The Butterflies of Grand Canyon

by Margaret Erhart

  Back at the house Oliver Hedquist has answered the telephone, which rang and rang and rang until he could stand the noisy intrusion no longer. On a small notepad kept beside the beast for just these purposes, he jots a message for Jane: “Rowe Well, nr. Supai Camp, GCNP.”

  “She’ll know what this is in regard to?” asks Oliver.

  “Yes, sir,” says Euell Wigglesworth.

  “And how are you keeping yourself these days?”

  “Just fine, sir.”

  “It’s a good life, isn’t it?”

  “What life would that be, Mr. Hedquist?”

  “All of it, damn it!”

  “Yes, sir. It’s a good life.”

  “Well, it ought to be,” says Oliver.

  Dotty stands at the edge of the ponderosas, considering her options. Noon is the hour of no shadow and therefore the wrong time to go unnoticed. Between her and the mule barn is the corral—an acre of open ground dotted with unpredictable, ill-tempered animals. But if she stays outside the fence, she will surely be seen by someone, which wouldn’t be the end of the world as long as she doesn’t act furtive. Perhaps he won’t come at all. Or he’ll be as late as he was the last time, and their half hour together will come down to a matter of minutes. No. She won’t risk her reputation for a few minutes alone with him. No matter how pressing the matter is or how much new information he has for her: heard with his own ears, seen with his own eyes. How dearly she would love to catch Emery Kolb in the act, to illuminate his foul deed for all the world to see! But she must be patient. She’s nobody’s fool. Her watch reads five minutes after twelve and she’ll give him till quarter past. She steps back into the concealing pines and waits for Amadeo.

  A Road Trip

  Euell Wigglesworth and Hugh Huddleston are not getting along as well as they used to, which is why Ranger Naturalist Wigglesworth has invited Ranger Naturalist Huddleston up to the North Rim for a few days to catch bugs by day and light-trap moths by night and generally clear the air between them, an air resembling the dirty brown gunk hanging over New Jersey. But Hugh, it seems, has forgotten. In Euell’s absence he has taken over his house and fallen in love with his bed, and it is there Euell finds him, sound asleep in the middle of the day, wearing only his shoes. Mysteriously, he has a pillow over his head.

  “Huddleston? Are you ill?”

  “Hullo!” cries Hugh from under the foul-smelling pillow. “I might be. Can’t tell.”

  “Why don’t you come up for air and find out?”

  “Can’t.”

  “Can’t?”

  “It’s too much for me, Charles.”

  “What a sop you are! What’s this with the pillow?”

  “I need the pillow. Don’t take the pillow.”

  “Well, I’m not talking to you with that thing over your head.”

  “It’s not a thing. It’s a pillow.”

  “Hugh,” says Euell evenly, “I will count to three.”

  “You can count to three hundred. I need the pillow. I don’t like today and I don’t feel very well and I like being in bed and I won’t come out just because you want me to. We can talk like this. Don’t be so bloody stubborn.”

  “I’m not talking to a pillow.”

  “But you are.”

  “All right. Never mind. I’ve left you some cheese. I’m sorry you won’t come with me. I think it would do you some good.”

  “Where are you going?” asks Hugh, sliding the pillow away from his face. “Are you going somewhere? Have I driven you away?”

  Euell comes and sits on the bed. “To the North Rim, Hughie. In search of butterflies—the elusive Riding’s satyr and all the bonnie sulphurs, clouded and cloudless, and red-spotted purples and swallowtails the size of cow’s feet and hairstreaks and silvery blues and red and Weidemeyer’s admirals. And at night, my friend, the moths—sphinxes, tigers, Pandoras, and underwings, and all other manner of noctuids, some never seen before by hominids. You don’t remember, do you? We planned a trip.”

  “It sounds like a good trip,” says Hugh, sitting up. “And we have enough cheese for the two of us?”

  “We do.”

  “Well, I’ll pack my things, shall I? My net and my canteen?”

  Euell nods. “Very good. I’ll wait in the truck.”

  At the trading post in Cameron they stop to buy Coca-Colas, and Hugh would like to buy a blanket from an old Na vajo woman, but he’s forgotten his money. “Trade?” he says hopefully. She points to the back of the truck. “I can’t give you the truck, m’dear. I wish I could. It’s a government vehicle. My friend, he’s the one I want to buy the blanket for, he’d be in a lot of hot water. He’d be given the boot. He’s inside getting sodas.” She points again and Hugh shrugs. “No deal, I guess. It’s not even a good truck. You don’t want this truck. I bet you’ve got a better one at home. Husband?” he asks her. She laughs and stands up, brushing the dust off the back of her purple skirt. She comes over to the truck and points and says, “Chickens.”

