The Killing of Butterfly Joe

by Rhidian Brook

  ‘You thinking about fucking me?’

  ‘Shhh!’

  ‘He can’t hear. He slept through a tornado once.’ She lay with her head resting on the palm over a hand angled across her ear. I looked at Joe lying on the floor and watched the rise and fall of his great torso, estimating how much time we’d have were we to try and do it.

  ‘Shall we . . . check out the pool? Have a smoke?’

  ‘Sure.’

  So we went outside and sat on the plastic loungers by the pool; I rolled a joint and we listened to the sound of cars passing in the night – a sound full of sad desire and sex.

  ‘We could do it here, no?’

  ‘A deal’s a deal.’

  The dope turned out to be a helpful prophylactic, making me flaccid in body and intention. But where dope made me calm and glazed and contentedly mediocre, it made Mary paranoid. Her chief insecurity soon surfaced.

  ‘You only want me for this,’ she said, pushing her legs out to show the extent of her figure. ‘Once you’ve had me you’ll move on Isabelle, I know it.’

  ‘I’m not interested in Isabelle.’

  ‘You seemed interested, talking about books ’n’ shit.’

  ‘She’s . . . not my type, Mary. I have no feelings for her. She’s too serious. Too earnest and religious. I like a free spirit. You’re a free spirit.’

  ‘I’m smart, too. Just different. Isabelle uses her mind. I use this.’

  ‘You are different. As different as the sun and moon. It’s hard to believe you’re sisters.’

  ‘Maybe we ain’t.’

  ‘What do mean?’

  She shrugged. ‘You got to figure how I look like Pocahontas when Isabelle looks like Anne of Green Gables. Ma says my father was hardly around when I was born. How did Ma get pregnant with me when he was in a jungle in South America for nearly nine months? Do the math.’ She stretched her mouth, as if trying wake herself, to sober up. She slapped her cheeks. I should have left it there, but curiosity justifies the picking of a thousand apples.

  ‘What are you saying?’

  ‘I’m not saying diddly. I’m just supposing. Don’t you wonder if your parents were really your parents? I think that a lot.’

  I hadn’t ever thought it, much as I’d have liked a different father sometimes. Or my father to be different.

  ‘Isabelle showed me a photo of him. In a book he wrote. He looks like a jerk. Hair and beard all wild like he doesn’t care. Which he don’t. Don’t look like me.’

  ‘Where is he now?’

  ‘In hell, I hope.’

  ‘Aren’t you curious? To know what your father’s like?’

  ‘You can’t call him my father. You gotta be around to be a father. He travelled all over the world chasing bugs then he disappeared. Look. He didn’t give a shit ’bout us. He weren’t even here for any of us being born.’ This sounded like Edith talking to me. And suddenly that same power of paternal prohibition shut this line of questioning down. ‘You should stop pushing in that direction. You might get bit.’

  ‘I already got bit.’

  Mary suddenly grabbed a towel, buried her head in it and screamed. When she lowered the towel her face was a patchwork quilt of fear and vulnerability – but also relief. Relief at having shared a heavy burden, perhaps? For surely that is what secrets are: little weights that grow heavier with the un-telling. That was my justification for pushing it. There is immense satisfaction in getting people to share their secrets with you. You feel you are being helpful, getting them to unburden themselves; you are flattered at their sharing a confidence; plus you get the prurient thrill of hearing the secret! I thought I was helping to bring things into the light. But really I was an idiot moth flitting too close to the flames.

  ‘You better not say anything to Ma or anyone about that.’

  ‘About which?’

  ‘About me thinking I have a different father. You have to promise me.’

  ‘Of course.’ I said. And for the second time I made a vow to Mary I wouldn’t keep.

  ‘I feel awful tired. I’m turning in.’

  I must have looked as disappointed as a dog for she repeated her terms. ‘Two-fiddy cases and I’m yours.’

  She did a dizzy pirouette by the pool and went inside.

  By the time I returned to the room, Joe and Mary were asleep. I touched Mary’s bare shoulder.

  ‘You awake?’

  She didn’t answer me. Was she asleep? Or just pretending?

