James Cain - The Butterfly

“That’s his birthmark.”

“I thought it was some kind of a moth.”

“It’s his butterfly.”

“It almost scared me to death.”

They went in the back room with him again, but I called Ka out. “I take it back, everything I said. He’s so sweet I could eat him.”

“But if you’d rather I went—”

“I couldn’t stand it if you did.”

“I can understand how you feel.”

“But I don’t! Not any more. It’s all gone, the devilment that’s been in me, and the onriness, and all what I’ve been thinking about. I want you to be happy. And if the boy wants to marry you, he’s not any rat, and I want you to have him.”

“I’m so glad, Jess.”

“Me too.”

“I want to be your little girl.”

“And I want to be your pappy.”

“Kiss me.”

I kissed her, and she kissed me back, and it wasn’t like those hot kisses we’d been having, but cool and sweet like the kiss Danny gave me just before they took him away.

Why she couldn’t go to Blount right away she didn’t tell me till one day when all four of us were sitting out under the trees and I spotted a big car coming up the creek from the state road. Then she owned up she had wired the boy, and yet she wasn’t going back till he came and got her. So she and Jane ran in the house with Danny to get slicked up and in another minute there he was, kind of a tall, dark boy in slacks and blue shirt. He didn’t put on any airs with me at all, but shook hands quick, and went around the cabin looking at it, and said it was just like the one his uncle had on Paint Creek, where he used to spend part of every summer. So then it turned out his father had got himself a mine, but his family were mountain people, like us. So that went with his bony look, and made me feel still better about him. Then when Kady came out and he took her in his arms, I had to begin fooling around with my shoe for fear they’d see the tears in my eyes. Then when he saw Danny for the first time in his life, in Jane’s arms laughing and trying to talk as she brought him out, he went over and bent over and looked and bent down and called him old-timer and shook hands just like it was somebody he was being introduced to and could say something. Then he tried to brush off the butterfly, just like I had, and we all laughed and had some Coca-Cola and were friendly. But when they went in to get supper he said he’d have to leave for a little while. “If you’re going back to town, I’ll ride along with you. There’s some things I ought to get.”

“I’m going up the creek.”

“There’s nothing up the creek.”

“There’s a heel named Moke Blue.”

“You know Moke?”

“I’ve seen him and I guess I’ve spoken to him, but I’ve never shaken his hand and until I got Kady’s wire I never even thought about him. I’m thinking about him now, though. And I’m putting him in jail for kidnapping my boy.”

“You’re taking him in, yourself?”

“That’s it, Jess.”

“I’ll go with you.”

“You mean we’ll do it together?”

“Soon as I get my rifle.”

“I won’t need it.”

“How you know?”

“He’s got no gun, I’m sure of it.”

“He could get one, and anyway, all he’d have to do is holler and about eighteen brothers and in-laws and cousins would be there, and at least half of them have guns.”

“If we bring a gun, Jess, I’ll kill him.”

“Maybe we better not.”

We got in his car and rode up as far as the church, then got out and walked up the hollow to the end of the path, then followed the gully up to Moke’s shack. Nobody was in it, and except for some beans in one corner that didn’t prove much, there was no way to tell if anybody had been there for the last two or three days, or had just stepped out and would be right back, or was up the hollow or down the creek. But while we were whispering about it he held up his hand and I looked. Through a cornfield, just below us, a boy was moving on tiptoe, toward the woods on the other side of the gully.

“You know him, Jess?”

“Birdie Blue. He’s Moke’s cousin.”

“He’s gone to tip him.”

“Then he’ll be back, to keep watch.”

“If we time him, we’ll know how far he went.”

He took out his watch, and we waited and I kept an eye on him, and the more I saw of him the better I liked him. He didn’t talk, but kept staring at the place the boy had to cross on his way back, and he had that mountain look in his eye that said if it took a week he’d still be staring, but he’d do what he came for. In a half hour the boy showed, and then all of a sudden Wash got up.

“We’re a pair of boneheads, Jess.”

“What we done now?”

“The banjo’s gone!”

“Well?”

“If he was in hell waiting to be fried he’d still have to pick the damned thing. Come on.”

There was no window in the back of the shack, but there was a loose log, and we pushed it out and crawled through. Then we crept up the gully, keeping the shack between us and the boy, where he was squatting in the bushes, keeping watch on my hat, that we left in the doorway to keep him interested. It was around sundown, and the mosquitoes were beginning to get lively, but we kept from batting them somehow, and pretty soon we came to a place where Wash stopped and looked around, and whispered if there was any sounds in the neighborhood, we’d catch most of them here, because sound travels upward. And sure enough, there were all sorts of things you could hear, from the creek going over the stones near the church to people talking in cabins and birds warbling before going to sleep. And then he grabbed my arm, and we listened, and there was the sound of the banjo. He stood up, and turned first one way, then the other way, then covered one ear, then the other ear, and in a minute he knew where it was coming from, and we crept over there. And when we got there it was a little stone well, with a frame over it and an iron wheel, and Moke was sitting on the rim, his head lopped over on one side, the banjo across his belly, plunking out sad chords that weren’t like the comical tunes he used to play, and looking so little he was more like some kind of a shriveled-up, gray-haired boy than what he was, a man. Wash crept around the well from behind him, grabbed him by the shirt collar, and jerked him over on the side, so he let out a little whimper. “What you doing to me? Wash, what are you doing here?”

“Didn’t the boy tell you I was here?”

“How would he know? He said Jess and a man.”

“I’m taking you to Carbon City.”

“What for?”

“Put you in jail. For what you did.”

I stepped out then and told him to shut up with his bawling and told Wash to cut it short with his talk. Because you pass three cabins on the way down, and four more up the mountainside that you can’t see but they see you, and if we ever gave them a chance to wake up to what was going on we might see something cutting the leaves. We hustled him down to the car and Wash drove and I sat on the outside. So when we got to my cabin, the table was set out under the trees with some candles on it and both Kady and Jane were looking down the creek to see what had become of us. Wash began talking to Kady. “Don’t wait for us. We’ll be back soon as we can after we get this thing booked, but don’t let the stuff get cold waiting for us.”

“Booked? What are you talking about?”

“Didn’t he kidnap our boy?”

“He didn’t mean any harm.”

“It could have cost Danny his life.”

“Wash, Moke is a friend of my mother’s, and she’s not well, and maybe she needs him. He’s not any more than half-witted anyhow, no matter what he did, so why can’t we forget it and go about our business instead of putting him in jail for the next five or ten years, where’s he’s not any good to anybody?”