The Butterflies of Grand Canyon

by Margaret Erhart

  The business of DNA has for some time attracted Dr. Clover. The chemical properties of this fascinating molecule were known at last, though the great race to define its structure continued to occupy some of the most fertile minds of the century, including hers. Recently, without the necessary time and equipment, she has fallen toward the rear of the pack, and accepting her position, has allowed herself to explore other aspects of the critical substance, namely the role it plays in mutation. The interrupted or abnormal growth of plants and animals in the state of New Mexico, downwind of the atomic test site, caught her attention five years earlier, when it first became known. White cattle, hairless sheep, plants that would not flower and birds that could not sing—these were the rumors, discredited as quickly as they arose. But in scientific circles the anomalies were duly tallied and the evidence examined. What seemed obvious to Dr. Clover and her many colleagues was that however great the destruction wrought by A-bombs, however insidious the danger posed by fallout from these explosions, the government of the great nation in whose defense these weapons were produced was not the slightest bit interested in letting the truth be known. Those who knew it were encouraged not to know it, and those who refused to pretend ignorance lived in fear of the consequences. Dr. Clover, who was not a cellular biologist, nor a physicist, used her position as a mere botanist, a mere woman, to advance in the study of radiation without drawing suspicion to herself. As a result, in a few short years she became a pioneer in the field of genetic mutation caused by nuclear fallout. And no one knew. Not even Lois Jotter Cutter, whose life and family she did not care to jeopardize. Her interest in mutation and manipulation of DNA was considered a perfectly acceptable, if not heroic, pursuit in a country of farmers. But the other side of it, the unknown side, the dark side, where science traveled well beyond God, and some would argue, beyond Darwin, caused in her a loneliness, a bitterness, that were it not for her daily obligations as a teacher—or a gumshoe—she would find impossible to live with. Without work, or the possibility of love, she would not necessarily find life in an atomic age worth living.

  She considers running after Lois who has hiked far ahead, but decides against it. Let the girl lope away and be free. Instead Elzada Clover walks to the rim and looks down on the Orphan Mine, all but abandoned since the end of the copper boom. But surely something else of value lies below the surface, something worth clawing from the ground. Uranium, of course. And if she’s right, someday soon the bright thread of Horn Creek, just below, will run a horrid yellow, spilling its radioactive poison into the muddy Colorado. And the river will dump it into the sea, and the sea will bring it to the shores of friend and enemy alike. Our human lives, thinks Elzada, are ever more connected by a grand ignorance and folly.

  A Patriot

  Euell Wigglesworth may look like the Duke of Windsor, but looks aren’t everything. He has never acquired the dukely habit of social ease, with which to hide the chip on his shoulder. The chip, weighing 117 pounds unclothed, goes by the name of Sally Domani and lives in Dorsey Corners, Pennsylvania, Mr. Wigglesworth’s hometown. After going steady for three years in high school, Miss Domani suddenly left Mr. Wigglesworth one day after Latin class and took up with Douggie Warren, class clown.

  At Cornell University Euell had a full scholarship in classics, which he dumped sophomore year for a major in ecology. “A major in what?” said his father, holding a tuition bill. “Classics wasn’t useless enough? Classics is what they’re paying you to study, boy. This . . . this other thing is not.”

  He left Cornell for points west shortly after that.

  On his own he studied the bugs, birds, fish, mammals, and plants of North America. He had, to his great relief, missed the war by a few months, seventeen years old at its close, but through his studies and wanderings around the West, he became a patriot. He hadn’t felt such things before, things like love of country. It astonished him. He hiked the mountains of Idaho, Montana, California, looking under every rock. He hiked the San Juans, thumbed a ride down the Rio Grande. He was happy but for the chip on his shoulder, which followed him everywhere, his shoulder heavy with that silly girl’s rejection.

  Work, a steady job, finally became imperative. To his surprise he was hired as a summer ranger on the North Rim of Grand Canyon, a place he’d never laid eyes on. His duties included the maintenance of outhouses and mule corrals, the emptying of trash cans in the vicinity of Grand Canyon Lodge, and the inspection of campgrounds, including the ability to issue warnings if necessary, though the only violations noted by young Wigglesworth were those that involved personal morals (the woods were dark and deep), and every so often a city dweller would play a radio after nine o’clock in the evening to quell longings for home. There was little of what he considered “rangering,” but the land left him in awe, the great size of it, like a sea, and he was happy, if occasionally bored out of his wits.

