When The Butterflies Come

by Rosemary Ness Bitner

  “Haven’t you ever even considered trying it, just once? It can really be beautiful.” David wasn’t giving up easily.

  “No. I’ve never tried it, I’ve never thought about trying it, I don’t even want to think about trying it, and I really want to stop talking about it. Okay? Look, David, there are probably a lot of men out there who would like to be your lover. I’ll bet even a few of them you have in the office right now would happily be your lover if you asked, don’t you think?” Bob gave David a knowing look.

  “They’re not the same as you. They’re not smart. They just get what they can from me. They use me.” David’s face was sad, the model of rejection.

  “Well, that’s something you need to work out with them. You always said you were going to handle the office, so I’m sure you can handle it if you set your mind to it. Now let’s get some sleep and get out there tomorrow and whack us a couple antelope. That’s what we came here for, wasn’t it?”

  With that, Bob turned over to go back to sleep, leaving David sitting there holding his penis and nursing hurt feelings.

  The early fall sun beat down hot and harsh on Wyoming’s high prairies. There was a light wind the next day, a little stronger than the previous day’s. It would be only a few more days before a brisk steady wind would suck out the residual scant moisture that clung to the soil after the hot dry summer. Those last vestiges of wetness were rising skyward into the high Wyoming blue and becoming wisps of cirrus that would race away to Nebraska. The ground was already caked and blistered. Trails made by man and animal were rock-strewn dust paths on the omnipresent talcum gray grit. On some few mornings as this one, a hint of dew kissed the leaves of sage and clung to the shrubs’ blue buds and dark grease-gray brambles. The antelope were pocketed in small herds close to what water they could find, with the finest animals commanding the best watering holes.

  Morning came for the fearless hunters from Plaintown, but they figured there was no point getting an early start. It was more important to eat a hearty breakfast, as strength would be needed to steady their rifles and stamina demanded to dress their kills. They wolfed down bacon and eggs, letting their Jewish taboos about not eating pork take a holiday because of the dire necessity of the hunt. They ignored the Jewish aversion to hunting, so they figured they might as well capitulate to goyim food as well. They packed pancakes drowned in maple syrup and hash browns drenched in Tabasco into their tummies. To properly fortify themselves and screw up their manly courage to face the wild beasts of the plains, they each had two shots of whiskey before they headed out, telling themselves the local antelope were in for a heap of trouble.

  Back on the gritty dust trail, passing the wrecked trailer, Bob’s mood was upbeat and anticipatory. He tried to crack some antelope and jackalope jokes, but David’s mood was dour and sullen as he rode shotgun while Bob drove. David barely spoke. He wasn’t having fun and he determined, while bouncing and bumping along over the dusty trail road, that he wasn’t going to let Bob have any fun either.

  When they arrived below the little rise atop of which one could glance at the entire basin, the duo stepped out of the Jeep and climbed the hill. The sun had already risen enough to evaporate the dew. Images in the distance appeared through the binoculars to waver and shimmer in the midmorning heat. Through their binoculars, there appeared to be a herd of antelope off in the distance, gathered around a small lake at the lowest part of an immense topographical basin. The hunters reckoned their quarry was about five miles away. The antelope were gathered around a small lake at the lowest part of an immense topographical basin. There were jutted rocks on a steep hill behind them, and the hilly terrain reached down in a wide arc like a pair of arms reaching almost all the way across the basin. The hunters reckoned their quarry was about five miles away.

  David spoke first. “I think we’re in luck. It looks like we’ve got them trapped right there against those rocks. I know something about antelope. They like to run on the flat prairie, so they’re not going to want to run up into those rocks. The only way they can get out of there is to come out onto the prairie, to run straight at us. So here’s what we’ll do. I’ll drive while you chamber a round and roll your window down. Now don’t let your rifle barrel be seen aimed out the window because they’ll see the glint of the sun on the metal and they’ll know we’re after them. Keep the rifle in front of you with the butt end on the floor of the Jeep and the barrel pointed up to the roof. Got it?”

