The Butterfly Plague

by Timothy Findley

  Elsewhere in the field, motorcars would not start or could not start, or be made to move. Engines were clogged with butterflies. The ground was inches thick with a sodden mass of dead and dying insects. There was no traction to be had; people could no longer run, but fell as though shot on a battlefield. Butterflies pelted themselves at the windscreens of cars and the spectacles of the old. Still, but for the sounds of spinning wheels and desperate engines, and but for the sounds of moving wings and slipping feet, there was silence. Human silence, now. Whatever mystical silence there had been had fled.

  No one dared breathe. No one dared cry.

  At last the clouds of wings settled, merciful and benign, upon the trees. The terror was over. The people withdrew.

  In years to come it was known as Fringes Field. A cross was erected. The butterflies returned yearly. But the people had left forever.

  And yet the Butterfly Plague affected different towns in different ways. Perhaps it should be said it affected different people in different ways—different spirits.

  Remember Edwina Shackleton in the city of Pacific Grove?

  She was instrumental in putting forward the petition that brought about the creation of the following ordinance:

  City of Pacific Grove—Ordinance No. 352

  PROTECTION OF BUTTERFLIES

  Adopted Nov. 16, 1938

  Ordinance No. 352

  An Ordinance providing for the protection of the Monarch Butterflies during their annual visit to the City of Pacific Grove:

  THE COUNCIL

  OF THE CITY OF PACIFIC GROVE

  DO ORDAIN AS FOLLOWS:

  Section 1. It shall be unlawful and it is hereby declared to be unlawful for any person to molest or interfere with in any way the peaceful occupancy of the Monarch Butterflies on their annual visit to the City of Pacific Grove, and during the entire time they remain within the corporate limits of said City, in whatever spot they may choose to stop in; provided, however, that if said butterflies should at any time swarm in upon or near the private dwelling house or other buildings of a citizen or the City of Pacific Grove in such a way as to interfere with the occupancy and use of said dwelling and/or other buildings, that said Butterflies may be removed, if possible, to another location upon the application of said citizen to the Chief of Police of this City.

  Section 2. Any violation of this Ordinance shall be deemed a misdemeanor and shall be punishable by a fine of not more than Five Hundred Dollars ($500.00), or by imprisonment in the County Jail of Monterey County for not more than six (6) months or by both such fine and imprisonment.

  Section 3. This Ordinance is hereby declared to be urgent, and shall be in effect from and after its final passage. The following is a statement of such urgency: Inasmuch as the Monarch Butterflies are a distinct asset to the City of Pacific Grove, and cause innumerable people to visit said City each year to see the said Butterflies, it is the duty of the citizens of said City to protect the Butterflies in every way possible, from serious harm and possible extinction by brutal and heartless people.

  PASSED AND ADOPTED BY THE COUNCIL OF THE CITY OF PACIFIC GROVE, this 16th day of November, 1938, by the following vote:

  AYES: COUNCILMEN: (Mayor) Fiddes, Norton, Galbraith, Burton.

  NOES: COUNCILMEN: Lee Matthews.

  ABSENT: COUNCILMEN: Solomon.

  APPROVED: Nov. 16, 1938.

  William Fiddes,

  Mayor of said City.

  ATTEST: ELGIN C. HURLBERT, City Clerk.

  Thus it was, the Butterfly Plague came to California in November 1938.

  The Chronicle of

  Dolly D.

  Wednesday, December 14th, 1938

  Any act of courage requires a little anger—a little or a lot, as the case may be. With Dolly, it was a lot.

  After all these years in his smart white bungalow, with the pool and the tennis courts next door, someone had offended him. They’d thrown a ball (and it had seemed quite deliberate) which broke his plate-glass window.

  He’d been sitting there staring out—but not, he was certain, offensively—when one of the players, a guest, Dolly assumed, had turned and seen him watching. With excruciatingly accurate aim, this person had thrown the ball right at Dolly’s face. Naturally, it hit the window—and naturally, the window broke.

  The pitcher had roared with laughter and disappeared, but moments later an apologetic neighbor had appeared at Dolly’s front door.

  Still trembling from the frightful experience, Adolphus had gone to answer the beckoning bell.

  “Oh, Adolphus, I am so terribly sorry. What can I say?”