  Every eleventh day he had four days off, and he took himself down the North Kaibab Trail into the canyon, swinging a homemade butterfly net. It was on one of these adventures that he first encountered Hugh Huddleston. They met in the middle of the bridge spanning the Colorado River, one young man approaching from the south, the other from the north, each brandishing a net. As Euell remembers it, Hugh suggested a beer at Phantom Ranch, to wait out the heat of the day; and as Hugh remembers it, Euell suggested a walk uphill in the blazing sun, in pursuit of anything that flew. On this occasion, victory went to the beer, though up the creek, in the hot white light between patches of cottonwood shade, Euell had his satisfaction as well. He gave chase to a cloudless sulphur, a magnificent yellow butterfly, which he brought down not with a sweep of his net, it being tangled in a mesquite, but with his hat. It boded well for the friendship.

  Now it’s summer again. Hugh, in his third year as a temporary hire on the South Rim, has pleaded homelessness, and the two friends are cohabiting for a brief time before Euell moves across the canyon to take a permanent job as assistant park naturalist, working under Louis Schellbach. Which is why, when invited to a party at the Schellbachs’, he considered it his duty to go and allowed himself to be dragged along by Hugh, whose enthusiasm for free liquor was akin to a pole vaulter’s attraction to the sky. He ate meatballs, dripped meatball juice on Mrs. Schellbach’s floor, and remembered little else until it was time to go home. He searched for his jacket and found it on a chair in Donny Schellbach’s room. Oddly enough there was a purse half concealed in the sleeve. It was a brown leather purse with a long strap, and alas, the last of the ladies had left the party. Hugh suggested with drunken good humor that they rifle through it to discover its rightful owner and carry it in their fairy-tale coach to that particular Cinderella. But they had no coach, only their bicycles. And, as Euell pointed out, because of the sensitive nature of the location in which the purse was found—Donny’s lair, which may or may not have served as a coat room—they would do better to say nothing of the incident to their host and hostess, just teeter on home to deal with it in the daylight. Now, over a nauseating (to Hugh, sipping a warm beer) breakfast of scrambled eggs and homemade pecan pie, made by Euell himself, they discuss the situation and come up with a plan.

  Because Euell’s chip inhibits him from attempting social intercourse with any member of the opposite sex who is not old enough to be his mother, he decides, given the unknown age of the purse’s owner, that Hugh must be the one to track her down. It will make his friend feel manly. Hugh, for his part, decides that Euell will be the one to pursue this Mrs. Morris Merkle

  (a charming little notebook bears her name on its cover). She’s a married woman, after all, and therefore risk free, and Euell could use a little gratitude coming his way from a female, a little adoration. Each argues his case, Hugh loses, and off he goes to call Mrs. Schellbach, who informs him that the lady in question is staying with the Hedquists. He calls and speaks with Mrs. Hedquist, who promises to pass along the message to Jane. Knowing he’s done all he can do for the time being, he allows himself a littl
e glass of whiskey to soften the edges of what has turned out to be a surprisingly hard day.

  When Euell Wigglesworth comes home from Rowe Well that afternoon with a killing jar of blister beetles, he finds Hugh snoring on his bed with the perfume of whiskey wafting up from his inert body. “You drunken Goldilocks!” he cries, shaking the mattress. “The queens are flying. Queens, batbreath! Get up!” But Hugh is beyond rousing. He grunts like an armadillo and rolls onto his side and within seconds is fast asleep again.

  The queens are indeed flying, though it is already July. Euell has never seen them on the rim and guesses the wind has blown them up from a lower elevation. He likes the queens, has always preferred them to their better-known relatives, the monarchs. They’re a smaller and less dramatic butterfly, with white wing spots and a soft, uniform rusty color. They lack the dark venation that makes the monarchs seem a brooding bunch, backstabbers and conspirators—the Brutus factor, Euell calls it, though in general he tries to keep his prejudices in check. He appeals to science and logic, eschews the irrational tides of emotion and anthropomorphism that plague . . . Hugh, for example. For while Hugh is a fine marksman, a fine collector in most respects, it remains only a passionate hobby for him. Euell has observed him in hot pursuit of what certainly appeared to be a dark buckeye, Junonia nigrosuffusa, a rare sighting indeed and a first for Grand Canyon, only to give up the chase at the critical moment when the creature flew across a creek and he, the New York City boy, didn’t want to get his blessed feet wet. Maddening.

