The Killing of Butterfly Joe

by Rhidian Brook

  ‘He’s a kind of hermit. Apparently he never goes out. Lives in an oxygen tent. Never flies. Frightened of getting a disease.’

  ‘So how come he’s willing to meet you?’

  ‘Ha! ’Cos I got what he ain’t!’

  ‘What about the Smithsonian, Joe?’ Isabelle asked.

  ‘I tried them. I took photographs and a couple of specimens. Met the Keeper of Entomology. This is a guy who’s seen more bugs than most people on the planet. You know what he said? “Mr Bosco. This is a quite astonishing collection. Have you thought about bequeathing it to the nation?” “Bequeath”,’ I thought. “That sounds like a fancy word for getting for free.” I said we had to get something for such valuables. He said they had a ceiling. Which is a fancy way of saying they’re cheap. And that the ceiling was ten thousand. So I said that ceiling wasn’t high enough. That I could get ten thousand for just one butterfly if I made a couple of phone calls. The Keeper got all frosty with me. He said, “Money can’t buy you everything, Mr Bosco!” So I said no, but it can buy you a set of Queen Alexandra birdwing when you want one! He got mad at me after that.’

  ‘How did this collector in Wyoming make his money?’ Isabelle asked.

  ‘Right. I said I don’t want to be selling the collection to some oppressor of the poor, or no arms dealer or oilman. This guy said his client inherited his money from his grandfather who was an oilman. But his client, he reassured me, is a Philanthropist with a capital P. He supports all kinds of environmental causes, saving whales, Siberian tigers, rainforests. He said he was a man who wanted to save the planet from the abuses of mankind. What his father destroyed he wanted to put right. He’s building his museum away from cities and the sea. In case something happens to the world. Like a nuclear war. Or a second flood. I held off telling him that this was Bad Theology as God made a promise he’d never flood the whole earth again. He sounds like one of those people who feels guilty about how much they have accumulated and wants to make up for all the stomping and accumulating they done.’

  I could see Edith already placing Joe’s story in the library of bullshit with all the other bigged-up biographies of Joe’s composing. Being around a serial exaggerator for long periods of time inclines you to stop listening. Joe was the boy who cried, ‘Wolves! Goddamn thousands of them!’ I had subconsciously started doing what Clay had advised me to do: dividing everything Joe said by ten and then cutting that in half again. I was sure that this Wizard – like his famous namesake – was going to be all smoke, all bark; a silly little man pulling levers to trigger the machinery of special effects needed to make him seem more than he was. It sounded fantastic, even by Joe’s standards.

  ‘When this guy can turn your bullshit into gold, then I’ll celebrate. But for now I got a goddamn business to run here. And a letter from a bailiff.’

  ‘Ma, while you worry about some florists in Bangor buying three fritillaries from us I’m trying to set us up a real deal, here.’

  And then the two of them slipped seamlessly into bickering. Edith reminded Joe (maybe for the thousandth time) that she had started this business when he was in diapers and managed well enough without hiring Cadillacs with car phones or Limeys to help the business (I was still at this point, if not the enemy, part of the problem, an extension of and cheerleader to Joe’s gallivanting ways) or arranging meetings with Wizards in Dollywood. Joe said he wasn’t in diapers, he was eleven, and that without his making her that case that time they would never have started the business. He defended employing me saying I had already helped with the business. My educated ways were making a difference. Edith countered with my educated ways would count for dick at the coal face. Joe said that soon they’d no longer have to work at the coal face. She came back with the fact they were behind on the rent and that the banks were turning them down. But despite all the yelling, Edith needed the medicine of a good rant. She needed him to do annoying things so that she could rant some more. And Joe needed her to be angry with him to affirm his maverick unaccountability. It was like letting blood, with Joe her apothecary supplying the leeches. She and Joe were more like a bickering married couple than mother and son. One by one the rest of us drifted from the room leaving them to their necessary and eternal squabble.

  Later, when we were packing for the trip west, I decided to confront Joe about the Wizard, Jimmy Carter, and the cut above his eye.

