Butterfly Stories: A Novel

by William T. Vollmann

  11

  You fell down again? said the butterfly boy's mother in amazement.

  Yes.

  What happened this time?

  I don't know. I just fell.

  Maybe he needs his glasses changed, she said to his father.

  12

  I don't want to go outside for recess anymore, the butterfly boy said.

  You have to go out, the teacher said.

  Why?

  Because if you stay in here with me you'll never learn how to take care of yourself.

  What can I do? Every time I go out there I get beaten up. He's waiting for me right now.

  The teacher sipped her coffee, trying to think of some miracle strategy that would make the butterfly boy grow out of his subhumanhood. But she couldn't think of anything.

  You can stay in with me today, she said. But only today.

  Thank you, the butterfly boy said gratefully.

  She let him look through the Schoolbook that the grade above him was reading, People from Foreign Lands, so he got to peer down a page of partly shaded bystreet, drivers resting in their cyclos under the trees,, sun hot on their toes, stacks of hollow-cored building bricks on the street corners, and he was contented, but then the second hand of the big clock made a ticking sound and he found himself already beginning to dread tomorrow's recess.

  13

  High up upon his filthy crag, the school bully crouched, flapping his arms like an eagle and muttering to himself. His head jerked back and forth as he scanned the playground, searching for victims. The substance that his soul was composed of was pain. Since the most basic pleasure of substance is to see or dream or replicate itself, the bully fulfilled himself by causing pain in others. This proves that he could perceive and interpret, since otherwise how could the agonies of others enchant him? However, if we allow what certain philosophers do, namely, that memory is a necessary component of consciousness, then we cannot say for certain that he was conscious. He always attacked in the same way, and seemed to derive exactly the same joy from the butterfly boy's anguish. Conscious pleasure, on the contrary, seems to require a steady and continual augmentation of the stimulus, since comparison of the pleasing sensation with the ingrained memory of that sensation will gradually devalue it. This explains why the higher order connoisseurs must inevitably shuck their rubbers after their beginning years, and hence contract sexual diseases.

  The butterfly boy took as long as he could in buckling his galoshes. (He could do all the buckles now.) The other boys were shouting: Come on out! Don't be a sissypants! - When he came out, they started to clap and shout. Their heads swiveled expectantly toward the pile of ice where the bully lived. The bully began to gnaw very rapidly on his lower lip. His eyes rolled. Then he screeched, raised his arms, and rushed down upon the butterfly boy like death.

  Don't you dare hurt him! a big girl shouted. She ran up to the bully and punched him as hard as she could. The bully cowered away. He began to sob hoarsely. Instantly the other boys forgot the butterfly boy. They threw delighted snowballs at the bully and called him a nasty stupid retard. The bully sat down. A steaming yellow stain began to form in the snow around him. The boys laughed and the girls whispered.

  The butterfly boy did not join in the attack upon his enemy. He went to the part of the playground where the girls played, and stood timidly beside the big girl.

  You can't play here, the big girl said. But I wish you were a girl, so I could play with you. You're so cute.

  The butterfly boy was silent. He went slowly back to the other boys.

  14

  The boys had declared war against the girls. Girls were ugly. Girls were sissies. Girls polluted the playground just by being there. It was an outrage that the boys should have to breathe the same air that girls did. They ran them down, shouting and knocking them to the icy asphalt and pulling their hair. Yowling, the girls scratched back. It was not a precisely coordinated campaign of gun butts and pickaxes because these were boys who soon would be upstanding Eagle Scouts, lighting fires, prancing about in jungle-green uniforms, holding lighted torches aloft to conduct smoke-signaled conversations with one another about the sizes of various girls' boobs, stealing each other's neckerchief rings, farting into each other's faces, striding through the woods without ever getting lost; thus to the teacher who sat sipping her coffee indoors and very occasionally glancing out the window, it seemed as if her pupils were playing exactly as usual, a bit more boisterously, perhaps; the girls were not jumping rope, which was odd or maybe not so odd since they had been doing that every day; they appeared to be mingling with the boys most energetically, which was all to the good, the teacher thought, and maybe she was right because when the bell did ring and the pupils came in they bore no wounds more serious than bruises, from which it follows that it had all been in fun. So they captured the big girl and tried to figure out what to do with her. Then they remembered the butterfly boy. -Make him kiss her! a boy shouted.

  What they wanted was to degrade and brutalize. The girl would be tortured by being kissed, because it was a universal truth that kissing was disgusting, and because everyone would be watching. The butterfly boy would be likewise raped by the procedure, although it was unfortunately possible that he might rise a little in their esteem by becoming their instrument. All in all, the scheme was as elegant as it was practical. One must admire such cleverness.

