Juan Pablo and the Butterflies

by JJ Flowers

  He rushed to the sails and slowly aimed the boat in toward them.

  The words cautioned them and their excitement disappeared in the instant.

  “Something’s wrong?” They braced for terrible news.

  Rocio and Juan Pablo stared, barely breathing as they watched the giant baby whale come closer into view. Smooth and gray and much too still. Bright yellow rope wrapped dozens of times all around it. The old man rushed to the side, staring at it.

  “¡Santo cielos!” He expelled the words. “She’s tangled in fishing net.”

  The old man flew into action, moving swiftly, as if he had done this a hundred times. He lifted the seat cupboard and reached in, withdrawing a mask. Holding this, he took off his shirt and pants, and slipped out of his flip-flops before diving into the blue depth.

  He emerged twenty paces from the boat. He shook his head and expertly fitted his mask over his face. Face-down in the water, he swam to the baby whale.

  Rocio and Juan Pablo leaned far over the rail to see.

  The mother whale suddenly spouted very close. Rocio and Juan Pablo gasped in unison as a fifteen-foot spray shot into the stilled air. A good-sized wave rocked the boat from the whale’s breach.

  The old man swam in a tight circle around the baby whale. Emerging, he called back to them. “Get me my knife. It’s in the cabinet above the steerage.”

  Juan Pablo raced into action. He found the knife, about ten inches long, and ran back to the boat’s stern. Before Padre could stop him, he discarded his sweater, the T-shirt beneath, and his jeans. Clutching the knife tightly, he jumped in.

  The cold water enveloped him. He came up for air, and still tightly clutching the knife, he swam slowly toward the baby whale. Padre was shouting at him, but he couldn’t hear the words above the racing of his heart.

  A massive dark shape, much bigger than the boat, swam slowly under Juan Pablo. He held his breath and froze as the displaced water first lifted him up and then pulled him down. He emerged a minute later, took a gulp of breath, and looked around. The old man was nowhere to be seen. He heard Rocio scream something from the boat. “Captain!”

  The old man popped up, took a breath, and submerged again. Juan Pablo swam toward him. All at once he understood what was happening. The mother whale swam under the baby, lifting her up to get air. A small spout erupted just as the old man appeared at his side.

  He shouted, “The knife, JP, the knife.”

  Juan Pablo passed it to the old man. Knife in hand he disappeared again. Juan Pablo tread water, watching. He made out the padre’s puny form near the baby whale. The baby held still as the padre cut the fishing net. Juan Pablo moved closer. The fishing net was wrapped many times around the baby’s fins and tail, as if it had rolled over and over, maybe to escape the terrible trap, but instead tangling itself worse.

  Rocio called something from the boat. He looked over to see the girl waving frantically. He looked down again and saw. The mother whale swam slowly back and forth beneath her baby, turned slightly to look, moving very slow.

  The padre emerged again and in between gasps, he managed, “It looks bad for her. She’s weak and so tangled. We’re going to need more help.”

  Juan Pablo felt the man’s desperation across the short distance. “I can help. I can hold my breath for two minutes and thirty-eight seconds.”

  The padre paused for just a moment.

  He repeated, “I can help!”

  “Go back to the boat, boy. There’s scissors in the same place and another mask. Be sure to fit it before you swim out.”

  Juan Pablo swam fast and furious back to the boat. He told Rocio. The girl ran off, returning moments later with the scissors. She bent over and handed these to Juan Pablo. She found a mask. “Make it tight,” Juan Pablo called up. The girl fumbled with the mask for several seconds before handing this down to him.

  Juan Pablo soon realized he couldn’t get the mask on while holding the scissors. He reached them back up to Rocio. He fixed the mask on his face. Once he had the scissors in hand, he was off.

  Face-down, the scene appeared in frightening clarity. The mother whale swam maybe thirty meters beneath them. She appeared as a slow-moving dark shadow, dotted with crusty barnacles, like speckled dots along the whole of her. She was huge, twice as long as the Catori. He felt her heightened interest, but perhaps he only imagined this as he swam to her baby.