  I lay on my bed, buzzing with a new speculation. Mary having a different father made sense; not just because of the physical differences; it also explained Edith’s desire to control the story.

  I thought I could hear a hushed roar of the falls beneath the sound of the air-conditioning and Joe’s contented snore. I lay there watching the shape made by the lights of the passing cars and listening to the different noises they made as they passed. I dug out my notebook and tried to sublimate my still unsated lust into trying to write some lines about my first day on the Road and an Ode to Niagara, straining out a poorly disguised metaphor.

  ‘Water falls near here

  Splits a county in two

  Makes one country

  Out of me and you

  Blood flows here

  So let’s me and you

  Make one country

  Out of two . . .’

  After about ten minutes I put down the notebook. I watched Mary for a while. She turned, breathing in startled fits and jerks. She was lovelier in sleep, maybe because in sleep she had no suitors to try and impress. The air-conditioning had goose-bumped her arms. She looked much younger. Isabelle was right. She was a little girl in a woman’s body. But how I wanted the body. Just before I fell into a fitful sleep I said my prayers:

  ‘Lord, let me sell those cases soon.’

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  In which I find my voice and Joe gets arrested.

  For the next few weeks we enjoyed a rich seam of selling. I have proof because I made a note of every sale we made in my notebook, scribbling the amounts next to my poems. It became a kind of ledger of lust. We stopped at gift stores in Erie ($120 (just morphos)), Conneaut (‘real pretty but no thanks’), a floral emporium in Cleveland ($350 and guaranteed re-order and a spectacular misquote of Winston Churchill). Joe sold in Toledo and Fort Wayne and I did $500 worth in Remington and Peoria, Indiana, after which Joe and I bought suits at J. C. Penney’s and ties to match the colour of our favourite butterflies. Joe insisted that every leppar had to have a favourite, even if it changed. It was helpful, too, when it came to the collectors. A collector’s favourite butterfly was usually the one they didn’t have. I chose the emerald swallowtail and Joe picked out a spotted bow tie he said captured the markings and colours of his current favourite (he revised it monthly), the tailed jay.

  I overcame my inhibitions about making things up, taking a leaf out of Joe’s book (and everyone else’s) and saying whatever I needed to win the sale. How lovely it was to leap into the liberating air of making things up and have my listeners hanging on and believing my every word; it was so much easier than following someone else’s script, and a spiel lacking facts was harder to dispute. Statistics could always be made to sound true as long as they were delivered with confidence: ‘Eighty-five per cent of our customers are likely to vote Republican’; ‘Sixty-seven per cent of women tend to go for the double cases’; ‘Indiana has the third highest amount of registered lepidopterists in the USA’. As a general rule, female staff seemed to prefer poetic, literary sounding quotes; male staff liked the reassuring, non-fictional truths of history or politics. My accent was a boon to both and in some stores I felt I could have said anything and I’d have sold something. And the further west we travelled – where my accent seemed more exotic – the more my powers of persuasion grew. On that trip we misquoted enough poets, politicians and prophets to rouse a quarrel of lawyers. Sometimes, Joe would be mid-pitch and then suddenly look at me and ask, ‘What was it that Abe Lincoln sa
id, Rip?’ And I would say something like, ‘ “The flutter of a butterfly’s wings stills the warring hearts of men.” ’ Or I would be halfway through my pitch and turn to Joe and ask, ‘Joe, who was it who said “better the brilliant blue of a spotted emperor than all the emperor’s clothes in China”? Was it Twain?’ ‘Nah. That was Confucius.’ We took enjoyment in making ever more outrageous claims for our products, as well as for ourselves. And if one of us floundered the other stepped in.

  By the time we crossed the state line into Iowa I had reached my secret sales target and Joe and I had grown into something of a double act, with Joe calling us the Flutter Brothers.

