soon as I was old enough at eighteen. I was still a Kuehler and so were all of my progeny, despite the name change. Some were like Emily with my mother’s genes and some were like Elizabeth who reminded me so much of my father. I could only hope the vestiges of my father would eventually be bred out with new blood in the family and the Howard Family would eventually be blessed with all the love any member could handle. I felt good about where I was with securing the Howard Family Trust’s financial future and looked forward over my remaining years encouraging the sense of family and love within the younger generation that had been missing in my brother’s and my life. I just needed to make sure the younger kids got out to ranch enough and left their electronics at the gate. I should buy a few more horses so everyone could ride together and made a mental note to tell Clete when I got back home. I wanted a remuda of horses for my family.
When I reached Butterfly Pasture I sat down beneath a Live Oak Tree on the knoll overlooking the pasture and waited. I was tired from the walk. I leaned against the trunk of the oak, stretched my legs out in front of me, and gave into the weight of my eye lids to drift off for a moment. When I awoke the sun was so bright I cracked one eye open slowly and saw a Monarch Butterfly sitting on the toe of one boot and a small sky blue butterfly on the other boot. I sat and waited for them to move away, but they didn’t. The Monarch stayed there on my boot for what seemed like half an hour, but that was just my old bones complaining, and it was probably no more than a minute after the small one fluttered off. Then the Monarch rose into the air with the hundreds of others from the field, as if on signal, and all of them tried to gain altitude amidst all the feeding songbirds. I got up and walked to the edge of the field to watch them close up. A few late risers still fluttered around dodging the birds, as I walked into the field. There were more lingering over the wild flower stalks than I thought and I was covered with them as they fought to get up and join that day’s leg of the migration. Some must have had second thoughts or weren’t ready to join the others so they landed on me, being the tallest object in the field. Before I knew it, I was covered in butterflies. It was just speculation, but I imagined the turbulence in the air from the butterflies would be felt somewhere in the world and it gave me pause to think I was part of it.
I stood out there in the field of milkweed and wildflowers like a scarecrow until the second wave rose into the air. I shook off the last few reluctant travelers and turned to go back to the shade of the tree. I didn’t see that diamondback rattlesnake and he sure as hell didn’t give me any warning before he sank his fangs in my leg. He was five feet in length easy and big enough to get above my boot. I felt the hit and then the sting of the bite before I realized what it was. When I saw him, I knew what would be coming next, having being bitten before. I grabbed him by the tail to pull him off and stumbled over my own dumb feet. He got me good on the arm as I struggled to get my feet back under me and before I could throw him away. After I pitched him away from me I sat down for a moment in the field thinking about what I needed to do. I knew better than to struggle to get up and try to make it to the oak tree on the knoll. That would just move the venom through my system faster. I took out my pocket knife to cut the fang punctures and let them bleed and hopefully wash some of the venom out of the immediate area before I tried to move.
After I had cut my arm over the punctures I started trying to get my boot off, but I seemed to be losing my energy in the effort. I didn’t have any strength in my swollen arm and it was fast going numb on me. I felt the first wave of nausea roll over me and leaned over to puke. I was sweating profusely now and it was hard for me to see, much less think clearly. I was just too damn weak to get my boot off with one arm while sitting on the ground. I quit that effort after a few seconds; my leg and foot were too swollen anyway. I cut the denim pants leg instead and then sliced the skin over the two puncture wounds in my leg and let it bleed.
I can’t say that I was in a panic at that point as much as I felt like the stupid old man that I was. I should have brought my cell phone. The thing to do, I told myself, was to stay calm and sit still so that the venom would stay in my leg and arm and not get into my system and reach my heart. I was kind of in the mood to lie down until I felt a bit better, but I knew that wasn’t the answer to my problem. If I was going to survive this, it was up to me to get home. Nobody was going to come out here looking for me.
