Juan Pablo and the Butterflies

by JJ Flowers

  The warm embrace told him he was not alone in his grief.

  They never knew how long they knelt there, crying over the old woman they all loved, five minutes, maybe more, but Mario abruptly interrupted the quiet and said the strangest thing, “I hear her. I hear Elena . . .”

  Blinking furiously, Juan Pablo looked at Mario for the explanation of these words.

  “Abuelo?” Rocio whispered.

  “¡Ándale! she says. She must be buried in the butterflies, she says. ¡Ándale! ¡Ándale!”

  Rocio’s eyes widened. “Because they are coming.” She understood this at once. “It is the only chance. Of course, Elena must be buried with the butterflies.”

  The girl’s urging managed to penetrate Juan Pablo’s thick curtain of grief. “¡Ándale! ¡Ándale!” She repeated as she stood up. “We must bury Elena before they get here!”

  Juan Pablo nodded, wiping at his face. His abuela had always insisted she be buried in the butterflies.

  Juan Pablo, when I transition to the Sky People, I want my body buried in the butterflies.

  Please, Abuela, do not transition for a long, long time, he had replied. The very idea of her leaving him alone seemed terrifying.

  On unsteady feet, Juan Pablo rose. Using the blanket, Rocio and Mario had already lifted her body into the air. He started to grab the opposite end of the blanket that Rocio held.

  Again, Mario froze and looked this way and that. “She is saying violin, violin!”

  Juan Pablo swallowed, nodding as if he had heard this too.

  His most prized possession. More than a possession, it was a part of him. When he was just five, his abuela had given him the precious family heirloom, the violin that had belonged to his beautiful mother and her father before her. It was not just any violin, but a Charles Bailly violin, made in France over a hundred years ago. Señor Tapis, a once famous musician, had mysteriously arrived in El Rosario shortly after this—a feat no doubt arranged by his abuela. He had given him lessons every day until his passing two years ago.

  He had taken to the instrument like one of their butterflies to the sky. Both his teacher and his abuela believed his soul held music in the same way a pupa holds a butterfly; like his mother, and her father before that, he had been born with it, the music had just waited to manifest.

  Juan Pablo rushed to this treasure and threw it over his shoulder before he found his backpack and quickly secured all the seeds in the house as well as the almond milk. He rushed back and took his place at the other end of the blanket. In this way, the three of them began the long journey into their last night in El Rosario.

  The urgency of their mission, to bury the old lady before the banditos arrived, renewed their fear and for a brief spell, it overwhelmed their sadness and grief.

  Rocio turned on her phone’s flashlight and held it in her mouth. Juan Pablo and Rocio clutched the edge of the blanket at his abuela’s head and Mario grasped the blanket at her feet. They would bury Elena in the butterfly meadow at the top of the sanctuary. Of all the people who ever lived, of course Elena must be buried beneath the loose soil made of an echelon of billions of butterflies. They owed the old woman this final wish.

  Time pressed on them. Burdened with heavy packs full of everything too dear to leave behind, they made slow progress up the mountain. They had only minutes before the narco-traffickers showed up, discovered their dead comrades, and turned their attention to finding the culprits.

  Rocio stumbled and with a whoosh, fell backside to the ground. The corner of the blanket jerked from Juan Pablo’s hands, and weighed down by his violin case and backpack full of almond milk, he lost his footing and slid. Gravel cut into his bare hands. Elena’s lifeless body and the two shovels crashed into Rocio, but the girl caught her scream in a gasp.

  They held still for a long moment on the cold ground, assessing the situation.

  Finding her phone first, Rocio swept the dim light in a wide arch to the sky.

  “Easy, easy,” Mario whispered, his own breath ragged and strained. The old man set down his end of the blanket on the darkened landscape and stood up to massage the pain shooting down his arm and through his back. The hoot of an owl interrupted the unnatural quiet of the forest. The distant sound barely registered over their frightened breaths, especially Mario’s. It took several tense moments to set things right again and continue on.

