The Butterflies of Grand Canyon

by Margaret Erhart

  “Thank you,” he gasps, afterward. He goes into the bathroom to wash up, and she curls in the bed and feels what it feels like to be a large blank space.

  In the morning he is merry, almost jolly, and she sees that this too is gratitude. At breakfast Oliver announces an expedition below the rim, to Santa Maria Spring. “We’ll leave tomorrow morning in the dark, hole up during the day, and walk out in the evening. Jane and I are after Cyllopsis pyracmon nabokovi , Nabokov’s satyr, and anything else we can find, of course. Would you care to join us, Morris? Give you a net and show you how to use it is what we’ll do.”

  “Oh,” says Morris. “I’ll give it some thought. Dotty, are you part of this outing?”

  “I’m outing-ed out,” Dotty replies. “But why don’t you go? You can walk down a little ways and walk right back up if it feels too much for you.”

  “I’m sure it won’t feel too much for me. Good grief!”

  “Take a little nap at Hermit’s Rest if you need to. You’ve been on a train for two days.”

  “Yes, but I don’t feel one bit tired. Though I ought to.” He winks at Jane.

  “The air is thin,” says Dotty. “And it’s hot.”

  “Yes, yes. I know.”

  “The last time you were here you were light-headed and almost fainted on us.”

  “I was hungry.”

  “Speaking of which, you look like you’ve dropped a little weight. Doesn’t he, Jane?”

  Jane hasn’t the faintest idea whether weight has been dropped or gained. She notices eyes and lips and teeth and shoes but not weight. And to drop weight is a different matter than to lose it, isn’t it? More accurate, really, because a person almost always comes back and picks it up again. “Yes,” she says, lifting her breakfast plate from the table and reaching for Morris’s. “He’s never been fond of my cooking, Dotty, but look what happens when he’s without it!”

  “Oliver’s the same,” clucks Dotty.

  “Oliver is not the same,” says Oliver. “Oliver has never lost a pound in his life.”

  “I ate quite well,” says Morris suddenly. “Catherine took care of me on weekdays, and on weekends I heated up her casseroles and cooked a little something for Martin.”

  “Martin?” asks Oliver. “Who’s Martin?”

  “His dog,” says Jane. “He died.”

  “Oh, of course,” says Oliver. “I do apologize, Morris. I didn’t realize he was a cooked-for animal. I forgot.”

  “He liked his meat,” says Morris. “I’m quite good at meat, if I say so myself. Beef was his favorite. Lightly fried. He was awfully good about pork too. Though chicken . . . chicken he wouldn’t give the time of day to. I suppose that’s no surprise.”

  “No,” Oliver agrees. “We’re all with Martin on that one, wouldn’t you say, Dotty?”

  Dotty ignores the question and asks, “But who is Catherine?”

  “A temporary woman,” says Morris.

  “And in a more permanent state,” asks Oliver, “what can we assume her to be?”

  There is an awkward silence. “I would just like to say,” says Dotty, “I think it’s wonderful when a human being can feel warmly toward an animal. Moose was very fond of this dog. It shows a large heart on his part.”

  “He was easy to love,” says Morris, frowning.

  “There,” she says. “You’ve gotten that off your chest.” Morris stands up from the table and volunteers to do the dishes. He will wash, Dotty will dry, and Jane will make a list and go to the store. Later she’ll make tomorrow’s sandwiches and Oliver will throw some nets in the car. It is, for some reason, a lighthearted day, a day in which she doesn’t worry and wonder, a day when the tasks before her seem interesting and useful, beginning with the shopping list: milk, cheese, chops, sardines, rye bread for Morris. “Syrup?” she asks, sitting at the kitchen table. “Shouldn’t we have a little syrup?”

  “Candy bars,” says Oliver, walking through.

  “Lettuce?” she asks.

  “There’s plenty of lettuce in the garden,” says Dotty. “We need Brillo pads.”

  “And succotash,” says Morris.

  “Succotash!” cries Jane. “What a silly old word. Say it five times fast, Morris. Come on. See if you can.”

  He looks at her strangely. “Suc-co-tash,” he begins slowly, as if he were pronouncing the word for a foreigner. “Suc-co-tash, suc-co-tash, suc-co-tash, suc-co-tash.”