  “Chickens? Well, I’ll be damned,” says Hugh, peering into the truck bed. “Look at that. Look at all those chickens. How’d you know there were chickens in there? Bet you smelled them, didn’t you?” He sniffs and points to the chickens. The woman laughs and holds up eight fingers and nods at the blanket. “Eight?” says Hugh. “You want all eight of them? What’s your name? Name?” he asks again. “I’m Hugh.” The woman watches him. “Hell,” he says, “take them. They’re yours,” and he lifts the box of chickens out of the truck and sets them on the ground in the shade of the trading post. The woman folds the blanket and wraps it in brown paper and ties it with a piece of wool.

  Euell comes back with two bottles of Coca-Cola, straws sticking out the top. They cross the Little Colorado, stopping on the bridge to look down at the dry riverbed. “She’ll be running tomorrow,” says Euell.

  “Rivers aren’t she’s,” says Hugh.

  “Some of them are.”

  “Not the Hudson. Not the Mississippi. Not Ol’ Man River. He just keeps rolling along.”

  “You’re feeling better,” Euell laughs.

  “It’s a road trip. I love a road trip.”

  By the time they arrive at the North Rim ranger station the truck is spitting dark fumes, as are the driver and passenger, each one having counted on the other for certain amenities, like cigarettes. And Hugh, to his profound dismay, has neglected to bring a bottle of something with him, something nice to drink. He realized it halfway across Indian land, somewhere in the Chinle formation, the blue humped hillocks so clownish, so bone dry it caused a thirst in him, which excited the memory of liquid refreshment. Which was not for sale on the reservation, nor beyond in the little town of Jacob Lake where they stopped for gas. The boy filling the tank was solemn when Hugh conveyed to him his hopes for a beverage stronger than Coca-Cola. “You won’t find that here,” said the lad. “I mean the Coca-Cola. But we got 7 Up and we got Nehi.”

  “Nehi?” laughed Hugh bitterly. “What the bloody hell is Nehi?”

  The boy, a pale boy, clean and scrubbed, turned red as a ripe tomato and backed up a step or two. “Orange drink. You can get it in different flavors, but all’s we got is orange.”

  “You’ve got nothing with, let’s say, alcohol in it?”

  “Alcohol?” The boy gaped at him.

  “No beer or fine wines or perhaps an aged Scotch. Or a nice malt whiskey. Or a—”

  “No sir,” the boy interrupted. “We don’t have none of that.”

  “Cigarettes, then. I’ll have a pack of Luckies. Two packs. One for my friend.”

  “We don’t have no cigarettes. But we got gum.”

  “Gum?”

  The boy nodded.

  “Gum, then,” said Hugh. “Gum it is. A round of gum.”

  Across the front seat he passed Euell a stick of Doublemint. “Let’s hear it for gum,” he said. “And enlighten me, Charles. Who the hell were those very strange people? I felt like I was ordering moussaka in Sweden.”
>
  “Mormons,” said Euell.

  “They were Mormons? That ghostly little kid was a Mormon?”

  “This is Mormon country.”

  “Well, bless my soul.”

  “Utah’s thataway.”

  “I know where Utah is,” said Hugh huffily. “Do they really have all those wives?”

  “Some of them do.”

  “All those women and nothing but gum? How the Sam Hill do they do it?”

  “It sounds like paradise to me.”

  “Oh, it doesn’t, Charles. You sound like every silly red-blooded American boy. I’ll tell you what, though. Right now I’d give anything for a good bottle of Scotch.”

  “Or a smoke,” said Euell.

  “Hell, I’d settle for a modest rye.”

  “A beer would taste good. A beer and a smoke.”

  “I’d give up the smoke to upgrade the beer.”

  “You won’t have to,” said Euell. “We’ve got the chickens.”

  “Chickens?”

  “I’m bringing the boys some roast chickens. It loosens them up and they become generous.”

  “With smokes, you mean?”

  “And a stash of the best Glenlivet I personally have ever tasted.”

  “Ah,” said Hugh. “Damn.”