  At the state line Joe announced our arrival with a little speech about ‘the Hawkeye State’ and how it was ‘the very epitomacy’ of Small Town America. It was the bellwether state, and not just for elections. When J. C. Penney wanted to know if a product would roll out in the rest of the country, they tested it in Iowa: ‘You sell in Aiway, you sell in Americay.’ Just before noon we entered a town called Centerville. It had a name that does not lie. It felt like the middle of something, geographically, culturally, politically. The extremes were left and right but this was the very middle of middle. To get to its centre you drove past a reassuring litany of fast-food outlets and tractor dealerships, past gardens with swing-seats and wind chimes and the outsized American flags on poles lest you forget which country you were in. And churches. Lots of churches. Centerville didn’t look like a town where you’d expect to find trouble, unless you were the trouble.

  ‘Look at this town, Rip. The people who live here have achieved the very heaven of happiness as enshrined in our beloved constitution as being our fundamental right to pursue.’

  Joe didn’t really do sarcasm but this was sarcastic for him. The third element of the Declaration of Independence – mankind’s inalienable right to pursue happiness – was another of his ‘things’, along with a US citizen’s right to bear arms and the hijacking of the Gospel. He believed that the Declaration of Independence’s claim that the creator had given mankind certain inalienable rights – life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness – was hogwash.

  ‘Them first two sit well enough with the truth, Rip. But that third is without doubt a piece of Bad Theology on a level with a child being damned unless they are baptized, or saying the only people who get to heaven are the good folks who pitch up in a building for an hour every week, or that the only place you can locate the creator of the universe is in a piece of bread dispensed by a priest.’

  For my part, the inalienable right to pursue happiness seemed like a good idea and I was happy for any government to protect my ability to pursue said happiness. But Joe really saw it as a kind of institutionalized evil. ‘Is happiness what the creator made us for? Did the creator really make that a right? And how can a government protect such a right? That thinking has got a whole lot of people chasing happiness and complaining when someone – usually the government – doesn’t give it to them. It’s insane. And it gives birth to all kinds of evil children, like the American Dream, and self-help, and “if it feels good do it” philosophizing.’

  I am lazy when it comes to assessing other people’s politics. I see myself as being somewhere in the middle and that middle is intrinsically sane, good, liberal and has something to do with freedom (although when I think of freedom it’s more the kind you associate with pleasure than ethics). Because I saw Joe as ‘religious’ (a term he despised) I assumed him to be a certain political hue and colour. When I first met him I’d have pinned him to my right. I’d have said red, Republican, rednecked; fiercely defensive of individual liberty, the right to say what he wanted and go where he pleased; a gun carrier and a Christian of the pointing kind. And yet. And yet he really didn’t go along with that congregation. Not at all. He wasn’t even in the building. He confounded my ‘typing’ from the very first day and continued to confound it. He, like me, cared little for politics; but unlike me it wasn’t out of lazy indifference but from a deeper conviction about what or who was really running the world, let alone the country.

  All was well when we parked up in the centre of Centerville in a vast square with blocks of stores either side.

  We headed for a florist in the middle of the square. We’d hardly got across the threshold when the woman at the counter pointed straight past us to the door.

  ‘Excuse me, sir. But you can see the sign.’

  ‘No, ma’am. I did not. Which sign?’

  ‘ “No hawking.” I don’t know what wares you got in that box but you can’t come in here with them. We are not that kind of town.’

  ‘Well, I don’t know about hawking, ma’am. But I’m a salesman. That’s how I earn my living. Selling the trinkets of God’s creation. It’s how you earn your living, too, I suspect.’

  ‘Salesmen are welcome. But not hawkers.’

  ‘Ma’am, I’m not rightly sure there’s a difference. I know that a hawker is someone who travels around selling goods, typically advertising them by shouting, but as you can see I am just talking calmly here.’

  ‘Sir. You must leave.’

  ‘Ma’am, it’s a sorry day when a man can’t show his wares to another and get a fair hearing. I mean we’re all salespeople here. After all, you say to a customer: “Ma’am, could I interest you in these azaleas? Sir, there’s some weed killer here that is just perfect for the roses.” Is that so different to what is happening here? Let me just show you.’

  Joe put the sample box on the counter and took out a couple of cases to make the pyramid.

  The woman reached down and pressed something behind the counter. Agitated, Joe launched in.

