The Killing of Butterfly Joe Read online

‘I think you can come down from there now, sir.’

  He was dressed in dark-blue dungarees, a check shirt and a trilby that sat tilted back on grey hair, tight and white against his black skin. His eyes had teabag folds of world-weariness beneath them and his voice was mellow and lifelorn. Despite his reassurance, I didn’t want to move. I could see the dogs up on their feet, straining at their bonds, still having doggy fantasies about ripping my throat out.

  ‘Joe said they’d be chained up.’

  ‘They’re all chained up now.’

  I stepped down, my heart hammering, my legs shaking, and when I slid off the bonnet I felt the bite and yelped.

  ‘You got bit?’

  ‘Yeh.’

  ‘We better take a look at that. Lord, they messed up the car pretty bad.’ He ran a wetted finger over the scratches and rubbed them. ‘Good job they took the fancy new one. I’m Clay by the way. You must be Mr Rip, right?’

  ‘Yes.’ How quickly my new name was becoming my name.

  ‘Does it hurt?’

  ‘It does now I think about it.’ My buttock was burning; my legs were visibly shaking.

  ‘That’s the ’drenalin. You were like a crazy man up there.’

  The knowledge that he’d seen and heard my rooftop ravings was as painful as the throbbing in my arse. I followed him past the outhouses to a detached wooden shack that was next to a long greenhouse thick with plants and opaque with sweated panes. I caught a flying flash of electric blue. Then another.

  ‘Are those butterflies?’

  ‘Uh-huh. That’s the blue morpho farm. We had a good crop this year. Near on a thousand. Miss Edith ain’t sure it’s worth the sweat. Joe says it makes more profit than raising cattle. I’m in the middle. Jury is still out.’

  Outside the front door of Clay’s shack there was a mat saying ‘home sweet home’. Inside there was a Zed-bed, a storm light, a fridge, a camping gas cooker and a wardrobe. The only other adornments were a Harold Robbins paperback and a signed picture of an American football player.

  ‘I know we just met, but you’re gonna have to drop those pants and let me see your butt.’

  The pain was over-ruling my self-consciousness now and I undid my belt and buttons and let my jeans slip over my boxers to my ankles, wincing as the material snagged my bite. I then lifted my boxers over my cheek to let Clay look.

  ‘It ain’t pierced. But we need to get this cleaned just in case. Hold on.’ He went to get something from the wardrobe.

  ‘Let me see . . . When everything comes to an end I got all I need in here . . .’

  Clay’s wardrobe was part larder, part medicine cabinet, part war chest; a storehouse built for the End Times. He rummaged around and found a bottle of purple liquid and some gauze. He soaked the gauze with the liquid then made me stand up straight. ‘Gonna hurt some.’ I anticipated the sting of the astringent by taking a deep breath. The pain was delayed for a few seconds but when it came I groaned. It was as if he’d applied a burn to a burn. I had to lean forward and use the table for support.

  ‘OK. Hold that there. I’ll get you some Tylenol.’

  He went back to the war chest. Found some painkillers. He ran a tap and filled a glass with brown water and handed it to me, with the pills. ‘Those dogs won’t forget your face in a hurry. Or your butt.’

  I swallowed down the pills thinking that what I really wanted was something for the embarrassment. He went to a fridge and found an iced tea which, under normal circumstances, I disliked. But I swigged it back and let the vileness of it distract me from the pain.

  ‘Where is everyone?’

  ‘Church.’

  Of course: it was Sunday. Since being picked up by Joe I’d really lost any sense of what day it was, what date it was, or even what era I was living in.

  ‘Did they all go?’

  ‘Miss Edith insists on that.’

  ‘Mary too?’

  ‘It’s a house rule. ’Cept for me.’ Clay chuckled. ‘Miss Edith took me to her church one time and I stuck out like a snake in a chicken coop. Music so gloomy it would make you want to take your own life. Lord forgive me for saying so. I like my worship upbeat. Assemblies of God. I explained to her my way of thinking and in time she unnerstood. I go to my own meetings too, at the AA in Hancock. I ain’t touched a drop of liquor for ten years.’

  ‘How long have you known the family?’

