James Cain - The Butterfly

I told him nothing, and he went off with a lot of talk about how he’s a peaceable man, and sure would hate it if somebody got hurt by a gun that belonged to him, and by ganny he hopes he don’t get sued. What anybody would get out of it if he did get sued he didn’t say. But a couple of nights later, when the girls had gone to a picture show and taken Danny with them, and I had taken a walk by the creek to think things over and figure out where I was at with my life if I was anywhere at all, I started back to the cabin, and from down the road a ways I saw a light inside. I crept up on it, and there in the front room, shooting the light all around, was Ed. After he finished looking there he went on back and shot the light at the girls’ clothes and under the bed. I waited till he was doing the same in the lean- to before I tiptoed inside, took my six-shooter down, and threw on him from the doorway of the front room.

“Put ’em up, Ed.”

He had no gun, and he was reaching before he even turned around. I went over and took the light from him so it wouldn’t burn down the house. “Now you goddam lop-eared cross-eyed good-for-nothing rat, for the last time what are you doing in my place and what do you want?”

“Jess, I’m only looking for my gun.”

“You think I steal guns?”

“No — no, Jess, it ain’t that. It’s just that after what happened that day, when I done what Moke made me do at the funeral, I thought maybe you’d come up there and tooken it, just to be safe. That’s all, I hope Christ may kill me.”

“I didn’t. You got that?”

“I got it, Jess.”

“If I shot, you know, if I said a man was back there in my house and I shot him because I was afraid he would kill me, the law would uphold me. You know that?”

“I sure do know it, Jess.”

“Suppose I let you go?”

“Anything you say, Jess.”

“Cut out your snooping around.”

I never said anything to her about it. I never said anything to her or anybody that would lead around to Moke. But it made me nervous. So of course she thought I was nervous on account of her, and that was how she liked it so she could laugh at me and sit in my lap and tickle my chin and say stop being so solemn. And then one day we were up there, behind the quilt that kind of cut us off from the timbered tunnel, and had had some drinks and stuff she had brought to eat, and the music was turned down soft, and she was dancing in front of me with not a stitch on. And then, from the other side of the quilt, I heard something no miner could ever mistake. It was the whisper that comes out of a carbide lamp when the flame has been cut but the water is still making gas.

I motioned her to keep on like she was, and hit the quilt with everything I had. Something went down, but so did the quilt, and it fell over the brazier, so the place went so black you couldn’t see your hand. I hit, and landed. I hit again, and got one back in the jaw. I hit again, and just touched a shirt going away. Then there were steps, shuffling down the track. Then she screamed, and all of a sudden the place was full of light, where she had tried to get the quilt off the brazier, and red coals were all over, and the quilt was burning, and so were her clothes, where she had dropped them on the seat. When we put out the fire with water the place was full of steam. “Jess, who was it?”

“I don’t know.”

“What did they want?”

“I don’t know.”

“You think they saw anything?”

“I don’t know that either.”

But in my heart I knew it was Ed Blue, still snooping around after his rifle. And sure enough, next morning, when I was out back chopping apples for the cider press, Jane came out of the house and went running to a big tree on the other side of the barn, grabbed a boy that was hiding there, and slapped his face. When she came back she was white, the only time I ever saw her get mad. “The idea, talking like that!”

“What did he say to you?”

“It was to Kady. Calling her pappy-lover.”

Kady came out, and listened, and didn’t look at her or me. All morning I could hear Jane going on about it, but if Kady said anything I didn’t hear it. Then in the afternoon she came to me, where I was up on the press turning it down, and said: “Jess, I’m going away.”

“You’re — what?”

“Going away. To Washington maybe. Some place.”

“You mean you’re leaving me?”

“I’m leaving you, and I’m taking Jane and Danny.”

“But why?”

“You heard what happened this morning, and you saw how Jane carried on about it. I can’t have any more of that. Maybe I’ve gone to hell, Jess, but I won’t have her finding it out, and if she stays one more day on this creek she will. Somebody saw us, and somebody’s spreading it.”

“Maybe I won’t let you go.”

“I wasn’t asking you.”

“Maybe you forgot you’re my wife.”

“For God’s sake, be your age.”

I climbed down there to tell her the truth, but her eyes were just two slits in her face, and she looked cold. It came to me it wouldn’t do any good to tell her. She wouldn’t believe me, and there was no way in the world I could prove it.

“We’re leaving today.”

“You’re in quite a hurry.”

“I’m taking them away on the six o’clock bus out of Carbon City, and I’ll thank you to drive us in there.”

“Then all right.”

Jane came to me just before we started, and she didn’t have any idea what was going on, but she was unhappy about leaving me and tried to tell how much she thought of me. I felt that way too, and tried to figure some way I could keep on with Kady and square it up somehow with Jane. So I said maybe if I could sell the place I would go east myself, and she put her arms around me and said that would be wonderful. And whether I meant to take them to town I don’t know, but I think I was going to have a breakdown on the state road, to stall it for one night, and in that time I might be able to think of something. But while we were still on the dirt road that runs beside the creek, we met a car coming up. It had two men in it, and when they saw us one of them raised his hand for me to stop.

“Are you Jess Tyler?”

“Who wants to know?”

“Sheriffs deputy.”

He showed a badge and I said I wasn’t saying who I was and if he wanted to know he had to find out some other way. “Well, there’s a simple way to find out, Mr. Tyler. I just look at you and then I remember you from the time I made out papers on you once before. When you pretty near killed a man. Remember?”

“What do you want?”

“Serve a warrant for your arrest.”

“What for?”

“Incest, this says.”

“That’s a lie.”

“If it’s a lie, then all you got to do is prove it to the court. My job is to serve papers. Is this your daughter Kady?”

“I told you, find out for yourself.”

“Miss Tyler, I remember you too, and I have a court order here for your detention as a material witness. Now then, how shall we do about the truck? Mr. Tyler, do you want me to drive in to Carbon with you, or would you and your daughters prefer to ride with the other deputy while I take your truck wherever you want it or have you got some idea of your own?”

“My other daughter will drive it.”

“Then we’re set.”

Kady and I got out and got in the other car and neither of us said anything to Jane at all. But out of the corner of my eye I could see her sitting there in the sun, the baby on her lap, staring at us.

When the deputy brought me to court, Jane was waiting, with Danny on her shoulder, trying to keep him quiet where he was crying because it was away past his bedtime. A whole bunch of people were there, because the Carbon City radio had put out about the arrest on the seven o’clock broadcast, and half the people in town came running over to the courthouse for the hearing. My case hadn’t been called yet, and while I was standing in the hall with the deputy, Jane came running over. “How could you do this to her, Jess?”