The Butterflies of Grand Canyon

by Margaret Erhart

  The dog comes and drops the ball in front of her. Such a smelly dog. She wishes it would go away. It stands there looking up at her, panting and dripping saliva. The air thickens as the fog comes in. The yard suddenly smells of dog doo and rotting foliage. Her head swims. The three pristine shirts seem to mock her. She should take them, it’s as simple as that. Add them to the useless freight in her suitcase. She can’t bear the idea of some stranger, some scavenger come to pick the bones of Owen Dunhill’s misfortune, paying a nickel apiece and walking away with them. They were intended for Lowell, to clothe his body, and if not his, her own.

  He comes to the door and stands in the shadow, looking out at the fog. Then he notices her. He turns his shoulder and she sees him from behind as he’s moving into the house, and she calls to him, “Owen? It’s me, Dotty. Lowell’s friend. Dorothy Hedquist.”

  “¡Aiyee! What I tell you!” cries the sister-in-law, pushing past him onto the patio. An Aztec is what she is. A blind, jungle Mexican, padding around Owen Dunhill’s house in her large bare feet. She should be wearing a serape, carrying a machete and a basket of bananas on her head.

  “I’m sorry to—” Dotty begins.

  “No,” he calls out. “Please. It’s not what you think it is.”

  “Think it is?”

  The sister-in-law stumbles across the yard, crying and shaking her hands in the air, beating her chest with her fists. He says her name sharply—“Gracia!”—and she starts to wail.

  “I’ll come back,” says Dotty. “I didn’t mean to—”

  He steps out onto the patio, and the dog picks up the ball and lumbers over and drops it at his feet. At the familiar sight of him, Dotty sinks down onto her knees. Her throat feels dry, her tongue catches behind her teeth. And yet it makes a kind of sense to her. The shirts, the camera he doesn’t want to sell. He’s here. Of course he’s here. “And your brother?” she whispers. “Where is he? Where’s Owen?”

  “Dotty, I can explain everything.”

  Wits and Teeth

  Euell Wigglesworth is thinking of going away.

  “Going away sounds asinine,” says Hugh Huddleston, sitting at his friend’s table, eating the last piece of chocolate cake. “Don’t go away.”

  “She’s not free, Hugh. The dog died, not the husband, you idiot.”

  “Stop pacing. You’re making me nervous. Have some cake.”

  “She’s married to someone old enough to be her father. And he can’t catch butterflies worth a damn.”

  “Maybe he is her father. Don’t look at me that way. A fatherly type. It may not be a hop-in-the-sack kind of marriage. They may not indulge in sexual congress ever, at all.”

  “How can you tell?”

  “I can’t tell,” says Hugh wearily, “but you can, by the way she kisses you. She does kiss you, doesn’t she?” Euell nods solemnly. “Kiss her again is my advice. As often as you can. And once for me.”

  After a game of backgammon, which Euell wins, Hugh goes back to his borrowed bed in the cowboy dorm for a late afternoon nap. Euell is restless. His house is too small, yet the rest of the world seems too big, like a pair of baggy trousers he’s forced to put on when he steps out the door, a costume that makes him feel ridiculous. For no reason he suddenly thinks of Ethan and Ivy Sayer, the British malacologists. He imagines their life in a tent, on safari, the African savanna overrun with herds of giant land snails, and Ivy with her binoculars, exclaiming at the number of species while Ethan scribbles excitedly in his field book. An odd couple, but they seemed happy together. He tries to imagine living a life like that with Jane, and it’s all too easy. She knows practically nothing about insects or the natural world, but she seems eager to learn and a good worker and experienced in ways he is not. But what is he thinking? She has a husband. Someone she appears to spend no time with, he reminds himself, and with whom she shares few interests, and possibly no physical relations. What if he, Euell, were simply to provide her with a choice? What if he were to pursue her—cautiously at first, spaciously, then closing in, running her flank, like a wolf she might offer an invitation to with her body?

