The Butterflies of Grand Canyon

by Margaret Erhart

  “Oh, I don’t know,” says Elzada. “It might be good for revenue. Scandal draws the curious, the lonely, and practically everyone else. Which is beside the point, of course. It’s Emery we’re concerned about. Being locked away in a cell wouldn’t suit Emery. But tell me,” she goes on, “why have you called upon me? May we sit down somewhere, Mr. Schellbach? I’m afraid I have rather painful varicose veins.”

  “Yes, of course. I’m so sorry. Let’s wander over to head-quarters. I have my car there, and I’ll take you to the house. That way you’ll have a chance to settle in.”

  “Settle in?” asks Lois.

  “Ethyl is expecting you.”

  “Oh, we wouldn’t think of it!” Lois exclaims. “That’s very kind of you, but Elzada has made arrangements for us at the hotel. I’m sure we’ll be comfortable there, and we won’t be underfoot. And besides,” she touches his arm, “Elzie snores.”

  Schellbach appears embarrassed. Clearly he doesn’t care for the intimate turn the conversation has taken. He clears his throat and says with effort, “Doesn’t everyone snore?”

  “Not like Elzie.”

  Elzada smiles. “It’s true. I’m an immoderate snorer.”

  “Well, you must at least take a few meals with Mrs. Schellbach and myself. The car’s right over here. Why don’t I give you a lift?”

  That seems agreeable to everyone. As they walk, Schellbach says to Elzada, “My sister-in-law has varicose veins.”

  “Does she?”

  “Yes. A terrible situation.”

  “One lives with what the genes dictate. Although,” she adds thoughtfully, “there will come a day when we turn that around, when we dictate our own genetic makeup.”

  “But surely you don’t believe that. Human beings are not corn, Dr. Clover.”

  “Why, Mr. Schellbach. Selective breeding is common botanical practice, as you point out, and being human, we can’t stop there, can we? We won’t. Who knows what we’ll try next? Cows and fireflies—”

  “But what would be the point?”

  “Livestock that glows in the dark!” cries Lois.

  “Yes,” says Elzada. “A great boon to ranchers. No more tracking, just wait until the sun goes down. And from there it’s a simple step to applying these practices to humans.”

  “Simple?” laughs Schellbach. “How simple, Dr. Clover?”

  “When we crack the gene molecule—and we’re very close, scientists in several different countries are working on it now—when we finally understand the configuration of DNA and the way mutation occurs, it will be a simple step from cows and fireflies to humans. Methodologically simple but morally tremendously complex.”

  “I should say so. It may be a long time before those veins of yours become a choice.”

  “The fact is,” says Lois, “we’re not so different from cows and corn, and that’s difficult for people.”

  “To me,” says Elzada, “it’s a great comfort.”

  “But we are different,” says Schellbach.

  “Yes,” Elzada says, smiling, “we can reason. And we’re capable of love. And murder. Is this your car, Mr. Schellbach?” He nods. “Oh, it’s good to stop thinking and talking sometimes, isn’t it, and just go for a drive?” Silence. “Well, I think it is.”

  They drive around to the El Tovar Hotel and pull up in front. They get out and a bellhop comes and collects the two valises. When the boy has gone, Schellbach turns to Elzada and says, “To answer your question, Dr. Clover, the question of why we have called upon you in this unpleasant matter involving Mr. Kolb, I can simply report that he asked for you.”

  “Emery did?”

  “He told Dr. Bryant and myself—”

  “Dr. Bryant?”

  “My boss. The park superintendent. We were told, in two different interviews, that you were not only sensible, knowledgeable, and a friend, but that you . . . ,” he looks out across the canyon at the North Rim, where afternoon rain clouds are gathering, “that you . . . now I don’t believe this, of course, I simply pass it along . . . he seems to feel that you might . . . how shall I put it . . . ?”

  “Might what?” asks Lois impatiently.

  “That Dr. Clover, impossible as it seems, might know, or rather, well, yes, know, something about the body.”

  “Good Lord!” exclaims Elzada. “Why didn’t you say so?”