I was still thinking about the walk home and if I could beat the venom’s effect, when I heard a rustling through the stalks. That sonofabitch was coming back for more. I threw a clod of dirt in a direction of the sound and then made an effort to standup. I saw Magali through the waist-high wild flowers. She looked much older and almost unrecognizable, her face ravaged by the sun, with a creased leathery skin and a pronounced nose. I knew it was her, though, by the burden basket on her back and the machete in her hand. I was almost up on my good knee when the snake struck me again.
He hit me from behind on my hip. I grabbed him around the neck with my good hand and pulled him off of me. My pocket knife was on the ground and there was no way I could get to it, much less use it with my bad arm that had nothing but pain in it now.
I held that snake in front of me. It had no rattle. It twisted its body violently and flicked its tongue at me but I didn’t stop choking it. He was close enough that I could smell its stink and see the pits it hunted with. I looked closely into its yellow eyes and knew then who he was. He was one of the Los Dioses Mayas. I knew he was the god Kukulcán, the feathered serpent that Hannah had told me about. The snake smiled at me, or I thought he did.
“Not yet, you sumbitch,” I said right back at him.
“Let him go,” Magali demanded.
“I did what you asked,” I said and continued to squeeze the snake’s neck. “You lied to me.”
“No, it was you that did not listen. I told you to return the Mask to me. Now you must die like Gabor. He served his purpose.”
“What purpose? Why is the Death Mask so important to you?”
“Not me. Itzamná.”
I was really tired now and getting weaker. I doubted if there was much venom left in Kukulcán, but I knew I couldn’t hold the grip around his neck much longer and he would bite me again and keep doing so until I was dead. My vision was moving in and out of blackness. If I was going to die there, it sure as hell wasn’t in my nature to go down without a fight, snake god or not. The pain in my body was almost more than I could stomach and I felt my grip loosen on him. I bit him in the belly just below where my hand was wrapped around his neck without thinking much about it. I started to spit the meat out, but swallowed a chunk of the snake just to spite the all-powerful Itzamná. It was my way of telling him to kiss my ass.
I bit Kukulcán again and again until his body was hanging by his spinal cord. He was still alive and madder than hell. I bit him one last time and severed his head from the rest of his body. It still didn’t kill him and I knew he’d bite me if I loosened my grip on him. The lower portion of his body lay writhing on the ground and I would have stomped it for good measure if I could have.
I felt the urge to puke again so with the last bit of strength I had in me, I pitched the head of the snake as far away from me as I could. I swallowed hard to keep him down because I had this crazy notion that if I took parts of him with me, he couldn’t come back. I laid down then to conserve my strength and to keep from vomiting. I would make the crawl over to the Oak Tree where someone could see me after I rested a few seconds. I heard a noise and I cracked one eye open. Magali was sitting there in the dirt cross-legged with a turtle shell rattle. She was shaking it and chanting in a language that made no sense to me. Then she disappeared like a wisp of
early morning fog before I could ask anymore of her.
Then Sunny was there with me; except that she was naked and very pregnant. What was she doing out there in the Butterfly Pasture running around like that without any clothes on, I wanted to ask her, but my tongue wouldn’t work or speak the words I wanted to say to her. Then I realized this wasn’t the Butterfly Pasture anymore, it was the front lawn of her house on the Lummi Tribal Reservation, green and freshly mowed beneath the tall western red cedar trees. The cool wet grass felt good to lie in, so I closed my eyes a moment to rest and conserve my strength for the crawl home.
The End
Thank you for reading The Turbulence of Butterflies. I hope you liked the story and the character, Max Howard. If you have any questions or comments, please email me at fischerghayes[at]gmail[dot]com. I would appreciate hearing from you. Please tell your friends about the Max Howard Series of novels and help me to spread the word by writing a review of The Turbulence of Butterflies. Best wishes and look for my next novel coming soon.
The Turbulence of Butterflies (Max Howard Series Book 6) Page 39