‘I will do it,’ I said.
‘You don’t have the balls.’
It is true what they say, that when someone faces a life-threatening situation time seems to slow down and almost stop. It might have been the intense heat and the imminence of total disaster, but I had something like terminal lucidity, that ultra-clarity that sick people are said to experience in the hours before their death. Despite my perilous position (or perhaps because of it) I had the sure sense that I was here – in this place, at this time – for a reason, that all this mess would be made right, that violence and destruction would be transformed into something good, that there would be an exchange of beauty for ashes. And then, almost exactly as I had this revelation, I saw colours and stars fizzing against a black velvet backdrop.
— Rip?
— Llew.
— ?
— I’ve gone back to being Llew. I’m going to ask the prison chaplain to un-baptize me.
— OK. Llew.
— I know. It doesn’t sound right to me either. But I thought that I might experience a change of fortunes if I reverted to my old name. Reclaim my old, dull self. Rip was trouble. Thought he could save everyone. Thought his actions had no serious consequences.
— I think Rip tried to do some good, no?
— Not really. He meddled and got burned. Your mother was right about that. Anyway. It’s nice to see you, Iz.
— Sorry it’s been so long, since my last visit. It’s been difficult. What with Ceelee. But I found a school for her and my cousin’s putting us up for as long as it takes. At least until I go to college.
— You got a place?
— Yale.
— Iz. That’s wonderful. Scholarship and everything?
— Yes.
— Well, that is . . . brilliant.
— Thank you. You are partly responsible.
— How?
— You challenged me. When you said I should quit mothering everyone. You see. Rip wasn’t all bad. And Ceelee liked him.
— How is the little sprite?
— She’s been drawing a lot since we left the house. Mainly fires and butterflies. She’s done you a picture.
— I see she’s put me behind bars.
— She’s given you a pen though.
— Is that to pick the lock?
— Maybe it’s prophetic.
— I have to write my way out of this confinement? Like one of your Russians.
— You look a bit Russian. With that red hair and that wispy moustache.
— Tolstoy or Dostoevsky?
— More like Gogol.
— Handsome dude?
— Clever. Charming.
— Those things don’t cut it with you though.
—
— You were always out of my league, Iz. As was Mary for that matter. I didn’t deserve either of you. And I treated you both with . . . I was careless.
— I’m sorry.
— Don’t be. If there’s one thing prison does it strips away the ego. Shows you what you are. I’ve had time to discover some things about myself – and grow a beard.
— What have you discovered?
— That I can’t grow a beard.
— It actually suits you.
— Well. The other great thing about prison, other than growing a beard and reflecting on the murky colour of my soul, is the time I’ve had to read. I’ve read your Big Russians. ‘Man is a creature who can get accustomed to anything!’
— Dostoevsky.
— Yes. And it’s true. I’ve adapted. I’ve become like one of those peppered moths you showed me. Blending in with the grime.
— Is that your confession there, on the table?
— Yes.
— You’ve written a lot. It looks almost Russian!
— Joe was right. There’s a time for reading stories and a time for making stories; but there also a time for writing them.
— Have you finished it?
— Almost. Why?
— I have some news. Can I sit?
— Sorry. My manners have deteriorated in this place. Here.
— Mary turned up – at my cousin’s.
— Oh.
— She wants to give a statement. Saying that you were not responsible for the fire.
— Really?
— Really.
— That’s more forgiveness than I deserve.
— That’s the point. Of forgiveness.
— What changed her mind?
— We got that blood test. The one you suggested.
— And?
— We have different fathers. Not that that really matters. What matters is that she knows the truth. We know the truth. But it loosened her loyalty to Ma’s version of events.
— She’s willing to back my version?
— She wants to say the butterflies were destroyed in the fire and that it was an accident. She wants you to do the same. If we say that it was an accident then my father won’t sue us. And no one will be convicted.
— He really is a piece of work. You’ve seen him?
— No.
— You’ve forgiven him? After what he did?
— I don’t have a choice. You know what I believe.
— Well. That’s impressive. I couldn’t believe in a God that forgave someone like that.
— What kind of God would you like to believe in?
— I don’t know. One that dispenses fire. Gets even. Or evens things out.
— Now you sound like one of those preachers Joe’s always baiting.
— Joe.
— You miss him.
— I miss him. In a way I haven’t missed anyone. He’s been haunting my dreams. Almost every night. Barging in uninvited. As if to say, ‘Hey, this dream is boring. I’ll make it more interesting.’
— I miss him, too.
— I miss his hope. He was completely unable to resist hope. Except perhaps that one time – after the trial. It’s all my fault, Iz. None of this would have happened without me . . . trying to fix it, at the end.
— You can’t blame yourself for what happened.
— I can. I created a disaster. I messed it up for all of you.
— You helped set us free.
— Except for Joe. I might have actually killed him.
— You didn’t kill him.
— I got myself into a situation from which I needed rescuing. And he rescued me.
— Yes.
— But you don’t think he’s alive, do you?
