The Killing of Butterfly Joe

by Rhidian Brook

  ‘How was church?’

  She continued looking down at her plate, cutting the meat into minute morsels and taking an inordinate time to chew them so as not to have to speak. Naturally polite, it took Isabelle a lot of effort not to answer me. An over-confident Mary leapt in to the silence.

  ‘That preacher is such a jerk. He so likes the sound of his own voice. Joe’s right: why do we go to church and have to listen to one man talk for so long?’

  ‘I like Pastor Jennings,’ Edith said, showing an interest. ‘Better than Rat-face. Remember how long he went on? He’d talk for an hour, making his three points beginning with the same letter over and over like we were children. At least Jennings keeps it under half an hour.’

  ‘Do you have church in England?’ Elijah asked. Elijah’s idea of England as being a primitive country lacking in all but the very rudiments of existence was profound.

  ‘Of course they have church in England, Eli,’ Edith said. ‘England is a Christian country, right?’

  ‘Not any more,’ I said. ‘Not many people I know believe in God.’

  ‘But you believe in God, don’t you, Rip?’ Celeste asked, worried.

  ‘I don’t know.’ It felt like the most honest thing I had said in days.

  ‘That’s stupid,’ Celeste said.

  ‘Where I come from people think you’re stupid if you do believe in God.’

  ‘Well that’s stupid, too.’

  I looked at Isabelle, willing her to get involved. I could guess her thoughts: ‘I’ll not throw my pearls to you, you pig. You think you are interesting, have intelligence and depth, but you are a shallow chancer, and the fact you’ve fallen for my sister’s Venus fly-trap act proves it. And now you’re talking garbage about something you don’t know or care about.’

  ‘Your folks not bring you up in the fear of the Lord?’ Edith asked me.

  ‘They weren’t church-goers. My mother would say she was a spiritual person. My father didn’t believe. Until his dying day. He even asked that there be no religion at his funeral. He didn’t want God to have the last word.’

  ‘Good for him,’ Mary said, more to provoke than out of conviction.

  ‘Mary-Anne thinks she’s an atheist,’ Edith said, as if it was a craze Mary would get over.

  ‘I know what I think,’ Mary said.

  Mary’s atheism seemed more like emotional rebellion than intellectual rejection to me but what surprised me was that Edith didn’t seem to mind. Despite the mandatory church-attendance she was laissez-faire with what her children believed. She herself had grown up Catholic (Joe on Catholics: ‘man, those people make a meal out of a simple instruction’) and although her own faith was ‘hanging by a very thin thread’ (her own description) she wanted her children to have the ammunition they needed to keep arguing about it either way. As a result the family were religiously literate and, I would discover, just as comfortable discussing the ontological as the entomological.

  ‘So what was the sermon about?’ I asked. Again, I looked at Isabelle, determined to hook her into the conversation before the meal was done.

  Again, Mary intercepted. ‘It was about Adam and Eve and who was to blame,’ she said.

  ‘Who do you think was to blame, Rip?’ Edith asked.

  I hadn’t really thought this issue through but I knew enough, and if my expensive education had taught me anything it was how to stretch a little knowledge into sounding like a great deal; what people call bullshit.

  ‘I’ve always felt slightly sorry for Adam and Eve,’ I said, as if I’d carried this burden of sadness for our deepest ancestors all my life.

  Isabelle took a deep breath. She half looked up, her eyes widened. She was nibbling my line.

  ‘Oh?’ Edith said. ‘I always thought if the schmucks had just listened to the Lord we wouldn’t be in this mess.’

  ‘Well that seems a bit harsh,’ I said, finding my argument. ‘God told them not to do something but when someone tells you not to do something you’re sort of inviting them to do it, really.’

  Edith chewed on this thought and looked only semi-impressed. ‘Hmmmmm. So. Are you saying God tempted them?’

  ‘Well. Yes. In a way.’

  Isabelle made a sigh – the kind of sigh a long-suffering teacher might give out when all other ways of trying to help a stupid pupil grasp a simple maxim have failed.

  ‘But they were free to choose,’ she said. She was involved now!

