The Butterflies of Grand Canyon

by Margaret Erhart

  “Foraging?”

  “Well, shifting for themselves.”

  “They’ll be living outdoors?”

  “No no. We’ll return them in the evening. They can sleep in their own beds. We’ll be working around the village and in the vicinity of Rowe Well. The details are up to Ranger Wigglesworth. He’s organizing us this year.”

  “Ah,” says Oliver. “Would a woman, then, be, let’s say, appropriate?”

  “Appropriate for what?”

  “An appropriate volunteer.”

  The superintendent thinks for a moment. “My guess is no. But why? Have you a woman?”

  “I do,” says Oliver with satisfaction. “But I’m more than happy to keep her for myself.”

  There’s an awkward silence. Finally Bryant says, “Well, I’m glad we spoke, Hedquist. Put it in your hat, will you?”

  “In my hat?”

  “Chew on it. And if you think of anyone, do let me know, will you?”

  “I will,” Oliver agrees. “In fact—What about allergies, Superintendent? Say a man had an allergy to bee stings. Would that disqualify him?”

  “I can’t imagine why. We’ll be working with butterflies, not bees.”

  “Right,” says Oliver gleefully. “I believe I have just the man for you.”

  “Splendid! Have him here in my office by eight o’clock tomorrow morning. Can you do that? And Hedquist, he’s to bring his own lunch.”

  The next morning, Oliver pries Morris out of bed as agreed upon the night before. Jane has made two tuna fish sandwiches and placed them, along with a pickle, in the only bag she can find, a large grocery bag from Babbitt’s. The size of it disturbs Morris, who has never before eaten lunch out of a bag. He’d prefer something smaller, more clandestine. “I feel like a horse with a great big sack of oats.”

  “Don’t be silly,” says Jane, and Dotty adds, “You’ll be happy to have your sack of oats come lunchtime.”

  Oliver walks his brother-in-law to the superintendent’s office, where a group of eight able-bodied men of all ages is already assembled, brown bags in hand. He introduces Morris to the three men he knows, including Bryant, who is in extremely good humor. Ranger Wigglesworth is nowhere in sight. Afterward, he says his good-byes and walks home. In his study he makes a list of what he and Jane will need for their expedition below the rim, which they are finally free to embark upon tomorrow at the crack of dawn. Funny about Morris. He seemed delighted at the opportunity to join up, as he called it, as if the monarch census were a call to arms. And yet the prospect of a stroll down the Hermit Trail laid him flat. Ah, well. The afflictions a man can conjure are surely as numerous as the ghosts that plague him, though Oliver himself is not much of a believer in ghosts.

  His window faces east and catches the long, thin morning shadows of ponderosa pines. The light and shadow fall in bars across the road, and as he watches, a bicycle appears, as if in an old flickering movie. He recognizes the rider right away. Young Wigglesworth. Some business about the monarch census, no doubt. Moments later the doorbell rings. He goes to answer it, but Jane, running in her bare feet down the hall, beats him to it. She turns to him with a look of triumph. “I’ll get it, Oliver. He’s here to see me.”

  It is not his intention to eavesdrop, but by now it’s an old and unbreakable habit, a requirement of his marriage. A certain fluttery energy plagues his chest as he stands with the door of his study cracked open so he might better hear the conversation down the hall. As far as he can tell, Wigglesworth has practiced his elocution since the last time he came to visit.

  “I could kill Huddleston,” says the ranger. “I’d like to wring his neck and throw him in a vat of boiling oil.”

  “Oh!” laughs Jane. “But that would kill him twice!”

  “Twice might not be enough.”

  “Good heavens, what’s he done? Don’t tell me he’s been impersonating you.”

  “Worse than that. Harboring information.”

  “What sort of information?”

  “About your bees,” says Wigglesworth forcefully.

  “But you’ve come about the bees, haven’t you?”

  “Jiminy Christmas! I would have come sooner.”

  “Oh, well,” says Jane. “They’re still here. I had a conversation with Hugh and he simply forgot to tell you. But now he has, and here you are. I’m . . . ,” she hesitates, “happy.”

  The ranger says something Oliver can’t make out. Jane responds with an audible sigh. Wigglesworth says, “And he wasn’t the one to tell me anyway. It was his girl, Betty.”

  “But he promised he would!”