  It’s all new, exciting, and dreadful to him. What if the invitation doesn’t come? He can make it come. Didn’t she take off her blouse for him? Without a word she was naked in front of him. Or practically naked. It amazed him and amazes him still, the softness of her breasts, as soft as silt. He can draw her in, draw her close with the names of butterflies and dragonflies, Lepidoptera and Odonata: red-spotted purples, hoary commas, cloudless sulphurs, Libellula saturata. The names of grasses, romantic names: the gramas, Bouteloua. Songbirds, bees—tales of the fall nuptial flights of Bombus. And Limax maximus, giant slugs whose mating rituals are the stuff of poetry. He must get his hands on a copy of Pilsbry’s Land Mollusca of North America, last seen in Ethan Sayer’s possession. To hunt down a woman he needs tools and ammunition; he needs time, endurance, his own sharp wits and teeth. And he needs Pilsbry. But where can he find that definitive book about slug love? One name comes to him: Louis Schellbach.

  The chief park naturalist isn’t home, but Mrs. Schellbach answers the door. At her feet the little tyrant Reginald, who has a reputation for ankle nipping. Ranger Wigglesworth has discovered the best way to deal with a pug is to treat it like a tourist—a cross between a tourist and a badger. He greets Mrs. Schellbach, then Reggie, inquiring about the health and happiness of each. He is unfailingly polite, as he is with park visitors, yet he keeps his feet planted outside the door, declining the invitation to come in.

  Mrs. Schellbach is quite certain the South Rim library now houses her husband’s mollusk tomes, including Pilsbry, a book she seems familiar with because she smiles knowingly at Euell’s request and raises her eyebrows. “Shall I tell him you came by and what you were looking for?”

  “Oh, that’s not necessary,” he assures her. He thanks her and leaves, blushing furiously. Idiot! he scolds himself. You’re acting like a girl! But the truth is, all his life he’s watched insects in copula, and birds and wild animals mating. He’s as comfortable talking about spider genitalia and odonate claspers and variations in penile shafts of certain land snails as he is the weather. It’s occurred to him, of course, that someday he too will be part of the mad flash and dazzle of wings, the secretion of pheromones, the swelling of throat and scrotum to attract the female. And of course he knows that the color patterns of butterfly wings, the scent and diminutive size of male black widows, the dance of hornbills, and the chest pounding of gorillas are all designed to keep the genes afloat, to leave a legacy, to create life after death, evolutionary immortality. But somehow, even when he was in love with Sally Domani, and his friends, Douggie Warren and the rest, had already entered the race, he held back. He observed. His heart wandered here and there, but there was no girl he wanted to fight for. His antlers were small and soft and unscarred. There was no one he wanted to give up his youth for. But Jane. He says her name aloud. Jane. He thinks of holding her to him, her breasts, her belly, smooth as chalk. Under the stars, with the far sound of the river rushing over rocks. A soft place to lie, and the darkness hiding them from the eyes of the world, and her hands exploring him where no hands have been, and her faint cries, and his. To the river then! He hurries along the road to the library, feeling bold and determined.

  Confession

  In his wife’s absence, Oliver Hedquist has tried to become a man worthy of her return. He cooks simple meals and keeps the kitchen counters clean, the dishes washed, the floor reasonably unsticky. He washes the clothes and even replaces a button on one of Dotty’s blouses. In the evening he picks tomatoes and tarragon from the garden. He feels, at this time, not like a bachelor as he supposed he would, but like a tree in late winter waiting for the first urge of new life to usher from its limbs. He feels like a man set down suddenly in a deciduous world, a world of loss, of empty boughs and gray stillness from which color and flower and fruit will erupt, and emptiness again. It is the first time he has considered the abso
lute necessity of change, including death. He has known it, of course, as an entomologist knows such things, but he has not felt it beneath his skin, which he imagines now as the skin of a palo verde or the smooth bark of a sycamore.