  I hit right back. ‘But if God knew they would make the wrong decision he should never have let them.’

  ‘If we’re not free to make the wrong decision it isn’t freedom.’

  Her voice cracked a little with the saying of this and her pallor, which still hadn’t recovered from the fracas with Mary, now included blotches on her neck around her frilly collar. She was not made for confrontation, or smart-arsery. She was a serious person with no glibness in her who argued only when it really mattered to her. And this mattered to her.

  ‘You’re saying desire is a bad thing?’

  ‘No. It’s what you desire that counts.’

  I felt something hot rubbing up against my calf. It was Mary’s foot saying, ‘You’re mine, remember what you desire, and remember your vow.’

  Isabelle finally looked at me and for a brief moment I felt transparent. She had me but intellectual pride is first cousin to smart-arsery and I couldn’t leave it there.

  ‘I think they were curious. Testing the boundaries. Wanting knowledge. Like children. And then they were punished for their curiosity.’

  ‘They weren’t punished for being curious,’ Isabelle countered, still that nervy quaver in her voice, but with a steely determination to hold to her orthodoxy. ‘They put their faith in the wrong thing.’

  This seemed reasonable, possibly true. Stuck for an answer I threw her the best that my education could offer.

  ‘Ultimately, you can’t trust in something you can’t see or prove.’

  This statement went unanswered for a few seconds and a smirk from Mary suggested she thought I’d struck her sister a fatal blow.

  ‘But that is precisely what faith is,’ Isabelle said. ‘Trusting in something you can’t see and don’t fully understand. Most people believe in things they don’t understand – or can’t see.’

  ‘Such as?’

  Isabelle looked at me, genuinely surprised I had to ask. ‘Love?’

  She let the theological fuck-you hang for a few seconds, to see if I had anything to say. Seeing that I didn’t she stood and started to stack the plates. When she’d left the room Edith looked at Mary.

  ‘What’s got into her?’

  ‘She’s uptight,’ Mary said.

  ‘Why were you being mean to her?’

  ‘I weren’t. Maybe she don’t like being challenged like that. She thinks she’s so smart. You told her, Rip. You put her in her place real good.’

  Mary winked at me as though we had won a victory, but it was Isabelle who’d had the last word. And it had been a good word. While Mary footsied my calf and I winked back at her, my thoughts followed her smarter sister from the room. I’ll win you over yet, I told myself. But, for now, I was prepared to buy the lie that the serpent supposedly introduced to the world: that dark is interesting and light is bland and that to know everything is freedom. Joe was right in this regard: Bad Theology can take you down the wrong road.

  * * *

  Joe had said nothing to anyone about where he might be going and, apart from me, no one seemed to care. The general message was that Joe’s whimsical flits were part of who he was and I should get used to it; for the sake of my sanity it was best not to fix Joe to a time frame or a particular place; Isabelle said he’d call soon enough. The phone was the umbilical cord by which he was still joined to his mother. As it was, he called three days later. We were all working in the factory putting together an order of fifty cases for a florist in Bangor, Maine. Edith took the call on her portable phone, seated on her ‘throne’ at the head of the f
actory table, and it was instantly clear who was at the other end of the line.

  ‘Where the hell are you?’

  Edith pressed a button on the phone so we could all hear Joe’s answer. Not that she needed to. Joe always yelled when on the phone, as though having to shout above the noise of a crowd at a wild party. ‘Ma! Can you hear me?’

  ‘Yah: too loud; too clear!’

  ‘Guess where I’m calling from!’

  ‘I wouldn’t care if you were calling from the Great Wall of China. You should be here. Working not gallivanting.’

  ‘Dollywood! It’s a total piece of serenicity, Ma. I was filling up with gas in New Jersey and I met a guy who sets up theme parks. He did Dollywood and when he saw my cases he told me I should get down there first thing.’

  ‘Down where?

  ‘Hold on. Just turning here.’

  ‘Down where?’

  ‘The Volunteer State.’

  ‘Remind me.’