  Euell has captured three queens, though two are really all he needs, and sets about pinning them. He pins the first and finds himself at odds with the day, restless and bored and particularly annoyed with his friend, whose nasal music fills the small and only room of Euell’s house. He pins the second butterfly and is about to apply himself to the third, when his eyes come to rest on an object he thought he was done with: the wayward purse of Mrs. What’s-her-name Merkle. He sighs. Hugh’s mission failed, apparently. It’s getting on in the afternoon, and his lush of a friend lies as if dead, with his mouth slung open and his limbs askew—hit by lightning, that’s the look of it. Not a pretty sight. Euell pushes back his chair, knowing what he must do. He has a queer sense of elation as he dials Mrs. Schellbach’s number. He’s felt this way before scrambling up cliff faces with no rope. She informs him, as she did his friend Hugh not two hours earlier, that Mrs. Merkle may be reached at her in-laws’, the Hedquists. “Has there been some mix-up?” she asks, to which Euell Wigglesworth would like to respond that the mix-up lies inebriated on his bed. Instead he says, “No no. We’re right on track here. We’ll get the thing settled shortly, Mrs. Schellbach. We will.” He would also like to add, but refrains from it, that if money is missing from the purse, he will see to it that little Donny is strung up by his thumbs until he confesses. “Thank you, Mrs. Schellbach,” he says in exactly the tone of voice his mother taught him to use with older women of a certain status, on whose good will he might someday depend.

  Assured that Mrs. Merkle is of a reasonably advanced age, being sister-in-law to the Hedquists, Euell feels a lightness in his limbs and shoulders, a sense of being airborne—the same feeling he gets when chasing a butterfly. He is therefore not prepared for the youthful voice that answers the Hedquists’ telephone. He guesses it must be a daughter. Then he remembers there are no children, for he knows Oliver Hedquist, enjoys picking his brain about bugs and enjoys a beer with him every so often. Perhaps it’s a niece. To her breathy hello (does she know the distraction she causes with the simple passage of air through her lips?) he says, “Hello. Yes,” then immediately becomes tongue-tied. Oh, idiot! He momentarily regains composure, his sense of purpose, and battles on with, “May I speak to Mrs. Merkle, please?” At which point he’s done in and needs a rest. But Whoever she is says, calm as could be, as if the world were not forever changed because of it, “This is Mrs. Merkle. Would this be Hugh?” And he, being so taken aback, responds in the affirmative, not knowing how to undo it once it’s done.

  An Impersonator

  Oliver Hedquist has seen many things in his day, and expects to see a few more before it’s over, but never has he seen a young man in such a high state of excitement over a purse. The poor lad comes pedaling up the road, and instead of leaning his bicycle against a tree, he kicks that useless kickstand thing, which does nothing but delay the inevitable topple. The bicycle falls before he reaches the door. The boy returns to the bicycle. (Oliver watches all this from his window.) He’s got a lady’s handbag slung over his shoulder. Oliver knows Euell Wigglesworth and finds this odd, then remembers his sister-in-law and her missing purse. The bicycle goes up again, young Wigglesworth again moves in the direction of the door, and once more the bicycle responds to gravity. Wigglesworth must have the mind of a sow bug today.

  By the time he finally decides to leave the bicycle on the ground (doesn’t he recognize a ponderosa pine for what it’s worth?), the poor fellow’s got a look in his eye that says to Oliver: SOS! Nonetheless, being the rugged ranger he is, he puts the immediate past behind him and moves on into his future. He rolls his shoulders a couple of times and knocks on the Hedquists’ door. Oliver hears Jane’s light running step—wearing her Keds, no doubt—and her call of “Coming, coming, coming!” There is the slow slide of the door opening, then a silence followed by a single, echoing “Oh.”

  The lad, on his part, is a sudden rush of words. Oliver can’t hear exactly what’s said, but Euell Wigglesworth, always tight-lipped around the ladies, seems to have come unbuttoned. He stumbles on excitedly, like a mynah bird on truth serum. Curiosity drives Oliver out of his study. He is surprised to find that his sister-in-law hasn’t asked the young man in. Inexplicably her rudeness goes beyond that, and she calls poor Euell an impersonator. “Goodness,” says Oliver, approaching the scene. Jane looks unabashed and Wigglesworth says, “Afternoon, Mr. Hedquist,” and hangs his head.

  Jane says, “There’s simply no explanation for it.”

  “There is,” says Euell. “I mean, I think there is.”

  They ignore Oliver.

  Jane puts one hand on her hip and says, “I’d like to hear it.”

  “I’m trying to tell you!” cries Euell.