  ‘Was that really a skunk, Joe?’

  ‘Sure.’

  Joe was actually a terrible liar. When he was lying it was so obvious it was as though he wanted you to know he was lying. You only had to call out the first lie and he’d fess up.

  ‘OK. It was Baptists.’

  ‘Baptists?’

  ‘I got beat up by Baptists. In Virginia. They didn’t like me questioning the preacher. This one preacher was preaching a gospel of prosperity in this life and justifying it with scripture from here and there – which even the Devil can do. And his congregation – who all looked pretty well turned out in their suits – were nodding and Amen-ing his every fart. The preacher said he had a Mercedes and that it was God’s provision and reward and he wasn’t ashamed to say it. He said a worker deserved his wages. And his congregation who looked like they all had good wages agreed. He said he was doing important work, more important than any CEO, and that he should get paid in a commensurating manner. So I put up my hand and asked if he could clarify for me, how much he was being paid as pastor of this church? And that’s when they took exception and threw me out. These four guys took me to the parking lot. Escorted me to my car. They wanted me to fight them back. So I offered my cheek. And this one guy took it! They put me in jail for a night.’

  ‘They put you in jail for preacher-baiting and that’s why you been so long?’

  ‘Rip, I have been setting up this deal. Believe me. And that was just for one night. But it was worth it. Just to see the look on those Baptists’ faces when I interrupted the preacher in full flow. Talking about who was in and who was out. And being a real Christian. And how he was going to heaven! I had to! I had to interrupt that. Because that right there is the theology that’s killing this country.’

  ‘Why do you even bother going to church, Joe?’

  ‘It’s food, Rip. And like any restaurant, if the food’s bad you send it back. Preachers are waiters dispensing heavenly chow – or at least they ought to be. They serve you something indigestible, or so rich and rarefied that it makes you want to puke, you send it back. But they should not be charging for that food because it was already given to them by someone else. They charge good money too, some of them. That’s why it should be asked.’

  I suddenly realized that Joe and I were alone. It was so rare being on your own with Joe; there was always someone – a chaperone, a companion, waif, a sister, a stray – in tow. I was sure he always had a foil so he could avoid the questions that might come. I made the most of the opportunity.

  ‘Your mother told me about your father. About what happened.’

  ‘She did?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Well, that’s a sign she trusts you.’

  ‘Her version was slightly different to yours. I didn’t realize your dad was that . . . bad.’

  ‘She’s dramatic! People always give different versions of a story. You should know that. A writer. Look at the Gospels. Don’t mean it ain’t true.’

  ‘Your mother has told me to keep an eye on you, Joe. Thinks you’re up to something. You must be straight with me.’

  He scratched his hands. The hands that he’d told me had dragged his mother from the fire.

  ‘You think the Wizard really wants the freaks?’

  ‘I do, Rip. In the world of lepping, it’s the misfits that make it big. But let’s talk about this when we’re out on the road. We’ll have plenty of time to share biographies. Straighten the twist and turns to your likeability.’ He then whispered. ‘When we’re a thousand miles from Ma, I’ll tell you everything you need to know. I promise. Come on. Let me show
you where we are going.’

  Joe led me through to the Operations Room. When we got to the map of America he spread out his arms, hands palm up, like a preacher revving up for a sermon.

  ‘The world is divided into two kinds of people, Rip. People with butterfly cases and people without. You, my friend, are to be the bringer of good news, a fisher of men and women, a bringer of people into the kingdom of butterflies. Every town that has a church, a McDonald’s, a gas station and a school will have a store selling butterflies. We are going to spread the good news of Papilios across this land. We will make it into a nation of lepidopterists. We will establish our empire of winged beauties, our cornucopia of colour. We will not stop until the Kingdom of Butterflies has been established here on this earth.’

  One reason I think Joe was drawn to preachers was because he recognized kindred spirits. He was an evangelist, doggedly, even cheerfully enduring the boorish ignorance of the unsaved as he proclaimed his entomological gospel. And as preposterous as these words were, Joe made me believe again.