  “Got it.”

  “Okay. We’ll start off slowly toward them so they won’t notice what we’re doing. If they look at us, we’ll stop for a minute before we drive forward some more. When we get close enough, I’ll gun the car and we’ll run straight at them. They’ll have to come running straight at us to get out of there. When one runs by the side of the Jeep on your side, you shoot it.”

  Bob was visualizing a head-on cavalry charge between a Jeep going fifty miles per hour in one direction toward the antelope herd running fifty miles per hour in the opposite direction.

  “Don’t you think it might be hard to get a bead on one of them? We’ll be bouncing all over the place, the antelope will be jumping and running, and our relative speed will be a hundred miles per hour.”

  “You can’t obsess over details at a time like this. The antelope are right there in front of us. They’re trapped! They can’t get away. We may never get another chance like this in our lifetimes. Details have a way of working themselves out anyway. Maybe one of them will accidentally run into the Jeep and we won’t even have to shoot it, or maybe one will break a leg near you and it’ll be an easy shot. Just go with the program and get ready for a shot, okay?”

  “Okay.”

  The old buck antelope knew it was hunting season again. The day before, he’d heard some shots in the distance and figured the hunters would soon be coming to his basin pond looking to take one or two of his herd. The rancher only allowed one or two hunters on his property each year. The old buck figured that out years back because there were always only one or two hunters. They always hunted together, or nearly together, so once he located them and understood their tactical plan, he easily outsmarted them. The hunters only killed one or two of his herd every fourth year. The old buck liked his odds.

  This year started off curiously for the herd master buck. The day before, he’d heard a terrible racket of metal being ripped apart by rock. This was a tactic he’d never encountered before, so his senses were on high alert. He and his females could see the two hunters five miles away when they crawled up on the far hillside to peer at his herd with their binoculars. He’d seen hunters do that before. That usually meant they’d be sneaking around to the north or south, keeping themselves invisible by staying low to the ground and slipping between the rocks. He probably had a good two hours while the hunters stalked his herd. He would watch north and south for their telltale signs.

  Some sparrows or a magpie would flush up unnaturally, or he’d catch a glimpse of the shiny orange vests they wore. Maybe a ground squirrel would be disturbed and it would scamper up on a rock and bark at them, or it could be a prairie dog. It didn’t matter how quiet they were or how long they took; he would know exactly where they were, where they were headed, and how much longer he had before he moved the herd. He was an old hand at this game and was much smarter than the best of the hunters.

  What the old buck saw next positively amazed him. There was a Jeep driving straight toward his herd. The buck knew the hunters never shot from their vehicles, so he wasn’t quite sure what this Jeep was trying to do. Then it stopped. The buck looked carefully. It was about three miles way now, still out of rifle range. The buck looked for signs of the hunters. They were still in the Jeep, and no other hunters were near it. Then he saw a tiny reflection coming from inside the Jeep. The bolt of the rifle carried by the man in the passenger seat caught a glint of the sun’s rays as the passenger moved it ever so slightly. The old buck realized they were going to illegally hunt his herd from their vehicle
.

  This required an innovative strategy. The buck sent his leading female off to the north with the herd. She led the others close to the rocks along the down slope. They knew enough to run straight up the rocks and over the top of the ridge if the Jeep came toward them.

  The old buck devised a plan. If the animal had been a human chess player, he would have been a master. About a half mile due south of the basin pond ran an arroyo about twenty feet deep from its prairie level top to its bottom. The trail through the washout was strewn with rocks on its sides and floor, deposited there by centuries of flash floods from downpours. The rocks were foreboding silent sentinels that thwarted the arroyo’s passage from all but the nimblest creatures. The old buck didn’t like going in there, for he handicapped his greatest advantage by doing so—he could only see for a few feet ahead instead of for miles. But this was war between man and beast, and he was not one to play by conventional rules. Over the years he’d seen dust fly up near his hoofs from the whining rifle bullets. He’d heard the bullets zing past his head and watched their lethal effect upon his does and his offspring. He didn’t know how to be angry or to hate, but he knew something about the men who did.