  “You can say that you’ll pay for my window, that’s what you can say, Dorabella.”

  “Very well, I will pay for your window.”

  “I accept.”

  “You weren’t hurt, honey, I hope.”

  “No. Oh, no. If I’d been hurt, Dorabella, I’d already’ve bled to death. I’d be lying there dead and you’d be standing here ringing this doorbell till kingdom come!”

  “Goodness, Adolphus. I just tremble at the thought. Is the damage exten—sive?”

  “One totally broken window. That’s how extensive.”

  “Well, I blush with shame.”

  “I couldn’t believe my eyes, Dorabella. Why, he took aim before he threw. And he leered at me. I tell you, he leered. He just loved breaking that window. Loved it. Who the hell is he, anyway?”

  “Why, that’s Jackie Manta Stupa, the famous baseball pitcher. Didn’t you recognize him?”

  “Well, I recognized him for an ape, my dear. But that’s all.”

  “I must confess, he’s had an eye on your window for a whole two days now.”

  “I believe you.”

  “But it’s understandable.”

  “I beg your pardon? Understandable!”

  “Well, it is. I mean, it’s terrible, but understandable. He pitches ball, honey. Think how seldom a really great pitcher like that gets to break a window that size.”

  “Or to kill someone…” said Dolly.

  “Now, now, Adolphus. Don’t be silly.”

  “You didn’t see the look on his face, Dorabella, and I did. He’s a killer.”

  “Well, I’m sorry. And I’ll pay for the damages.”

  Dorabella swung around, hip first, to take her leave.

  “It’s really the fault of all these dreadful butterflies, anyway. I mean, if it hadn’t’ve been for them, why, we wouldn’t have had to drain the pool. And if we hadn’t’ve had to drain the pool, well, we wouldn’t have been pitching ball. And if we hadn’t’ve been pitching ball, well…”

  She gave her shoulders a lofty shrug.

  “He’s just so full of energy, and now, I don’t know what we’ll do.”

  “Why don’t you go and fly a kite,” said Dolly.

  “Oh, ‘Dolphus! There isn’t a lick of wind, not a lick!” Then she got it.

  “Why, you’re joshing me! You mean thing!” She laughed. “Imagine Jackie Manta Stupa flying a kite! Oh, that’s just precious!”

  She ambled seductively away, still laughing, until a circle of butterflies rose up and fluttered around her head, at which point she began to scream and curse.

  “Get away from me, you crazy monsters!” she screamed. “Fucking maniacs!!!” Then she commenced, as best she could, to kill them. “Bloodsuckers!”

  Dolly watched, amused and horrified.

  At last Dorabella had repulsed the attack and stood fuming and raging on Dolly’s side lawn, brushing corpses from her blouse and hair. Then, as one might retrieve a broken egg, she reached down between her breasts and eased a few more bodies out onto the lawn. She wept at this, in disgust.

  “Oh, Dolly! They was right down inside me! Haagh!”

  “They’re only butterflies, Dorabella. Quite harmless. There’s no need to kill them.”

  “They’re sons-of-bloody-bitches,” was all Dorabella would say. “Sons-of-bloody-bitches!”

  “At any rate,” said Dolly
, “you owe me a hundred dollars.”

  “Oh, go fly a kite!” screamed Dorabella, frustrated and maddened by the butterflies.

  “You forget,” said Adolphus, calmly. “There’s no wind.”

  He shut the door in the face of further protests.

  How dare she, he fumed. She’d started away quite content to pay the bill and then those butterflies…

  Why, wasn’t it terrible! She was blaming him for those butterflies in her bosom, just because those butterflies had been on his property.

  He looked out through the broken window.

  There was Jackie Manta Stupa.

  What on earth was he doing?

  He was murdering butterflies with a baseball bat. And Dorabella was egging him on. She just stood there screaming, “Sons-of-fucking-bitches!” while Manta Stupa yelled something else.

  At first Dolly couldn’t make it out.

  Then he could.

  “Kill! Kill! Kill!” the baseball pitcher was yelling. “Kill! Kill!! Kill! You orange faggots!”

  Dolly went quite pale and it was soon after this that he decided that he would go out and drive his car.

  Himself.

  Alone.

