“What’s it about?”
“Has to do with Erebia magdalena.”
Mead’s heart leaped and sank at the same time. Did somersaults. Stopped and started again. “Gee,” he said. “That’s the species I’m interested in.”
“Well, well—you’ll be glad to meet Mike, then. He’s crazy about Magdalena—calls it Maggie May, after the Rod Stewart song a couple years back.”
“You can never tell when you’ll see ol’ Michael,” Tiny chimed in.
“That’s for darned sure,” said Sterling, and “I guess,” said Kate. Then she added, “But he usually shows up at the field house in Wyoming before he heads back home. Why don’t you do the same, and you might run into him?” She smiled. She was the one from the car.
Mead’s ego was just big enough, and Noni’s riddle just fresh enough, that he imagined he was being invited in his own right. Then he wondered just how much Tiny really kept them in line, and how the sexual dynamics of a coed butterfly circus, thick with lusty and attractive young men and women, could possibly work, and how they ever got any fieldwork done at all. He didn’t ask these things, but he smiled back.
Mead yawned. He laid out his sleeping bag, hoping for clear skies overnight or, failing that, a beckoning from Kate’s tent. Then he reformed and let thoughts of Noni carry him off to sleep. He’d landed with a Nordic blond all right, just as she’d imagined. But it was no long-tressed Swedish centerfold. Instead, a middle-aged Polish Adonis with a harem—not exactly the threat Noni had conjured from the mists of Conundrum. Carolinus bid them all sweet dreams, popped another beer, and continued his curatorial tasks beside the cinnabar coals of the campfire.
No rain fell, and when the tang of coffee, trout, and bacon hit Mead’s nostrils at six, he crept out like a bagworm, bloated with Hamm’s he’d forgotten to recycle the night before and crowned with a light hangover from the tall cooler on top of the cheap beer.
Bagdonitz hurled him a bright “Good morning” from beside the fire as Mead passed by on a mission to a bush. Whether CB ever slept, or simply swapped his beer for a coffee cup at dawn, James never knew.
31
As the Nordic Green Aphid panted toward the summit of Loveland Pass the next morning, Mead beheld something extraordinary. A parking area and a small tarn lay beside the road, and beyond them, a big rockslide tumbled down. At the base of the rocks stood a man holding what appeared to be a jumbo butterfly net and a large black object. “Holy cow!” he said. “What is that?”
He was riding in back between Kate and Lisa. “That’s Michael,” said CB, “and Maggie.”
By the time they had parked beside the lake and walked to the base of the rocks, the figure was still in sight, but now he was high up the talus slope. Mead watched with his binoculars and saw the man hold the black thing over his head and give it a toss. Down it came, almost directly at Mead. He could see that it was not free-flying, but gliding down a monofilament line that shone like a rock spider’s web in the sun. “What’s the deal?” Mead asked, but only a frightened pika replied: Weet! Then Mead made it out: the object was a giant Magdalena alpine, hang gliding down the rocks after the fashion of the real thing. “Holy cow,” he said again as the model butterfly reached the end of its tether and alighted—a bit roughly—among the rocks.
Michael Heap climbed down the slide. He reached his model about the same time as the field team, Mead in tow, reached him. “Mike, you ol’ son!” crooned Carolinus, and the two big men embraced.
“CB! I thought you’d never get here, or the clouds would come first!” In turn, Heap hugged each of the Circus members on hand. Then he was introduced to Mead.
“I saw your mega-Magdalena fly,” said Mead. “Do you always do this here?”
“Well, usually—it’s the easiest place. Not much of a hike, and when you have to go up and down the rocks as much as I do, that counts. Plus, not too many rubberneckers, thanks to the I-70 tunnel under the pass. So—you figured out what this baby represents?”
“Sure! I have a big interest in Erebia magdalena myself.”
“Aha!” Heap exclaimed. “The two magic words!”
“So, Michael,” Carolinus butted in. “I didn’t bring these boys and girls all the way up here in order to get rained on, which we will pretty soon. Why don’t you show the kids what you’re up to with that big hunk of black cardboard.”
“Sure,” Heap agreed. “If you all want to watch and maybe help out a little, I’ll run a couple more trials.”