  No, it was not his imagination. A deep slow echo pushed through the water, the most forlorn cry for help.

  I will help, he thought. I will help or die trying . . .

  Heart pounding with the emergency, he took in the sight. The old man braced one hand on the baby as he deftly cut the net around the body. She was maybe three meters wide and fifteen to twenty meters long, a miniature of her mother. The padre had almost freed one dorsal fin before he emerged for air. Juan Pablo emerged alongside the old man, a meter away from the calf.

  “Be very careful,” he managed between gasps for breath. “She can take you down with a roll. You hear? Keep at arm’s distance, or as far away as you can while cutting the rope.”

  Juan Pablo nodded and taking a big gulp, he disappeared at her tail. His first touch sent a thrill through him—the smoothest, slippery surface—but he didn’t have time to think, only act. Holding the scissors, he snapped once, then again and one more time before he pushed himself up for air.

  He came up with a huge gasp. The mother whale moved directly below. He realized what was happening. Padre saw it, too. They pushed hard backward as the mother whale rose beneath her baby, lifting her up for a breath.

  The spout, the sign of life, fell over Juan Pablo’s head.

  Stripped to her underwear, Rocio dove in. She came up and fitted a pair of goggles over her eyes before swimming to Juan Pablo’s side. “I don’t have a knife, but I can pull the rope away from her and you cut.”

  Juan Pablo nodded.

  As soon as the mother disappeared below, they swam to her baby. Rocio spent a full minute studying the whale before coming up for air. She dipped down again, pointing to a spot. He took a big gulp, and dove. Right off he saw the smart strategy of cutting where she pointed. She lifted the rope away as he cut. With Rocio’s help, he was able to cut again and again, while his other hand pulled the loosened net from her tail.

  Rocio’s long hair floated around her face. She had to be careful not to get it tangled in the net as they repeated the measure dozens of times. The padre did the same, freeing the first dorsal fin. Grabbing a precious breath, the old man swam around the baby and emerged on her other side.

  He cut and cut and pulled with all his strength.

  As they worked, the mother emerged like clockwork to lift her baby up, six, seven, eight times.

  Juan Pablo ignored the cold seeping into his bones. He ignored his now cut and bleeding fingers, the sting of salt water. He ignored his thirst for air. He thought only of the snap, snap, snap of the scissors on the deadly fishing net.

  The baby whale seemed to have tremors now, like tiny earthquakes running the length of her.

  Juan Pablo and Rocio emerged to find the old man waiting for them.

  “One more . . . cut . . . fins will be free.” He tried to steady his breath.

  Juan Pablo nodded, his heart pounding furiously as he tread water. Rocio nodded too, but the old man’s gasps reminded her of her abuelo. “Are you okay, Padre?”

  “I can’t—” Gasps for air. “I can’t cut it—tail must be free. First. We have to do the last cuts at the same time. She’s ready to go—how much more?”

  “Three more cuts, I think.”

  “Okay. Move.”

  They took a deep breath and descended two feet. They released their breath in bubbles. Rocio held the rope up as Juan Pablo cut three times before he pulled with all his might. The old man freed the dorsal fin. As Juan Pablo and Rocio held the net, the baby whale shimmied forward. They held the net with all of their strength. Juan Pablo closed his eyes, his heart urging the b
aby forward with a silent explosion of joy.

  The net came free. He and Rocio popped up. Padre emerged as well.

  The old man gave a big shout. Juan Pablo yelled, just as he and Rocio began laughing triumphantly, their joy a tangible force.

  The baby gave a tentative go of swimming. The mother rose a short distance below her.

  “Watch out,” the old man warned them.

  Juan Pablo and Rocio tread water, witnessing it.

  The morning sun caught the spout and a rainbow arced over them.

  Joined by tears and laughter, the three wet people stood on the deck of the Catori watching a fine show made from a mother’s gratitude. As the whales swam away, the mother’s ten-meter tail shot out of the water and hovered a few seconds before slipping back down below.

  Juan Pablo and Rocio collapsed on the deck on their hands and knees.