  After all, it wouldn’t be safe to stay there. Not with that man killing things. With a baseball bat.

  9:50 a.m.

  The Franklin was parked in a tidy stucco garage at the side of Dolly’s house.

  Every time he saw it sitting there he thought of Myra and was sad.

  Some evenings he would just go out, around sunset time, and stand there in the shady driveway and stare at the purple rump, morosely.

  Other days Ruth would come and take the car away, and as it drove off into the distance (if Dolly was there to watch its departure) he would stand on the sidewalk watching it dust off the road, and he’d mutter to himself, “Some day…Some day…”

  He often half-heartedly gave sighs, thinking about it, and envisioned himself ensconced up front, alone, driving into some orange sky somewhere.

  But Dolly did not know how to drive.

  However, on that Wednesday, after Manta Stupa’s attack on the butterflies, Dolly flung caution to the winds and came, actually running, out of the house and nearly fell to his knees on the rolling ball-bearing sea of gravel, and practically ruptured himself yanking open the garage doors.

  “Orange faggots, indeed!” he said aloud, as fifty or sixty monarchs flew into the sunlight from what had been their prison. “I’ve got to get out of here!”

  Dolly gave the Franklin the once-over. He was so used to sitting in the rumble seat that he barely knew, in his panic, how to get into the front. In fact, he did not get into the front at all, but piled in amongst his pillows in the back and stared from there at the mysterious dashboard, the pedals, and the steering wheel.

  How did they work?

  He tried to envision all the drivers he had watched from over their shoulders: Myra, Ruth, cabmen, chauffeurs, and friends. Men with Negro hands. Women in leather gloves. Boy drivers with golden, flicking wrists. Bus drivers with hirsute knuckles…

  He closed his eyes and watched all these fingers working in his mind at once.

  They yanked at things, pushed things, pulled things, and slid things. They wiggled one thing and wobbled another. Then there was a long passage of jerking something knobby back and forth, back and forth back and forth back and…

  Oh, dear.

  Oh, my…

  Low down, out of sight, they slid in and withdrew darkly oiled contrivances. They battered momentarily at something which shook and quivered, gurgled and slipper-slappered. But what?

  Now, all the many drivers together settled their buttocks with firm resolve. They stretched their legs—massively thighed—bulgingly calved. They pushed and paddled and finally jammed hard down with their feet. Then with their heads hunched forward, shoulders lunging, they grabbed at the whole shaking, slipping, farting contraption, nearly ready now to explode in giant petroleum spurts and giving off heaving sighs of breathless satisfaction, they roared off into endless rhythmic journeys.

  Oh, dear.

  Oh, my…

  But how to drive a car?

  Dolly got out of the rumble seat into the front.

  He turned the key.

  That much he knew.

  Miraculously, the Franklin at once slid into action.

  Backward.

  Backward—backward down the drive.

  “Help!” Dolly screamed. “God help me! I’m moving!”

  At once, the car jiggered to a stop.

  Dolly blushed.

  Although God had apparently heard him, he sincerely hoped the neighbors had not.

  So there he was, immobile in the center of the road, broadside to oncoming traffic.

  Luckily, however, there was no traffic coming on.

  Looking both ways to ensure at least temporary safety, Dolly pulled a few knobs, and after one or two backfires that nearly cost him his life in heart attacks, he heard a faint rumble, felt a promising jolt, tingled with delight at the first jiggling and juicings of the engine, and realized that indeed he had somehow mastered the mysteries of internal combustion.

  Now, all he needed was a destination.

  There was no orange sky, unfortunately. It was the wrong time of day for that.

  Still, it hardly mattered. There was Dolly, sitting in the front seat—all by himself—driving.

  It was lovely. Not a single other car was in sight. Only people walking their dogs on distant sidewalks.

  Dolly wanted to wave at them, but he didn’t dare. That would mean taking his hands from the wheel. And if you took your hands from the wheel, the car stopped. Everyone knew that.

  Didn’t they?

  10:15 a.m.

  The journey extended as far as Topanga Canyon Beach.

  When he arrived with a crash, Ruth and Miss Bonkers could not believe their eyes, and kept going back outside to make sure Dolly did not have someone else in the car with him. They did not notice that he had been forced to bring it to a stop by crashing into a convenient sand dune.