“So what’s the point of the experiment, Mike?” asked Sterling.
“Well, you’ve all read about Niko Tinbergen’s experiments with the European grayling butterfly?”
“They’d better say yes,” said CB, laughing, as most of their heads nodded.
It’s closely related to the arctics up here, which aren’t far from the alpines. Tinbergen found that super-female models elicit more intense courtship responses from the males than normal-size and colored females.”
“So what’s new?” came a male voice, bringing a female’s “Boar!”
“Be nice, kids. Well, back in those unenlightened days, this was called the Raquel Welch effect.”
Lisa: “Not the Bagdonitz principle?” Kate: “It’s good to know he’s not the only one.”
“I’m sorry about these guys, Michael. Cheap labor, you know,” said CB.
“It beats no labor, CB. I used to have an assistant, David Shawmutt from Cornell. But he got tired of the climb up and down the rockpile and went into premed. Wants to be a doctor—a real one, not a butterfly doctor, like us.”
“Smart lad,” said CB. “He’d never get rich in this game.”
Young heads nodded.
“Don’t I know it,” said Heap. “Still, I’ll take Maggie over myocardial infarction any day—she’s good medicine for what ails you, right? Well, anyway, I’m just trying to see if I can replicate Tinbergen’s result in black-and-white instead of gray. When it works, the males go bananas over Maggie May here. Now why don’t you all spread out up and down the rockslide and watch for responses. I’ll carry Maggie up, release her, and watch with binoculars. CB, maybe you could try to catch her down here so she doesn’t get so beat up on these sharp rocks.”
As Mead climbed the rocks behind Michael, he wondered if all lepidopterists were big. Heap was of average height, but bore his large head on broad shoulders over a deep chest. His short legs could have been hewn from the same Colorado cottonwood as his big net was. He was a man who fought the paunch, now more on top of the paunch than the other way around. Mead guessed the balance swung in wintertime, when he came in from the field, especially if he drank beer, as most of his kind seemed to.
Heap wore an old Panama with sweat-stained brim bent low over his high red forehead. Long, light hair hung behind in waves. His truly notable feature was his beard: sternum-length, full, and many hued, leaving little of the face showing but his high cheeks, harebell eyes, and sunburned nose over a long mustache and permanent smile. His pelt of many colors, hinting at a white future, reputedly waxed and waned, giving him a metamorphic nature not unlike that of the insects he studied. Right now he seemed to be between molting stages, beard just brushing his belly.
Michael Heap was not graceful as he lumbered up the boulders like a silverback marmot, but he knew his way around a rockslide and had good wind, climbing the scree faster than students half his age. More than once he tottered on a loose rock, but then he would leap to a sounder stepping-stone or balance himself with his net pole as a logroller might use his pike. A livid purple scar across one massive calf testified to a rockslide mishap of yore, when a companion loosed a sharp slate right above him. But Heap seldom if ever fell. Mead, naturally coordinated, nonetheless beat his knees to a pulp the first few times he tried to navigate the talus.
Mead positioned himself halfway up. As he awaited takeoff, he watched the pikas arrayed along the ridgeline every fifty feet or so. They shouted their opinions o
f the invaders’ impertinence with shrill geeks and stern little peace-sign faces. One, skinny as pikas go, lifted its right paw each time it squeaked, like an action doll. Another, a plump one with its head up, was a mere fluffball against the Rockies themselves—just a pellet with little rabbity ears no longer than the wind would allow.
Heap reached the anchored top of the fishline and held Maggie May aloft. She consisted of a matte-black silhouette cut from thick photographic board, two feet in wingspan, affixed to a pinewood body. A brass ferrule on her thorax channeled the heavy-test leader that kept her from gravity’s grasp. Heap drew Maggie May behind his head with both hands, counted down, and made the launch. The Flying Circus cheered as one, sending all the marmots scurrying.