  Rocio threw her arms around him and he held her cold, wet form against himself as they tried to calm their still-racing hearts. Full of joy and triumph, they laughed. If he had one wish it would be that his abuela really was watching from a lofty plane, that she had witnessed this great thing Rocio and her grandson had done.

  The morning light danced and sparkled merrily over the tiny ripples in the sea . . .

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  The padre could hardly tear his gaze from the raised dais in the packed barroom where the teenager played Vivaldi’s Concerto in D Minor. The boisterous crowd had fallen silent too, mesmerized by the performance. The room exploded with applause as Juan Pablo took his last bow, his face beaming with pride. His abuela would have tsk-tsked him, but she would have been smiling, too.

  People crowded around his violin case, filling it with pesos and dollars. Compliments flew at Juan Pablo. Shaking hands, saying “Gracias” over and over, he made his way through the smoke-filled room to the padre sitting at the bar.

  If only Rocio was here to witness this. He still couldn’t believe she was gone.

  It all happened so fast. Once the Catori had reached Cabo San Lucas’s harbor and the picturesque city of hotels, condominiums, and restaurants set before the sun-bleached cliffs, the old man had refused, absolutely, to hear of them leaving. He explained the reality to them: There was no way a beautiful young girl could cross the border without protection, let alone if they were being hunted by the cursed cartel. They wouldn’t make it out of the city. He might have a trick he could pull off; he knew someone, a rich and powerful person, and he was owed a favor. They were to wait for his return

  He and Rocio had spent three days magical days of swimming in the ocean, walking the streets, and picnicking in the park every night. They had no idea where the padre had gone until he had returned in the middle of the third night bearing the miraculous gift: A passport and an American birth certificate for Rocio.

  How he and Rocio had clung to each other at the airport.

  Juan Pablo finally reached the padre’s side.

  The old man patted his back affectionately. “Ah, the maestro!”

  Flushed and happy, Juan Pablo gratefully accepted the icy water the bartender set before him. Still, all he could think about was Rocio. He closed his eyes, the sweet scent of her freshly washed hair coming back to him. He recited her last text from memory: Everything is so shiny in America. The plane flight was just like in the movies, but without the snakes. My mom’s here!

  He and the padre had come to the bar to celebrate.

  An older man was pushing his way through the crowded bar toward them.

  Noticing his friend, the padre smiled. “Dario.” Holding his drink as if offering a toast to Juan Pablo, he shouted to be heard, “Did you hear my young friend play? The music comes straight from heaven, no?”

  “Sí, sí.” The man stood between the padre and Juan Pablo, facing the bar. He was clearly a working man: white T-shirt, worn Levi’s, and work boots. “You are a very talented young man.”

  Juan Pablo started to smile, but the worry in the man’s eyes alerted him. Dario was searching the mirror behind them over the bar, anxiously examining the faces that surrounded them.

  Fear pushed through Juan Pablo’s body; he knew what he was going to say before he said it.

  “That is why I am telling you this,” he said, head bent forward, so as not to be overheard. “People are looking for you.” His gaze motioned to Juan Pablo. “The wrong kind of people.”

  The padre slowly set down his drink. “Who?”

  “You know, Hector over on the avenue?”

  The padre did know of the man. “Droguista.”

  “He is showing a picture on his phone. Juan Pablo’s location, he says, is worth two thousand.”

  “Pesos?” Juan Pablo asked.

  Dario shook his head. “Not pesos.”

  A tingling alarm shot through Juan Pablo. His picture plastered over the Internet, the great World Wide Web that covered the entire earth, just as that old Indian predicted a hundred years ago: The land shall be crisscrossed by a giant spider’s web. Everyone would be looking for him—everyone who needed money, which was basically, 7-plus billion people.

  “When?” the padre asked.

  “About an hour ago,” he answered, running his callused hands nervously through his long gray hair. “He is asking everyone. I came straight over.”

  Looking nervously around the room, Juan Pablo swallowed his panic. The man with the red boots was not going to give up. The cartel was not going to give up. His fate was sealed; he was a doomed creature, like a pig at slaughter, the end was upon him . . .

