Butterfly Winter

by W. P. Kinsella

  WELL INTO HIS FINAL TERM of office El Presidente married the woman he had lived with for twenty-seven years, and after the marriage remained more and more in the palace with his wife, who now wore housecoats and let her greying hair hang loose, quite unlike the days when he was guerrilla leader and she stood by his side dressed in army fatigues, a bandoleer’s hat at a rakish angle, ammunition belts forming a heavy cross on her chest.

  El Presidente ate custards and worried about his bowels, the loyalty of his staff, and his personal safety. He distrusted his generals and had heard rumors of the ambitions of Dr. Noir, the American-educated colonel who wheezed like a cold wind whenever he breathed.

  “Colonel Noir will at least not be able to sneak up on me and murder me in my sleep,” the Old Dictator joked.

  DR. NOIR DID NOT SNEAK into the Old Dictator’s bed chamber himself. He spotted a fourteen-year-old boy in the palace who had a certain gleam in his eye—the same gleam Dr. Noir saw when he stared into the mirror of a morning. The boy’s job was to feed the cockatoos, parrots, and birds of paradise and clean their cages.

  He had the boy brought to his office in the palace annex.

  “If you had three wishes, what would they be?” Dr. Noir demanded. “Quickly, now, I will give you only one minute to answer.”

  The boy, who had a stocky body with bow legs, and a wide, stupid face the shape of a pail bottom, blurted the first things that came to his mind.

  “A washing machine for my mother; a green felt hat; a silver portable radio this big,” and he spread his stubby hands to indicate a length of thirty inches or so.

  “Be here tomorrow night at 10:00 P.M.,” said Dr. Noir. “Speak to no one of this, not even your mother. If you do I’ll have you both killed.” The boy stood stupidly in front of Dr. Noir, but his eyes glowed.

  “Are you right or left handed?” asked Dr. Noir.

  “Right,” the boy stuttered, after considering the question for several seconds.

  Moving from behind his desk Dr. Noir seized the boy’s left hand and with one deft motion, first dislocated, then fractured the boy’s left little finger.

  The boy screamed in pain.

  “If you speak even one word of our meeting I will personally treat every joint in your body the same way,” hissed Dr. Noir. “Now get out!”

  THE BOY APPEARED AS SCHEDULED the next evening. A marvelous snow-white washer sat in front of Dr. Noir’s desk; it was round and chubby as a baker, and its chrome parts sparkled under a white light-bulb Dr. Noir had had installed specifically for this occasion.

  The hat, furry as a caterpillar, and parrot-green in color, rested on the machine lid.

  The radio, cheap and garish, gleamed brighter than any thirty pieces of silver. Dr. Noir turned the radio on. It brought in a Miami station playing something that sounded like garbage can lids being slammed together, while in the background a chorus of demons wailed in everlasting pain.

  The boy stared rapturously at the items.

  He reached out to touch them.

  “No!” shouted Dr. Noir, then coughed furiously because of the sudden expulsion of air.

  “You must earn these gifts,” he said.

  “I will do anything,” said the boy.

  “I know,” rasped Dr. Noir, smiling, his cheeks expanding on either side of his mask. He reached under his desk and produced a machete, the blade thin and blue as a razor, sharpened until it could cut a sheet of paper as it floated midair, silently, as if the paper were part of the air itself.

  “You know where El Presidente and his wife sleep?”

  The boy grew pale, but nodded, his eyes enlarging.

  “Two swings of your weapon will do it. Then all this is yours,” and he smiled again, one of the few times Dr. Noir had smiled twice in one day, the white orb of his mask seeming to wear an expression of cunning.

  Years later a young American movie producer would remember stories he had read of Dr. Noir, and use him as the model of a harsh-breathing villain extraordinaire, in a series of space-adventure movies which made the young American producer’s name, and the actor who portrayed him, into household words.

  “I can’t,” the boy stuttered. “I do not need these,” and he backed a step away from the gleaming presents.

  “You have no choice. You have no reason to be here at the palace tonight. I’ll simply call my guards, say you made an attempt on my life with this machete, and they will kill you. But not of course until I amuse myself a little,” and he stared at the boy’s swollen and bandaged finger.