Two pikas dove for cover with extra sharp geeks as the shadow of the dusky flier passed overhead. The last fifty feet of its glide drew four real Magdalenas who shot up at Maggie with terrific zeal. Mead watched openmouthed as the optimistic male Erebias made none-too-subtle advances toward the impressive sex symbol. Just before Maggie reached the bottom of her flight path, her line snapped, and the heavier-than-air kite crashed onto the rocks, out of CB’s frantic grasp. That signaled the end of the day’s trials. Heap rescued Maggie, not badly damaged, while Mead reeled in the line. Everyone met at tarnside to compare notes while Heap entered the data. “Not bad for the butterflies,” said Randy, “but it really works for pikas!”
“Maybe they thought it was a raven,” suggested Lisa, “or a golden eagle.”
“The boy butterflies worked out too,” said Sterling. “She sure does something for them. I wonder if it cuts both ways?”
“Well, try this,” said Michael. He drew an envelope from his collecting bag, a little leather pouch with a willowware pattern toffee tin in it to protect the butterflies, and removed a live alpine with his forceps. This he gently placed on a surprised Randy’s nose, where it remained, basking for some minutes. “See if that does anything for your popularity,” said Heap. Apparently it worked, as the girls all gathered around him.
Heap stored away the tableau as a vision not to be squandered; Mead memorized the technique for future reference; even CB was stilled. There stood Randy, hard young chest held high in his white tee, chin back, beatific smile curling his sculpted mouth, his strong arched nose, as yet unmarred by alcohol or hard knocks, graced by the pure black oval of an alpine the same color as his curls. And all about him, a roundel of bewitched young women: Alice, forehead shining in the alpine sun, her smile one of unaffected bliss, her hand on the shoulder of Lisa, who held her hand over her heart as if in a swoon; Nancy, on the other side, simply rapt. Kate, harder, less readily beguiled, and already distracted by Mead’s nearness, still cracked a down-curved grin that drew her ample dimples, as well as Mead’s eye, down toward her low-cut halter, making dark declivities that an alpine at evening or an imprudent graduate student might drop into, forever.
Then the sun hit it full on, and the butterfly on Randy’s nose flew off. Randy, handsome lad though he was, became just one more dude on the field team, and the tableau dissolved. “I think he’s got something there,” said Sterling to CB, sotto voce.
“No shit,” said CB. “That’ll be on the test.”
Just then an uncommon bog fritillary appeared in their midst and weaved its way between their legs. Four or five nets swung at once, like jousting janitors, and about as effective. “Boloria eunomia,” said Mead. “Dr. Freulich says it’s the rarest one up here.” Sterling zigzagged after the butterfly, took a wild swing, and fell into the willow bog.
“Sterling bricked it,” Carolinus observed to Mead. “They’ve gotta do better than that, or no tall coolers tonight.”
Mead wondered whether it wasn’t last night’s tall coolers at fault here, but he held his tongue.
The BFC made its farewells, thanked Michael Heap for the demonstration, and headed up the far slope for a little collecting before the clouds closed in. “Come on, you guys,” rang CB’s injunction. “Let’s go see some biology!”
Mead stuck around Loveland Pass for a while with Heap, hoping to romance one more Magdalena out of the shattered granite for another look. But when the early-afternoon clouds rose over the rim of the pass like sinister blimps fixing to drop water bombs on their heads, they retreated to the shelter of Heap’s old maroon VW bus. “Where to?” he asked.
“Your call,” said Mead. “I’m in your hands and at your mercy.”
“Right. To the Red Ram, then!” And so the two fellow sufferers of their particular infatuation repaired to the Red Ram saloon in Georgetown, down canyon from the pass. Over a malt whiskey at the massive mahogany bar, Mead’s first ever, Heap’s first for the day, the younger one picked the other’s brain about the black glider of the stonefields as a gray mountain storm pounded the tin roofs of the old mining town. “You know, don’t you,” Michael asked, “that Georgetown was named as the type locality of Erebia magdalena?”
“No!” James choked on his Scotch. “Here?”
“Of course it’s a couple thousand feet too low. But in those days it was common to generalize localities. Collectors often used the name of the nearest rail or stage stop for their specimen data. You were lucky to get more than ‘Rocky Mountains’ on a pin label! Anyway, Herman Strecker described the species in 1880 from material sent him by a Professor Owen of Wisconsin who labeled the locality ‘Georgetown.’ I strongly suspect that the type specimens actually came from Loveland Pass—a classic Magdalena locale on an early stage route—where we’ve just been.”