  “Oh, you’re no fun,” she laughs. “Fast!”

  “Dearest, I—”

  “No, Morris. No excuses.”

  “It’s a joke, is it?”

  “It’s not a joke; it’s a challenge.”

  “I don’t want to . . . I don’t want a challenge, not right this moment, darling. I don’t mean to be a—”

  “Spoilsport, Morris. Don’t be. Give it a try.”

  He seems perplexed beyond expression. He appeals to Dotty, but her attention is suddenly riveted on the dish towel. His hands in the soapy wash water, his back to Jane, he attempts to say succotash five times fast. He fails. He tries again. Fails again. Tries once more and comes out with an unruly garble that resembles an obscenity. “Excuse me,” he says quietly.

  The kitchen is silent. Oliver walks through again. “Liverwurst,” he suggests, “unless you don’t like liverwurst, Morris.”

  “I do. I’m fond of liverwurst. Thank you.”

  The word liverwurst appears in the wake of Jane’s pen and suddenly she feels ashamed. She remembers the happiness of her first encounter with Euell in the store, the feeling of being lifted on wings. Liverwurst was what they spoke of. Liverwurst! And now the soddenness of her relations with Morris, as if they are struggling to lift a heavy, waterlogged carpet. She’s been unkind. She’s humiliated him. How can it be? When she first met Morris, hadn’t she felt the same lift around her heart, the feeling of flying through air? If not on wings, then on the woven threads of the magic carpet she believed carried them both? And now the whole endeavor lies in a soggy heap between them, and Morris is simply who he is, and she is too, and nothing will come of old resentments. His love for her has always been in question. She puts down her pen and says softly, “Forgive me.”

  “Yes, yes,” he says, keeping his back to her. “I’m feeling under the weather is all. It’s Martin, I’m afraid. There’s not one thing that will bring him back.”

  After that there’s nothing to do but get on her bicycle and ride out into the clean air. When she returns from shopping, a car she has never seen before sits in front of the house. She doesn’t know one kind of car from another, but it’s green. She sets her packages in the kitchen, wondering where everyone has gone. The house seems empty and quiet. She walks down the hall and stops before her bedroom door, which is closed for some reason. Oliver’s voice comes to her faintly, and she continues on to the Hedquists’ room where she finds him and Dotty and the doctor from the clinic, whose name she can’t remember, standing around the bed. In the bed—or on it—lies Morris, looking pink and puffy, so little like the Morris she left behind one hour ago that she wonders, suddenly, whether it is truly he. “Morris?” she whispers.

  He raises a weak hand to her and waves.

  Dotty turns in surprise. “Oh, Jane, thank goodness you’re here! Something terrible has happened!”

  “Dotty, please,” says Oliver. “Come in, Jane. Sit right down. You know Dr. Ruffey, don’t you?”

  The doctor, a long lean man with a bloodhound’s face and delicate wire-rimmed glasses, extends a hand to her. The hand is heavy and very white. His palm is surprisingly fleshy. She feels like a woman in an open-air market, receiving a cod from a fishmonger. The doctor says, though she hasn’t asked (she doesn’t know what to ask), “Yes, he’s coming around quite nicely.”

  “Gave us an awful fright,” says Dotty.

  “What exactly—” Jane begins.

  “Bee sting,” says Oliver.

  “Your husband seems to be allergic to bees,” adds the doctor.

 
; “Which we all knew,” says Dotty. “But did he take any precautions? No, of course not.”

  “Oh,” says Jane, sitting down heavily on the other bed. She looks at Morris, who seems to have fallen asleep. “Where did he get stung?”

  “On the foot,” says Oliver. “He must have stepped on the culprit right there in your bedroom. He came running out—”

  “He was panicked,” Dotty whispers.

  “We called Dr. Ruffey and—”

  “Absolutely panicked. His skin was red and itchy. And bumpy. It’s still a little bumpy.”

  Jane leans forward to take a closer look at the patient, to assess his bumpiness. “He’s awfully pink.”

