James Cain - The Butterfly

“This court, unless compelled, is not going to make a criminal out of a father defending the honor of a daughter. But is not going to overlook, either, a breach of the peace that could have had the most serious consequences. Tyler, do you realize that if these witnesses hadn’t prevented it, you would have killed a man, that you would now stand before me accused of the crime of murder, that it would be my unescapable duty to hold you for the grand jury, and that almost certainly you would in due time be found guilty, sentenced, and hanged?”

“Yes sir.”

“Do you think that’s right?”

“I guess I don’t.”

“How much money is in your pocket?”

“Fourteen dollars, sir.”

“Then just to impress it on your mind that this is more than a passing matter, you can pay the clerk here a fine of ten dollars and costs for disorderly conduct — or perhaps you’d rather spend the next ten days in jail?”

“I’d rather pay, sir.”

“Young woman, how old are you?”

“Nineteen, sir.”

“Have you been drinking?”

“I — don’t know, sir.”

“What do you mean you don’t know?”

“Well, I was drinking Coca-Cola, but you know how it is. Sometimes they put a little something in it, just for fun, but tonight I don’t know if they did or not.”

“Lean over here, so I can smell your breath... How can you have the cheek to tell me you don’t know if you’ve been drinking or not, when you’re half shot, right now? Aren’t you?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Do you realize that I can hold you with no more evidence than that as a wayward minor, and have you committed to a school?”

“I didn’t know it, sir.”

“There are a great many things you don’t seem to know, and my advice to you is that you turn over a new leaf, and do it now. I’m remanding you into the custody of your father, and on the first complaint from him, you’re up for commitment. Do you understand that, Tyler? If there’s any more trouble like what went on in there tonight, you don’t grab a gun and start shooting. You come to me, and the proper steps will be taken.”

“Yes, sir, I understand it.”

“Next case.”

Going home she was laughing at how funny it was, that he hadn’t asked her how much money she had, because she still had every cent of the hundred and fifty dollars we had got for the liquor, but after we got home and got a fire going and ate something and drunk some coffee, I shut her up. “You want to go to that reform school?”

“You mean you’d send me?”

“If you don’t shut up, I might.”

“Can’t I even laugh?”

“He was right.”

Then we began to talk, and I tried to tell her how it scared me, that I had almost killed a man. “And you, don’t it shame you, you were making up to two men tonight, within ten minutes of each other?”

“What’s to be ashamed of?”

“It’s blood.”

“Listen, if I hear any more of this Morgan stuff—”

“I tell you, it’s in-breeding. It’s what we both got to be afraid of. It’s in us, and we ought to be fighting it. And stead of that—”

“Yeah, tell me.”

“We’re not.”

“Well say, that’s terrible.”

“ ‘Shining, shooting, and shivareeing their kin, that’s what they say of people that live too long on one creek. I thought I was too good for that. But today, right up in that mine, I ran off five gallons of liquor that’s against the law. This evening I almost killed a man.”

“And tonight you’d like to have me.”

“Stop talking like that!”

“What were you shooting him for?”

“You ought to know.”

“You must be loving me plenty.”

“I told you, quit that!”

“Have a drink with me?”

“No!”

“How about you going to reform school?”

One night when I got through the run I took a walk up the creek, and when I came to the church I kept on up the hollow, and pretty soon sat down by a tree and tried to think. We had had some trouble that day. Now the money was coming in she kept buying clothes, blue and yellow and green dresses, and red coats, and hats with ribbons hanging down the side, and every night we’d drive in town to the White Horse, and they wouldn’t serve her liquor any more but we’d have some Cokes, and then she’d dance and carry on with whoever was there, and then I’d take her home. But in the daytime she got sloppier and sloppier, and one day when it got hot she took off her shoes. And this day she said it was so hot by the still she couldn’t stand it, and slipped off her dress so she was in nothing but underwear and hardly any of that, and began dancing to the radio, swaying with the music with one hand on her hip and looking me in the eye. Well, in the first place, in a coal mine it’s the same temperature all the year round, and that little bit of fire I had in there, what with the ventilation we had, didn’t make any difference at all. So we had an argument about it, and I made her put her clothes on and cut off the music. Then she said: “Jess, did it ever strike you funny, one thing about this place?”

“What’s that?”

“If a woman was attacked in here, there’s nothing at all she could do about it.”

“Couldn’t she bite? Or kick? Or scratch?”

“What good would it do her?”

“Might help quite a lot.”

“Not if the man was at all strong. She could scream her head off, and not one person on earth would hear her. I’ve often thought about it.”

I made her get out of there and go down to the cabin and catch up on some of the work. But I was hanging on by my teeth by that time, and I was a lot nearer giving up the fight, and going along with her on whatever she felt like doing, even getting drunk, than I wanted her to know. That was when I took this walk up the creek, and past the church, and through Tulip, trying to get control of myself, and maybe pray a little, for some more strength.

And then, from up among the trees, I heard something that sounded like a wail. Then here it came again, closer. Then I could make out it was a man, calling somebody named Danny. And then all of a sudden a prickle went up my back, because I knew that voice, from the million times I had heard it at the company store and around the camp and in my own home. It was Moke, but he wasn’t singing comical stuff to a banjo now. He was scared to death, and slobbering at the mouth as he called, and in between moaning and whispering to himself. He went stumbling along to his cabin, and I followed along after him, and watched while he stood in the door, a candle in his hand, and called some more. Then when he went inside I crept up and peeped through a chink in the logs. He was a little man, but I never saw him look so little as he looked now. He was sitting on the clay floor, in one corner, the banjo leaning against the wall beside him, his head on his arms, and shaking with sobs so bad you thought they were going to tear him apart.

I was shook up plenty myself, because if there was one person in this world I hated it was him, and after all Kady had said, and all I knew from before, I couldn’t help wondering what he was doing here, and I knew it had to be something that meant me. So I could feel some connection when I came to my cabin, and from the back room I could hear a baby crying. I went inside, and at the sound of the door, a woman called to know if it was Kady. I said it was Kady’s father. She came out then, and from the tall, thin shape she had, and the look of her face and color of her eyes, I knew she was a Tyler. “I think you’re my girl Jane.”

“And you’re my father.”

We shook hands, and I patted her hand, and then we sat down, and both of us wanted to give each other a kiss but were too bashful. “Can I call you Father?”