  “He did,” says Lois, crossing her arms. “He certainly took his time about it, but now he’s said it. And it sounds to me like Emery’s up to his old tricks. Implicating you, Elzada. Come on. We don’t need to stand here and listen to any more nonsense and gossip.”

  “I wouldn’t give that particular aspect of it another thought,” says Schellbach, frowning. “And I know Ethyl will be very disappointed, as will I, if you won’t join us for supper tonight. She’d like to make a fuss over you.”

  Lois opens her mouth to speak but Elzada says, “Supper will be fine, Mr. Schellbach. What time?”

  “Six o’clock. Shall I come for you in the car?”

  “We’ll come on our own two feet,” growls Lois.

  “We’ll be ready to be picked up at six,” says Elzada. “We’ll wait right here.”

  He drives away, and the women watch him go. Lois says, “That fool, Emery. I knew we couldn’t trust him. It’s center stage or he won’t play.”

  “Yes, but we knew that about him from the start.”

  “To store the evidence in his garage!”

  Elzada shakes her head. “Someone else did that. He was on the river with us, as you remember.”

  “The perfect alibi! He left the dirty work to an accomplice.”

  “Really, Loie, I must insist. It’s possible but improbable. What would he want with the body?”

  “I don’t know, Elzie, but I’m nervous.”

  “You mustn’t be, my dear. They’ll sense it. They’ll smell it, like sharks do blood. And we have very little to worry about, except Emery. My reputation protects us. In their eyes I’m a tower of good intentions.”

  “A tower of good intentions whose interest in genetic manipulation is no longer a secret. My goodness! I thought you’d never quit!”

  “It didn’t stop you from adding your two cents, did it?” laughs Elzada.

  “I’m not used to hiding my opinions, I’ll admit.”

  “Never mind. Nothing to hide here and now. Come, Loie. We need to elongate our horizon.”

  They climb the front steps of the hotel and Elzada first, then Lois, turns to look at the great painting hung in the open air beyond the porch—the enormous canvas that changes as they watch, as the clouds darken and descend and rain visibly lashes the far rim. It is a painting beyond price, a canvas few are lucky enough to glimpse, and the effect on the two women is one of overwhelming relief. They are here at last. Scandal, dirty business, and mystery swirl about them, but they are meaningless, as are most things, in the face of what lies here before them. The great canyon opens and offers up bars of sunlight, columns of rain, as if the sky exists below, inside it. Then a sudden crisp flash of lightning, hollow thunder. The misses Clover and Jotter jump and clutch one another and laugh, and Elzada, leading Lois by the hand, walks out under the expectant sky and waits there, until finally the rain comes hard and sharp, lashing their upturned faces and pouring in endless rivers from the roof of the hotel.

  Over the Edge

  Oliver Hedquist has plans this morning to introduce his brother-in-law to the wilds of Grand Canyon by putting a butterfly net in his hand. He can’t imagine a more exciting adventure than a stroll down the South Kaibab Trail, looking for Behr’s hairstreak or the Sara orangetip. The painted ladies will be flying, of course, and a variety of skippers, and with great good luck they may see a ringlet or two on the rim. Or a Riding’s satyr—now that would be a find! He waits until the groceries have been carried in and the perishables put away before he suggests such an outing.

  He doesn’t know Morris Merkle well, has spent little time with him over the years—geograp
hical distance has ruled that out. They were back east for the wedding, he and Dotty, and what a gloomy affair that was! St. Louis was veiled in drizzle, and the bride’s brother, who gave her away, the father having passed on some years earlier, got rip-roaring drunk and relieved himself on the pastor’s habit or cassock or whatever it was. The cake, a four-or five-tiered thing, was raw, the champagne flat, and tequila nonexistent. Of course. No one drank tequila. No one but vaqueros and desperadoes and the entire population of Mexico. And Oliver, when he had a chance—he tended to overdo it, he wouldn’t be the last to admit. Oh, it was ghastly! He and Dotty had a bit of a tiff, something about the bride being too young. His response, regretfully, was that perhaps the groom was too old. That didn’t help matters. He liked to get along with his wife, it was so much easier than being at odds with her, though he’d become quite accustomed to the odds over the years and had learned to approach her at such times like a man swaddled in bandages.