  “After the deed is done,” he went on, “go home and rest well. These prizes will be on your doorstep in the morning,” and Dr. Noir waved the boy from the room.

  The boy picked up the machete. He swung it once, halfheartedly. It made no sound as it sectioned the air.

  The boy and Dr. Noir each kept their bargain. The bodies of El Presidente and his wife vanished, the way bodies tend to do in unstable political climates.

  The boy, after being unable to eat for a couple of days, and after awakening in the night screaming like a loon on more than one occasion, took pleasure in how his mother adored her washing machine, donned his green felt hat, shouldered his wailing radio, and, in his first full day on the street convinced three girls, none of whom had ever given the hatless, radioless boy a second glance, to have sex with him.

  Dr. Noir, after announcing El Presidente’s retirement, observed a three-day period of personal mourning for El Presidente, after which he announced his first official edict as new president of the Republic of Courteguay. He banned baseball as a subversive, capitalistic, nonproductive pastime, and proclaimed soccer as the National Game of Courteguay.

  FORTY-FIVE

  THE GRINGO JOURNALIST

  Shortly after Dr. Noir seized power in Courteguay, after those in government most loyal to El Presidente, the Old Dictator, had vanished as if they had never existed, after Dr. Noir had promoted each member of his elite group of secret police to lieutenant and given them dazzling uniforms of ebony and white, an emissary was sent to the jungle to deliver a message to General Bravura, the exiled guerilla leader.

  My Dear General: In view of El Presidente’s retirement and his relinquishing power to me, I feel that a summit meeting is called for. You were the enemy of El Presidente. If I have acted against you, it was only because as a military man I follow orders without question. I have always admired your courage and your skill as a commander and your brilliant military mind. As disloyal as it may sound I have always felt that Courteguay was in better hands when you were in power than when the country was ruled by El Presidente. I see no reason why we could not iron out an agreement that would allow you a major say in establishing government policy. I foresee making you my closest advisor, and second in command. It only remains to establish what title you would hold, though Vice President of Courteguay sounds well to my ears. I sincerely want to end civil strife in Courteguay and believe that by meeting we can bring that worthwhile goal to fruition. I suggest that at the earliest possible moment you and your closest advisors come to San Barnabas under a flag of truce, and that we set talks in motion to forever unite our beloved Courteguay under one stable government.

  Respectfully,

  Dr. Lucius Noir

  President of Courteguay

  “I DO NOT TRUST HIM,” General Bravura said to his followers in the jungle. “I only wish I could be in touch with El Presidente in his retirement, but his country home is surrounded by soldiers who state El Presidente is resting and no longer wishes to be involved in state matters.”

  “I think we should attempt an assassination,” said his second in command. “He has only been in power a few days and cannot possibly know what dangers lie ahead. He will be more vulnerable now than in the future.”

  “We should at least talk with him,” said General Bravura.

  On his second week in power Dr. Noir stood on the steps of the Presidential Palace and watched as three dilapidated Jeeps approached the gates
. General Bravura and eleven of his lieutenants and advisors accompanied him. Dr. Noir welcomed them, said that a banquet had been prepared, and led General Bravura and his entourage into the palace.

  Once they were in the semicircular foyer of the palace, an armed soldier appeared from behind every marble pillar, rifle at the ready.

  “Surrender your weapons, please,” said Dr. Noir.

  One of General Bravura’s lieutenants attempted to draw his side arm and was shot dead. General Bravura was taken through a side door to the sun-bright garden full of blazing bougainvillea growing against the white coral of the walls. General Bravura was handcuffed and forced to stand between two swaths of bougainvillea. A few seconds later he was shot. The remainder of General Bravura’s associates were marched to the basement of the palace to a section Dr. Noir liked to refer to as the wound factory.

  BECAUSE OF DR. NOIR the baseball fields of Courteguay lay abandoned. In smaller towns or in small parks in the cities, the infield was sodded, home plate and the pitcher’s rubber uprooted like large vegetables. All across the nation backstops were scrapped. On the outskirts of San Barnabas was a dump full of a tangle of mesh backstops, deposited at odd angles, rusting, grating eerily in the night wind, sections rubbing together squeaking and creaking as if among them metal rodents clacked and scuttled.