  Giant fir trees, the famous oyamel forest of the butterflies, crowded the worn hiking trail on all sides. Rocks, some the size of a foot, treacherously littered their way, but Rocio’s careful orchestration of the phone’s light allowed them to sidestep the worse pivots. Just when Juan Pablo’s arms began to shake with the exertion, the trees at last gave way to the familiar open space of his and Rocio’s meadow, the main stage of their childhood.

  “Aquí estamos,” Mario managed between irregular gasps.

  They set their burden down and breathing hard and fast, they assessed the surroundings.

  “The middle.” Rocio’s nod indicated the direction.

  Picturing the meadow in the bright light of a full moon, Juan Pablo knew his abuela would approve of this final resting place. It was after all, her favorite place, where she often communed with the returning butterflies.

  What do the butterflies tell you?

  Oh, many things. They tell me of their journey across the great distance; of strong winds, friendly rains, and deadly ones; they sing, always, of their glorious sun. In these last years, they tell of the changes, too.

  What changes?

  The wind mostly, but also disappearing water and forests and milkweed plants. Fires, too, sometimes. More and more of them are returning to the Sky People . . .

  “Come. ¡Ándale!” Mario said, struggling out of his backpack. His breaths rose and fell with an unusual strain. They were all perspiring and bone tired, and after the fear they had just lived through, continued to live through, it was little wonder the old man could not quite catch his breath. For a long moment, he bent over his knees, just trying to ease the pain in his chest. “Rocio, stand back there and watch for any sign . . . of people.”

  Rocio nodded before turning her anxious gaze to the dark trail behind them.

  In the far distance down the mountain, El Rosario appeared as a patch of pitch-blackness. There were no lights now. They had demolished all lights at the cantina as soon as they gathered their things and began the journey up the mountain.

  They took turns digging the loose soil made of centuries of butterflies. The grave had to be deep enough to prevent any unearthing by coyotes, but after that, no one figured it ultimately mattered how deep she was buried.

  “¡Ándale!” Mario kept whispering.

  Juan Pablo didn’t think, he only moved, swinging the shovel into the dirt and lifting it out. Had he entertained a thought, he would drop to his knees and cry for all that had happened, all that was happening. His abuela had died and he was burying her in the meadow of butterflies and music. He was an orphan, a creature he had always, his whole life, pitied, but found in his pity an extreme gratitude for his abuela’s love. He had just murdered eight men; he had watched the life leave their bodies. He was running away from the only home he had ever known, a place he only now realized how much he loved.

  “Okay, okay,” Mario said. “Help me lift our dear old lady one last time.”

  They placed her body into the shallow grave.

  Mario and Juan Pablo began covering the grave with the small piles of dirt surrounding it, his abuela’s body mixed forever with a millennium of butterflies.

  He would not cry more now.

  Nor could he speak. No words could express the depth of his loss. Not now. Not ever.

  Rocio came and took Juan Pablo’s hand in hers, and her abuelo offered a simple eulogy: “We love you, Elena.” Mario paused, wiping his brow with his sleeve, still trying to ease his ragged breathing. “The whole town has always loved you, a soul full of the Holy Spirit and as beautiful as the butterflies that sustain
us.” He coughed, and required several anxious minutes to recover. “You are the best person I’ve ever known. I promise I will take care of Juan—”

  The old man suddenly drew a sharp breath, but the inhale stopped.

  Juan Pablo forgot to breathe, waiting for Mario’s.

  The shovel dropped from the old man’s hands. Mario’s next inhale came as a loud, gurgling wheeze.

  Rocio called out as she hit his back. “Abuelo, Abuelo!”

  Juan Pablo watched in sick horror as Mario’s hands clutched at his chest and he dropped to the ground. Rocio fell over him, gently shaking him, calling his name.

  Rocio collapsed over his body.

  Juan Pablo’s startled senses snapped back in an instant. He lifted Rocio up and using all his strength he turned the body over.