  ‘Tennessee! He said Dolly loves butterflies. She did that song. “Love is like a butterfly, soft as gentle, and that’s no lie, da de da.” She’s thinking of setting up a butterfly house in the park. He told me to check it out. Then I got me thinking we should do a theme park and call it Butterfly World! It’ll be like a cross between Disneyworld and the Smithsonian, all wrapped in an “entertainmentful experience”.’

  ‘You must think I’m no smarter than a shithouse mouse. No one wants a theme park for butterflies. You’re up to something.’

  ‘Ma, if they have made a theme park for a country singer they can make one for butterflies. Dolly will be lovin’ on the idea.’

  ‘And how are you going to pay for this cockamamie idea? Right now I got bills for these phone calls you keep making. And we got cases to make and sell. I need you back here focusing on reality.’

  ‘Pretty soon Ma you won’t have to worry about any of that. I’m working on a deal so big you’ll be able to watch TV all day.’

  ‘Enough of this.’

  ‘So how’s Rip doing? He learning the ropes?’

  ‘He’s been pontificatin’ about things he don’t know about. And he got himself bit by the dogs.’

  ‘No! Ha! Really? Let me speak to him. He got bit?’

  ‘King Crapola wants to speak to you. Don’t let him off the hook. I’m not nearly finished with that ape.’

  I went and took the receiver, standing next to Edith.

  ‘Hi, Joe.’

  ‘You got bit! Was it Ronnie? Or Nancy? I bet it was Ronnie.’

  ‘It was.’

  ‘Oh man. He’s a one. How’s it going there? Everyone lovin’ on you?’

  ‘Uh . . . sure. Apart from the dogs.’

  ‘Ha! You met Clay yet?’

  ‘I did. He saved me from certain death.’

  ‘Clay’s got a way. He showed you the morpho farm?’

  ‘I saw them through the glass. But not properly.’

  ‘Has Isabelle shown you the collection?’

  ‘Not yet.’

  ‘You need to see it! You need to know all about it. And tell Ma we need a hundred cases for our trip west. And tell Clay we need some travel packs. When I get back I want you to be ready to hit the road, Rip. We got some selling to do.’

  ‘When will that be?

  ‘Any day now. I’ll call you. Learn the names of all the butterflies we sell. There are twenty-six core species you need to know. I want us to be super-prepared. I need you learning those names. Learn them good. You should prepare for this pitch like a NASA astronaut making a trip to Mars, Rip.’

  ‘OK,’ I said, not sure that NASA actually sent astronauts to Mars.

  ‘I gotta go.’

  ‘Your mum wants . . .’

  I handed the phone back to Edith but Joe was gone.

  Although I was frustrated at Joe’s desertion of me, the days he was away gave me time to insinuate myself into the family’s affections and learn the ropes – which, I later realized, was all part of Joe’s chaotic plan. In the mornings I got involved in the construction of the cases. Working the production line made me feel a part of things and brought everyone together around a unifying purpose: Elijah sealing the case with the silicon gun, Celeste arranging the flowers, Isabelle mounting the butterflies and Edith adding the Latin stickers to the bases, me packing the cases in cardboard boxes and Mary and Clay sealing the filled boxes and taking them to the storehouse. It was truly a family production and if these gift items were not always ‘lovingly hand-crafted’, they were, as Edith liked to say,

  ‘Made in America by American hands;

  not by machines in foreign lands.’

  My job was to pack the cases in boxes padded with ripped-up pages of National Enquirer magazines, and as I did this I occasionally paused to read a headline in my best received pronunciation – ‘Ryan O’Neal’s son: my father’s a monster.’ ‘How To Be Richer A Year From Now: 42 Easy Tips to Put $$ Thousands In Your Pocket—’ a little act that seemed to go down well with everyone. I also started to learn the names – English and Latin – of the butterflies that I would be selling. While we were constructing the cases Elijah or Celeste would hold out a butterfly to test me. I memorized the prices – retail and wholesale – of the five different sizes of case and the variations according to state: in some parts of New England you add 25%, in some parts of the South you knock off 25%. I was taught the difference between how to pitch to florists versus how to sell to gift shops (florists were friendlier – they had the happiest work of any retailer – and better if you needed quick cash, but they generally bought fewer cases than gift shops); and there was the golden rule: ‘never pitch to a Muppet’ (someone who didn’t have the authority to buy). Or as Edith put it:

  ‘Save your breath for the one who signs the cheque.’