  “So I’d like to kill him.”

  “It seems only fair. I’ll help you. Oh, but Euell, I can’t. Today Oliver and I are getting ready for a trip, and tomorrow we’ll be at Santa Maria Spring, and then . . . then of course you’ll be gone again.”

  “I won’t be. That’s what I came to tell you. Dr. Bryant put me in charge of this year’s monarch census. For the next two weeks we’ll be training volunteers, so I’ll be staying here and I can move your bees.”

  “My goodness,” she says thoughtfully. “You’ll meet Morris.”

  “Morris?”

  “My husband. He’s one of your volunteers.”

  “Your husband? I thought he died.”

  “Died! Heavens no. He was stung by a bee, that’s all.”

  “I’m sorry, I—”

  “Morris dead? How on earth . . . ?”

  “Hugh told me.”

  “Hugh!”

  “He called him Martin.”

  “Martin! But the dog is—”

  “He said he died. He didn’t say when. I thought maybe that was why you never spoke about him. I had no idea you . . . I would never have . . . I’m at a loss, Jane. I don’t know what to say. I feel a bit led on by you. There. I’ve said it.”

  Oliver leans his head against the door frame and waits. Finally Jane says, “If you’ve never been married, you can’t understand the desire not to be. From now on I’ll try to conduct myself like a married woman, but I’m going to fail, Euell. Sooner or later, I can promise you, Mrs. Morris Merkle is going to fail.”

  It seems to be the end of the conversation. Oliver turns to the window to watch Wigglesworth pick up his bicycle (it’s fallen to the ground), throw a leg over it, and pedal stiffly away. He seems like a different man from the young man who came to call on the widow Merkle just minutes before. How quickly love can be shattered. With a gesture, a look, a word, the dream of belonging to someone is tossed away. The weightless dream that feels golden and lusciously sweet. Now it weighs heavy and burns like vinegar. And despite what they say, only rarely does such disappointment move a man to poetry. More often it dulls the appetite, increases wakefulness, and inspires long pointless walks. It takes hold of the mind and won’t let go, and all a man can do—or a woman—is endure the hours until it runs its course, when the simple absence of the aggravation has a golden, luscious sweetness of its own.

  Vespids Under Her Veil

  The bride is dressed in a blinding white gown covered with faded pansies. The faint scent of Clorox trails behind her like a bridal train. She wears a tulle veil anchored to her short dark hair with a sequined crown. One of the rangers has made her a bouquet of bunchgrass and black-eyed susans, something Ethyl Schellbach finds unusual and charming.

  The church is overflowing and hot as hinges. The entire village is here—except the postmistress, Edith Chase, who doesn’t like crowds. Before the ceremony, as people waited and grew irritable, there were rumors that there was no bridegroom, that he hadn’t been chosen, that there was a list and poor Lulu hadn’t yet found the boy who would agree to marry her. Well, it was fiddle-faddle, mean-spirited fiddle-faddle. Not unheard of in Grand Canyon Village, as Ethyl well knows, but still no way to act as guests at the Delgadillo’s only daughter’s wedding. The bridegroom is, in fact, a perfectly nice-looking young man by the name of Jones, C. O. Jones. From Williams, right down the road.
Everyone, including his parents—a tall, slim pair of ranchers—calls him C. O. The passable looks come from the mother, Ethyl notices. The father, with his slicked-back hair and prominent teeth, resembles a prairie dog.

  Not that looks mean a thing. Well, they certainly don’t mean everything. Even if her Louie weren’t the handsome man he is, she wouldn’t trade his looks for all the gold in China—nor for Spencer Tracy, for that matter, who proposed to her so many years ago. She pats her husband’s knee, remembering her own wedding day, while at the altar the newlyweds linger in some confusion about what to do next. Finally they turn and start their slow walk back, the boy looking terrified, as if the church is a pirate ship and the aisle a red-carpeted plank.

  After the couple passes, Ethyl squeezes out, for she’s agreed to hurry ahead to the reception, which on Lulu’s insistence will be held outside the Bright Angel Lodge. The Canyon Songbird, as Ethyl is affectionately called, will serenade the wedding party and guests as they make their way to the rim, where Lulu, though she hasn’t told her mother, will toss her bouquet into the canyon as a warning to other girls.