  “The high color may last a little while,” says the doctor. “Let him sleep, and when he wakes up he should be good as new.” He closes his black bag and bows. “Good-bye, Mrs. Merkle. Oliver. Dorothy. If there’s a turn for the worse, Mrs. Merkle, don’t hesitate to give me a jingle.”

  Jane nods dumbly, remembering that she is, in fact, Mrs. Merkle. Mrs. Merkle. How odd it sounds in the mouth of this man who’s come to save the life of her husband. Her husband, Mr. Merkle.

  “Well,” sighs Dotty, after he’s gone. “I think that’s enough excitement for one day.”

  “But our expedition!” cries Jane. “He won’t want to miss our expedition.”

  “He may be in tip-top shape by tomorrow,” says Oliver. “We’ll see. By the way, I closed the door to your bedroom, Jane. I have a feeling Morris’s bee was not the only member of the family Apidae to take advantage of our hospitality.”

  “We’ll have to destroy them,” says Dotty firmly. “We can’t have our lives taken over by bees.”

  “I know that, dear. But at the moment we have no evidence of a nest.”

  “We do,” says Jane, reluctantly, then wishes she had said nothing at all. For suddenly the buzzing in the walls, in her walls, is dear to her, of the utmost importance, the sound of a life that’s hers alone, hers and the bees’, a secret life. “At least I think we do.”

  “We do?” asks Oliver.

  “I’ve heard them.”

  She leads him into her room and they stand beside the bed and wait. Dotty comes in from making lunch and waits with them. The bees make no sound, and Jane imagines them waiting too. Dotty says, “Three perfectly good liverwurst sandwiches are going to waste on the kitchen table. I don’t know about you two, but I’m going to eat one of them.”

  Later that afternoon Jane is stretched out on her bed (Morris is still asleep in the Hedquists’ room), luxuriating in the cool solitude, about to shut her eyes for a short nap. Suddenly the wall starts to vibrate, ever so slightly, a tremor, and she tries to remember what to do in the event of an earthquake. Earthquakes are not unheard of at the South Rim, but she can’t for the life of her remember if she should run out into an open place or find a root cellar. The tremor stops. She’s afraid it will start again—she’s read about aftershocks—and it does. She sits up, intending to wake Morris and leave the house, when she recognizes the hum. The bees! The wall is alive with bees! She sighs and lies back down again, knowing she must alert the Hedquists. But what an energetic sound they make, tending to their honey or whatever it is they tend to in their short lives. She’d like to join them. She’d like to work hard, hurry here and there, go out, come in, crush and push, make music with her body. What a life that would be, what an utterly useful and satisfying life. A life—a work—that must die prematurely, because of Morris. Morris, who sells life insurance.

  That does it. Her mind is made up. She marches into the kitchen to announce that she and Morris will take a room at the hotel until he leaves. The bees can go about their business unmolested. But to her surprise, Dotty has already thought the matter through, and her solution is remarkable. “Here we are,” she says, “miles from anywhere but rich in rangers. Goodness, Jane, every other person you meet is someone who knows birds and bears and flowers and what have you. Squirrels and butterflies. Not to mention bees, Jane. Bees. Isn’t there someone you can think of who knows how to smoke out a nest of bees? He could come on his day off.”

  “Smoke them out?” asks Jane, feeling stupid with astonishment.

  “Encourage them to live elsewhere. It can’t be difficult, it’s done all the time, but a young entomologist would be our best bet, I think.”

  “Well, yes,” Jane stammers, “but Oliver’s here.”

  “Oliver,” says Dotty, “is an old entomologist.”

  A Bullet to the Head

  From eight until five, seven days a week, Gavia Immer, the switchboard operator for Grand Canyon Village, hides her long, useless legs under her desk. Her hands fly, plugging and unplugging, her vocal chords gather and shake: “Hello. Oh, it’s you, Dotty. I’ll connect you. Just one minute please . . . Ethyl! How was your trip back east? New York, you say? Your Preston has the most adorable manners! I’m afraid Dotty Hedquist is on the line. No no, it doesn’t sound serious. It never really is. With Dotty I mean. Well, nice to talk to you, hon. I’ll put you through.”