— I don’t know.
— They didn’t find a body.
— No.
— And it’s just like Joe to disappear.
— I suppose.
— And someone saved me.
— It’s true.
— That’s my hope. He’s alive. I’m going to keep believing it until they find a body. Yes?
— Yes.
— Yes.
— You really loved him, didn’t you?
— Love. Present tense. There’s no past tense with love.
— Yes. Love.
VI.
There’s a raging fire
At the heart of this house
Its flames lick the ones
We love the most
And burn the hearts
Of those who’ve lost
And turns their treasure
From gold to dust.
It’s one part fiend
And one part mother
Two half-sisters
To one half-brother
It roars, scolds
Singes and shouts
It sears our dreams
Will not be doused!
Into that fire
I saw him go
To save my butt
If not my soul;
To grab something
Worth more than gold
And leave this
Story to be told.
EPILOGUE
A year had passed since I first encounter
ed Joe Bosco and his half-sister, Mary-Anne, at the Kaaterskill Falls; and six months since I woke up to find myself in the New York State’s Hudson Correctional Facility. The blow to the back of my head (delivered by Mary with the butt of Besse the shotgun) made a hiatus of time, turning seconds to years and making the years seem like seconds; for several days afterwards, I remained in a confusion of understanding about what had happened, as though shrouded in one of those witchy Catskill mists. My mind was filled with beguiling visions of those final, fiery seconds at the mansion. One moment I was facing a shard-brandishing Edith, the next I was lying in the drive, on my side, the house on fire and giving off such heat I could smell the singe of burning hairs on my arms. I saw a man – or the silhouette of a man – enter the house; I tried to tell him what was so obviously so – that the house was on fire and he would quite likely die if he went in – but the words remained choked in my throat. When I came to, in the medical wing of the Hudson Correctional Facility, they told me that I cried out Joe’s name several times and insisted that the medics stop my friend from entering the burning house. A doctor told me – and I wanted to believe – that this vision was likely the result of the blow to my head and I had probably not seen anyone enter the burning mansion. After being treated for concussion and shock, I was told that I was being held under suspicion of arson and wanton destruction of government property. The FWA and Shelby Wolff accused me of destroying the collection, an accusation given credibility by the fact that I was the only person found at the scene and had been heard telling Shelby Wolff at Joe’s hearing that if I had anything to do with it, ‘he would never see those bugs again!’ In jail, the days passed slowly and the weeks went quickly until, in the sixth month of my incarceration, Clay was spotted by the tenacious Agent Moroni in a trailer park in Tucson, where Edith and he had started a new business selling dried flowers. After cross-examination, Clay suggested that the fire was most likely an accident. A claim backed up when Elijah overcame his monosyllabia and testified, saying he thought the fire had been caused by the collecting materials igniting. Edith refused to say anything about my innocence or guilt. But all charges that had been pinned on my sore head were eventually dropped when Mary (against all expectation, and everything I deserved) testified that the fire had already started by the time I arrived at the house and I was released almost exactly a year to the day of my arrival in America.
Whilst in jail I had often dreamt of freedom, and was often deceived by dreams! When actual liberation came it did not seem real. I had been reprieved but I felt no gladness. I experienced no renewed hope after the despair, or ‘respair’ (the word Joe had used when visiting me in my dream). In prison I had at least found a new sense of purpose – of meaning – in the writing of my confession; and I had the time to reflect on these events and what they said about the condition of my soul. And, although he was not with me in person, I had kept Joe alive in my imagination and through the words of my statement. Indeed, Joe had been so present to me in my daily reconstruction of events that once I had finished, I immediately felt his absence like a death; I was bereft and alone, and almost tempted to invent and write down new adventures simply to be with him again. In prison I believed Joe would appear at any moment to liberate me once more from the chains of my existential frustration if not prison itself. I refused to countenance the prospect that my friend was, as the authorities declared, missing presumed dead, and even in the first moments of my release I was expectant. Stepping through the gates of the jail I hoped to find him sitting in Chuick, gunning the engine and announcing our next adventure. But it was not to be.
Some believe we are permitted – if we are lucky – one great adventure in life. As I took a bus back to my aunt’s house in the Catskills I felt the heaviness of knowing that I had already had mine and that the person who had given it to me was not around to thank or remember it with. My aunt was sweetly welcoming. Her scatty kindness helped me make light of the time that had passed in jail and the happenings that had happened. She did her best to make me feel as though I’d hardly been away and that six months in a state prison was good experience and grist for the writing mill.
‘What a thing you have been through, Llew. I hope it hasn’t put you off America.’
‘I love this country. I’m a born-again American. We have unfinished business, America and me.’
‘You know you can stay here. Visit with me. Write more books.’
‘I don’t know. About the books part.’
‘But you finished the book you were writing, yes?’
‘Nearly.’
‘Maybe I could pass it on to someone. I know people – in the literary world.’
‘That’s kind, Julia. I’m not sure it’ll be their cup of tea. I don’t even know if it counts as a “book”.’