  ‘You ready to sell, Rip?’

  ‘I think so.

  ‘Are you ready to sell, Rip?’ Joe yelled it the way a sergeant major yells at a platoon and expects a shouted response.

  ‘Yessir!’

  ‘I said: are you really ready to sell?’

  ‘Yes, sir! I am ready, sir.’

  ‘Oh . . . I can feel it. We are going to take this land. You are going to rip it up, Rip. We are going to sell like crazy. And you are going to conquer. With charm and stories and salesmanship. Selling is stories and stories is selling. To sell something you gotta be a storyteller. Conjuring up pictures for people. Giving them hope. And if you want to understand this land, Rip, you have to sell. When you sell you will understand it. Selling is the language of this nation. And you are going to learn to speak it fluently. Having something people want, or need, or something they didn’t know they needed yet: this is the beauty of it. And when you have a product that actually has real value and meaning, truth and beauty (you said it!) there’s nothing better. And while we do this you will experience such glories, and see such wonders that you’ll think yourself crazy for ever contemplating saying no to my invitation. But it ain’t all a plain sail. We are like fishermen. Putting out to sea in our metal boat, hoping to net some sales, in various ports, crossing a land so huge you will think you are in an ocean. There will be storms. There will be sharks. Pirates even. But if we cast our nets we will catch them, Rip! There’s plenty fish in this sea. Dee, dee, dee. Fish for you and fish for me.’

  It would be easy to think Joe some kind of cheerleader for the American Dream. But I think he just took the tropes of the Dream and mashed them into a pumped-up pep talk to gee himself up. The can-do positivity was the language he needed to speak in order to survive and make it. It took me a while to see through all the bluster that ‘making it’ (financially, commercially) was not the goal for him, and that the only bit of the Dream he cared about (if indeed it is even what the Dream is about) was the freedom it might buy him, the opportunity to keep moving, to ‘ramble unaccountable’.

  I looked down at the map of America. It was a land big enough for Joe. A land big enough to accommodate all our delusions. A Quixote could make a go of it here, travel unhindered across the plains for a long distance before meeting a single self-doubt or being called crazy. I wanted to embrace her and I felt sure she wanted to embrace me. I was willing to be credulous, believe anything she told me, her impossible possibilities and crass creeds. I looked at all those lovely states with names so resonant and full of some elemental meaning and memories of things I had only dreamed but not yet experienced – and they called out to me: ‘Come to me, Rip,’ said Colorado. ‘I have mountains higher than anything you’ve seen.’ ‘No. It’s me you want,’ said Wyoming. ‘My mountains are prettier, my grasslands greener, my parks more spectacular.’ ‘Up here!’ Montana said. ‘Where the skies are bigger and the rivers cleaner.’ ‘It’s my rolling plains you wanna roll over,’ said South Dakota. ‘Down here, boy,’ whispered a smoky Tennessee.

  I’m coming, America. I’m coming!

  — Do I get coffee?

  — This ain’t room service.

  — Where’s Larson?

  — Larson?

  — My guard.

  — Not my concern. I’m Deputy White. The Sheriff’s asked me to pick this up. I read your statement to date. Or should I say ‘book’? You sure got a frilly way of expressing yourself. And boy, do you go on.

  — The Sheriff told me to be exact.

  — Just writing it down in all this detail don’t make me believe you any more than were it a few words. So why don’t you put down that pen and just tell me why you did it and we can just save ourselves a few rainforests.

  — I told you: I didn’t do it. But I assumed just writing ‘I didn’t do it’ wouldn’t cut it.

  — Well someone did it, Mr Jones.

  — Did you actually read my statement?

  — I have and you ain’t being as honest as you think. Just because you’re writing it down like this. You already shown yourself to be a top-dollar liar when you want to get your way. Using the death of people still living to get your way. A man can deliver a bare-faced lie like that he can lie about anything. What’s to say anything you say is true?

  — I’m being honest about the lying. Are you telling me you’ve never lied?

  — Sure but some of these lies had scale.

  — I’ve admitted to them.