  For precisely the same reason that they did not subject one of their own to this humiliation, they did not lay hands on the butterfly boy. He was not one of them. His closest kinship was with the bully. He was an untouchable, a prostitute, an eater of dirt. There was thus no need to force him. Because what they demanded of him was disgusting and he was disgusting, he would do it of his own accord. That way there could certainly be no trouble, for if any crime were about to be committed, it was not theirs, but his. - Another point for cleverness.

  And weren't they right? No free will, bravery, or self-confidence could be attributed to this creature. He came when they called them.

  It was always possible that the end-of-recess bell might strike if he stalled them, but he could not walk too slowly or something worse would be done, so he watched the glossy black tips of his galoshes crunch down upon the white snow with spurious deliberation. With every step, the playground contracted, tightening the ritual bond between himself and the other victim. The crowd of boys had pulled in close. They had been shouting and then they had been quiet and the girl had screamed and had been doing that every day; they appeared to be mingling with the boys most energetically, which was all to the good, the teacher thought, and maybe she was right because when the bell did ring and the pupils came in they bore no wounds more serious than bruises, from which it follows that it had all been in fun. So they captured the big girl and tried to figure out what to do with her. Then they remembered the butterfly boy. - Make him kiss her! a boy shouted.

  What they wanted was to degrade and brutalize. The girl would be tortured by being kissed, because it was a universal truth that kissing was disgusting, and because everyone would be watching. The butterfly boy would be likewise raped by the procedure, although it was unfortunately possible that he might rise a little in their esteem by becoming their instrument. All in all, the scheme was as elegant as it was practical. One must admire such cleverness.

  For precisely the same reason that they did not subject one of their own to this humiliation, they did not lay hands on the butterfly boy. He was not one of them. His closest kinship was with the bully. He was an untouchable, a prostitute, an eater of dirt. There was thus no need to force him. Because what they demanded of him was disgusting and he was disgusting, he would do it of his own accord. That way there could certainly be no trouble, for if any crime were about to be committed, it was not theirs, but his. - Another point for cleverness.

  And weren't they right? No free will, bravery, or self-confidence could be attributed to this creature. He came when they called them.

  It was always
possible that the end-of-recess bell might strike if he stalled them, but he could not walk too slowly or something worse would be done, so he watched the glossy black tips of his galoshes crunch down upon the white snow with spurious deliberation. With every step, the playground contracted, tightening the ritual bond between himself and the other victim. The crowd of boys had pulled in close. They had been shouting and then they had been quiet and the girl had screamed and then they had shouted again. Now they parted silently to let him through. He did not look into their eyes. He gazed only at the crouching girl, who no longer screamed or struggled. One of the big boys yanked her hair hard.

  He was almost upon her now, and had no knowledge of what he was going to do. But it was not up to him to know what to do. His act would rise up red like a pepper, a penis, a pistil of a tropical orchid. Of course he did not think in those terms. He did not think. The world was now no larger than the slanting plane between the toes of his galoshes and her straining face, teeth clenched in fear and hate, neck corded like a tree trunk down to the collar of her sweater; she was jerking and gasping like an animal in the boys' unescapable hands, her nostrils drawn almost flat as she sucked in breath to face him and the butterfly boy took one more step and one more step and now there were no more steps left to take. The boys' hands fell away from her as the circle tightened about them both like an anus. They wanted to see her go mad, no doubt, running about, kicking and scratching and clawing at the butterfly boy (no danger of her escape). Her eyes slammed themselves down to slits. She didn't recognize or remember him. He reached slowly toward her and she stood stock still as he pulled the hood of her parka back up over her head because he knew only that she was shivering, and she glared at him for a moment and shook the hood back down just as a dog shakes itself dry and he embraced her.

  He kissed her the only way he knew how, as he would have kissed his mother's cheek or his aunt's cheek or the cheek of any of the nice ladies who came to visit. (The other boys made loud noises of revulsion.) He felt something happening to her but he did not understand what it was. He said: I love you.

  Then she was squeezing him back in tight defiance. — I love you, too, she said.

  The boys made barely feigned vomiting sounds. They raised their fists in horror.

  Teacher's looking! a boy shouted.

  Get the bully! Get the bully!

  The bully stormed bellowing down from his hillock, and they dropped back to form a line that would protect them from implication but insure that the girl and the butterfly boy could not escape their punishment. What a horrible spectacle it had been to see them enjoying themselves! - Beat 'em up, retard! a boy shrieked, and the bully snorted like an ox and was just about to fall upon them with feet and fists when he recognized the girl who had beaten him, stopped, and slunk away.

  Teacher's coming, teacher's coming!

  The boys exploded into individual atoms, fleeing everywhere, circling the other girls like maddened sharks (what the girls had been doing the butterfly boy would never know), and the girl and the butterfly boy were by themselves.