  The larger baseball parks, the St. Ann Mother of Mary Stadium and the Jesus, Joseph, and Mary Celestial Baseball Palace, the Stations of the Cross Ballpark at the north end of the country, and two other major parks were totally off limits, left to decay in silence. Armed guards were placed at each entrance with instructions to shoot intruders first and ask questions later; it became an imprisonable felony to photograph either the stadium or the guards.

  The grasses grew tall and wild, cowlicked, seeming to sense their new freedom. Berry vines appeared, delicate and green at first, but soon grew bolder, their spines fiercer, their stocks big and round as fingers. Weeds fought their way up through the shale of the bullpen. Small flowers peered jauntily through cracks in the asphalt in front of the concessions. Birds found sanctuary in the uppermost corners of the grandstand, their nighttime flutter and daytime squawking and squalling became the ballpark’s only sounds. Wind pried at the heavy shingles on the roof, and with no one to listen the shingles seemed to give up their grip easily, making flapping sounds in the night like travelers demanding entrance, then spinning crazily downward to lie in among the tangled grasses, or land like kites in the parking lot already inundated with weeds, vines, and flowers, sprinkled like croutons in a salad.

  Dr. Noir imported fifty thousand soccer balls from Haiti.

  FORTY-SIX

  THE WIZARD

  A group of boys on a spring day after school headed to a vacant lot where a ball appeared, not a baseball at all, but a tennis ball, worn, hairless and weathered to the color of a mouse. A fence picket became a bat, dandelions were pulled and stacked to use as bases.

  The voices of the boys rose on the scented spring breeze, shrill as starlings.

  “Stee-rike,” a sweet voice shrilled.

  “Burn it in there, Ernesto,” cried another.

  The ball rose in a long arc to the outfield, a dark-skinned boy glided under it, pounded an imaginary glove, caught the ball on the move and fired to home, though there was no runner.

  Again the bat met the ball with a resonant thump and the forbidden sounds of baseball echoed over a little corner of Courteguay, until a Jeep growled down the street and stopped outside the school fence. Two soldiers leapt from the rear of the Jeep, each brandishing a submachine gun.

  “Ho!” the leader called. “The ball. Give us the ball.”

  The boys bolted and ran, scurrying across the vacant lot and the school yard and disappearing into the cherry-colored bougainvillea. The soldiers loped slowly across the yard, joking easily, for they had both played baseball when they were children.

  At the edge of the lot, the tallest soldier, not with rancor, but because of boredom, sprayed the bougainvillea with machine gun bullets. The soldiers walked back across the lot. One of them kicked the pile of dandelions that was second base. They climbed in their Jeep and drove away, the odor of green grass clinging to their uniforms.

  The children crept slowly back to the lot, emerging from the bougainvillea like rabbits, nose first, testing the air. At first they thought that one of their friends was playing a trick on them, that he was lying face down on the edge of the bougainvillea feigning sleep, that bougainvillea blossoms had dropped onto the back of his grey T-shirt.

  The boys became serious and silent, exchanging frightened glances. One of them nudged their friend with a toe. One of the death flowers on his back burbled audibly. The boys ran to find some adults. Their dead friend, nine-year-old Trinidad Munoz, became the first baseball martyr.

  FORTY-SEVEN

  THE GRINGO JOURNALIST

  “The deeds of a leader are relatively unimportant. What is important is that he look the part of a leader. Unless he is a thoroughly despicable tyrant or a mewling coward his actual performance matters little so long as he looks the part, appears often enough in public, dresses in a manner appropriate for a person in a position of power, and displays the proper amount of eccentricity, enough to make him remarkable and audacious, without being a zealot or a fanatic,” said the Wizard.

  “It is quite the opposite in baseball,” said Julio. “A Greek god in a diamond-studded uniform who cannot hit or field or pitch is gone in a day. Audacity must be accompanied by talent. Everything must be accompanied by talent. Talent is everything.”

