Juan Pablo and the Butterflies

by JJ Flowers

  He would never need help more than now.

  Juan Pablo sent a furtive, frantic prayer to the Sky People for help. He imagined the earth cracking open up and swallowing these beasts, but no such thing happened.

  Which is not to say nothing happened.

  The speed with which help came was a shock; it landed like a hard blow to his head. From that moment on he never thought; he only acted.

  Retracing his steps, he ran back to his house. He slipped through the door. The profound stillness in the room brought back the awareness of the powerful buzz in his ears. Like static, it felt like a cacophony urging him forward at a furious speed.

  Wasting no time, he turned on his iPad’s flashlight.

  He placed the stepladder under the uppermost shelves. Carefully marked jars, all sizes, lined the shelves and it took several frantic minutes to find the right one. Gripping it tightly, he clicked off the light, jumped off the ladder and rushed from the room, never noticing the momentous event that had transpired in their small home.

  Juan Pablo ran past the Rodriguezes’ house and rushed behind the gas station again. If the cantina’s grill was hot and Mario was cooking, the back door to the kitchen would be open. He hesitated before racing across the open space between the two buildings. Ignoring the familiar, once comforting scents rising from the cantina’s kitchen, Juan Pablo stepped to the back door.

  Breathing hard and fast, he looked in.

  Mario’s face was marred with fear as he tried to still the shaking in his hands before pouring the freshly made salsa into serving bowls. A large pot warmed the beans on the grill. The cantina’s best steaks sizzled away. A pile of tortillas warmed there, too.

  Juan Pablo stepped into the light.

  Mario spotted him with a gasp.

  Juan Pablo motioned for silence.

  Mario cast a furtive glance at the men on the patio and looked back at the boy. He shook his head furiously, motioning for Juan Pablo to vamoose, to save himself, but instead the boy moved in swift, sure steps to the pot of beans. He unscrewed the lid to the jar and dumped all but an inch of the precious liquid into the pot. The rest was poured into the salsa. Mario’s brows drew a sharp line across his wrinkled forehead. For a long moment, the old man stood staring stupidly at the boy.

  Abruptly his face changed with the shock of what Juan Pablo was doing.

  Juan Pablo nodded slowly.

  Mario shoved him into the darkened pantry.

  Terrified by what he had done, what was about to happen, Juan Pablo drew in the sweet scent of Mario’s famous pan dulce, staring without seeing the bags of black beans, boxes of onions, bags of flour and corn, and cans lining the shelves. How long would the poison take? Five minutes? An hour? He didn’t know.

  Keeping to the shadows, Juan Pablo stepped out to watch.

  Mario stirred the pot reverently now, as if the dark brown stew held their fates—and it did, it did. He hastily began preparing the plates. The men began shouting to hurry with the food. Mario had never moved faster.

  It took four trips but finally all the men were served. Both groups of men gathered at two tables, side by side. Each man had a plate full of beans and a steak. The pan of tortillas sat alongside multiple bowls of salsa.

  As the men ate greedily, ravenously, Mario returned to the kitchen to prepare pitchers of water along with another bottle of tequila and a bottle of rum as demanded. These too, soon sat on the table. Returning to the kitchen, he pretended to tend to pots and pans as he watched the food disappear amidst laughter and rancorous talk.

  Inching further out of the pantry, mesmerized by the scene before him, Juan Pablo’s heart fell in sync with the rhythmic thud of the music as he remembered that terrible day last year, the first hint that the long shadow of Mexico’s problems had reached into Rosario.

  That day he had come home to find Mario consulting with his abuela.

  I can’t go on Elena. At first it was one Federale, Fernando. A free dinner once in a while. Fine. The price of doing business, but Dios mío. Now he brings his amigos. I am supposed to feed sometimes ten men every other day. No tip, no nothing, barely a gracias. I cannot refuse. People have been killed or disappeared for less or they lose everything to a suspicious fire. I could not pay Leonardo’s tuition this month—

  Ah, his abuela had scoffed, her eyes smiling at her friend, this trouble has a simple solution.