  More Than One Secret

  Pretending to doze in the backseat of the Hedquists’ car, Jane Merkle considers the events of the day before. In retrospect she shouldn’t have done it. It was far too risky. She was lucky, yes, but it could easily have been otherwise. It was a day that divided itself right down the middle, the two halves as different as pepper and salt. That extremely pleasant encounter with Mr. Wigglesworth on the one hand, and on the other a furtive, perhaps even sordid, business that made no sense to her, though it involved someone known to her, to whom she was practically related. She opens one eye and sneaks a look at Dotty, or rather at the back of her head, as if her sister-in-law’s bun might start to speak. Ordinarily a neat pincushion of hair, this morning it resembles a dog turd, and Jane is overcome with the giggles, which she expresses as a coughing fit, which in turn captures the Hedquists’ attention. “Are you quite all right?” asks Oliver, who is driving. “Yes, yes,” she murmurs, as if drifting back to sleep. She snores lightly to authenticate the ruse and goes on with her accounting.

  She had been careful to arrive in the vicinity of the mule barn a few minutes before noon and no earlier. She went around into the woods to find the best place to wait, and as the time approached, she made her way to the edge of the woods and practically ran smack-dab into Dotty. But fortunately Dotty had her back to her, her attention focused on the barn. Minutes passed. Jane watched her anxiously scan the road and guessed that whoever he was, this Deo, he would arrive by car or truck, and it would not seem out of the ordinary for him, so he was therefore almost surely connected to the mule operation. If he was a he, she reminded herself. Just then Dotty spotted something. Jane heard her catch her breath (she was that close) and watched her walk out of the woods and along the corral fence. She walked quickly at first, nervously. She seemed to be talking to herself, trying to calm and slow herself down. Jane noticed a green truck coming along the road from the other direction, the back of it piled high with hay bales. It stopped at the barn and she saw a figure get out. It seemed like a man, though she was too far away to tell. It was small for a man, but it walked stiffly, the way a man walks, as if wearing a heavy iron belt. She would have to get closer, she realized, or she would miss everything.

  Jane waited until the figure went behind the barn, followed a minute later by Dotty, then she slipped into the corral and, weaving her way around the back ends of mules (she’d heard they were steadier than horses), she made her way toward the scene of the intrigue. The voices came from inside the barn, and she crouched down behind a water barrel near the door. Dotty spoke in an angry whisper, and the man, for it was a man, replied in a pleading, subdued voice. He had an accent like the butcher’s in the general store—a Spaniard then? A Mexican? “It’s no good,” he declared. “I cannot do it.”

  “What are you saying?” asked Dotty, her voice rising. “All these months and you want to walk away from it? It means nothing to you, does it? I should have known.”

  “It mean something. It mean I lose my job.”

  “Oh, your job,” she scoffed. “Don’t be ridiculous. You’ve been here almost as long as Mr. Kolb has, and you’re too colorful. You’re almost as colorful as he is.”

  “What means this, colorful?”

  “It means you’ll never lose your job. They need you. The visitors love you. Except when you’re drunk.”

  “Please, Mrs. Dorothy.”

  “And I need you too,” she went on. “Come here, Deo.” Jane wanted desperately to peek out from behind her barrel, but she didn’t dare. From the corral came the sound of a mule sucking water from a trough, then a bird of some kind flew over going cheeeeeeee cheeeeeeee. She couldn’t tell what was transpiring in the barn. Whatever it was, it went on for several minutes. Finally Dotty spoke in what seemed to be a breathier-than-usual voice, saying, “That’s better, isn’t it? We can go on, can’t we?” The man, Deo, said nothing, but he must have indicated yes, because there was another brief period without conversation, and then Dotty gave a little yelp and said, “Oh, I must go! You’ve promised me, remember? We’ll be away for a while now, and when I get back I want you to give me everything.”

  “I give you something, Mrs. Dorothy.”

  “Everything,” she repeated.

  “I do good for you. But I don’t want I lose my job.”

  “We’ve talked about your job, Deo.”

  “I need my job. I have wife and kids. They need my job.”

  “I know all that,” said Dotty. “I know. I don’t have time now. What will it take?”

  “Money.”

  “Money!” she laughed. “You’re joking.”

  “No. This is not joke, Mrs. Dorothy. This is America. Money is America.”