  ‘Ten years, near enough. Miss Edith took me in on July 5th 1977. I started getting my independence back the day after Independence Day. Not a day gone where I don’t thank the Lord for her. I don’t care what people think. Or say. She’s some woman. What that fire done to her would finish most people. She raised a family single-handed. She started a business. I can’t say a bad word about Miss Edith after what she done for me.’

  This praise seemed too quickly offered to me. There was a ‘but’ hovering in the silence after it, a silence I let sit for a bit.

  ‘Joe said how he . . . found you.’

  ‘Oh, I got Joe to thank, too. That boy saved my life.’ Clay pushed his mouth sideways into a pout and whistled slowly, a note up and a note down. ‘I was so drunk back then that I booked myself into the Plaza. Turned out to be the back of a garbage truck. Joe hauled me out and took me home. That boy was stronger than a man even then. Miss Edith agreed to take me in on condition I gave up the liquor and helped with the butterfly business. That was when they were living in Michigan. I been working for them ever since. They got some faults, like us all. But they showed kindness to me and kindness is the only currency that counts in this life. Anyways. What’s he brought you here for? Joe don’t normally take on people with credentials. Educated types, I mean. Most people who land here are in trouble of one kind or other. Needy and desperate. You needy and desperate, Mr Rip?’

  ‘No. I don’t think so. He offered me a job. Wants me to help build the business. Take it to the next level.’

  ‘That sounds like Joe. Everything taken to the next level. Ain’t no mountain high enough. He promise you the earth?’

  ‘He said he’d show me America.’

  ‘Well, that’s a start. As long as you dilute everything he says with a gallon of salt water you’ll be right. But I guess you probably know that already.’

  ‘Am I making a mistake? Working for him? Should I be worried?’

  Clay looked at me and thought for a few seconds; caught between loyalty to family and courtesy to a stranger.

  ‘You just gotta know what you’re in for. Joe is a human hurricane with a heart of gold. He is strong, and he has energy – dear Lord such energy as will not be contained; if you find a way to harness that then you could power a city. Natural law can’t contain him, and the laws of man, well, they are like bars of a prison cell. He will never be told what to do. Or where to go. Or let you know where he’s going! I mean, do you know where he is now?’

  ‘I thought you said he was in church, with the others?’

  ‘Lord no. He’s banned from Miss Edith’s church. He left last night going somewhere.’

  ‘Last night? Do you know where?’

  Clay laughed.

  ‘He done say. He never done say. Always got some deal going on. He could be meeting the King of Siam. He could be having lunch with a hobo. He could have gone lepping. Even when he does have a destination he finds another along the way.’

  ‘He didn’t mention going anywhere to me. He might have said. What with this being my first day.’

  ‘Don’t take it personal. Mr Joe can’t be in a place for more than a day before going crazy. One time he set off to get some parts for the car or something. In Albany. Next we heard was he was in the Blue Mountains of Jamaica, looking for strange fruit to make jellies out of. He will mention everything but the thing needs mentioning. And never the same answer to anyone. He might tell me he is going to Washington. He tells Miss Edith he is taking the car back. He prolly tells his sisters he was getting some groceries. And he prolly tells the Lord he is going to find some lost soul.
Wherever he is it won’t be where he said. He will ramble unaccountable to his dying day.’

  This was not reassuring. Joe’s spontaneous ‘I am answerable to no one’ approach to life was a singular and beautiful thing; until you were the one he wasn’t being answerable to. But at least Clay was describing a Joe I recognized. It was the same mountain albeit from a slightly different angle.

  ‘Why was Joe banned from church?’

  ‘He got into an argument with the preacher. In the middle of the sermon. Does it all the time. Someday they’ll lynch him for it.’

  ‘I thought Joe had faith?’

  ‘Oh yes. Not a journey made without some waif or stray rescued from somewhere. Or him giving away his every last dollar. Without faith he would be a danger to himself and everyone else. But he has his own notions about what is true and what in’t. About what’s man’s and what’s God’s. He’s a one-man denomination. Without a father around to tell him otherwise he learned to have his own ’pinions young. He’s allergic to any male ’thority, see. He won’t be told. He don’t respect men much. Which is no surprise gi’n the example he been set by men. But I guess you know all about that already.’