  Never has Oliver seen either of these usually placid individuals so ill at ease, so ruffled. What can be the reason for it?

  “Well,” says Jane, “tell me one more time. Tell Oliver too. Maybe he’s quicker than I am. And what do I care anyway? I’ve got my purse. That’s all that matters.”

  Euell looks like he is about to sink through the ground. Oliver says, “Come in, Mr. Wigglesworth. Come in. I would introduce you to my sister-in-law, Jane Merkle, but it seems you’ve already met.”

  To his relief, Euell Wigglesworth attempts a smile. “We have,” he says, “and the pleasure is entirely mine. Solely mine, I would say.”

  “He introduced himself as Hugh!” cries Jane. “I knew he wasn’t Hugh. I knew it right from the start. And yet he had the audacity to go on with—”

  “Not audacity,” says Euell, shaking his head.

  “To go on with the deception.”

  “Just dumb.”

  “This constitutes a crime, then?” says Oliver.

  Jane nods, and says almost contritely, “You see, I . . . I watch people. At the party last night . . . I mean you mustn’t think I was spying. I don’t spy on people, I . . . Oh, how to say it? I . . .”

  “You pay attention,” Euell offers.

  “Yes. Yes, thank you. I pay attention. I notice those around me, take mental notes, if you will. It’s quite harmless, isn’t it? It’s harmless. And that’s how I knew you weren’t Hugh. I knew you were Earl.”

  “Euell,” says Euell.

  “Of course,” says Jane. “Ewell. With a w?”

  “A single u. E-u-e-l-l.”

  “My goodness. What a lot of vowels.”

  Oliver Hedquist excuses himself at that moment. He isn’t particularly interested in why
one man masquerades as another—or rather he has felt the temptation himself and has from time to time succumbed to it. It seems the most human thing in the world, to wish oneself into someone else’s life. Or at least out of one’s own. During several dark periods in his marriage he pretended to be a man never at home, a man so busy, so caught up in his work, he had no time to darken the door of his own house. And all this in order to widen the gulf between him and his wife, whose actions, he knew, came of a desperation he could not soothe, an absence she felt in his presence. “More absence!” his body cried, so acute at times was his desire to remove himself from her. He understands, yes he certainly does, the need to be who one is not. Though why Euell Wigglesworth would choose to be that dissolute sissy fruitcake Hugh Huddleston, that’s a bit of a mystery.

  Her Rubicon

  Jane stands in the doorway and watches him bicycle away. The relief she thought she would feel with his departure does not arrive. Instead a terrible restlessness overtakes her, and she goes to her room and empties the contents of her purse onto the bed. No ring. She shakes the accursed purse, holding it upside down and sweeping her hand around inside it. No ring. Ah! she remembers. Of course! The inner pocket. She tugs on the zipper and there it is, right where she placed it a fortnight ago. A simple silver ring, set all around with light blue stones. The turquoise thrills and astonishes her anew. She looks at her wedding band, remembering for a brief moment the incident that came to represent that day for her. It eclipsed the nuptial vows, the scratchy kiss Morris dutifully planted on her cheek at the altar (she had anticipated a kiss on the lips and stood there like a beached fish, smacking the air), the oversize tent under which a motley band played “Boogie Woogie Bugle Boy,” “Chattanooga Choo Choo,” and what sounded to Jane like “Giovinezza,” a Fascist marching song—all too difficult to dance to, Morris not being much of a dancer to begin with. But the jewel in the crown of that less-than-fairy-tale day was the stream of urine unleashed by Jane’s brother, Willis, onto the lily white surplice of the minister. Poor man, ghastly as he was with his buck teeth and malfunctioning salivary glands that caused him to swallow and drool all through the service, he certainly didn’t deserve what Willis bequeathed him. Such is Jane’s thought as she removes her wedding band and tucks it into her underwear drawer and slips on the turquoise ring in its place. She feels a guilty thrill, and at the same time a sense of standing at the bow of a boat, looking toward the far shore, the gray waters of the Rubicon passing beneath. Or is it the Delaware? Anyway, launched is what she feels, and it is at this moment in her trajectory that her attention falls on the folded piece of paper thrust at her by Euell Wigglesworth as he fled the house. It lies on the bed amid the contents of her purse. She picks it up gingerly, her hand trembling for reasons she cannot imagine, and slowly, carefully, unfolds it. She expects a note, some word of apology perhaps, but clearly this is not young Mr. Wigglesworth’s way. For when the paper lies open in her hands, there is not one ink mark upon it. Instead, a freshly collected butterfly.