  The clouds are building as Ethyl Schellbach starts to sing. Oliver Hedquist cannot help but notice a lone Grand Canyon ringlet fluttering around the wedding cake and finally coming to rest on the edge of a large glass bowl full of Catholic punch. Catholic with a capital C, unfortunately, meaning little chance for intoxication. Luckily he anticipated the problem and brought his own solution, tucked in his pocket in a silver flask, which he has consulted from time to time during the day. It is well past ringlet season, so the butterfly on the punch bowl is a record breaker and ought to be collected. Oliver didn’t think to bring his net, but he’s wearing an old straw hat. He approaches the bowl, like a tiger his prey—or a tiger beetle, an even more impressive predator—and with a deft flick of his wrist, swiftly, so as not to call attention to himself, he sweeps the air directly above the butterfly and . . . misses. Though his smelly old hat lands directly in the punch bowl.

  Jane Merkle wishes her husband looked a little more like Oliver, or at least tanned up nicely the way Oliver does. But apparently Morris still has the power to attract women of a certain age. His age, she realizes. She’ll bet her bottom dollar that’s Dr. Elzada Clover he’s talking to. There’s something familiar about her. Jane wonders if they’ve met somewhere. Goodness knows she’s heard enough about her from Dotty and Oliver and Morris too, who’s run across her at the hotel, where he’s sensibly taken a room in order to escape the Hedquists’ bees.

  At first Jane assumed she must go with him, and for one night she did. But she found herself unsuited to hotel life, the stiff sheets and fat pillows, the tiny soaps that delighted Morris but made her feel like Gulliver among the Lilliputians. And the fact that just beyond one’s door lay public life, and along with it a scrutiny that made her feel uncomfortable and guilty. She felt she’d been exiled—from the Hedquists’ house and her now-familiar life—simply for wanting to keep the company of a man who wasn’t her husband. Her flirtation with Euell was wrong, impossible, and therefore misleading, but was it more than an error in judgment? It was not—nor, she realized, had Dotty and Oliver asked her to go. They had, in fact, asked her to stay, she and Morris both. If young Wigglesworth, as they called him, wasn’t available to smoke out the bees, surely someone else was. But Morris seemed relieved at the prospect of quitting his sister’s home, and Jane, his dutiful wife, marched into exile with him.

  In a hotel her husband was a different man. They had never stayed at a hotel together, not in five years of marriage. In their room he became less agreeable than usual, picking fights over little things like whether to wear one’s shoes indoors or the correct positioning of the shower curtain, which went inside the tub rather than outside, as any nincompoop knew. And in public, in the lobby and dining room, to Jane’s astonishment he became a man who guffawed. So overnight she developed a rash on a part of her body he would never ask to see, an allergy to the bedclothes. Publicly laundered sheets and towels were the culprit. What choice was there but to return to Dotty and Oliver’s, which of course didn’t mean she and Morris wouldn’t spend time together when he wasn’t busy learning how to tag butterflies for the monarch census. He seemed momentarily downcast, then back to his old agreeable self. It was a shame, he assured her, to sacrifice domestic life for the sake of one’s allergies, but bees or bedclothes, allergies could kill you. And, thought Jane uncharitably, domestic life could not?

  He looks now to be a man enjoying his freedom. Against the backdrop of a building thunderstorm, he bends his head close to Miss Clover’s. Something he says makes the lady professor smile, then throw her head back with laughter, which seems unusually coarse for a woman of Miss Clover’s caliber. Perhaps it’s one of his off-color jokes. Jane hopes not. But what can they possibly find to talk about? What lies at the intersection of desert plants and life insurance? She steps closer. The laughing has stopped, and she hears Morris say something she will never forget: “I loved him like a son—no, more than a son, because I wouldn’t trust a son to love me back.” Martin, of course. They’re discussing Martin, and in the next breath an individual of similar proportions, also deceased, whom the botanist refers to as Scabiosa Spanky Pants.

  A collie, Jane decides. Miss Clover looks like a woman who would own a collie. Or perhaps even raise collies in her spare time. She herself could never own a collie—all that hair, and their general shape, which resembles a love seat. She’s not sure any dog would suit her, but certainly not a collie. Anyway, she’s tired of watching her husband converse charmingly with a woman old enough to be his wife. She hasn’t said hello to Euell yet, though she’s seen him. She’s kept her eye on him all day. They haven’t spoken since . . . that terrible encounter at the house. She acted so poorly! But so did he!

