Tinfoil Butterfly

by Rachel Eve Moulton

  FIVE

  Earl reaches out and wraps his hand around mine. His chapped fingers press into my road-burned flesh.

  There’s an insistence in Earl’s grip, a pleading little tug that reminds me of when I thought I had Ray’s baby in me. It was only for eight weeks, but it was there, in our minds, forming its own little brain and heart, changing all of our plans. Ray sang to it. Hummed indie rock into my belly button while I read him the classified ads for Airstreams made after 1960 but before 1975.

  “We’ll be gypsies, Emma My Emma. We’ll buy an old RV for the whole family and never stop moving.”

  Before Pea Baby, we talked about hitching cross-country. Stopping at the most desolate places we could imagine: the Petrified Forest, White Sands, inner city Detroit, and always ending in the Badlands where we’d jump off the edge of the world together. It was a suicide pact of sorts, but I honestly don’t know if we meant it, because Pea Baby came along and made us talk about the world in a new way. Lush and full with plenty of places to call home. We would buy something with an eight-cylinder engine to drag our living space behind us. The Badlands would just be another stop and perhaps I’d accept that scholarship I’d earned to Antioch College and we’d stay there awhile before moving on.

  Ray had layers of secret lives. I called him the Everlasting Gobstopper, or Gobs for short. Red on the outside then yellow then orange then white. Emma and Ray forever was the solid white center. I was Queen of the White Core where we loved each other in a way no one would understand.

  There were darker layers than the ones he shared with me. I knew that. But then there was the hope. The possible happy ending. Pea Baby.

  Earl’s little hand and Pea Baby have a lot in common—their weight fleeting and precious.

  “Please,” he says, all little-boy quiet. “I need to make him go away.”

  “Let’s get something straight right now,” I say, and pry my hand out of his. “This dude is not my problem and neither are you. And I don’t like to be touched. Please remember that.”

  “Just do the last bit for me and this will be my land. My home.”

  The farmhouse is behind me. Its cellar door in my peripheral vision. One metal door swung open, one closed. The dark hole of a mouth is ready to vomit up the horrid history of this place. George could be dumped down those stairs. Tipped out of his lawn chair and kept out of sight.

  Earl, as if inside my head, moves to the side of the house and sits himself down so that his back rests against the splintery clapboard just to the left of the coffin I’ve imagined for George. I turn away from George to face Earl and the house. The rich dark of that cellar. The invitation of it is delicious.

  When we were finally alone, and I’d stopped crying long enough to tell him it wasn’t a baby I was carrying, but a tumor—baby shaped, perhaps, but a tumor all the same—Ray said, “We’ll go back to the plan. Jump off the edge of a deep, dark something and then burrow underground until the earth blankets us. You, me, and tumor baby.”

  “Jesus, Earl.”

  “What?”

  “I just need gas,” I say, thinking, And medication. “That’s all I’m here for. I can send someone out to help when I get where I’m going.”

  Earl tips his face to the ground, then whispers, “That’s not your van down there.”

  “Excuse me?”

  “It’s. Not. Yours.”

  “It is now.” I turn my back to Earl and take in the forest beyond George. The tall, proud spruce trees are thick here behind the row of buildings. There is a stream nearby. The sound is light and thin, but it leads to the river that runs through the base of these hills.

  “I looked at the papers in the glove box. They don’t say you.”

  “How did you get in? I locked her up.”

  “I know how to jimmy locks,” he says, so proud of himself that I feel proud of him too. “Also, I stole your keys.”

  “Give them back.” I spin to look at him. He’s sitting now, Indian style, against the building. The mask big and bright and caught up on the collar of his shirt so that it sits crooked on his face.

  “I’ll give ’em back,” he says, but he does not move to do so. “Lowell Smith,” he says.

  “Excuse me?”