  One morning while eating his breakfast alone, feeling suddenly sodden and bored by the heavy taste of the bacon in his BLT, Oliver scribbles something in Spanish, a phrase that appears in his mind like words on a billboard: “Por algunos, la belleza es en la caeda.” He’s not aware of having thought it, and he doesn’t know exactly what it means. He gets up and goes to the sink and consults Dotty’s conversational Spanish book, which Morris at one point took an interest in but has now forgotten, just as he has forgotten that dishes rarely wash themselves. He finds no caeda, but comes across caedizo, meaning “deciduous.” It doesn’t seem like a terribly useful word, the way toilet and train station are useful. He can’t imagine ever relying on the word deciduous in a foreign country. But there it is. Caedizo, or caediza if the flora involved is feminine. Perhaps Spain has a famously beautiful autumn, when talking about the trees is quite as necessary as asking for the ladies’ room. It’s possible. He himself has traveled so little. It is certainly possible. “Por algunos, la belleza es en la caediza.” For some, beauty is in deciduousness.

  His days are spent like a fisherman, hauling in his catch in the long hours of sunlight and repairing his nets in the evening. The currant bushes tear them up, but he can’t help himself, swinging for vespids and new species of Bombus, and one late afternoon a remarkable little clear-winged sphinx moth nec taring on the columbine. He feels the summer ebbing, notices the increase of monarchs and California sisters, and because of this he rises earlier each morning and sets out along the rim or below it, taking his net, a canteen, and a candy bar.

  One day he invites Jane to come along. Since Dotty left, the poor girl has lapsed into a gloomy self-satisfaction, as if repressing a secret joy. He senses the cause and would like to occupy her with a more hopeful project than Ranger Wigglesworth. Not that he doesn’t like the fellow—he likes him tremendously. But there are limits to such relations, and the last to know it, or to admit it, are those involved. He would like to bring her out a little, back to where she once was. Or rather, not back, but forward. She has never in her life been free. He knows that, though when she stepped off the train two months ago, she appeared curious and open, unencumbered by luggage and willing to take the worst of Morris with the best. There was a freshness about her, an aliveness, but it fell short of freedom because it was dependent on novelty. On new places and customs, new clothes, new food. And now, Oliver sees, a new love.

  He does not quarrel with his sister-in-law’s method. Her choice is the unextraordinary choice of anyone who confuses the moment’s happiness with true freedom. But he feels obliged to remind her—only remind her—that from time to time she used to avail herself of him. He wishes to offer again his services as a doddery old fellow of limited wisdom, whose affection for her nonetheless knows no bounds.

  He opens the conversation at breakfast, though Jane no longer eats breakfast, at least not with him. Still, she has coffee, which requires her to scurry in and out of the kitchen, lured by the smell, and her timing seems to put her there when Oliver’s mouth is full of crunchy toast and bacon and drippy tomato. He nods and chews, and by the time his palate’s clear she’s filled her cup and set sail for foreign shores, usually the privacy of her bedroom. Though once or twice he’s seen her standing in the garden, staring intently at the neat, flourishing rows, as if taking the pulse of the featherlike carrot tops and the lettuce going to seed, trying to work something out in her mind as she sips her coffee in the cool morning air. She’s become mysterious, a quality he’s not fond of, though he senses in her case it’s a necessary step to becoming her own species of butterfly.

  This time he does not let her get away. He’s made himself some oatmeal and swallows it efficiently. He’s had quite enough of BLTs. “Do you think it’s strong enough?” he asks. Jane is filling her cup. She looks at him as if she’s met him somewhere but can’t recall his name.

  “Strong enough?”

  “The coffee.”

  “I haven’t tasted it yet.”

  “Well, taste it and tell me.”

  “It’s usually perfect.”

  “Today it seems feeble. Like an old man’s coffee. Try it.” With a sigh, she tastes her coffee. “It’s perfect.”

  “Less bite than usual?”

  “A little.” She holds up her thumb and forefinger, indicating the smallest amount.

  “So it’s not quite perfect.”

  “No, it is. It’s perfect.”

  “Not if it’s missing its bite. It can’t be both flawed and perfect, Jane.” He looks at her, hoping she’s had enough of him.

  “What’s got into you today, Oliver? All of a sudden you’re worried about the coffee?”

  “With good reason, my dear. It’s not up to snuff.”