  After a few days I knew all the names of the butterflies and the catchphrases that would help me sell them on the road and felt ready to get out there. My desire to get going wasn’t just about wanting to sell or to see America. Close physical proximity with Mary was an exquisite torture that the promise of satisfaction on the road did little to cool and she did little to ease. All that week the heat picked up; it was that oozy, itchy Appalachian heat that makes you yearn for cold showers, mountain rivers and outdoor rutting. It was opiate and aphrodisiac, slowing everything down and swelling everything up. The factory was airless and the odours of dried flowers, glue and chemicals and all that pent-up passion would leave me with a throbbing headache. I tried to break her resistance down; I’d tell her what I wanted to do with her fearfully and wonderfully made temple. I’d whisper crass sweet nothings: ‘I want you.’ ‘I’ve never met anyone like you.’ ‘You are so beautiful.’ The borrowed phrases of pulpy romance come easily when you’re in an unsated delirium of desire. One afternoon, I asked her to show me where we were going on the map in the Operations Room so we could be alone. We were leaning over the map of the USA, me one end, her at the other. I started to drive my finger from east to west, towards the hot states, towards her. Mary was leaning over the map from the Canadian side, her breasts cascading over the 49th Parallel into Montana, her elbows planted in Alberta and Manitoba, her lovely smooth brown arms running down the Rockies and the Badlands. She was looking at me running my finger from the Catskills along a rough route to the West, calling out the names. She reached over and started driving her own finger across from California, along Interstate 80, and our digits met somewhere in Nebraska where I drove my finger up onto the bridge of her hand and along her arm and up to her shoulder and then to her lips. She opened her mouth just a little and I pushed the digit in. She clamped my hand and lightly bit into my already clamped finger. My heart was hammering like the heart of a trapped bird.

  ‘Can’t we find somewhere to do it in this big old ruin?’ I asked.

  ‘Like I said. Not under Ma’s roof. She would kill me. And then she would kill you. You’ll be pushing your pin into me soon enough.’

  ‘But where?’ I asked, picking up a pin and
holding it over the map. ‘Here?’ I put the pinhead somewhere over Pennsylvania. ‘Or here.’ I moved it West to Iowa.

  ‘Depends.’

  ‘On what?’

  ‘How many butterflies you sell. You gotta sell two hunnerd and fiddy cases first.’

  ‘You’ve changed the terms of our agreement.’

  ‘I get to.’

  ‘How so?’

  ‘Supplier sets the price.’

  ‘I thought it was demand that set the price.’

  ‘You think you’re the only one that wants a piece of me?’

  ‘You have a boyfriend?’

  ‘Two-fiddy cases.’

  Never did a salesman have a better incentive to hit his targets.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  In which Isabelle shows me the collection and Edith sets me straight.

  Since our theological clash I had not seen much of Isabelle. She tended to get to the factory before I was up, do her bit, then go to the library to continue working on the collection. I was sure that I had upset her and, despite Mary’s warning, I was determined to win back her approval partly to sate my need to be liked, but also because she had got the better of me and I would not rest until I had given a surer account of myself. I used the excuse of needing to see the collection as a reason to seek her out and I was sly enough to wait for Mary to be out of the house (taking her Z28 to the race circuit in Watkins Glen) before asking Isabelle to show it to me. She was in her room, at a desk set in the alcove. Sunbeams lit up the square where she sat. She looked quite in her element and when you see people in their element, being what they should be, they are usually at their most attractive and Isabelle was, in that moment, an absolute picture. Her hair was up but long black strands hung down, against a pale, thin kissable neck. Such was her focus that she wasn’t even aware that I was standing in the doorway. I knocked gently on the door so as not to startle her.

  ‘Sorry to interrupt.’

  She looked up at me and then quickly back at what she was doing. Was she still pissed off or just preoccupied? I couldn’t quite tell.

  ‘I was wondering if this might be a good moment to see the collection.’