  “Your ideas are childish, Deo. And corrupt,” she added. She was no longer whispering, and Jane could feel her own face growing hot. Suddenly she realized she was hardly invisible. She was squatting behind a barrel and any moment now Dotty could come storming out of the barn, hot as a hornet, chasing or escaping from her lover or blackmailer or whoever he was, and to be in her path would amount to suicide. It would be, in plain English, as ugly a scene as one could imagine. Rather than imagine it, Jane stood up and tiptoed away. Tiptoed, then ran, and when she reached the road she slowed to a brisk walk. She walked back to Babbitt’s where, what seemed like a lifetime ago, she’d leaned her bicycle against the building. She got on it and was halfway home before she remembered the groceries. She turned around. She was in no hurry. She wanted Dotty to get home before she did. If she were Dotty, she thought, if she had a secret to keep, she would live for those moments when she could be alone with her secret, not only for the delicious-ness of it—though Dotty’s seemed a bit unsavory—but for the simple relief of not having to lie. Not having to lie with one’s words or one’s face or a trembling hand. And Jane did not want to be lied to. For she in turn would then have to lie, because she had a secret now too, didn’t she? More than one. In a matter of hours she’d opened a letter not addressed to her, fabricated its contents, tracked her hapless victim, and eavesdropped on a conversation clearly not intended for her ears. And there was something else. She had tried to ignore the signs, hoping they were of no importance, like an allergic reaction to béchamel sauce that occurs once and never again. She herself had experienced such a thing and abstained for years afterward, then quite by accident had eaten it with no ill effect, which left her annoyed at all the time she’d wasted on abstinence. But. But. The signs she was thinking of had not abated. She continued to grow flustered in his presence, her heart beat faster, her words felt clumsy and inadequate. She noticed things about him that she had never noticed in any man before, such as his teeth and shoes. And worst of all, s
he could hardly wait to see him again! She had not been away from him for more than an hour and she . . . what was it exactly . . . ? She missed him. What an extraordinary sensation. She wasn’t sure she had ever felt it before, not even for her parents, though she had loved her father very much and missed talking to him, missed their games of badminton and helping him set the table. But this was different. It didn’t rely on a past together, a history of daily life. It was immediate and physical. It had to do with the presence and proximity of skin, and then its absence. His skin, his form, his—good Lord, might she use the word spirit? It was all a jumble in her mind. Yet clear as could be.

  At the store Mrs. Jicama yielded up her packages and she started out once again, pedaling as fast as she could with the enormous rucksack of groceries on her back. She pedaled faster and faster, faster than she ever had before, even as a child. She remembered something her father used to say—he said it often, and she never understood it: “Thoughts are impediments. They’re flies in the paint, pebbles in the soup. They break your teeth in the name of food.” It was still obscure to her, but as she sped along, she knew that whatever kept her upright on her bicycle, it was not thought. Thought might have cautioned her to slow down, and slowing down on a bicycle meant falling over. No, it was something else; it was something she had learned to trust without knowing it, the way she trusted her feet and calves, hips and thighs to carry her through her day. It was more than instinct, more than nerve endings. It was a place, a country, a whole continent, and she had tried to live beyond its borders and had succeeded quite well, navigating by her mind, until . . . She could not put her finger on the transformative moment. And who cared anyway? It was all too philosophical. This thing, this gap, this gape of canyon over her right shoulder, it didn’t care in the slightest that she, Jane Merkle, felt herself to be—oh say it, Jane!—taken, somewhat, by a young man, younger than she, certainly, who seemed himself to be somewhat smitten by her. But then, who could tell? She resolved right then and there to invite Mr. Wigglesworth to dinner. Dinner around the campfire. Followed by a walk in the moonlight. Oliver would wonder, perhaps, but perhaps not. And Dotty, caught up in her own intrigue, would hardly have time for someone else’s. There was a certain assumption that went along with being a wife (it didn’t hold for husbands) that Mrs. Jane Merkle now wished to use to her advantage. Wives were trustworthy and loyal, and the whole world knew it, and even when the proof lay elsewhere, they knew it all the more. They wanted it to be so, and it was so. This was a revelation to Jane. It meant freedom where she had believed there was none. Oh, freedom! she thought, bicycling into the Hedquists’ yard. Terrifying freedom! And for one fleeting moment she wished to be back in St. Louis, the old Jane, Morris’s dutiful helpmeet, making supper, shoveling the walk, smiling and nodding at those long pointless stories of his, which were not the sum of his life, though perhaps he thought they were. The feeling passed. She leaned her bicycle against a tree, a pine that smelled of butterscotch, and marched inside, calling out, “Yoo-hoo! Oliver! Dotty! We have food enough for weeks!”