  I guess you know all about that already. Clay kept repeating this phrase and then making a quizzical look at me as if to see what I did and didn’t know, to see how far into the confidence of the family I had travelled. For all his ‘faithful and loyal servant’ shtick Clay struck me as having a capacity to spill the beans.

  I gave Clay my most ingenuous look. ‘He told me something about his father leaving when he was young. But that they don’t talk about him. That’s he’s called the Unmentionable One.’

  ‘Uh huh.’ Clay looked at me and narrowed his eyes.

  The plate was tilting, the beans moving to the edge. I continued to tilt it. ‘He said he was an entomologist. That he was always away. Left this incredible collection of rare butterflies. Said he loved bugs more than people.’

  I was sure Clay was burning to tell me what he knew. Our knowledge of those close to us is often the only power we have over them, our only collateral in this life. And Clay was weighing up whether to spend it.

  ‘Did you ever meet him?’

  ‘No. He was a big deal in the bug world. But he had a—’ Clay broke off, deciding to stop it there.

  ‘He had a what?’

  Clay shook his head and castigated himself. ‘That’s enough, Clay Cornelius Beauregard, that’s enough!’

  Clay moved away from me, tidying up my bottle of iced tea and rearranging his wardrobe. He continued to reprimand himself. Further disclosure was prevented by the sound of a car and those damn dogs barking.

  ‘That’ll be them back from church. All washed clean for another week. We’d better go.’

  ‘Will you go first, make sure the dogs stay chained?’

  ‘I’m on to it now.’

  ‘Don’t tell them about, you know . . . what you saw. The way I reacted, I mean.’

  ‘That crazy banshee jig?’ He laughed. ‘Don’t worry. Everybody’s secret’s safe with Clay.’

  I let him go ahead, giving him enough time to make sure no one loosed the dogs. I watched him through the little window of the hut as he greeted the family, opening the passenger door for Edith like a chauffeur, holding an arm for her to steady herself on. Was there more than deference in the way he greeted her? He wasn’t quite staff; he wasn’t quite family. He seemed friendly enough, though the way he’d suddenly stopped talking about Joe’s father was odd. This ban around any sort of talk about him was taken seriously and perhaps I should have respected it. But as everyone knows, the more you enforce a prohibition, the greater the temptation to break it.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  In which I lose an argument and gratification is delayed.

  ‘You kick my dogs? Hey. Lamo. You fuckin’ kick my dogs?’

  I’d just sat down on the rubber ring that Clay had given me to ease the sting of the dog-bite. I’d made an entrance, partly to win sympathy, but also to deflect any concern about the damage caused to the Chuick by the dogs’ claws. Isabelle and Clay were serving the lunch. Edith was sat at the head of the table fixing me with her one-eyed gaze. She was wearing a pirate’s patch over her dead eye, had her hands out, palms up, and mouth open feigning stunned offence (a mouth not in the least bit washed clean by the Lord). Mary, Elijah and Celeste were staring at me, waiting for my response. Only Isabelle continued dishing out the food, resolutely not looking at me, or her mother.

  ‘Clay said you kicked them and cussed them. Called them all kinds of names. And Clay don’t lie.’

  I understand that loyalty to the house supersedes all others, but this little betrayal was disappointing. Clearly Clay was not the safe deposit for confidences he’d made himself out to be. And I couldn’t shake the feeling that he’d let those dogs loose in the first place.

  ‘I . . . I’m not sure, Mrs Bosco. It was all so quick,’ I said. ‘I was just trying to defend myself.’

  ‘Those dogs wouldn’t hurt a fly. You must have provoked them some. You been here barely a day and you’re abusing my animals? Wrecking my property. That car is going to need a new coat of paint.’

  Then Celeste contorted her face into a snarl, made claws of her fingers and started mimicking my rooftop rant with an excruciating accuracy. ‘Rar Rar Rar! Crazy dogs, crazy dogs, rar, rar, rar!’ Clay really had given them quite a vivid account of my performance.

  ‘They attacked me, Mrs Bosco. I’m sorry about the car, but I had nowhere else to go.’

  The room fell silent. Perhaps challenging Edith was a new, revolutionary idea.

  Edith wiped her mouth with a napkin and fixed me with her sparkling one eye.