  She’s a robust woman with bushy white hair, a somewhat thick waist, thick white arms, and iron fingers. She’s never been married, eats lunch at her desk, and has learned out of necessity to control her bladder. When not in use, her wheelchair sits in a corner of the communications room, which is itself no larger than a large closet. She has no window to look out of. Four beige walls enclose her. And yet she feels she sees everything, sees through her ears, and has for the twenty years she’s ruled the switchboard. The pitch of a voice, its timbre—these are the clues that shape stories, give weight and girth to speculation. Rumors offend her. She has little use for gossip. Her imagination may seem like a wild animal that leads her down mossy paths, fords spring rivers in flood, and chases cows, but in fact it’s accurate.

  On this particular August morning she’s putting the park superintendent through to the secretary of the interior in Washington, D.C. “What do you think?” asks Dr. Bryant, his voice crackling in her earphones. “Should I break the ice with the naked cow joke or the one about the rubber Chihuahua?”

  “Neither,” says Gavia Immer, firmly. “Trust me, hon. Washington’s not ready for that. And besides, the secretary’s a very busy man. Not to say you aren’t. But he’s busy busy, if you know what I mean.”

  “Busy busy? You mean a busybody?”

  “Very funny.”

  “Admit it. I’m one of the funniest people I know.”

  What Narcissism Means to Me, by H. C. Bryant, thinks Gavia Immer. “Hold please. Yes, go ahead, Dr. Bryant. The secretary’s on the line. Remember, no jokes,” she whispers.

  “Jokes?” asks a voice behind her, scaring her half out of her chair. She turns to see Elzada Clover beaming with satisfaction. “I’ve actually managed to sneak up on you, Gavvy. I can’t believe it. Aren’t you the ears of Grand Canyon?”

  “Getting old, hon. Ears getting waxy.”

  “Oh, boloney.”

  “Did you know that’s spelled with a g?”

  “It’s a city in Italy.”

  “City in Italy! You can’t fool me.”

  “It is, Gavvy.”

  “Then how’d it make its way into my lunch?”

  “The city gives its name to the sausage.”

  “The sausage I’ve got in my sandwich?”

  “That’s right.”

  “You know, Professor, I don’t know what I’d do without you, I truly don’t. You come in, scare the living daylights out of me, and deliver a lecture on the geography of Italy, all in less than a minute.”

  “It wasn’t the geography of Italy, Gavvy. It was Italian culture and cuisine.”

  “Okay, okay. See? I would’ve flunked the course. Culture and cuisine,” she shakes her head. “You ought to get a real job, Professor. Give up that teaching and come work with me, what do you say?”

  Just then a light on the switchboard blinks. It’s the superintendent, trying to call Washington again. “But you just called Washing
ton, hon. I think once is enough, don’t you? Oh, you want the president this time.” She rolls her eyes. “Sure, sure. If there’s a direct line to the White House, hon, I’ll find it. I’ll do my best. Hold, please.” To Elzada Clover she says, “H. C., he doesn’t understand it’s Washington he’s calling, not his mother in Butterball, New Jersey.”

  “He’s not from New Jersey, is he?”

  “It’s a for-instance, Professor. And no. Obviously he’s not from New Jersey. I’m from New Jersey. A little place like this, you couldn’t have two from the nation’s armpit or there’d be an atomic war. Anyway, you can’t just dial a number and end up with the president on the line. Hello,” she says into the mouthpiece. “Oh, hello. Is this the Mr. Truman who’s president of the United States? It is. Well, that’s good luck. Dr. H. C. Bryant, superintendent of Grand Canyon National Park, would like to speak with you.”

  Elzada Clover smiles and shakes her head. “Gavia Immer, you’re a genius.”

  “Who would’ve thunk it? The pee-resident. You want to sit down, Professor? Sit down.” She points to the wheelchair. “It’s not comfortable, but it won’t kill you.”

  Elzada sits and looks around. “You need some artwork in here. Spruce up these walls a bit.”

  “I hate art.”

  “How can you hate art? No one hates art.”

  Gavia Immer ignores the question. She slips off the headset and swivels her chair to face Elzada. “Am I ever glad you came. Something fishy’s going on. It’s not just . . . you know . . . the thing in the . . . in Mr. Kolb’s . . .”