  Oliver quite likes his sister-in-law, Jane. In the five years since the wedding she’s grown up and come forward a bit, though she’s still extraordinarily shy. She is, of course, young enough to be his daughter, or Dotty’s, or Morris’s, a situation that must make her feel lonely. She has a habit of biting her top lip after she speaks. Has she been chastised for having opinions? He finds himself suddenly relieved that soon enough Merkle will be on his way home and Jane, by her own choice, will stay longer. He senses an opportunity in that girl. She’s a sweet girl, nice to look at, forehead not too high, with good strong, straight hair the color of Brazil nuts (but just below the ears? why doesn’t she grow it out?) and eyes (he’s hopeless at eye color) a piercing blue (they’re green, actually), and a small mouth that could be larger. And the rest is a bit of a mystery. The first time they met she was draped in bridal attire, all those billowing layers upon layers that shroud the body, advertise virginal tendencies or some such thing. And this time he’s seen her only in the dark, wearing what he recalls to be an unflattering—though understandably comfortable—dress. No, he assures himself, she’s no old-man bait. She’s got an old man already and seems a bit restless with him. The opportunity, he feels, lies away from the vicissitudes of sex, in a place he can only identify as her curiosity, the wideness of her eyes and her apparent entrancement with this land, this place, this canyon, which first entranced him as well, years ago. And in she comes, just at that moment, dressed in Dotty’s clothes yet wearing them in a way that Dotty never has and never will because she can’t. This is youth. Youth in denim. How is it that these ordinary coverings take on such a splendid, promising look when youth resides within?

  Merkle says, “Why, you look like a cowboy, Jane.” He laughs irritably. “Is that all Dotty could come up with?”

  “Oh,” says his wife. “I think this will do, Morris. I’m comfortable enough and grateful to have clothes at all. Dotty’s been more than patient. See, she even basted the hem of the blue jeans.” She rolls up her pant leg to show him, but he’s settling into a sodden, darkish mood and she adds, meekly, “They were too long.”

  “A success!” says Oliver with as much gusto as he can muster. “You look western indeed, my dear, and out here in the West we like that!”

  “We’ve made things fit,” says Dotty brusquely. “That’s the best we could do and we’ve done it.”

  “Done it, and done it well!” cries Oliver, then wills himself to calm down. He doesn’t want to scare the girl. He coughs to gain control of himself and makes this announcement: “Plans for the day include a picnic at Yaki Point and a foray over the edge for those willing. Willing to what? Willing to foray!” (Now, don’t be an idiot, he warns himself.)

  “The edge?” asks Merkle.

  “The edge, yes. Precisely.”

  “The edge of what?”

  The edge of what? Oliver inwardly groans. He says, as directly and informatively as possible, with just the slightest trace of exasperation, “The canyon, Morris. Grand Canyon. For here we are, meters away from one of the seven wonders of the natural world, and to fail to begin our exploration of it willy-nilly while the sun shines and the temperature remains pleasant and the invertebrates creep and fly—to fail to run out there right now and take a look at it and bring a net or two, why . . . why, what would we be, Dotty?” His wife gives him a blank look so he answers himself: “We’d be dotty!”

  The girl laughs, then asks a surprising question: “What’s an invertebrate?”

  “Oh,” says he. It’s been years since he’s had to think about what an invertebrate is, not that it requires thinking. He has to express the definition of invertebrate, which is no longer automatic to him because he hasn’t come across anyone for quite some time who hasn’t known it. (Though he has, of course, but in his blind passion he assumes everyone knows what an invertebrate is, what an insect is, what an arachnid is and an arthropod and a true bug.) “Well,” he says, removing his glasses, polishing them up a bit, and returning them to his face, “invertebrate means, simply, ‘without a spine.’ ”

  “Like a jellyfish?” asks Jane.

  “A jellyfish is an excellent example of an invertebrate.”

  “But not one that creeps and flies.”

  “Seldom,” Oliver agrees.

  “And not here at Grand Canyon.”

