The Butterflies of Grand Canyon

by Margaret Erhart

  He stops thinking about Superman and thinks about Jane. He’d like to drink his Coca-Cola and think about her for the rest of the afternoon. No he wouldn’t. He’d like to see her is what he’d like. He’d like to see her naked.

  The thought is sudden and sweet, and he allows it to soak into him until he feels like a pancake drenched in syrup. Naked is not something he’s allowed himself to dwell on when it comes to Jane. His mind has wandered there, of course, but on a short leash. There has been so little hope, and there remains little hope—no hope at all, in fact. But something has changed. A week ago, after chasing butterflies and sitting by the creek and eating Mrs. Hedquist’s enchilada casserole baked in a Dutch oven and drinking a little tequila with Mr. Hedquist before bed, he was present in the tent when Jane mysteriously slipped out of her day clothes and into her nightclothes, and the transformation was enough to temporarily tie his tongue. It happened so quickly and without warning. After dinner he and Mr. Hedquist got to talking about the strange social habits of Heterocephalus glaber, the naked mole rat, an anomalous rodent if there ever was one, and there came Jane out of the shadows, wearing the most interesting pair of pajamas. A married woman wearing pajamas! Perhaps she only wore them camping. It was hard to tell in the lamplight, but they seemed to be covered with ducks. On closer examination, they were ducks. Wood ducks. Aix sponsa. Males. Since then, he has thought night and day about what lies beneath those pajamas. It excites him and embarrasses him. Sometimes he feels impatient and disgusted with himself. He feels like a spy. He’s spying on her body and he feels it would be better—fairer and more reputable—to spy on her mind. But why? Her bottom reminds him of a ripe pear. Her breasts are plump, like two peaches, and her nipples, seen through her shirt that rainy day, point to the sky. Her mouth makes a little O of surprise when she laughs, as if laughing is new to her and unexpected. And her short dark hair swings when she runs. Forward and back it goes, like a sleek horse running. If a man finds beauty in a woman’s body, what’s the harm in it? If he wants to see her naked, wants to hold her and press his skin against hers and find his way inside her, what’s the harm in imagining it? When there isn’t the slightest chance in the world that it will happen, what’s the harm?

  He draws a breath, for all his imaginings have left him breathless. A loud knock startles him, and he tucks in his shirt, puts on his hat, returns body and mind to the role of Ranger Wigglesworth. It’s the British couple. The wife, who stands ready to pound on the door again, is somewhat older than Jane, a tall, narrow woman with buck teeth, pink skin, and squinty eyes. She looks, in fact, surprisingly like a naked mole rat. The husband, a fat man who comes to her chin, holds up an imaginary bottle and glass and says, “Might we tempt you to join us after work, Mr. Wigglesworth? And your colleague Mr. Haas as well, if he’s returned from his carousing?”

  Ranger Wigglesworth searches for the right response to this invitation and finally settles on a tentative nod.

  “Excellent!” cries Mr. Sayer. “A way to repay you for your assistance with our tent!”

  His wife blinks but says nothing.

  The husband says, “Until then, Mr. Wigglesworth. Of course you know where we are camped.”

  After they leave, Ranger Wigglesworth does garbage rounds, assists an elderly gentleman who has sprained an ankle while getting out of his car at Cape Royal, reunites a mother in the campground with her runaway son (who ran only as far as the outhouse), and checks on a report of a mountain lion roaming the parking lot of the Grand Canyon Lodge. Ranger Wigglesworth is well acquainted with this particular lion, a dog named Tuna, belonging to one of the busboys. He writes a note reminding the owner that pets must be kept on a leash, and attaches the note to the dog’s collar. He returns to the station to find Warren Haas stretched out asleep on the kitchen table, and remembers what makes this man the ideal roommate: often gone, seldom sober, angelic in his cups. He shakes him and reminds him that in an hour he’s scheduled to give a nature talk over at Grand Canyon Lodge. Haas turns a bleary eye on him and clutches his hand. “Do it for me, Wiggles.”

  “I can’t. I’ve got to make a telephone call.”

  “You owe me. You and Huddleston. For a couple of beers.”

  “A beer for a beer, Haas. Don’t be a jerk.”

  “Make your telephone call over there. For free. A girl named Lydia. Brown hair, big boobies. She works reception. Tell her I sent you.”