  The padre tossed a couple of pesos on the bar. “Get your violin,” he ordered in a heated whisper as he stood up to leave.

  Dazed, afraid to look at anyone now, Juan Pablo made his way across the room to his violin. He quickly packed up, managing to nod and smile at the well-wishers as he followed the padre out the door.

  Once outside, a warm breeze from the sea greeted them, but it did nothing to ease their fear. The harbor, marked by dozens of lights, stretched before them. A large cruise ship had just docked that morning and hundreds of tourists mixed with the locals on the main boulevard. Burdened by his violin, dodging people as he went, Juan Pablo raced to keep up with the padre. The old man was a good ten meters ahead, drunkenly cursing under his breath, which Juan Pablo had noticed happened whenever he drank. People parted to get out of the madman’s way. They passed the American Hard Rock Cafe, the padre rushing forward to get back to their slip and the relative safety of the Catori.

  Finally catching up, Juan Pablo listened with little understanding of the man’s drunken, muttered words as they hurried down the street.

  “Why did you shackle me with this useless heart? What good is it? This fucking albatross beating its wings against my chest, dooming me all my days.” He lost sight of the old man behind a costumed mariachi band strolling through the crowds as they played. He ran to reach his side again. For an old man, he could be quick. “I don’t even need to hear the entreaties of their angels; I know they’re special . . .”

  “I do not want you to get in trouble, Padre. If you were to get hurt hiding me—”

  Upon hearing this, the padre stopped as if quite shocked. Glancing in both directions, he spotted an alleyway between a hotel and another bar. He grabbed Juan Pablo’s arm and pulled him into the shadows there. “Juan Pablo, I will not let them have you. Do you understand?” A fierce passion fueled his gaze. “I have lost everything. So many have lost everything.”

  “But—”

  “No.” The padre cut him off. “They are not going to get you, too, so help me God.”

  The old man resumed walking again, heading down the dock for the boat.

  Juan Pablo ran after him. “But . . . but we cannot hide forever, and you said the Catori cannot make it up the Baja coast.”

  The padre stepped onboard the darkened boat. “We don’t need to hide forever. Only for two days.” Then, aiming the words toward the heavens, “Two days, that’s all I ask.”

 
Juan Pablo climbed onboard after him. “Then what will we do?” He stored his violin and his backpack, hurrying to help man the ship.

  “Not we, but you, Juan Pablo. You see, I booked you on an American cruise ship going to San Diego . . .”

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  Juan Pablo woke to a furious pounding.

  “Hey, hey, kid. Time to wake up.”

  Darkness surrounded him. He was enclosed, knees to chest in a small, tight, dark space. His backpack rested on his knees and his violin case stood at his side, pointing up.

  The latch lifted up and an overhead light shined bright. A face appeared. “Hurry up, kid.”

  The voice sounded American.

  A light shone from behind an attractive face. Reddish hair, cut short and slicked back with grease. Amber eyes and an angular face made of sharp lines, the man might have been handsome, except for the pointy chin.

  “Rise and shine kid. The cones are about to pop.”

  “Cones? Pop?”

  “Passengers, kid. The passengers are about to start waking up and I need you topside before a shirt comes by.”

  Juan Pablo tried to stand up. “Kenny Backdoor?” He had met the man last night, but it had been dark. He and the padre took a long time to say their goodbyes; only in parting did he realize he had come to love the old man. The padre did not have a phone, so he was instructed to call a church in Monterrey when he was safe. The priest there would get word back to him.

  The magician’s cart was hauled onboard the giant cruise ship. He had thought he’d get out right away, but no one came for hours. He must have eventually fallen asleep.

  “That’s Backdoor Kenny. You can call me BK. Here, let me help you out. We’ve really got to get moving.”

  Juan Pablo lifted his backpack and violin before trying to climb out. His legs hurt from the cramped position, and standing was a sweet relief. He leapt out.

  “Hey. You’re one tall kid. A myuzo, too, huh?”