  “It’s his van. I also found a picture of a little girl and her mama.” Earl pulls out a wallet-size photo and holds it out toward me. I haven’t seen this photo before. The little girl is beautiful. Her grin big, her blond hair blowing around her face. Her mother kneeling down behind her to rest her own big smile over her daughter’s shoulder. Fuck you, Lowell, I think. Good riddance. I make no move to take it so Earl puts the photo back in his pocket. “They love each other. They are a sweet family.”

  “Lowell’s a fucking asshole,” I say. “I mean, not a nice guy.”

  “Oh, I know tons of curse words,” he says proudly. “You want to hear them? I know asshole and shit and hell and dermit and fuck.” He whispers the f-word.

  “Dermit is not a curse word.”

  “But it’s not good.” He nods so sincerely that I smile.

  “You’re right. It’s not good.” A cold wind rushes the patch of land I stand on, pulling tangled strands of hair across my face.

  “So you’ll help, right? I’ll get gas and give Lowell’s keys back and you’ll help me.”

  “Earl, I’m not a good guy. Don’t assume anyone is. Even if I wanted to help you, you shouldn’t accept my help. Good things don’t happen around me.”

  “George has money in his back pocket. A lot of money.”

  “All I need is gas. That’s it.”

  “Can you get the money for me?”

  “Why can’t you get it yourself?”

  He shrugs.

  I study George, a hulking mass of a man in a shitty lawn chair.

  “If you’re too scared, I understand,” he says.

  On his eighteenth birthday, Ray and I had a fight. I don’t remember what we said. I don’t want to remember what I said. Though it’s getting harder without the layer of drugs in my system to hold up the curtain between now and then.

  I do remember that I called Ray a cocksucker and that I wanted to shake him. Wrap my hands around his biceps until my fingertips sank deep bruises into his skin and his neck either snapped or he decided to fight back, kick me on my ass, claw himself free, scream out what he really thought of me. Instead I shoved him in the chest and called him that name. He looked shocked, stunned really, but then he reached out and grabbed me by the arms just as I’d thought I might do to him. Instead of shaking me, he kissed me. On the lips. So hard that we clanked teeth and I could taste blood in my mouth. The affection between us was always too intimate for siblings, but we weren’t lovers. Even though I wanted to be. Not until that night. I was a virgin. He wasn’t. I know that now. We both assumed he’d gotten me pregnant when my period stopped and my belly gained a strange firm grapefruit of roundness. The one time we crossed the line and it was angry and painful and the end of so many things. He disappeared for a few days after that. He walked out of the house and didn’t come back. I was so scared of what we’d done. Terrified I’d never see him again. Terrified I would see him again and that I’d disgust him as much as I disgusted myself.

  “I’m not scared,” I say to Earl.

  I walk up to stand in front of George. His breath comes slow and labored. I grab up one of his stiff arms, pull him forward so he just about falls out of his seat and reach around to his jeans pocket where a wad of money is suddenly perfectly visible. I pull it out easily. I check his other back pocket. Nothing. I toss the money to Earl and let the body flop in half as I walk around the farmhouse and away from his ghost town.

  “I’m sorry, Emma. Please don’t go.” His voice is pulling at me even before he is tugging at the back of my jacket. “You can have some of the money.”

  “Earl, I can’t help you. I have too many problems of my own.”

  “You can have all the money, Emma. All of it! We can live together. I’ll s
ign over the deed to you and everything.” Something hits my back, a soft thump. I stop, stand still even as the hill slopes downward under my feet. The cash he threw at my back is on the ground. I could pull loose. I could keep moving but I don’t. I look at him, planting my feet firmly.

  “Let me see your face.”

  “No.”

  “Why not?”

  “I don’t show people. Not any people.”

  “Show them what?” I ask, but he does not answer. He tightens his lips into a white line. “I don’t trust you, Earl.”

  “That’s okay. I don’t trust anyone either.”

  “That’s sad.”

  “Where are you going?”

  “I’m going to the Badlands.”

  “But you need gas. And medicine. My mom has pills. Maybe they are the same. I’ll give you some.”