  Euell sighs. It isn’t the first time Haas has sent him to one well-endowed Harvey Girl or another, but in Euell’s experience, when Warren’s name is mentioned, they seldom want to grant the favor requested. On the other hand, a telephone call free of charge? No grubbing for dimes in his pocket? His voice, then Jane’s, unimpeded by time or money? It’s worth a try. Maybe Lydia has kept her wits about her, or whatever it is a girl is required to keep in the presence of Warren’s manly charms. (It’s strange, he never thinks of Jane as a girl, or someone who’s lost her wits even once.) He’ll give the talk, go heavy on birds and mammals and leps, and light on land snails, which is Warren’s field of expertise. When the dinner rush is over, he’ll drop in on Hugh’s latest love interest Betty and see how life with Casanova is treating her. If Hugh’s been a good boy, Betty will wield her waitress clout to find Euell a plate of food, leftovers from the guests. If Hugh’s been a jackass, well, alas. Before going back to the station he’ll call Jane from the telephone at the lodge, where he won’t be prey to Ranger Hemple’s eavesdropping. To Haas he says, “Right. It’s a deal.”

  “I knew you’d see the light. Remember,” Haas winks at him. “Lydia with the boobs.”

  “You’re an animal, Warren.”

  “Phylum Chordata, at your service.”

  “Phylum Mollusca is closer to the truth.”

  “Now, Wiggles. Don’t insult the wee folk.”

  It isn’t until after his talk, when he’s dialing the Hedquists’ number, that he remembers the malacologists. Doggone it! he thinks. All in all, it’s been a most imperfect evening. His stomach is growling, evidence that life with Casanova is not going well today. He wishes he’d bought a Hershey bar. He wishes Hugh were not such a dolt. But he must concentrate. The telephone rings twice, and suddenly he wishes it would ring forever. He can’t imagine why this seemed like a good idea. What if Jane answers? What if she doesn’t? He hasn’t thought it through. It’s still ringing. He can hang up right now—she’ll never know, no one will ever know. He can hang up and see if Haas has sobered up enough to go over to the campground and talk snails with Mr. and Mrs. Sayer. Perhaps drink something out of that imaginary bottle. He could use it. For courage. Right now. The telephone continues to ring, and he finds himself wondering what kind of woman becomes a malacologist. A mannish kind of woman? Is Mrs. Sayer mannish? No, not exactly. She has long tubular breasts, a slim figure, a somewhat Byzantine face (he remembers Byzantium from an art course he took in college). The subject of a sacred painting, Mrs. Sayer. Madonna of the Buckteeth. But why is he thinking about the teeth of a woman he doesn’t know, when he could be thinking about Jane? The telephone ringing in the Hedquists’ house is causing his head to hurt. He imagines Jane in her wood-duck pajamas, hearing it and guessing it is he and deciding to let it ring. She rolls over in bed, pulls the pillow over her head. That does it. He’ll give up. He’ll never bother her again. And just as he moves the receiver away from his ear and begins to drop it back into the cradle he hears a distant voice say, “Hello?”

  “Hello!” he shouts, pulling the receiver to his mouth again. Lydia, the melon-chested receptionist, casts him an admonishing look. “Hello,” he says again, more calmly this time. And forgetting his manners, “I’ve wanted to call. It feels like forever since we talked in the meadow. I miss you. I shouldn’t say that, but I do.” The words tumble out of his mouth, they gush and tumble and suddenly he feels like a child, a cross between a child and a geyser, a child and Old Faithful. He doesn’t stop to think because thinking will ruin it. “It feels like a dream. I feel lik
e I’m floating in water. I may look the same, but I’m not. Inside I’m not.”

  “What do you mean?” she cries.

  “I’d like to see you. I’d start running now and run all the way to see you if I knew you wanted me to.”

  “Oh, I do. I do want you to.”

  “It’s downhill!” he laughs.

  “Downhill? Where are you?”

  “I can almost look across the canyon and see you.”

  “The canyon! Lowell, for heaven’s sake. What are you doing here? It’s Emery isn’t it? He’s gotten you involved. Oh, I knew it, I knew it! Those two ladies. The professors. Nothing but big snoops! Somehow they’ve dragged you back. You must be careful, careful, do you hear? Do you promise me? Say you do.”

  “I do,” says Euell obediently, dumbfounded.

  “Good,” whispers Mrs. Hedquist. “Now, don’t forget how I’ve waited for you. You know how I feel about you.”

