James Cain - The Butterfly

“Why not?”

“You heard her just now. Moke was a shiftless, no-account nothing, and if I told her the truth about him I thought she’d hate me for it and I loved her and didn’t want her to.”

“Where is this Moke Blue?”

“I don’t know.”

The judge and the prosecutor looked at each other, and then the judge said to Kady: “Young woman, do you believe any of this?”

She didn’t answer, and he asked who Jane was and asked the same thing of her. She didn’t answer, either. “Is there any neighbor of this man, who knew him and his wife at the time they were living together, who will testify he believes it, or had any knowledge of it at the time?”

Nobody said anything. I said Moke had the same butterfly on his stomach that Danny had, that only the men in his family were born with it, and that Kady didn’t have it but the boy did, and they didn’t even bother to wake Danny up to look, where he was stretched out on the desk, with Jane’s hat over his eyes to keep the light out. I was sunk, and I knew it, and Kady was sunk, and I knew that too. Until, all of a sudden, I happened to look at Ed Blue, and the look on his face told me I wasn’t sunk, that I was going to win, that I’d rip it right out of him, what I had to have to be turned loose. The judge got ready to wind up the case. “Well, Tyler, until you get Moke Blue in court and produce some sort of direct substantiation of what you say, I’m afraid I’ll have to regard it as a farfetched invention to escape the consequences of several serious crimes, so—”

“I can’t get him up here.”

“Why not?”

“He’s afraid to come.”

“What’s he afraid of?”

“That I’ll kill him.”

“Why would he be afraid of that?”

He was looking at me like I was making a fool of myself and didn’t know it but he would give me all the chance I wanted, and that was just how I wanted him to feel. “Because I ordered him off the creek when he tried to kill me, with a rifle that was lent him to do it with by this lying rat that’s come in here to testify against me, that’s his half brother and that has the same butterfly on his stomach this child has and that he’s not saying anything about because he wants me sent up for something I didn’t do!”

If you think that don’t set off a bombshell in that courtroom, you don’t know what a judge feels like when he thinks somebody has been trying to put something over on him. He was so sore I thought he’d hit Ed. He had him take off his shirt, and unbuttoned Danny’s little suit himself, so gentle it was like he was his own son. And on Ed, sure enough, was the butterfly, all fixed up with curlicue feelers and red border, from the time he fired on the railroad and a tattoo man in Norfolk had fixed him up, or so he told the court.

“And this half brother of yours, this Moke Blue, has this butterfly too?”

“I don’t know, sir.”

“Do you want to be charged with perjury too?”

“Yes sir, he has it.”

“And only the men in your family have it?”

“I heard so.”

The judge drummed on the desk with his fingers, then leaned over and whispered with the prosecutor. Then: “Tyler, in the light of this piece of evidence, I’m not at all sure that I’m convinced of your innocence. Morally, it seems to me there was something queer about your failure to tell this girl of her parentage, and let her go on thinking she was guilty of something that must have struck her as utterly loathsome. But I am convinced that if these birthmarks are shown to a jury, whether Moke Blue can be located or not, it is going to be impossible to get them to convict you. So I’m dismissing the charge. But God help you if you’re in trouble, on the basis of new evidence, in connection with this case again.”

“I won’t be. I’m not guilty.”

“That reminds me: Why did you enter your plea of guilty in the first place? That still seems a queer thing to do.”

“I told you, I didn’t want her to know.”

“About Moke Blue being her father?”

“That’s it.”

“You must indeed be in love with her.”

“I might be.”

For the next week she hardly looked at me, and stayed on in the back room, while I stayed on at the stable. But she kept studying Danny and the butterfly, and you could tell she was trying to get used to it, what it meant. And then one day before the fire, while Jane was out back cooking supper, she picked him up in her arms, and said: “My little boy.” She said it over and over, with tears shining in her eyes and running down her face. After that she began taking care of him, and wouldn’t let Jane do anything at all. Then was when she began to notice me again, and watch me, like she was studying about something. And then one morning, just before daylight, she came down to the stable with a lantern, and I had a wild idea she had come to make up and be my wife. But she wasn’t thinking of that, even a little bit. She hadn’t undressed from the night before, and set the lantern down, and sat on my bunk with it shining up on her face, so I could see it but couldn’t see her eyes. “Jess, ever since that night in the courtroom, I’ve been thinking back, trying to remember how it all was, and specially that’s what I’ve been doing tonight. And there’s one thing I’ve got to know.”

“I’ll tell you anything I can.”

“When did you first know Moke was my father?”

“Before you were born, even.”

“And how did you know?”

“I knew I wasn’t.”

“You mean there had been nothing between you and Belle for some time and that meant somebody else had to be my father and you figured it had to be Moke?”

“That’s it.”

“Why didn’t he tell me?”

“Maybe Belle wouldn’t let him.”

“What reason could she have for not letting him?”

“Ashamed, maybe.”

“Or maybe she didn’t know it.”

“If I knew it, she had to.”

“Not if only the men in that family had the butterfly. I haven’t got it. Maybe neither of them knew it until Danny came and they saw the birthmark. Maybe that’s why they began to fight. Maybe that’s why Moke took Danny. Maybe that’s why Bell tried to kill him, to keep him from saying anything to me about it.”

“I tell you, if I knew it—”

“Jess, there’s a simple answer to that.”

“What is it?”

“You might be lying to me. Right now. About knowing it before I was born, about how it was between you and Belle then, and all the rest of it.”

“I might be an Indian, but I’m not.”

She stretched out on top of the blankets and stared up at the harness that was hanging on pegs over our heads, and it was quite a while before she said anything. “Jess, you are lying.”

“If you think so, all right.”

“You didn’t know it when we were up there in the mine every day, running liquor, and in town every night, selling it.”

“What makes you think I didn’t?”

“The passes I was making.”

“I fought you off.”

“But why?”

“Didn’t you hear me in court? I was married.”

“Jess, don’t make me laugh.”

“That’s funny to you, being married?”

“Jess, the way you wanted me, being married wouldn’t have meant any more to you than nothing. And what are you trying to tell me? You hadn’t seen Belle for eighteen years, and just because you hadn’t taken the trouble to get a divorce, and she hadn’t, you think I’m going to believe it you were still worrying about being married? But laying up with your own daughter, that would be something else. That would be something you would think you had to fight. That would mean plenty to you on Sunday, when you were going to church and singing the hymns and worrying about hell-fire after you die. Jess, why don’t you own up to it? At that time you thought I was your daughter.”