  Are we going to get married? she said.

  This eventuality had not occurred to the butterfly boy before, but now that she had said it, it became the only conceivable choice. He nodded.

  For the rest of the school year he considered them engaged, but in the fall he learned that her family also had moved away —

  In reality, the permanent wound cavity. . . obviously has more effect on matters than the temporary cavity, since the temporary cavity collapses almost instantly from the resilient effect of the human paste.

  Chuck Taylor, The Complete Book of Combat Handgunning (1982)

  1

  On the morning after what was supposed to be his last night on earth, the boy who wanted to be a journalist dreamed that we were falling toward Jupiter. Other people had no conception of how horrible it was going to be, but he did because he was an expert on atmospheres. First they'd see the Great Red Spot getting huger by the hour, tinting everything red and baleful, driving animals to madness. The oceans would rear into thousand-foot tides, smashing cities with cold dark fishy blows, drowning Asia and Africa, exterminating all but the rich and flabby elite in their mountain bunkers. Their time would run out, too. Gales of methane and mothball-smelling gases would rip the air away so that everyone would die in convulsions of unspeakable pain, kicking like bugs in a killing jar. The boy who wanted to be a journalist decided not to wait. He drank paint stripper and swallowed pain killers. The gentle girl found out and asked why he wanted to worry enough to do that, since he'd die anyway when they got to Jupiter; when he strove to explain, his skeleton overpowered him, and he began to weep in helpless spasms. The gentle girl drew him into her arms. He tried to jerk away, but she held him all the more tightly and he felt better. Instead of crying much harder as he usually did, he vomited poison all over her. She'd saved him.

  He was awakened by a pounding at the door. He heard the door handle turning futilely. Last night for the first time he'd locked himself in.

  He put his underwear on and went to the door. It was the boy who believed in praxis. He'd known of his plan, and came by early to learn what had happened to him. - Congratulations! he said. You're alive!

  Yeah, said the boy who wanted to be a journalist.

  He stood there for awhile in his underwear, and then he began to feel that he needed to justify being alive, so that the boy who believed in praxis wouldn't feel that he'd come for nothing.

  I decided to flip a coin, he said. Heads would be life, and tails would be the other. I went and flipped the coin, and it came up tails. But I figured I'd released it sooner than I meant to, so I flipped it again, and it came up tails. I decided to try one more time. I flipped it, and it came up tails. So I decided the coin was wrong.

  2

  A couple of weeks later he started slitting his wrists. He never cut deep enough to do any harm, however. A Band-Aid lengthwise seemed to do the trick.

  3

  He'd found a nice stuffy attic with an archives room that had an inner bolt on the door. Sometimes he'd go up there and stand on a chair and take a good length of parachute cord, throw it over a beam and tie it, put the noose around his neck and then slowly draw his knees up to his chest so that he was suspended. The novelty of it tended to take his mind off things, although his throat really hurt afterward.

  4

  Once he began to combine cutting his wrists and half-asphyxiating himself he believed that he'd found the ideal. Afterwards he'd dream of mummy sex with the gentle girl, by which he meant her body being suspended ropelessly above him, then slowly drifting down; when her knee touched his leg he jerked and then went limp there; her hands reached his hands, which died; her breasts rolled softly upon his heart, which fibrillated and stopped; finally she lay on top of him, quite docile and still and soft ... He knew that the others didn't like mummy sex, but that was because they didn't understand it; they thought that it must be cold; they thought that she must paint her mouth with something to make it look black and smell horrible and soften like something rotten ... He wanted to open her up until the pelvis snapped like breaking a wishbone. Would that be mummy sex?

  5

  After the gentle girl got married (which happened in the same week that mail service to the People's Democratic Republic of Kampuchea was suspended), he transferred his unclean attentions to a girl who wanted to be a linguist. The girl who wanted to be a linguist wrote him:

  You had virtually always, by your remarks to me, given me the sense that you were not being straightforward with me, that you impregnated your words with a significance I did not grasp and was not sure I wanted to, and that you analyzed me, perhaps attempted, very subtly, to manipulate me. When I got your letter my first reaction was that I did not know what was going on but you no doubt did; no doubt you would carefully watch my reaction; perhaps you were in a way testing me. I realized later that you were not a low creature, that is to say you were not the sort of bei
ng that ought to be humiliated. But while I do wish to help you, or to be capable of helping you, or to help you if I knew how, I am deeply skeptical of my ability to do so. If I were like the gentle girl I might be someone who could help. But I am not like the gentle girl. I do not think you would want me to behave in whatever contrived manner. To whatever extent you are dissatisfied with me you want me to be different. But I am not what you want. I wish you would realize that, and stop loving me as you say you do. I do not understand why you do, for I do not and did not feel that I had solicited your love or given you any reason to love me.