  “No, I’m done with pills, and I’ll hitch,” I say, but I’m lying about both things. I can’t leave Veronica here, and if handed a pill I’d surely swallow it. “Besides, there must be someone else out here. There is no way you are out here all on your own.”

  “Please, Emma.” He’s shaking. His eyes wet and full, spilling over behind the mask. “Stay with me. Or don’t go right away. Just be here a little while.”

  “I can’t take care of you, Earl.” This is the understatement of the year, but there is a positive pitch to my voice that I didn’t intend. He brightens. Smiles up at me.

  “I don’t need taking care of. I just need company.”

  “Earl, honey, I’m not suggesting you need someone to change your diapers, but someone clearly needs to be looking after you. Do you ever take that mask off or do you wear it to bed?”

  He doesn’t answer.

  “You do, don’t you? You wear it to bed,” I say. “Okay. Tell me one other thing. What were you planning to do with George before I came along?”

  “The crows. I thought they’d eat him,” Earl says, face to the ground. “They usually only like strong things. Still alive things. I didn’t let him die all the way so they might still eat him but they haven’t yet.”

  “You’re lying.”

  “Can I show you my town? Maybe we’ll find gas. George has a lot of supplies, and if he’s dead, they belong to me. I can give you what you want. Just promise to help me get rid of George before you go.”

  Veronica is down in that parking lot. She has no gas. She will not run, and I will not run without her. I need to find gas.

  “My mother didn’t want to leave me,” Earl says. “She wanted to stay and make this place good.”

  “Sometimes people disappoint you,” I say.

  “He killed her. Choked the air out of her and then put her body in the cellar. It’s okay though. She’s not really down there. She turned before he dropped her down the stairs.”

  “Don’t say ‘turned’ like she’s some kind of zombie.”

  “You don’t know how it is here.”

  “I know that your mother left you with that horrible man.”

  We face each other. The woods are quiet. The air feels colder and heavier than before. Snow is coming.

  “Jesus, Earl.” He’s standing as still as one of the spruce trees surrounding us. “I didn’t mean to say that.”

  “He was still alive when she turned.”

  Earl flops to the ground and pulls his knees up under his chin.

  “I fed her soul to the crows,” Earl whispers. “She’s one of ’em now,” he says, and on cue, I hear the birds calling to each other, circling nearby.

  “Bullshit,” I say. “Get up, Earl.” He doesn’t move. I feel suddenly angry. “Get the fuck up off the ground. Everything you say is bullshit.” I reach out and put my hands on him, my arms on his shoulders, and he reacts quickly, shoving me so I rock back onto my ass.

  “She was gonna kill him but he got to her first and now she’s up there.”

  “What the fuck are you talking about, Earl? Who’s up where?”

  “My mama keeps track of me when she’s not in her old body. The one in the cellar.” He holds his face up to the sky and the sun glints and flashes off the mask. He keeps his face up and holds his arms out, waiting, but for what? And then I hear them, the wild pterodactyl cry of those fucking crows.

  “Is that why you wear that stupid mask? For the crows?”

  “I made it,” he says, and I realize I’ve insulted him.

  “It is beautiful. Your art is actually pretty amazing.”

  He smiles so wide that his cheekbones push his mask up on his face.

  I’m staring up at his shiny mask with his green, green eyes peeking out at me.

  “No parent should ever leave their kid,” I say, thinking maybe I can trip him up and get him to admit she’s not actually dead.

  “She couldn’t help it. And she’ll come back. She promised. For real come back. Like she was when she was my mama,” he mumbles. “I just have to wait for her so she can find herself again.”

  “Can I get this straight for a second?”

  He shrugs his Sure, why not?

  “Your father killed your mother. Her body is in the cellar, but you think her soul has entered a crow and will stay in that crow until she can find a way back to her body?”

  “Yes,” he says. Succinct and pleased with himself.

  “That all sounds highly unlikely.”