  “Oh, yes,” says he. “Very possibly. Five hundred million years ago they were plentiful enough, propelling themselves through the sea.” He adds excitedly, “This was a sea, my dear. Imagine it! A vast sea all around us, rimmed by sand dunes and fed by rivers. And jellyfish, or their ancestors, fanning their way through it, living and dying, falling to the sea floor as boneless piles of protoplasm. But, kind enough to leave trace fossils. We’re not sure how they did it, but it seems to be the gas. The gas within, creating a little pocket of . . . well, gas, a bubble around which the sediments formed and were subsequently cast by time and pressure. Any of this make sense?” Jane nods and he wonders aloud, “How in the world did we get on to jellyfish?”

  “Spinelessness,” says Dotty with a little barbed wire fence of a laugh. “Oliver’s specialty.”

  He laughs as well, a sign of greatness, or at least great manners, thinks Jane Merkle.

  They sally forth, picnic packed, sweaters draped over shoulders, feet variously shod. The Hedquists have sturdy brown hiking shoes, Morris wears loafers, and Jane sports U.S. Keds. Off they go in the Chevrolet to Yaki Point, a short drive east along the rim of Grand Canyon. Dotty drives. Her brother sits up front with her, and Oliver sits in the back with Jane. The road comes so close to the edge sometimes, Jane finds herself leaning away from that fathomless chasm toward the safety of the forest on the other side and into her brother-in-law’s formidable shoulder. Known for a certain Scandinavian boniness, Oliver Hedquist gives the impression of solid angularity wrapped in skin, like a worn paper bag of baseball bats. Against this redoubt Jane Merkle plunges in her flight from vertigo, only to realize that a dizzy spell is preferable to the strange experience of arriving alone on the uninhabitable shore of her brother-in-law’s humerus. He, on his part, doesn’t seem the least bit fazed by her plunging and launching. He tries to steady her by leaning ever so slightly toward her. Dotty, in the front seat, is pointing out the sights. “Moose—” says she.

  “Where?” cries Jane, her heart fluttering in anticipation of a creature the size of the car, gangly and cartoonish.

  Her sister-in-law laughs. “I meant your husband, silly. See the temples everyone? There’s Zoroaster, Brahma, Buddha, Shiva. And over there, Wotan’s Throne. It’s a regular roll call of infidels, isn’t it?”

  Jane feels carsick but interested and peeks out across the vast space, bluish with haze. It is the first real look she’s allowed herself, her first sight of the canyon in daylight. It’s wider than she thought it would be. Somehow she imagined a slice, a sharp cut in the earth, but this is a ragged opening, full of what her in-laws call “temples,” great vertical slabs of rock, flat-topped mountains, some of them tree-covered, others ba
re, rising up like islands in a dry sea. And everywhere a great convolution of folded land. Everywhere the spidery dry pathways of water etching their way downward in dark lines. If she half closes her eyes, she can see a great blue cloth, a heavy linen cloth folded upon itself in the blue haze—a lover’s dress, a lover’s cape, flung to the floor. And the sky a blade of blue above it all, and the snow shining on the northern shore (of course it’s a rim, but to her it’s a shore), the far shore of a river of air and light suspended in space, suspended in spaciousness, for goodness’ sake! Not one bit like the river she grew up with, the muddy, shrieking, crowded, busy, bustling, big-shouldered, stevedored, hot, steamy, frozen, churning, legendary Mississippi. No, nothing like that. Suddenly it’s all too much for her, the grandness, the majesty, the sheer size, the arousing sense of all that rock, sinuous rock—oh, it’s too much. It overwhelms her as thoughts of death do, or the universe, which has no end anywhere, no edge. She closes her eyes and hears Oliver Hedquist say, “Ten years of looking out at that miracle and still I never see it to my satisfaction. Do you, Dotty?”

  “What an odd question,” says Dotty. She pulls the Chevrolet into the parking area at Yaki Point. It’s a large car, and her confidence brings to mind the captain of some river barge. They choose a suitable tree, a stunted piñon pine, and plop their picnic down in the shade. Dotty unwraps a meager feast of crusty bread and a bright orange spreadable cheese that looks suspiciously like war rations, while Jane admires the tablecloth with its pattern of wildflowers and bees.

  “It’s just an old sheet,” laughs her sister-in-law. “Can you imagine sleeping with all those bees? I never did get used to it.”

  “Morris is afraid of bees.”