  ‘All of nature’s trading, ma’am, so why can’t we? Flowers and butterflies have a business relationship. Butterflies need the energy in the nectar that a flower produces to attract pollinators. When flowers trade with butterflies, they want a smart business partner. We are in the same business here: the business of taking nature and re-packaging it for people who crave a little beauty in their lives.’

  ‘Have you quite finished, sir?’

  ‘Oh no. I am only just getting started.’

  ‘We make it very clear we don’t sell to just anyone off the street.’

  ‘But how else could I get in here other than off the street?’

  ‘Sir, I don’t like your tone. You are being aggressive with us. Unless you leave I will be forced to call the sheriff.’

  ‘Ma’am, I am in no way being aggressive, here.’

  In fairness Joe was not being aggressive but if you were this woman, without the benefit of knowing what Joe was like, without the benefit of having seen his gentler side, the hidden kindnesses and acts of spontaneous charity, you’d think him at best a fool and at worst a crazy dangerous fool. Joe was determined to put this woman straight even though it was clear she would not be bent from her position by him or anyone.

  A man entered the store from the back. ‘Is there a problem here, Betsy?’

  ‘These gentlemen are hawkers, Mr Dean.’

  Joe put his hands in the air, an unusual gesture of conciliation for him. ‘We are just honest to goodness salesmen, sir. Doing what it is our right to do. Did not our own great president Lincoln say, “Deny a man the right to sell and you deny him the air to breathe”?’ Joe looked at me for confirmation.

  ‘I believe he did,’ I said.

  ‘I couldn’t say whether Mr Lincoln said that or not, sir,’ the man said. ‘But you can’t sell without making an appointment.’

  ‘OK. Can I make an appointment?’

  ‘Not like this, sir. I’d appreciate it if you and your friend left the store or I will have to call the sheriff.’

  ‘Well, I don’t think we can do that,’ Joe said.

  The man picked up the phone and started to dial. I thought I should rescue the situation. Or at least rescue Joe from himself and, by extension, myself.

  ‘Joe? Sir. Ma’am. It’s all right. My friend – my assistant is very passionate about our
product and keen for you to see it but there’s no need to call the police. Joe? Shall we leave? Respect their view? I am sure they have their rules for a reason. When in Rome?’

  The man paused with his fingers over the black clickers of the telephone, willing to call it truce. But Joe didn’t seem to hear me. Despite the futility of the cause, he continued with his soliloquy (for that is what it had become). ‘People all over this country have been purchasing our butterfly cases, from Pough-keepsie to Buffalo. As I stand here now speaking J. C. Penney’s are considering whether to invite us to pitch our product. But it seems I have driven into a part of America that is not America but a little country within it where freedom is unimportant. Where protection trumps liberty.’

  ‘For the last time, I am asking you to leave, sir. I am calling the sheriff now.’

  ‘I think you should know that you are making a judgement that condemns you in your own prejudicing.’

  ‘Hello? Is that the sheriff’s office?’

  ‘I want to give you a chance to redeem yourself.’

  ‘We have a disturbance.’

  ‘Joe! Can we leave it?’

  ‘No, Rip. This word hawker is made up by people who want to look down on the poor. Who think they are superior in some way. It’s the poor who have to get out there and shout loud to be heard among all the powerful selling that is going on in this land.’

  ‘Yes. Hello, this is Pat Dean from Floral Heaven. We are having some trouble.’

  ‘Sir?’ I stepped in front of Joe now. ‘Please. We will leave. Joe?’ I put the cases back in the case and snapped it shut. I cleared my throat, trying to make my intentions clear to Joe. But he was riled in a way I hadn’t seen before. Was this about the definition of a word? Or was it – as Clay had hinted – he could not handle a man asserting authority?

  ‘I understand that you work in a store in a town that thinks it’s better than the rest of America. That probably looks down on the poor white people that live out there in the Appalachia where I myself come from. I understand that you may not have thought about what the rest of us might consider beautiful. But mark this. One day you will think of the day you turned down the possibility of selling a product that brings joy to many thousands of Americans, from gentlemen who will soon be running one of America’s fastest growing . . .’