  “It does,” he says, sounding even more pleased with himself. As if unique circumstances shape an opportunity for pride no matter what the nature of those circumstances are.

  I let the silence rest between us for a while. What would be the harm of driving him out of here? I could leave him at a campground or at a National Park office. Either would be better than here.

  “Fine, Earl. Help me find gas and we’ll both get out of here.”

  “Oh, I could never leave. You stay!”

  “I’m not staying here, Earl. I would never stay here, but I’m saying I’ll take you out of here and get you someplace safe. It’s a good offer. You should take it.”

  “I don’t want to leave. Plus, we can’t leave tonight.”

  “And why is that?”

  “It’s gonna snow. A bad snow,” he says, and a pristine white flake rests for a second on his shoulders before it melts.

  “Okay. I’ll leave tomorrow if I have to. You can come with or stay. You’re really not my problem.” I stand and brush off the back of my pants. “But let’s find the gas for Veronica.”

  “Who’s Veronica?”

  “The van. I named the van.” I blush a little.

  “George’s truck is in my barn. It might still have gas!” He is excited, as if this has only just occurred to him. A lie of omission. He’s known all along there was a vehicle in these hills. “I can show you where I stay. I have a stove. We’ll be warm there tonight or for forever if you stay.”

  Earl looks down, picks at his pants with his thumb and forefinger. His hair springs up wild at the top of his head behind the mask.

  “Earl, honey, I can’t even take care of myself.”

  “I’m scared,” he says, and I see that he is. “Please don’t leave me,” he says.

  “I’m not helping you bury that man alive,” I say softly.

  “But if he dies, like really dies dead, you’ll help, right? You will, won’t you? Maybe then you’ll stay.”

  “I won’t stay. No means no on that one, Earl, but I’ll stay a bit. Not to see what you think is so great about this place, but because I need gas and a place to sleep tonight.”

  “Thank you, Emma! Thank you!”

  “I just said I’d stay the night. That’s it.”

  “Okay,” he says. He can barely stand still he’s so happy.

  “George needs medical attention, Earl. You’ve got to get him help. Once I leave, I’m going to have to tell the cops that you need help. They can get George to the hospital. They can find you a home.”

  “I have a home, but you do what you have to. I’m not worried about that.”

  �
��Earl. It’s going to snow tonight. George’ll be dead by morning if we leave him in that chair. And no one is ever going to leave you alone if they think you’re a murderer. Not ever.”

  “Maybe you can take George with you when you go? Get him to a hospital for me.”

  “Whoa,” I say with my hands out in front of me. “That’s a big ask.”

  “You could just move him inside for me. It stays warmer in the house. He won’t die all the way and then you can take him to the hospital and he’ll probably die there or on the way there. That way we get to try to save him and we get rid of him all at the same time.” He claps his hands together with glee, as if he alone has just solved the problem of world peace. “Just tilt him down the stairs.”

  “I’m not lugging around a dead body.” I’m thinking of the truck he claims to have. How much gas might it have? Will I be able to siphon it? Could I drive it straight to Veronica? “I don’t want to waste any more time on you than I already have. I’m sorry if that sounds harsh, but…”

  “I’ll tell them about you,” Earl says in a whisper.

  “Excuse me?”

  “I’ll tell the police that you were here. I’ll tell them what you did.”

  “What did I do?”

  “You stole a van. You poisoned George with your medicine. You hurt my face.”

  I study him. The snow falls faster. I’m shaking and hungry. The wind is picking up force. It tugs at me, eating at the stitching of my jacket to worm its way inside.

  “You wouldn’t.”

  “I would.”

  I am far less worried about Earl’s hollow threats than I am about surviving this weather and whatever my suddenly sober body will put me through. He can’t hurt me if we never make it out of these hills.

  “I have gas.”

  “How long will it take to get the gas and get back to Veronica?”

  “A few hours,” Earl says.

  “A few hours! Where is this stupid truck?”

  “I have a few things I want to get to show you. They are supercool and you might think differently about this place if you see them all.”