James Cain - The Butterfly

We stayed for two days in a little Gilroy hotel, and all that time I kept wondering what we were going to say when we got home. She must have been doing some thinking too, because on the way back she said:

“Jess, we’re keeping this quiet.”

“You mean that we’re married?”

“All right, we got drunk and meant it for a joke and didn’t know what we were doing anyway. At least, we can tell that to a judge if we ever have to, and maybe he’ll believe us. But I don’t know any way to tell it to Jane, and I love her.”

“We going to see each other?”

“I’ll have to think about that.”

“I can’t do without you.”

“We’ll see.”

When we got home I acted like I’d been away looking for her all that time, and Jane was so glad to see her she didn’t even think whether it sounded fishy or not. She kissed me, and was glad to see me all right, but all she thought about was Kady, and how good Kady was going to feel at the nice way she’d kept Danny, and she took Danny in her arms, and talked to him, and listened to him now he practiced up some more words he had learned, or thought he had learned, though what they were was more than I could figure out myself. But that night, after I’d finished up all the work Jane had been doing the two days I’d left everything to her, and had gone to bed in my bunk down in the stable, the door opened and there was Kady, in her nightgown.

“Jess?”

“Come in, Kady.”

“I made out I couldn’t sleep.”

I flipped back the blanket for her to come in with me, but she shook her head and sat on the edge of the bunk looking out the window over my head. After a while she said:

“Jess, what am I going to do about Danny?”

“You could eat him. He’s sweet enough.”

“I don’t want to be around him.”

“You ought to make up your mind.”

“It’s not like it was before. I hated him then. Now I see how cute he is, and understand why you’re so crazy about him, and Jane is, and — why I was, for a little while. But I can’t help it. I’ve got something in me. Every time I look at him I see Wash, and I can’t forget what Wash did to me. I don’t want to be around him.”

“He’s not Wash.”

“I know it. I’m so ashamed.”

“He’s just a sweet, friendly little boy that’s laughing at you all the time and sticking out his hand to touch your face and showing you how good he can kick and you ought to be thankful all day long that you’ve got him.”

“I ought to, but I’m not.”

What she did about him was try to swallow down how she felt, and play with him, and help Jane take care of him, and drink. She told Jane it was Coca-Cola, but all the time she was spiking it with the stuff we had made, that was hidden all over the place, and when she had a load of it she’d get a look in her eye, and I would almost explode from wanting her. Every night she’d slip down to me, and bring me some stuff, and we’d drink it together, and there was no end to how much we wanted each other. But Jane would get worried, and go out looking for her, and once she almost caught us, and that meant we had to do something. “Jess, we’ve got to have a hide-out.”

“Yeah, but where?”

“Have you forgotten our mine?”

Now the mine, after what I’d done with Moke, was about the last place on earth I wanted to be. “I thought we were done with all that stuff.”

“What stuff? We don’t have to run the still.”

“It’ll be there just the same.”

“It doesn’t have to be. I can take it down and put it away if that’s all that’s bothering you. But it’s secret. It’s like we used to say. Anything in the world could be happening up there and nobody would ever know.”

“You used to say it.”

“And you used to think it.”

She would borrow the truck after that and pretend she was going to Carbon City for stuff that we needed, and maybe she did go, I don’t know. But one of those times I had a look around, and found it parked in a place that could only mean she had gone up the mountain. And then one day she came out to where Jane and I were giving Danny his lunch with a basket on her arm. “Want to carry this for me, Jess, while I get some of those grapes up there in the woods, so we can have us some jelly?”

“You lost an arm or something?”

“It takes two hands for grapes.”

“I never noticed it.”

“First you got to find them, then you got to lift the vine up, where it hangs down over them, and then you got to cut the bunches off with a knife, so you don’t mash them up trying to break them. And I want company. Wild grapes take a long time.”

“Go along with her, Jess.”

So we went, up the same old path, her a little ahead, humming a little, in between catching her breath. When we got to the timbered drift she went past it, then stopped.

“Would you like to see the little nook I’ve made in there?”

“Some other time, maybe.”

“Not now? You sure?”

She half closed her eyes, and I don’t know which was worse, the way my stomach was fluttering over Moke, or the way my heart was pounding over her.

“It’ll only take a minute. Come on.”

We went in, and got lamps out of the tool chest, and got as far as the entry where I’d buried Moke. “This old tunnel caved in since we were here, but that blocked the draft that used to blow through it, so of course that makes it a nice place to sit and pass the time.”

In the tunnel mouth she had hung some candlewick quilts like they sell on the way to town, and had fixed a seat. “But of course we can’t have carbide, not romantic people like us.”

Near the seat was a galvanized iron can we had used for water, with holes knocked in the bottom, and she held her lamp to one of them. It began to burn inside, and I saw it was half full of charcoal. “And with that good old Tyler corn and Coca-Cola, I thought we might cook ourselves something to eat.”

She lifted the cover of the basket, and inside was a picked chicken. By then I wouldn’t have left there if Moke had come right through the rock at me, so while she chased outside to grab some grapes quick, I went to the shaft mouth to grab some Coca-Cola we always kept in the spring water, and some corn. I was trembling so bad I never noticed that all the smell was gone, where she had emptied all that mash out, and put things in apple-pie order. I came back with the bottles, then went to the tool chest for a miner’s needle, that I cleaned in the fire and ran through the chicken. I was almost done broiling it, trying not to think of her, when I jumped at the sound of music.

It was the radio, and she came in swinging her hips, and red fire shining up in her face, and looking right straight at me. That was one dance she never finished.

One morning, couple of months after that, there came a rap on the door and when I went out there it was Ed Blue. He wanted to know if I had seen anything of his rifle. I had my own rifle in reach, and after all that had happened I wouldn’t have asked much to tell him to get the hell out and stay out or I’d plug him where he stood. But I thought I better see what he was up to. Because I knew where his rifle was all right. But at the same time I knew why he didn’t have it. The way things were between him and Moke, Moke wouldn’t have taken his rifle without him knowing it. And the way things were between me and Moke, Ed couldn’t have helped knowing what Moke figured to do with it, even if Moke had said nothing about it, which wouldn’t be like Moke. So when he began talking, I thought he was pretending rifle, but he really meant Moke. But after a while I saw that it was really his rifle he was after, and as well as I could tell, he had thought about it since Moke left him, and put it together something like this: Moke hadn’t killed me, so something must have gone wrong with it. I hadn’t killed Moke, or so far as he knew I hadn’t, so what had happened? He probably said to himself, I’d run into Moke and maybe run him off the creek. But if I had I certainly wasn’t letting Moke keep the gun. So why not come around, ask me about it, and watch my eyes?