  “Yes,” says Euell.

  “You haven’t changed, have you?”

  “No.”

  “But you said inside you’re not the same.”

  “I said that?”

  “My dark and handsome ranger boy,” whispers Mrs. Hedquist. “When the fuss is over, we’ll see each other. We’ll—oh, they’re here, darling. Oliver and Jane are here. I must go. I’ll tell you about Jane later. Morris’s wife. She’s fallen, as we all do. She has a beau! He looks like you. I’m quite taken with him. And so amused by their predicament. They honestly think they’re the first . . .”

  She laughs softly and hangs up. Euell stares at the receiver, then replaces it in the cradle. He walks out into the night, which is overcast. The stars are visible only through a gauzy layer of clouds. He is confused, upset, and angry with himself for once more pretending to be who he is not, though this time he hasn’t the faintest idea who he is not, some fellow by the name of Lowell. Which sounds like Euell, it’s true, but that doesn’t solve the matter. A dark and handsome fellow, at least. Someone worth impersonating. Is it possible to impersonate an unknown person? He was guilty once of impersonating Hugh (it seems like years ago that Jane, or rather Mrs. Merkle, lost her purse), but even then there was no premeditation. He was led to that particular falsehood like a cow in a chute. He was tricked. And he’s being tricked again. Or so he feels as he makes his way to the ranger station, hoping to find Warren Haas upright. Because right now more than anything—certainly more than love—he needs the company of someone who likes to drink and likes to talk and can do both at the same time all night long and still wake up in the morning and think life is worth living. That would be Haas. God bless Haas.

  The Second Law of Thermodynamics

  Jane Merkle cannot understand why he doesn’t call. Does he not think of her? Tomorrow Morris will arrive and that will be the end of her freedom. Though perhaps she’s lost her freedom already. Perhaps one’s freedom ends when love arrives.

  Oliver, meanwhile, has invited her to pin butterflies, and the strange process so engulfs her, it’s the only thing that takes her mind away from Euell. Just this morning she pinned up thirteen Schellbach’s fritillaries, captured a week ago at Kanabownits Spring, yet in the delicate spreading and pinning of the wings—and the antennae, which Oliver insisted on—she never once fell into nostalgic reminiscence or felt poetry leap to mind. No tragic songs of sitting beside her handsome ranger in the meadow. No. The Speyeria atlantis schellbachi, as she has learned to call them, seemed to draw her down to the pinning board, draw her down into their caramel browns—their velvet wings still in death, yet rich in beauty, alive. And she lay with them, pinned and happy. Still. So still. Free from desire and love and not-love. A butterfly herself.

  But there is nothing left to pin, a situation that ought to please Oliver, who has never had an extra pair of hands, especially hands as capable as hers. But it alarms him instead. He makes quite a fuss. They must get out and collect, for goodness’ sake! The season is flying by (as well as a fair number of Nabokov’s satyr, with its two pretty little eyespots). He suggests an early morning outing. “But Morris is coming,” says Jane. She is standing in his study, leafing through Holland’s The Butterfly Book. She feels quite lost, and yet quite found in the mute, colorful pages.

  “Morris?” asks Oliver.

  “Yes. My husband,” she says, and starts to laugh.

  “I remember, my dear. But when is he coming?”

  “Tomorrow.”

  “Drat it all. We’ll go the day after. Or the day after that. We’ll drag him along. And if that’s not—”

  “Oliver,” she says suddenly, the book a pleasant, anchoring weight in her hands. “What would you do?”

  “What would I do?”

  “If you were married to Morris. If you were me.”

  “If I were you. Yes, I see.” He rubs his chin, his throat, his chest.

  “It doesn’t matter,” she says, dropping her eyes.

  “Oh yes, my dear. It does. It matters very much. That you ask me, that’s what matters. My answer, of course, is only inadequate.”

  “Don’t feel you have to—”

  “I don’t feel I have to anything. I would like to give you a helpful answer. It would please me very much. However, I’m not sure I can. I’m not you, you see. Well, I’m you and I’m not. I mean I . . . Well, I’ve been on both sides of it, haven’t I?”

  “I don’t know!” cries Jane.

  “Well, I have. On Morris’s side and on what we will call yours. I too had a . . . a temptation once. It was years ago, when I was a bit more dapper and feeling my oats and generally worth a thing or two—”

  “Oliver.” Jane touches his arm.