  The whole town knew the rest of the story. Two days later, the next time the federal officers showed up at the cantina, they ate and drank their fill before piling into their SUVs and driving off. That night Mario received a phone call from the hospital informing him that several of his customers had contracted food poisoning.

  What did you give Mario, Abuela? he had asked in the days following.

  Datura. It is a rare and beautiful flower, growing in marshes by rivers. The tiniest amount will make you wish for death.

  You will die?

  Not always, his abuela had said. Sometimes you live if you are young and healthy and there is a hospital nearby.

  Now, as Juan Pablo watched and waited, he felt certain they would not actually die. He intended that they only wished they were dead, sick enough so they would not—could not—hurt Rocio. They were all young men, he told himself. They could probably get to the hospital in time.

  He watched as the big man removed his phone. What was he doing? Taking a picture? No, a video. Holding it up, he swept the phone in a circular motion over the cantina’s patio, stopping on a man sitting across from him. The man with the old woman’s bun on top of his head.

  Juan Pablo could not believe what happened next.

  Carlos’s gun appeared in his hand. “Hold still, amigo,” he cautioned. All the men tensed, turning to Carlos as he took aim. The anxious moment collapsed as Carlos rubbed his hand down his face. “My vision is blurred. Geezus, this shit is potent.” Blinking, undeterred, Carlos aimed and fired once.

  The man’s bun exploded.

  The shock gave way to hearty laughter, continuing as the man reached to feel for his bun that was no longer there.

  “Haircuts are free,” Carlos joked, laughing at his comrade’s terror. The men relaxed as their laughter died. Yet, his victim seemed frozen in time, his eyes bulging.

  No one seemed to notice at first.

  The noise continued over the booming beat of the music. They kept eating and drinking their fill. Finally, one by one, hands pushed plates aside. Pipes were passed around. Mario appeared with the pot of beans, but there were no takers. He tried not to look at the frozen man, a trickle of blood dripping over his thin lips.

  “This shit is really tough,” Carlos said, grabbing the sides of his head to stop the strange sensations burning through him. “Jesus, I am . . . high.”

  “Sí. I can’t get a breath . . .”

  “Water,” Rencor demanded. “I need . . .”

  He never finished as he was stopped by what seemed some great internal shock.

  Mario rushed inside to fetch more water. He filled the pitcher and began gathering glasses onto a tray, but his hands shook badly. He pressed them against his thighs, took a deep breath, and offered up a prayer.

  Juan Pablo came slowly out from hiding.

  “Jesus. What’s wrong with Kooch?”

  Just like the first victim, the man Carlos referred to sat staring dumbly into space, his eyes unblinking and bulging hideously. His hands wrapped around his throat as if he was choking himself to death.

  “Dios mío. I can’t see,” said another man furiously rubbing his eyes.

  The man Rencor grabbed the table. “Hilado . . . alto, alto . . .” Just like that he toppled out of his chair and onto the floor, convulsing violently.

  The man next to him emitted a stream of vomit onto the floor.

  Swear words and screams blasted forth in unison, louder even than the music.

  “What the . . . ?” A man’s last word stopped as his mouth began foaming. Bubbles of spit erupted over his lips just
as he, too, started jerking as if electrocuted.

  Chaos erupted all at once. Shouts and screams and cries for help.

  Juan Pablo stepped forward to watch.

  Within minutes five of the men writhed in agony on the floor, clutching their bellies as they convulsed in tight balls.

  Sweat poured off Carlos’s face and he suddenly lurched forward, ejecting a grotesque stream of puke over the table. He fell face-first into it, his body shaking violently.

  Breathing in pained grunts, wiping the sweat from his eyes as he gripped the table, the giant bodyguard stood unsteadily to assist his boss, but stopped, seized by an internal agony. With a loud warlike cry, the big man fell backward, toppling like a tree and crashing onto a table. He moved no more.