‘Well. I’d like to read it.’
A copy of my confession – kindly typed up by the stenographer at the Hudson Correctional Facility – sat on the desk in the Barn of Ten Thousand Books, next to the Remington upon which I had started my Americodyssey. I had not read it since my release and had put off the moment out of a fear that I might hate the sound of the vainglorious young man who had caused trouble for this family and had the hubris to think he could save them. When I placed a hand on the manuscript, I was surprised that all those words had come out of me. Imprisonment had at least given me the one thing even billionaires can’t buy enough of: time. Time to reflect, to get memories back, to get my story straight. Although having tried, I don’t know if it is possible to write a straight story, be honest with what are essentially slippery happenings and elusive truths. I’d probably be accused of being another of those unreliable narrators (as if there were really any reliable narrators out there!). I do know now that in the writing I silenced the voices – mainly my father’s – that had held me back. I performed an exorcism of that particular ghost; I was writing my way out of a hole of grief and depression as well as a set of expectations (many of them imagined) that had shackled me. I know too that it was an act of preservation. It pained me that the wonder and magic of this time and the singular brilliance of Joe might remain unknown to the world. In writing my statement I was trying to preserve something of his sayings, his doings, as well as those of his extraordinary household. Trying too, to recall the glory of this country. America, I am not done with you yet. Your wildness, your weirdness, your wonder. Joe always said that the land of the free and the home of the brave was not an actual place but a state of mind and I will continue to search for that state. As for ‘True Freedom’, well, all I know is that it took being incarcerated without to free things within. We were all incarcerated in our own prisons when we first met and it took a strongman to bend the bars back far enough for us to escape. I know too, above all this, that this confession is an act of self-preservation; a way of leaving a mark. Yes, that vanity goes deep! Some nights in the cell I felt like one of the ancients drawing on the walls of a cave, recalling their dreams and trying to capture them so their descendants might know their story in the centuries ahead. I remembered the day I finished it. Larson brought me my coffee and bun, whistled at the word mountain, then told me I looked different and, whilst I make no claim for transformation, I felt different. A burden had lifted off me and I felt as light and bright as a swallowtail, happy to go wherever the wind blew me. As I looked at the manuscript in my aunt’s barn, I realized that I didn’t care what people thought, whether they liked it, believed it, or admired it. It was – as Larson had said to me – a story only I could tell.
In my last days in America I finished writing my story and then tried to escape to other stories, taking books with me on walks in the mountains during the day. But Joe’s ghost was too easy to find in that terrain, and every time I opened a book I could hear him telling me to put it down and get out there and start living the next chapter of my life.
One morning just a few days before I began my journey home, I received a letter postmarked in Jamaica, addressed Mexico, and dated about
a fortnight before. The letter was written in an angular, childish script, with the capitals printed decisively and the t-bars strong and high and visionary. (That, or it was the handwriting of someone who was nuts.) The words were Americanly optimistic: generous, big-hearted and full of preacherly cadence and the kind of statements that excite fallacious hope. The spelling was creative as were some of the words. But I didn’t need a graphologist to tell me who had written this letter, what its author was like; or an entomologist to tell me the name of the five-winged, large blue butterfly that was in a glassine envelope taped inside the letter.
Mexico, someplace
Rip!
Glory be. I am not dead. You will be chokin’ on your marmalade to hear it, I know you will. I can see that cynicalistic smile I could never get you to lose. And hear your voice – boy how I miss it! Hear it sayin’, ‘Where the heck is Joe Bosco now?’ I imagine you’d think this is a situation that will ‘render words redundant!’ I sent this letter to your aunt’s place figuring that it would get to you somehow. Well for reasons that don’t need explanating I can’t give an exact address. The one I wrote is probably old by now. Just know that it’s somewhere in the Neotropical region. And that it has the second largest butterfly in the world for its national emblem.
I am sorry for your incarcerating. And for all the trouble I left you with. I did not expect them to blame everything on you. But I guess families will always circle the wagons. And Clay is as loyal as a dog. When Iz found me at the nurseries and told me that you’d gone on to try and stop Ma I didn’t believe it; especially after what I told you about those bugs not being worth it. (Not all of them anyways.) That was a crazy notion. What were you thinking? You were lucky Ma told me you were there. I don’t think she would have left you there to burn – so don’t feel too rejected. I hope you can forgive her. You gotta forgive if you want to keep flying!
Turns out you weren’t the only thing that needed saving from that fire. I moved the freaks the day Moroni arrested me and I put them somewhere no one would look. Iz and me always joked that in the event of a fire one of us would grab the freaks. I have all twenty-four of the critters. Less the one I sent you. I trust the little freak arrived safely in this letter and that you have him somewhere no one can see him. Keep him safe, Rip. Do what you want with it. Maybe give it to your own Natural History Museum in London. Or sell it. Or keep it as a momento memorial – to me!
The Killing of Butterfly Joe Page 36