  “True,” said the Wizard. “A sports hero is paid to perform. If he can perform with panache, if he can elicit sympathy, he will become an idol. The same is true for a politician.”

  “Not true,” said Julio. “It is that a politician has more tricks available to him. If he is in a slump he gives the people the spectacle that they crave: a parade, a show of strength, bribing the Olympics to come to his country, something, anything to make the rabble feel good about themselves, though billions of public money are wasted, and the country becomes hugely poorer.”

  “Being a Wizard is the perfect preparation for leadership. A perfect leader must continually pull coins out of noses and make flowers rain from the sky,” said the Wizard.

  “A plodding leader may be more capable than a wizard, for a wizard has no illusions. A wizard knows that there are no wizards, that coins come not from amazed noses but from between the Wizard’s fingers, and that the flowers that rain from the sky were in his pockets first. I agree with you that talent is essential, but … look at Roger Maris, a great baseball player but a plodder. He lacked panache, and unfair as it was, he has never been given his due, probably never will. The fans and the press long for the perfect combination, genius and eccentricity. Look at The Bird … Detroit’s Mark Fidrych.”

  “But The Bird is the perfect example,” cried Julio. “It doesn’t matter how much you talk to the ball, tend the grass, or stalk about the mound, when your fastball is gone so are you.”

  “Oh, but The Bird, if only I could have worked with him. He was born to be a leader. He should have become a politician for he was already a wizard,” the Wizard continued.

  “Politicians suffer similar fates. Those who do not provide bread and circuses do not fare well. President of the United States Carter was probably the most compassionate, honest, genuinely decent man to be President in a century. But he did not look the part. He did not act aggressive when aggression was called for, he did not supply spectacle when the nation cried out for spectacle.

  “Now, Dr. Noir. I must give the Devil his due. On the day Dr. Lucius Noir seized power in Courteguay he decreed that as long as he was dictator all the mirrors in all of Courteguay would reflect only his image.

  “Children screamed. Women fainted. Mirrors were a scarce commodity in San Barnabas. A hubcap or a piece of chrome from a wrecking yard often served the purpose. People who had mirrors or make-do mirrors gaspe
d in horror the first full day of Dr. Noir’s regime for when they went to brush their teeth, there staring back at them was the dictator of Courteguay. Even the rivers, lakes, and ponds carried his reflection, so that even the peasants of the fields when they went for a cool drink or to wash the sweat from their brows in a stream or rain puddle were confronted by a strange man, one many peasants did not know. Haitian voodoo! people screamed. The military along the border to Haiti were increased tenfold.”

  SECTION THREE

  THE WOUND FACTORY

  “When a book is published, some characters get a life of their own.”

  — W. P. KINSELLA

  FORTY-EIGHT

  THE WIZARD

  The Gringo Journalist, who would one day win the Pulitzer Prize for his collected writings about Dr. Lucius Noir’s time as Dictator of Courteguay, was born in Onamata, Iowa, a somnolent farm town of forty frame buildings located on the banks of the Iowa River, in Johnson County, just south and west of Iowa City. He graduated from journalism school at the University of Iowa, qualified for a four-month internship program sponsored by some of the nation’s major newspapers, and was assigned to the Washington Post, as the most junior of junior reporters.

  The Gringo Journalist had no interest in Courteguay. He had never taken a geography course in university, and, until he was assigned to visit there as part of a tourism promotion sponsored by the new Courteguayan government, he had always thought Courteguay, if he had given it any thought at all, was in Central America.

  At the University of Iowa, he had been entertainment editor of The Daily Iowan, the university’s student newspaper, and during his four years with the paper had written several hundred theater, movie, and book reviews. His fondest hope was to review theater productions in Washington, D.C.

  The tourism assignment was refused by several senior reporters because they felt Courteguay was so small and so close to Haiti, at that time controlled by the ruthless Papa Doc Duvalier, that it might be overrun at any moment. There is nothing reporters like better than free trips to exotic foreign lands, but they prefer free trips that don’t involve danger or inconvenience, unlike congressmen who are not smart enough to sense danger, hence, years later, the fools who visited the Jim Jones compound in Guyana.