  Rocio covered her trembling mouth, even as she whispered “abuelo” over and over, trying to call him back to this life. Juan Pablo called to the stricken man too, before he placed his hand over the old man’s chest. In desperation, he pounded Mario’s chest in the way he had seen it done in movies, but after several minutes, he gave up the fierce, but futile, movement. He put his head against the old man’s chest, but felt no heart beating there. He leaned over and put his cheek on Mario’s lips to feel for a breath.

  Juan Pablo stumbled to his feet, shocked more than anything, and acting on instinct, he reached for Rocio.

  The girl clung to him as if her life depended on it.

  Juan Pablo closed his eyes. “I’m so sorry, Rocio. I’m so sorry . . .”

  Juan Pablo had lost his abuela and Rocio had lost her abuelo, but it was even more than that. They had both lost the person who had always cared for them. They had lost the only home either of them had ever known. They were in danger of losing even more. They were in danger of losing their lives.

  They could not afford the luxury of grief now.

  “Rocio, Rocio, we have to keep going.”

  But Rocio dropped to her knees and pressed her tear-stained face against her grandfather’s body. “No, no,” she whispered. “This cannot be . . .”

  Kneeling down, he pulled Rocio forcibly up. “Rocio, Rocio, they’re coming for us. We have to keep going.”

  She nodded, trying to slow her gasps and wipe her eyes.

  A new and strange sound rose in the far distance.

  Helicopters. Three of them circled the cantina far down the mountain. The bright floodlights lit the patio before stopping on the collection of bodies there.

  A tense minute passed, maybe more before all three helicopters zoomed away, lights searching the town. One helicopter light slowly moved up the long row of houses on one side, while another went up the row on the left. The third helicopter rushed toward them. The headlights of three cars raced up the road leading to the plaza in the far distance.

  “Grab your bags,” Juan Pablo shouted.

  Crying still, gulping in gasps of breath, Rocio turned to where their backpacks sat in a small pile. Juan Pablo rushed to his violin and backpack, heaving them onto his back. “The tepee.”

  Rocio grabbed her backpack. The two stared at Mario’s pack.

  “I’ll get it,” Juan Pablo said.

  Nodding, Rocio turned on the flashlight on her phone to light the way.

  “No, no, they will see it,” Juan Pablo warned. With effort, he lifted Mario’s heavy pack. Rocio aimed her phone to the ground and with trembling fingers she turned it off before looking down the mountain to where the helicopters circled. Stumbling with the weight of the pack Juan Pablo rushed behind Rocio into the overhead protection of the forest.

  The sliver of moon lit the space around them. Earth crunched beneath their sneakers. The tepee lay hidden in a wide arch of brush, the entrance a small dark triangle. The black-and-white blankets that covered the wood structure were layered with sticks and brush. It was impossible to see from the outside, wasn’t it?

  At least it would be completely hidden from above.

  Juan Pablo followed Rocio’s hurried steps. Dropping to her knees, she disappeared through the entrance. Juan Pablo followed, emerging into pitch blackness. Rocio fumbled with her phone’s light, safe inside the space, no bigger than the inside of a small car. Orange blankets covered the ground. On top, there was a bottle of water and two sodas alongside a stack of books—that was all.

  Juan Pablo dropped the bags inside before turning to the entrance.

  “Where are you going?” Rocio asked in a panic.

  “I’ll be right back.”

  A helicopter spotted the trailhead and headed up, the light flooding the area just below. Juan Pablo assessed the risk, but knew he had to do it. Nimble and quick without the weight of the packs, he flew back to the fallen Mario and fell beside his body. Using all his strength, he managed to turn him on his side, finding the gun behind his back, tucked into his belt. Pointing it at the ground and holding it carefully, he ran back to the safety of the tepee.

  The helicopter noise drowned out everything, even his frantic thoughts.

  Juan Pablo reached the edge of the trees and ducked behind a giant fir tree just as the helicopter zoomed into the meadow. Pressed backside against the trunk, he watched as the helicopter’s light circled the open space and then stopped, hovering over Mario’s dead body.

  For a full three minutes, the helicopter hovered there, the pilot trying to make sense of it. Finally, it arced back into the blackened sky and returned to the trail. Juan Pablo used this time to make his way back to the tepee. He ducked inside.