  ‘What I really would like to know is this. Was that dog’s bite worse than its bark?’ There was another long pause. Then she snorted, the way Joe did when childishly amused; and then Mary and Elijah were laughing too, all laughing at my expense. Oh what mirth I was providing! I raised my hands in defeat and joined in. A willingness to take the abuse without buckling was the price to pay for being accepted into the bosom of this family. No doubt, future generations of Boscos would one day recount The Tale of Rip’s Butt.

  ‘Seriously. How is your butt, Rip?’ Edith asked, softening.

  I shimmied into the rubber ring. ‘It’s . . . fine, thank you.’ And then, for good measure, I added: ‘Would you like to see it?’

  This won the day.

  Elijah sprayed his mouthful of food over his plate and clapped his hands in disbelief. Mary, who liked to think she had a monopoly on sass, looked genuinely impressed at the gall of it. There was a second’s pause from Edith and then she pointed her finger at me, stabbing the air with it, her living eye sparkling. ‘Son. Of. A. Bitch. You’ll go far, Rip. You’ll go far.’

  What an endorsement. (The second such endorsement in less than twenty-four hours.)

  Only Isabelle remained beyond my winning powers of self-deprecation. She’d been quiet since getting back from church and shown no sympathy towards me for the dog attack. She was still in her Sunday best and, whilst a lack of concern for fashion is commendable, she really wasn’t making the best of herself. With her blouse pressing her breasts flatter and her hair in a little-too-tight bun she seemed wilfully dowdy. It was as if she was trying to be the very opposite of her sister. How had Edith spawned such different creatures? They were fire and water.

  ‘Ain’t you hot in those clothes?’ Mary asked.

  ‘At least I’m wearing clothes.’

  I’d not known Isabelle more than a day but this seemed uncharacteristically sharp.

  Mary wore her sister’s criticism like a mantle of victory, sucking up her disapproval with a satisfied smile.

  ‘You can dress like some governess from way back when if you like – but it’s 1987, not 1887. In case you hadn’t noticed.’

  ‘It’s just inappropriate, Mary.’

  ‘You mean slutty?’

  ‘I didn’t say that.’
r />   ‘Jesus loved sluts. The preacher said so today. Weren’t you payin’ attention? Maybe our guest should be the judge of what’s OK?’

  Mary was wearing a tie-dye vest without a bra and her full breasts easily filled the material and spilled out the sides; she also had on the shortest cut-off jeans it was possible to wear. It looked appropriate to me. Good enough for Jesus; good enough for me. But, people-pleaser that I am, I didn’t want to get caught in this fight, so I pulled a diplomatic ‘each to his own’ shrug and made conciliatory gestures to both sisters.

  ‘Whatever feels comfortable, I suppose. “If it feels good do it.” ’

  Mary flashed me a look. Coward. She was in a merciless mood.

  ‘This is the bod I got from God. I am fearfully and wonderfully made.’

  All the Boscos could quote scripture when they needed to; even the ones who didn’t believe a word of it.

  ‘You shouldn’t mock,’ Isabelle said.

  Mary mocked on. ‘It’s true. My body is a temple.’ She straightened her nave and pushed out her transepts to prove it.

  ‘Then why abuse it by smoking?’

  ‘I don’t hardly smoke. Not cigarettes anyways.’ Mary gave me another look.

  ‘You know what I’m saying. If you have to smoke don’t do it in Ceelee’s room.’

  Isabelle flushed burgundy as she said this for it was a reprimand that extended to me. I finally twigged. How dull-witted I was being; how slow to pick up on what was going on! Isabelle wasn’t really upset about Mary smoking in Celeste’s room (Mary smoked all the time); she was upset about Mary smoking with me, in my room. She didn’t care about Mary’s scanty clothes (Mary wore nothing less than scanty most days); she cared about the effect that scantiness was having on me. She obviously knew about Mary’s visit to my room and did not approve of our nocturnal pow-wow; she was just too polite or embarrassed to say so directly. Or perhaps too proud to let on that she might be jealous of my attentions towards her sister. Yes! That’s it, I thought. Isabelle is in a cranky mood because she likes me and is disappointed I’ve already fallen for her more flagrant sister. Feeling sorry for her, I tried to help her into the conversation.