  Juan Pablo tensed for one moment as one of the last men alive managed to get his machine gun into his hands, but in the few seconds he tried to determine who he should shoot, the gun dropped and he fell over with uncontrollable shaking.

  Only two men remained seated, but only one was still alive. The Peacock, with the damning trophies of his victims’ hair, managed to stand on unsteady legs. He looked up from the dying men that surrounded him and suddenly found Juan Pablo. Their eyes locked, the key tossed away. “You . . .” he began with a soft viciousness, but he was breathing in huge, unnatural heaves. “. . . don’t know what you’ve done . . . persona estúpida . . .” He drew his gun and he took one, then two steps.

  Mario stepped in front of Juan Pablo just as the man dropped to his knees with a scream of gut-ripping pain. Then he, too, dropped first to his knees, the gun falling, and then he fell over.

  Only three men still shook now, but their bodies no longer produced the violent shaking, only a small tremble of their muscles’ last grip on life.

  In minutes even these stopped.

  Retrieving the last bottle of Tequila and a glass, Mario folded himself at the table furthest away. He started to pour a drink, but stopped, his disbelieving gaze staring at the scene from a horror movie.

  The old man burst into silent tears of relief.

  As if in a dream, without any real consciousness, Juan Pablo went to the box and turned the music off. The sudden silence was broken by a steady pounding sounding as if from far away. It came as a start to realize the loud thud was the cry of his own heart.

  CHAPTER TWO

  Juan Pablo raced up the stairs to Rocio.

  Within minutes of the last awful death, he appeared in the doorway of the bedroom. Rocio was handcuffed to the bed. Her expression held his same shock, but desperation too, more scared than he could know.

  “JP,” Rocio cried, “what’s happening? I heard the cries and screams, but—”

  “I poured my abuela’s bottle of datura into the beans.”

  The girl’s dark eyes searched his face. “A whole bottle?”

  Juan Pablo nodded. “I had to make sure all of them would be sick.”

  “Are they all . . . ?”

  He nodded again. “I didn’t mean to kill them, but I couldn’t let them hurt you. I just couldn’t.”

  Tears suddenly replaced the fear in Rocio’s eyes.

  “Are you okay, Rocio?”

  “I was so afraid . . . I . . .” The girl’s lip trembled. “I kept thinking . . . I thought . . .” She couldn’t finish. “You saved me, JP.”

  Shaken to the core, he came to the edge of the bed. Rocio had only cried two other times: when her mother left for a job in America and last year when her own abuela had transitioned from life. It unnerved him now, triggering an understanding of the magnitude of what he had done.

  He had killed eight men . . .

  For several minutes he tried to remove the handcuffs, only to realize he wasn’t thinking straight. He needed the key.

  Rocio said, “The key. He put it in his pocket. The grande monster.”

  Juan Pablo nodded before rushing back down the stairs. He slowed as he approached the patio, half expecting at least one of them to recover enough to shoot him. He studied the scene for a long minute. He counted eight bodies, all but the one on the floor. There was no movement whatsoever now. An unnatural stillness mixed with the stench of vomit but he ignored this. He was thinking instead of the time he asked his abuela about hell.

  Abuela, if you do not believe in hell, then what happens to bad people when they die? Do they become Sky People, too?

  Sometimes, she had said.

  That doesn’t seem right.

  Sky People are immersed in the energy of love, in a way we cannot imagine. It gives them a great wisdom and bad people view their deeds through a prism of a boundless compassion. You are too young to understand, but there can be no greater punishment for a soul.

  This still didn’t seem right, and he had pressed with another question. What about the very worst people, people who kill and hurt many people; people who like to hurt other people?

  Some souls do not return to the sky.

  What happens to them?

  They cease to be.

  He would like to believe this now.