  “One helicopter is following the trail,” he whispered. “The other two are still circling the town.”

  Wiping her eyes to stop crying, Rocio tried to see him in the darkness. “What will we do?”

  Juan Pablo knew the answer. “We wait until they’re gone, and then we make our way down the trail.”

  “But . . . if they find Abuelo’s body?”

  “They already have. The helicopter spotted it from above.”

  “They will investigate.”

  “But they will only find him. They might think he acted alone. They might search the area, but they will never find us in here.” He said it with certainty, though he wasn’t at all sure that the tepee would be missed. No one had ever found them here, but then no one had ever searched for them before.

  They fell into silence, interrupted only by the soft sound of Rocio’s tears. “Elena and now Abuelo . . .” The noise of the first helicopter drifted further away even as the other two drew progressively nearer. He and Rocio pulled closer to each other.

  The noise increased dramatically when Juan Pablo would have sworn this was not possible. He guessed the two helicopters now hovered over the meadow, as the pilots studied the dead body, communicating both with each other and with the men on the ground, no doubt. The joint sound split suddenly and the tremendous roar of the helicopters circling the area rose and fell. They were looking for more people.

  The men at the plaza would be examining the dead bodies there. It would not take Einstein to figure out they had been poisoned.

  They would no doubt be searching the houses, but they were all empty now. They would find nothing. Even if they did discover the poison had come from his abuela’s house, what could they do? No one was there now. No one lived there anymore.

  He had no home. No parents. Rocio had no home. Her mother and brother were in faraway countries. They faced a gang of criminals and murderers alone. It was up to him to keep Rocio safe.

  A helicopter’s searchlight swung back and forth above. He pulled Rocio even closer. They looked up, as if they could see the light arcing above them. After a moment or two, it drew away and returned to the meadow.

  Juan Pablo drew a deep breath of relief.

  The first helicopter returned. Now, the three helicopters hung over the meadow, drowning out all other sounds.

  If only he could see what they were doing.

  Abruptly, Juan Pablo realized there were men on the ground in the meadow.

&n
bsp; Juan Pablo had no idea how long they waited, crouched in the tepee, bound by fear and apprehension, crying softly and blurting a “I cannot believe this is happening . . .” until it was a habit, these words. At some point the helicopters took off, one by one. The men in the meadow retreated as well.

  Gradually they became aware of the stillness, shot straight from heaven, a balm to their frayed nerves.

  “I think they’re gone,” Rocio whispered.

  Juan Pablo nodded. “Sí,” he said, “for now. Can you sleep?”

  Poised on the edge of hysteria, Rocio let out a pained yelp.

  “I am going to see if I can tell what is happening,” Juan Pablo said.

  “No.” Desperation filled Rocio’s whisper. “No. Stay here, JP.”

  “I’ll just be a minute,” he whispered back. “I’ll be careful.”

  Holding the gun awkwardly, having no idea how to shoot it, Juan Pablo slipped outside into the dark forest. He held still, listening for any sound and letting his eyes adjust to the moonlit darkness. Not even the owl hooted now. He quietly made his way back to the edge of the trees and peered out into the darker space of the meadow.

  There was no one and nothing. They had even taken Mario’s body.

  Like a warning, the mistake rang loud in Juan Pablo’s mind. The shovels. They had left both shovels. They would know someone had helped Mario bury the old woman.

  They’d be looking for another person.

  He cautiously made his way to where they had buried his abuela. Sure enough, the shovels were gone.

  Down the mountain, he saw that all activity had returned to the town. At least a dozen headlights went both ways on the road leading into and out of El Rosario. The lanterns at the cantina were turned on again, now bright against the darkness. Two houses were lit as well. They had begun a house-to-house search.

  The Gonzalezes’ house light came on as he watched. It was two doors down from his abuela’s house. They would soon be inside his house with all of his abuela’s jars of potions and herbs. They would know the poison had come from there, but no one remained. Would the information mean anything?

  Juan Pablo found his way back to the safety of the tepee.