  The arroyo was a topographical barrier between the basin pond and the open prairie, a feature the old buck used to his advantage when he needed it, as he did now. If the hunters were going to play dirty, so would he. He followed along behind the herd for a while, and when he was behind some field boulders he broke off and crawled on his belly with his head low until he was out onto the flat, unseen by the hunters. He slipped down into the arroyo, then ran along its bottom channel until he figured he’d be directly in front of the men. He heard their Jeep approaching, moving faster now because the hunters saw the herd moving. When he was certain they were less than a half mile from him, the old buck sprang into action. Up out of the arroyo he bounded, standing in the open. He was the most magnificent specimen on the prairie. Many a hunter coveted his rack and visualized his head upon their trophy room wall. He stood proudly in front of the Jeep a mere half mile distant, but beyond the left front driver’s side. The passenger shooter had no shot.

  “There’s a real big one!” screamed David. “It looks like we’ve got the herd buck. Let’s get that one!” He turned the Jeep toward the old buck and floored the accelerator. The buck just stood there, frozen as if he didn’t know what to do. At about four hundred yards, the buck took off running in a sprint toward the east, running parallel to the top of the arroyo. In the space of two seconds, the buck went from standing still to a fifty-mile-an-hour blur of white, brown and gray. David turned right, giving chase at full speed. The buck slowed slightly, allowing the Jeep to close some. “He’s slowing down. He’s confused!” shouted David. “Get ready for your shot.” The buck let the Jeep come still closer.

  The Jeep was now going fifty miles per hour on open prairie, bouncing over rocks and clumps of cheat grass, crushing sagebrush as it flew over the ground. At a perfectly timed moment, divined by the gods of antelopes, and in their innate genius to use relative movement to their advantage, the old buck turned again slightly. It was the antelope move to go down in the history of all antelope moves. It was the move that grown men marveled over as they drank their whiskey by their campfires and extoled the genius of this magnificent fleet-footed creature that outran the wind.

  The old buck veered right, a quick jaunt to the south, now running hard, flat-out toward the open area. There was a blur of brown and white muscles flexing full power, propelling flying hoofs to stretch over open prairie. First the outreaching front hoofs touched earth; then, just as the front hooves touched down, the muscular rump gathered up the back legs underneath the buck’s chest and thrust them back in a bounding, graceful motion, propelling the buck forward. The buck’s dodge move succeeded. David careened the Jeep toward the antelope but before he could ascertain the landscape, it was too late. The Jeep was headed straight toward a blackish-purple rock outcrop on an otherwise open plain. Rocks grew on Wyoming’s prairie surface like dandelions grew on suburban lawns, and there were several dead ahead.

  “Stop! Rocks! Turn!” screamed Bob, but it was all too late. Maybe David could have turned the wheel and avoided the rocks. Maybe he was just too slow, or maybe he just didn’t care. The Jeep hit those rocks going fifty miles per hour. There was a sickening sound of metal crashing and grinding on rock as sparks flew from the basalts and granite in the hardened, unmovable jumble. The body of the Jeep tried valiantly to rush onward without its undercarriage as the vehicle engaged the unmovable mass of unyielding, unsympathetic rock. The Jeep’s axles, transmission, drive shaft, oil pan, and assorted parts accessory to the engine were all left behind on the rocks. The frame welds snapped and the body shuddered as it ground itself into the dirt. Then came the ominous hissing sounds, followed by the flames. The fuel tank ruptured and the Jeep was burning. The two hunters scrambled from their wreck and ran for their lives.