“So that one on Randy’s nose could be a topotype?”
“Right—if it had a pin in it, which Randy might resent. I reckon that first collector drove down to the Red Ram, just as we’ve done, except by horseback or stagecoach, and wrote ‘Georgetown’ on his labels as the nearest depot—maybe at this very bar!”
Mead drank to that, bought a round, and drank to it again. Then, while still able, they went in search of food. Mead, elevated somewhat by the malt, felt a twinge of envy for the early collectors, traveling by stage and steam, discovering fabulous new species, but he suspected that they fared worse when it came to dining. They entered a small trattoria where the several inches, difference in their height and girth melted as they pulled up to a red-checked tablecloth. Awaiting their order, Mead said, “Look, Mike. I know Maggie’s your bug . . .”
“Mine! Last I heard, nobody was patenting insects. Remember, butterflies are free, as the saying goes—nobody owns them, or the research rights to them.”
“I mean, you’re working on it.”
“I guess you caught me black-handed on that.”
“Well, I’ve noticed that biologists can be a little proprietary about their chosen topics. I really don’t want to trespass on your turf, so if you feel there’s no room for both of us in this here town, just tell me, and I’ll retreat to my roaches.”
“Heck, no! Forget that, James! Several folks are looking at Maggie already, such as Gerald Hilchie in Alberta, Charles Slater right down the road in Central City, Ken Philip in Alaska for mackinleyensis, and Piotr Rombostislov in Siberia, for starters. This butterfly is a big black tent—no one has a corner on it. She presents so many fascinating questions that no one worker could answer them all—just as with Peter Freulich and his frits or Vern Volte with his sulphurs. Why do you think they have grad students doing so many projects on them? It takes all hands to the wheel to get a three-D picture of these complex beasts.”
Mead sat back and sipped his Chianti, digesting that, as their food came.
“I couldn’t begin to do justice to all of Maggie’s charms by myself,” Heap went on, twirling his spaghetti. “Besides, I’m an amateur now. I dabble at it endlessly, but I don’t publish much. Maybe you can get something really useful done.”
By now Mead felt easy with Heap, so he brought up the subject of October Carson. Heap had never heard of him, though he knew George, having done his own doctorate with Winchester’s fir
st grad student, Abe Brewer, at UConn. Mead took the first bite of his lasagna, then told Heap about Carson’s procession across the West and his own flirtation with Erebia magdalena. “So what do you know about Maggie’s name?”
“Well,” Michael garbled through his pasta, “I’ve often wondered. Obviously it has to do with Mary Magdalene. Turns out her Saint’s Day is July twenty-ninth. Since that date falls well within Maggie’s flight period, maybe Owen caught the first one on that day and Strecker named the species in her honor. I don’t know whether he was Catholic or not. Anyway, that’s my only hypothesis on the question. You might want to ask Brownie about it.”
“Brownie?”
“F. Martin Brown, author of Colorado Butterflies, my New Testament. Holland’s Butterfly Book and Klots’s Peterson Field Guide were my Genesis and Revelations.”
“I loved those books too; being from New Mexico, I ought to know Brown’s.”
“It didn’t get around enough—sold mostly at the Denver Museum of Natural History, my childhood haunt when I couldn’t be outdoors. Hell of a book. Check this out.” Michael cleared his throat and recited from memory: “ ‘This large and uniformly black alpine is a real prize. It cannot be confused with any other Colorado butterfly. Its dark wings, free from markings, make it easy to recognize . . . The Magdalena Alpine haunts the rockslides at timber line’ . . . Let’s see . . . yes, that’s it: ‘It is very difficult to capture because of the treacherous footing afforded by the tumbled rocks . . . Once in a while conditions have been such that a large brood of the species is produced. Then if a collector is around he has a field day.’ Page twenty-nine, Colorado Butterflies.”
“Bravo! Chapter and verse, yet. A real devout.”
“You should see my copy of the book,” said Michael. “Dog-eared is hardly the word. The dust jacket, with the beautiful purple Colorado hairstreak, is in tatters, and the red buckram binding is pretty soft at the corners.”
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