  Across the lawn Oliver Hedquist has misplaced his hat. He’s looked in the punch bowl—for the third time—and searched the heads of the other guests, male and female. For it would suit a lady, that hat of his. It’s a sexless thing in its old age. Gavia Immer has something similar but she swears it’s hers, and it’s not smelly enough to be his, and besides, it’s got a spray of coreopsis tucked in the hatband. He goes to sit down in the shade and wait for the bride to cut the cake. It’s too damn hot for a shotgun wedding, and soon it’s going to rain. But there’s Wigglesworth. “Wigglesworth!” he calls out. “Over here, Wigglesworth! Come talk to me.” The young man approaches, wearing his uniform and looking quite dashing. “Wigglesworth,” scowls Oliver, shaking a finger at him. “You’re too damn polite!”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “You’ve got to learn to disobey!”

  “I know it, sir. Yes. Thank you for telling me.”

  “Oh, you’re hopeless, Wigglesworth.”

  “I know it.”

  “Is there one damn thing you don’t know, son?”

  “Well, of course there is. Well, yes, I mean . . . yes. Yes, there is.”

  “What what what?”

  “I’m not sure, sir.”

  “You’re completely hopeless.”

  “I mean, I’m not sure I can tell you, sir.”

  “Oliver. Call me Oliver.”

  “Oliver, sir. I’m not sure I can—”

  “Oh, for heaven’s sake, Wigglesworth, of course you can. It’s about Jane. I love Jane too. You can tell me anything about Jane. Your secret is safe with me.”

  “Th . . . thank you, sir.”

  “Oliver.”

  “Yes, okay. Oliver.”

  “She’s a married woman, isn’t she?”

  “Is that a question, sir?”

  Oliver Hedquist laughs. “There’s marriage and there’s marriage, Wigglesworth.”

  “Well, I don’t know, sir. I guess so. To be honest, it’s not something I know much about.”

  “One day you’ll know too much about it. But right now I’ll tell you. What makes one person married is not what makes another married. These two, for example. Lulu and he
r beau. What makes them married is sitting in her stomach.”

  “Her stomach, sir?”

  “Well, not literally her stomach, Wigglesworth. Where babies come from. You do know where babies come from?”

  “Yes, sir. Since I was four. My mother told me.”

  “Well, good for her.”

  “Where were you and Mrs. Hedquist married, sir?”

  “Right at the hip!”

  “The hip?”

  “The trouble with you, Wigglesworth, is you lack a sense of humor.”

  “I know it. I’ve been told that. Thank you.”

  “And you’re too polite.”

  “Yes, you said that.”

  “I’ll say it again. You’re too damn polite.”

  “I agree with you. But there’s nothing I can do about it. And anyway, where I grew up it was . . . it was good to be polite. People liked that.”

  “To hell with what other people think or like.”

  “Well, that’s easy for you to say, sir, if you don’t mind me saying so, because you’re old. You don’t have a whole life ahead of you. You’ve lived your life already and you can do or say what you please. No one’s going to stop you. Or fire you. Or marry the other fellow. I wish I were you, sir. I really do. I put on this uniform and I feel like a . . . a . . .”

  “A turd caught in a tube.”

  “Well, I don’t know about that. Well, yes . . . I guess so. Yes. A . . . a turd. Squeezed into a narrow tube.”

  “That’s it.”

  “And it all looks good from the outside—”

  “To hell with the outside. Have a sip of this, boy.”

  “Oh, I couldn’t, sir.”

  “You lily liver! Have some.”

  “But I’m in uniform, sir.”

  “Drink up, Wigglesworth. That’s an order.”

  It seems to Ethyl Schellbach that Oliver Hedquist is as saulting Euell Wigglesworth over by the wedding cake. This is just the kind of behavior weddings are famous for, and Oliver too, when he’s in his cups. A hard rain is beginning to fall on the North Rim as she makes her way through the jumble of guests to find the bride. Lulu is leaning on the arm of her new husband, who is staring starry-eyed at Lulu’s cousin Consuelo, the maid of honor. They’ll sort it out, Ethyl reminds herself. This may, in fact, be the newlyweds’ first date. “It’s time,” she tells Lulu.