  “No,” he says quietly. “Let me finish. I would be honored to tell you.” He draws a breath. “We have been married for a very long time, Dotty and I, but not forever. And there was a time when we were so recently married we both felt . . . we felt in a kind of limbo. Neither here nor there. With each other but not of each other, if you follow me. For many pairs this time is a hopeful time, but for us it was . . . it caused . . . irritation. We chewed at each other. I think we were trying to discover what it might feel like to be free again, rid of the mate. Of course I stood a very real chance of being devoured, being the male—that is, if Dorothy and I happened to be spiders.”

  “Which you weren’t,” says Jane.

  “No. It’s somewhat irrelevant. But a different perspective can be useful, don’t you think? Anyway, we felt like sailors on a sinking ship at a time when many in our situation seemed to feel like cocaptains. We were right and they were wrong, as it turns out. Second law of thermodynamics: everything goes to hell over time. The ship will go down; it is always sinking; it is only chance that keeps it afloat. Captains are irrelevant. So are sailors for that matter. We’d had enough of standing helpless on deck, gawking at a failing enterprise. Our instincts told us to jump for the lifeboats, and we did.” He clears his throat. “My lifeboat was a young lady named Isabelle Finch. She was a friend of mine long before I met Dotty. We were schoolmates. Our names were alphabetically close so each year we sat next to each other, until a boy called Grumann joined our class. I think we both resented him. I know I did.”

  “But why didn’t you know you loved her, way back when?”

  “I did know it. I knew it every day when I walked into the classroom and walked to my desk and sat down without looking at her.”

  “Oliver! That’s too strange!”

  “You were never a boy,” he laughs. “Terribly awkward, all that stuff, for a boy. And I was hopelessly unpopular—the odd duck. It was pure humiliation to like a girl.”

  “I don’t believe it. You weren’t unpopular.”

  “I’m afraid I was. Yes indeed. I was considered beyond the pale. My hero was John Wesley Powell, for one thing, and for another, I was mad about butterflies.”

  “So you forgot about her, then Dotty came along.”

  “Something like that, but not quite like that. She wasn’t forgotten; sh
e was left behind. Dotty came along, we married, we stood at the rail of our sinking ship until our feet got wet, then we jumped.”

  “You jumped to her. To Isabelle Finch.”

  “For a time, yes.”

  “But did you save yourself, Oliver?”

  He smiles. “One thing we didn’t consider was that lifeboats are subject to the second law of thermodynamics, too.”

  “Of course,” says Jane, soberly.

  “We might have waited a little, my dear. Until the water came to our knees. Perhaps that’s what I would advise. Wait for the water to rise to the knee, then jump, knowing that the vessel of your salvation is but a diminutive version of the vessel of your destruction.” He taps his head. “Keep that in mind.”

  The next day Jane and Dotty drive to Flagstaff to meet the train. The snow has melted off the mountain, except for a few white patches in the high gullies. The sight of all that bare gray rock stretching up into the gathering thunderheads puts Jane in a somber mood. She and Dotty talk very little.

  Morris is waiting for them when they arrive. “Unheard of!” cries Dotty. “How in the world could you be early?” She gives her brother a dry kiss on the cheek. Jane kisses him also and stands beside him and pats his arm. She looks up at him as he talks to Dotty and is distracted by something she’s never seen before: he has hair in his ear. Quite a nest of it. She moves to the other side and sees a nest in that ear as well. Her heart sinks. Yet she feels a softening toward him, a pity. Why, he’s an old man! With hair growing in his ears! Suddenly she understands how grateful he must be to be with her, to have her as his young wife. Pure gratitude. It softens her and repels her at the same time.

  That night in bed he wants to touch her and she lets him, though she feels no impulse in that direction herself. She pretends he is a bear, a bear who wants to mate with her but means her no harm. Though it is clumsy mating with a bear. He pushes hard. He gasps and grips her flanks, and she feels like a deer brought down. He pumps and grinds against her until she wonders how he can not notice that she is utterly still: she is still and dead as a deer. She is prey. She doesn’t struggle. Maybe he likes that. She feels him driving recklessly up into her, pushing the inside of her aside, forgetting she’s a woman, not a bear like him. Before he finishes she digs her nails into the soft flesh of his shoulders, to hurt him. He flinches. She can feel his startled penis flinch and miss a beat, and it gives her pleasure that even so far along in his excitement she can stop him with a touch.