  “You’ve got a woman hidden out there,” Ruth teased. “You must have.”

  “No. No. Not at all. Quite honestly. I really did, Ruth. I drove it all the way myself.”

  “Well, I think that’s marvelous,” said Ruth. “I think that is simply marvelous. Don’t you, Miss Bonkers?”

  “Oh, yes. Yes. Marvelous,” said Miss Bonkers, and left the room. She had beds to make.

  Adolphus beamed from ear to ear. He did a sort of knock-kneed march from one end of the living room to the other. He gave his goatee several patronizing pats with the flat of his hand. His clothes (pink trousers, blue blazer) seemed to shout “Success!” and even “Bravo! Bravo!”

  “It was nothing,” said Dolly. “Nothing.”

  “Well, I think it calls for a good stiff drink,” said Ruth.

  “I feel,” said Adolphus, leaning elegantly and delicately against the stones of the fireplace, “like the whole of emancipated slavery! I shall drive everywhere from here on in—slowly, I admit. I still have no wish or penchant for speed, but I shall do all the driving myself!” He smiled. “I simply adored it.”

  “Oh, Dolly! I’m so proud of you,” said Ruth. “Driving your own car! Why, it’s marvelous!”

  She had made some highballs in the interim and now she passed him his. He snuck a look at her figure.

  “How do you feel?” he asked with as little commitment to interest as he could muster.

  “Fine,” said Ruth. “Fine.”

  “Ha—hum! “Dolly said.

  “What’s the matter?”

  “Well, I mean to say—I mean, well. Do you know yet?”

  “Oh, yes,” Ruth laughed. “I’m certain.”

  “Certain, eh? Well. Well.”

  “I hope you approve.”

  “How can I approve when I don’t know who the father is?”

  “Don’t fish, Dolly. All in good time. I’ll tell you
, all in good time.”

  “Can you tell me if it’s somebody I know? I should, at least, think you could tell me that.”

  “No. You don’t know him.”

  “Do you think…? I mean, one day…? What I mean to say is, whoever this is, do you think…? Well?”

  “Marriage?”

  “Yes.”

  “No.”

  Dolly found his way to a chair and sat down.

  “What am I expected to say when this child appears? That you’ve had some sort of unhappy affair?”

  “We can decide that when the child comes. For now, it’s sufficient that the child is coming.”

  “Sufficient for what?” said Dolly, miserable with ignorance.

  “Sufficient for my peace of mind.”

  Ruth, too, sat down.

  “How can you do this, Ruth?” Dolly pondered. “Inflict life on this child. Don’t you know how awful it is for me to be alive…”

  “But you stay alive,” said Ruth.

  “Only because death is too repugnant to contemplate.”

  “Come on, now. You don’t believe that for one minute.”

  “I do. I do.”

  “But just now, just now, driving the car it was triumphant for you and wonderful to be alive…”

  “In that moment, Ruth. Only in that minute.”

  “But that’s all life is,” said Ruth. “Moments and minutes—one by one.”

  Adolphus stared at her. She was his sister, but he did not know her. Certainly, she did not know him. As children, yes. As adults, no.

  “You’re very positive,” he said, “all of a sudden.”

  “I have another life inside me,” said Ruth. “It’s easy to be positive when you carry the future around with you.” She smiled. But this only angered Adolphus.

  “You never did grasp philosophy,” he said. “Never. You have the mind of a child. Up and down. Up and down. Here today and gone tomorrow. Pessimist. Optimist. Stoic and pleasurist. The shy gregarian. That’s what I ought to call you, the shy gregarian. You won’t talk to anyone, and then, when you will talk, finally, who do you choose? A bunch of gypsies on the beach. You marry a perfectly extraordinary man who, from all appearances, certainly loved you, but you won’t have children by him. Oh, no! So what do you do? You come back here and meet some total stranger…” Dolly paused and then said, “Some slavering sex maniac, for all I know, and you give yourself to him without a thought. One minute you’re devastated by depression and everyone’s sick with worry that you’ve gone mad, and the next minute you’re bouncing around like a schoolgirl who’s discovered boys, telling us you’re going to have a baby. I think you are crazy, that’s what I think. Crazy as the March Hare—or just plain simple-minded. And for my money, there’s very little difference.”