  Juan Pablo patted the pocket on the giant’s trousers. He felt a phone. Feeling something in the other pocket, he lifted the side of it and slipped his hand in. He withdrew small plastic bags of powder. Some kind of drug. Tossing them aside, he abruptly noticed a key ring on his belt.

  A phone rang to life.

  Juan Pablo’s gaze flew to Carlos, head still stuck in a puddle of vomit.

  Washed in renewed panic, he waited through six rings.

  Urged to speed by the sound, the nightmarish situation, he ripped the keys from the belt. Clasped in his hand, he stood just as the bodyguard’s phone rang “La Cucaracha.” It rang ten times before going silent. He started to move when Carlos’s phone rang again.

  Two more phones started ringing.

  Mario stood up in alarm as another phone sounded and another. Amidst the cacophony of demanding phones, the old man shouted, his hand waving, “Vamoose, Juan Pablo, vamoose.”

  Juan Pablo rushed upstairs and burst into the bedroom. He fell upon Rocio with the keys. “Their phones.”

  “I hear them.”

  “They are all ringing.”

  “I don’t understand,” Rocio said. “What does it mean?”

  “They’ll be sending an army out to find out what happened. We’ve got to get out of here.”

  Once freed, they rushed downstairs.

  Juan Pablo’s arm shot out protectively. Rocio’s hands flew to her mouth to stop a scream even as she stared at the scene drawn from a nightmare. Two phones still rang, but the others fell into a more ominous silence. Her eyes found her grandfather.

  “I’ll get my truck,” Mario said.

  “No, no,” Juan Pablo said. “There is only one road out. They will be coming up it.”

  “You and Rocio can go out the Butterfly Pass through the sanctuary,” Juan Pablo said.

  Mario’s gaze landed on the young man.

  The residents and tourists all came and went on the main road. None of them had ever been on the famous twenty-three kilometer trail through the mountains and forest the other way. They knew of it only from the occasional hikers (hippy types, usually German or American) who arrived at the opposite end of town, the butterfly sanctuary, rather than the road leading to the plaza. Because of his excellent English, Juan Pablo met many of these hikers as they came to the meadow where he practiced his violin or as they passed by the front of his house. They were always covered in dirt, ragged, and starving but in a state of ecstasy brought by a million butterflies floating and gliding in the sky. These hikers were also the poorest people on earth. They often asked if he knew where they could trade work for something to eat. His abuela fixed them a hot meal: tortillas and beans, eggs, fried cornbread, and jam as he translated the stories of their journeys for his abuela’s enjoyment.

  The Butterfly Pass was the only way to escape the fury of wrath and vengeance heading toward them.

  “Rocio, get your things,” Mario o
rdered. “Only what you can carry. Save room for water and food.”

  Rocio nodded and flew upstairs again.

  “You too, Juan Pablo. Hurry.”

  Juan Pablo turned back to his house, his thoughts flying even faster than his feet. He could not leave his abuela. With neither a mother nor a father, she was the only thing separating him from being an orphan; he would be lost without her. He would never leave her alone to the uncertain mercy of these droguistas. Just as he had protected Rocio, he would find a means to keep his abuela safe.

  Opening the door to his house, he found the old woman, still unconscious on the small cot, the blanket tucked under her chin. He moved to the lamp and turned it on. Light flooded the space and he greeted the second miracle.

  Like the final signature to a beautiful painting, the giant monarch had taken its last flight and settled on his abuela’s forehead. It was impossible, of course, but there it was.

  Both butterfly and old woman moved no more.

  The magical sight blurred.

  Juan Pablo dropped to his knees. He took the still-warm, weathered old hand in his for the last time and brought it to his lips to kiss.

  “Te amo, Abuela. Te amo . . .”

  CHAPTER THREE

  Rocio and Mario found him kneeling over Elena, silent tears falling over the old lady’s still and lifeless form. Mario dropped to his knees and gave the sign of the cross, while Rocio came quietly behind Juan Pablo and put her arms around him. Closing her eyes, she rested her head on his back.