  The vehicle didn’t explode, just burned quietly. Jeeps are made to serve the stupidest hunters in the world, to the very end of the vehicles’ lives, even while they are going up in flames. That’s why hunters swear by them.

  Once he heard the Jeep hit the rocks, the old buck slipped back down into the arroyo. He ran along its bottom, back in the direction from which he’d first entered the formation. He knew to stay invisible to hunters between his appearances. He trotted out on the far bank about a mile and a half away, when he knew he was out of their rifle range, and then turned back to peruse his handiwork. Two men stood off about twenty yards from a flaming wreck. They were staring at the wreck and no longer paying attention to him.

  No one could say for sure what that old buck was thinking about that day. Was the whole Jeep chase something he’d planned? Did he know the outcome before he entered the arroyo in the first place, or did he improvise as the chase moved along? The two hunters finally turned and looked at him from afar. Across the divide of distance, species, and evolution, the two antagonists stared at each other for a moment to memorialize their encounter. The old buck turned away from them and loped off to join his females. The hunters could only wonder what that old goat was capable of as they watched him slip away.

  “Let’s go back to town and get somebody to come out here to clean up this mess,” David said. “I’ll give you some money to make up for the Jeep. I just didn’t see the rocks in time,” he fibbed.

  Bob kept his mouth shut about David’s driving, but he was seething inside. The hunt didn’t need to be the fiasco it’d turned out to be. He couldn’t help but wonder if David, when the opportunity was there, decided to punish him for not being a homosexual. If that were true, there was a side of David’s personality he was seeing for the first time, and it was chilling. Barbara had given him fair warning. The man could be a monster, a duplicitous schemer, and a vengeful bully child in a man’s body when he couldn’t have his way with other people.

  Bob was relieved to be on the ground with his life back under his own control. It felt good to walk. As they walked along on the sun-parched prairie, their plodding steps stirring the alkaline gray grit powder, Bob wondered if his entire relationship with David was based upon an elaborate trap by a terribly desperate and lonely man who was in a deep human need for a homosexual companion, a steady love interest who had a brain.

  Was Bob just the mark in some elaborate sick game? Were the fishing trips all a pretense to bait a relationship? Did David deliberately fail to secure the stairs? David knew there were rock walls on the trail; he’d mentioned it on the drive up from Plaintown. The only significant difference between the trailer and the motel room was the motel had running water. The trailer had limited water. David needed frequent showers. Could it possibly be that David went to all this trouble just to make a pathetic advance on him? The mind can go into paranoia at times. It must be doing that now. There was no way David could have known the motel would have one room available, unless he’d reserved it in advance. That would be confidential betw
een David and the motel owner.

  Bob willed his mind to climb off its hamster wheel. Regardless of David’s personal turmoil, they had their agreement and Bob was performing his part. The agreement was separate from the personal, and David would never break a deal. Despite his personal difficulty, the man was honorable. Their mutual loyalty to each other and the firm was very strong. Besides, after working for the firm for eight years and taking a terrible drop in income, Bob could see his best choice of action was to keep his part of their deal and see it through to the end, until David died.

  He felt sorry for David and wanted to be a good friend to him, but he just couldn’t become a homosexual. He wasn’t wired that way, and the thought of behaving against his natural heterosexual attraction to women repulsed him. As he and David walked past the wrecked trailer wedged between the rock boulders, two doe antelope stood off about a hundred yards from the trail. They alternated, first one standing there chewing its mouthful while watching the hunters as the other one grazed on cheat grass and sage and then switching.

  The four antelope eyes weren’t the only ones that tracked the movements of the hunters. The excitement of the hunt and the Jeep crash caught the attention of a fully matured male half-breed lobo. His yellow eyes watched the old buck’s movements and the antics of the hunters with the thought that he would learn some lessons for his hunts. He attentively watched every detail of the old buck’s movements before his olfactory senses told him this hunt offered more than he saw.