  She starts to walk away, then turns in the doorway and smiles, not at him but at the prospect of being free of him. “Tomorrow I’ll make the coffee. I promise.”

  “That’s a splendid offer. And will you make the oatmeal as well? Or do you know what I’d like? I’d like corned beef hash with a poached egg on top. With some fried potatoes. Dotty never allows me the potatoes, because as she points out, the hash itself is half potato, but I’d still like some on the side, fried up in butter. Doesn’t that sound good? Oh, you’d be an angel, Jane, if you’d do breakfast every now and then. It’s a sad affair when I make it myself. I don’t really enjoy cooking, and I’m a frightful cook.” He looks directly at her. “She left me in your hands.”

  He watches her closely and sees that she’s been stung, and he continues, “With coffee it’s all luck, pure dumb luck. A cow could make a decent cup of coffee. You see,” he laughs, “today I’m not even up to a cow. But who would want to be a cow, really? It’s a rotten life. Eat, eat, eat, if you call all that roughage food, and all that masticating eating, and then you’re squeezed into a little chute that leads to a little box on wheels and taken to a strange place full of the anxious smells and cries of animals like yourself, and then you’re struck dumb and killed. By a stranger,” he adds inconsequentially. “Yes. By a stranger.”

  “Why, Oliver, that’s a horrid story. Why do I care about being a cow?”

  “You probably don’t. But you should. Or you should at least consider the fact that behind even the simplest thing, such as a well-cooked steak, lies a story, a story made up of stories, and the more we know of the life of that thing, of its past, the more complicated becomes its simplicity.”

  “Really, Oliver, I don’t follow you today. I thought we were talking about coffee, and now we’re on to steak.”

  “Which in turn might lead to a stroll in the woods or to Ranger Wigglesworth, for that matter.”

  “Euell?” says Jane, truly puzzled. “What does this have to do with Euell?”

  “He’s the object of your affection, silly girl, and therefore a subject both complicated and simple. Now shush. There’s no point in denying it. It’s there for all the world to see—except Morris, of course. I believe he’s quite blind to the matter. He loves you, but in a way that suits him more than you, perhaps. I don’t know, and I’ve no interest in meddling; it’s just that married love tends to be blind. I was quite like Morris at one point in my life. I walked around with my head in a bag because I was too conceited to show my hurt and humiliation. It’s terrible with your head in a bag. You knock yourself out all the time, running into walls, falling over things. You can imagine.”

  “I must admit I’m mystified,” says Jane, shifting out of the doorway, into the kitchen again. She sets her coffee beside the sink and crosses her arms, as if she intends to scold Oliver.

  “Nothing mystifying about it, really. Either you’re in over your head or you’re not. You choose, Jane. Perhaps you’ve already chosen.”

  She drops her arms. “Chosen what?”
Her voice shakes a bit.

  “To run away with him or not. Simple, isn’t it? And look how complicated!”

  “I don’t understand you. I’m not running away with anyone.”

  “You certainly have in your thoughts.”

  “Why, what do you mean? What are you saying? Oliver Hedquist, you have no right to—”

  “Now now,” he laughs, conscious of his role as the pesky mosquito. “Keep your protests for another time, Mrs. Merkle. You may need them. Why not give me the benefit of the doubt—all your many doubts—and accept the fact that I know you a little. I’ve observed you, as if you were just another cloudless sulphur. I’m well trained in observation, Jane, which gives me a distinct edge over those who deal in life insurance, the requirements of that field being that the agent first assess the aliveness of the client, and second, decide whether the client will someday die.”

  He is distinctly aware of wandering from his point, but Jane brings him back. “Oliver,” she says quietly. Her demeanor has changed. She has dropped her helmet and chest plate and sheathed her sword. “I once asked you what you would do if you were me, and you advised me not to jump ship until the water rose to my knees. But what I’ve come to understand is that when we were married my husband and I boarded different vessels. Mine seems to be sinking while his stays happily afloat, so even the act of jumping is a solitary matter, not a shared one. You and Dotty sailed together for a while before the . . . the wreck.”