  — Look. I’m a ‘this happened then that happened’ kind of guy. I don’t want your opinions on America or what you were doing with your dick; although the way you bounced those sisters was impressive. You certainly played them for kicks.

  — It wasn’t that simple.

  — Oh I think it was. You wanted the full buffet there. All you can eat. I don’t blame you for that. Young man sowing his wild oats. But sowing wild oats means using the bad seed. And it seems you did that.

  — What’s your point?

  — My point is, Mr Jones, I don’t think all these words are going to justify you. Or are even helping people understand your case. I’m not buying it.

  — There’s no buying – or selling – here. I want to give a true account.

  — Well, I ain’t sure I trust you, Mr Jones. Or this tomb you’re writing.

  — Tome.

  — Whatever. You’re damning yourself with this statement.

  — Why?

  — I made a note of how many times you said you felt like killing someone, so far. Six times. Five different people, too.

  — It’s a figure of speech.

  — Did you kill him?

  — Joe? No!

  — Did you ever want to kill Joseph Bosco?

  — Come on.

  — Answer the question, Mr Jones.

  — Of course I did! Who wouldn’t? But the wanting and doing aren’t the same. You know that.

  — Did you ever threaten to kill him – to his face or in front of anyone?

  — I killed Joe once, in a manner of speaking. But not twice. Not in the way you mean. Everyone in that family was usually threatening to kill someone.

  — Everyone in that family?

  — Edith. Joe. Mary. Edith mainly, and practically every day.

  — What about Mrs Bosco? Seems you and she had a grudge going on.

  — I . . . we had a clash. But I never threatened her in that way. I might have thought it.

  — Why don’t you tell me about this?

  — Mary borrowed it. For the journey west. Her mother said ‘every woman should have a gun’.

  — It had your prints on.

  — That’s because I held it.

  — Mr Jones. I think I know why you did it. You didn’t get what you wanted and you made sure they wasn’t going to get what they wanted.

  — That’s absurd. This is really ridiculous.

  — You seem angry.

  — Of course I’m angry. I
’m being held here under false charges.

  — Because you were the only person found at the scene of the crime. Someone who had reasonable motive to do what they did. And who even admits to thinking about doing it. Don’t seem so ridiculous.

  — You’re twisting my words. Or misunderstanding them.

  — How do you think this is going to end, Mr Jones? You just think you can write the end you want?

  — I’ll write what happened.

  — Well, the way I’m reading it, this isn’t going to end well for you.

  III.

  O my America!

  The dreams were sweet, at first.

  The dreams you dream

  When wide awake imagining

  An idyll to fly to, a fleece to find.

  I sprouted wings and crossed your land

  Half blue morpho; half boy-man.

  Took the road inevitable

  Destiny manifestly get-able,

  The signs were good

  (The ones I saw

  Other portents I ignored).

  You lay before me

  Open-armed and legged

  On your back, flat

  Canyons, valleys, eventual sea,

  A country to finger, feel and bed.

  I did all three.

  CHAPTER TEN

  In which Joe, Mary, Jimmy Carter and me head west.

  We set out first thing – Joe, Mary and me – with the Chuick loaded up with ‘two and a half thousand miles’ worth’ of butterflies and a bald eagle called Jimmy Carter. Joe woke me at seven o’clock with a reveille: ‘Rise and shine. This glorious world is yours and mine!’ He said we needed to get a head start on the rest of America; that all over the eastern seaboard people with things to sell were waking up and we had to beat them to the opening of the stores’ doors.

  ‘The early bird gets the waffles, Rip!’

  We ate a vast breakfast of bacon, eggs – and waffles – as though it would be our last meal for some time. Holding up the packet of Hungry Jack, Joe delivered a pitch on the simple beauty of making one thing well. ‘You see this, Rip? These Hungry Jack guys were like us once, before they became a household name. They had a product that was home-made and they sold it in their local communities. They did nice business because everyone who tried it loved it. They could have carried on that way and done just fine. But one day a buyer for a national retailer tried it and now they sell in every grocery store in the land.’