One thing you should know is that I think I might have found a wife. As I am writing this, Amelia is sitting next to me. She is not only skilful and pretty but entomologically minded, Rip. Her favourite lep is the same as mine (currently the chocolate albatross). You think maybe the Lord put me through all that just to help me find a wife? Didn’t I say she gotta be 5 feet 8 at least, maybe a hundred thirty pounds; she gotta have no intention of settling down, and have Good Theology. She blushed when I told her what I was writing just now which I will take as a yes. I been teaching her about the five faunistic regions. The life stages and the classifications.
Don’t feel disappointed I didn’t get to make a reunion with my father. Some things can’t happen this side of heaven. Of course I always wondered what he might be like and I knew Ma was putting a bad spin on it. But I also knew she weren’t lying. She was protecting us. I don’t say what Ma did is right – back then or now – but I understand it. In her clogs, I think I might have done the same. You were hoping he’d have changed from what he had been and I have commendation for you thinking that way – that is uncynicalistic for a European like you, to believe a person can change. Don’t give up on that notion. Although remember that when St Francis converted the wolf the wolf was still a wolf. My father was still the same Wolff!
There is a funny side to all this. In truth I split my melon thinking on it. Not out of being cruel, but on account of you getting more than you paid for! But I am trusting that you will be true to that promise that you would write the story of our adventuring and I know that it will be better for having met me. I almost cry with laughing when I think of you having never met me and writing the kind of book you said you were thinking of writing. A book full of things that will impress folk who don’t never get out into sunlight and mountains. Make sure this book contains all the things I said. America and lepping and the search for True Freedom, which I think you got some qualifications for now. Write it in full-fat Panavision!
This isn’t the end of the story, Rip. You and I both know that. I don’t feel our butterflying days are over. That’s a little flame you should keep burning. Don’t let the winds of trouble blow it out, Rip! There! Is that one of your epic similarities? I know you like a metaphor like some people like junk food. So here’s another one for you. Remember that life is an apple and you have to bite it to the core, not peel it and cut it up into slices!
I had a dream the other night and you know I don’t go in for dreams. I had this visitation. I am not joking about this. Fear not! This visitation involved no particular message and there’s nothing to add to what the Lord’s already said on almost everything that needs to be said. But he came to me as a blue morpho. He told me that my task in life was to help the last, the lost, the least and the looked over, and get people to see the joy and the wonder of living. I said count me in. And then he was gone. It was so real, Rip. Realer than life itself. When I woke up I thought, am I going crazy? Is this another bogus angel founding a religion? You gotta test the spirits, see. You gotta discern. I’m going to have to weigh it up, but I’m leaning t’ward it being the Almighty.
Things work out, Rip. Life is too full up of joys and wonders to give up on it. One thing you can count on: the seasons will change, eggs will hatch, small caterpillars will grow into big ones and pupate and then the butterfly will emerge and dry its wings and then, pretty soon, it will make its first flight. People say happy endings are for the fools and the crazies. Then I’m with the fools and the crazies. This story ain’t done yet and no matter what happens in between, it will end well.
Joe
I was so stunned it took me a while to get to the end of this letter. Joe on the page was no substitute for Joe in the room – damn him, he was right about that! – but his words were all I had. I read the letter several times, a bit like a lover trying to capture the essence of the sender; I read the lines and the lines between and the words and the gaps between the words, trying to conjure Joe’s presence. When finally I stopped reading it I felt an aching for its author’s company.
Three days later, I took my swimmers and my Classic American Stories with me up to the Kaaterskill Falls for one last dip in the still icy waters and to finish the story of Rip Van Winkle. Thanks to Mary’s bibliokleptomania, I’d never managed to finish it and the completist in me needed to put a full stop to my American adventuring. The day was overcast but warm enough for a Brit to think about a swim. Perhaps I would un-baptize myself in the waters while I was there, shed that skin and officially return to being Llewellyn Jones, leave Rip’s grave clothes floating at the foot of the falls. I arrived at the waterfall as the sun broke through the cloud cover. The waters were full – fuller than the year before – from the heavy snows that, thanks to my incarceration, I had missed completely. Everything was as I remember it. Less the naiad in the water; less the colossus on the rock. I saw the empty ledge where I had been lying that day Joe had first appeared and I went and sat there with my book. The sun was almost at the point in its orbit where Joe had blocked it out. I started to read the story of Rip Van Winkle again, from the point where Rip wakes up, but I couldn’t focus on the words. After several times of trying I gave up. I realized that I didn’t want to finish Rip’s story because I didn’t want to finish my story, so I set the book down and left my namesake lying asleep near the cold waters beside the Kaaterskill Falls. And a profound sleepiness then came upon me and I laid my head on the rock, eyes nearly closed but with lashes touching to allow a little vision, letting the sun warm my face to the point of burning. I lay there indulging a nostalgia. I won’t lie, I was hoping for a sign, willing a butterfly to flutter by, as one had done that day I first met Joe; but no butterfly came and the lack of a sign brought on that sad-sweet melancholy for what was not and what was, and as I gave in to this feeling the tears began to flow like the winter melt waters of the Catskill River. It was good to let go and I lay there blinking, creating multiple suns in the refractions of my tears, listening to the hissing rush of the fat falls, imaging Joe turning up with that marvellous expression that contained wonder, gratitude and the promise of new adventures. And then, just as I pictured him, I detected a vibration in the understorey and thought I could hear, rising above the abundant music of water, the sound of a man singing to himself and laughing at the world.
Acknowledgements
I wrote this novel all by myself; but I couldn’t have done it without the inspiration, encouragement and agency of some special people:
Joseph Simcox, who once offered me a job selling butterflies and promised me I’d see America.
Adam Leyland, who agreed to ride shotgun and let me drive even though I had no licence.
Harry Armfield, who encouraged me to write this book and helped plot its route as we walked around Richmond Park.
The two Steves – ‘Silent’ Steve Matthews and Steve Robinson – for letting me run bad ideas by them at inconvenient moments.
My agent – Caroline Wood – for backing my decision to write a book that was a little bit different to my last.
My editor Kris Doyle and publisher Paul Baggaley for taking the book on when still in chrysalis stage and having faith it might hatch and take flight.
David Kosse for being involved in and connected to this story from egg through to imago. And maybe to another ‘stage’.
My son Gabriel and daughter Agnes for putting up with me staring into space during dinner and offering elegant solutions to conundrums.
My wife, Nicola. Words don’t cut it really.
The Author Of All Things.
The Killing of Butterfly Joe
RHIDIAN BROOK is an award-winning writer of fiction. His first novel, The Testimony of Taliesin Jones, won several prizes including the Somerset Maugham Award. His third, The Aftermath, was an international bestseller and has been translated into twenty-five languages; it has also been made into a major motion picture.
He has written for television and the screen and is a regular contributor to BBC
Radio 4’s ‘Thought for the Day’. He once had a job selling butterflies in glass cases.
ALSO BY RHIDIAN BROOK
Fiction
The Aftermath
Jesus and the Adman
The Testimony of Taliesin Jones
Non-fiction
More Than Eyes Can See
First published 2018 by Picador
This electronic edition published 2018 by Picador
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ISBN 978-1-5098-1617-0
Copyright © Rhidian Brook 2018
Design: Melissa Four, Pan Macmillan Art Department
The right of Rhidian Brook to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
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