All the Butterflies in the World

by Rodney Jones

  I shrugged. “Somewhere between Weston and Wallingford.”

  “Oh. That would’ve been quite a haul back in the day, which brings up the next question. Was there a coroner’s report? I’m almost certain they would’ve needed one for a murder conviction.”

  We started sorting through the documents, searching for a coroner’s report.

  Mrs. Brown glanced up at me. “Do you know if there were any suspicions at the time concerning the validity of your aunt’s death?”

  “No. I was just thinking, like, what if she wasn’t?”

  Liz pointed at a handwritten page of notes with a cluster of signatures at the bottom. “Is this it?”

  “Uh, that’s it, yes.” Mrs. Brown studied the document. “Ah, yes, the county coroner. This is typical of those old coroner’s reports—sloppy and no evidence of any forensics. He states here that the victim died from two gunshot wounds to the head. The rest is merely filler to make it appear he actually did something. Now, what’s interesting here is that this poor man would’ve been required to hop on a horse then travel to Weston—probably two days by horse and buggy. He’d have to find the grave, dig her up, examine her to determine the cause of death, then rebury her and haul his sore butt back to Woodstock. That, I’m pretty sure, is what the law required. Did he actually put himself through all that, considering the petty wages he would’ve received, or did he just sit at a desk and fill in his report with whatever he’d been told? I think it’s reasonable to assume that the defense, if Mr. Bartley had any, would’ve looked into that. A falsified coroner’s report could have incapacitated the prosecution.”

  I was baffled by the “shot in the head” claim. After being pried for details, John had admitted that I was shot in the chest. And he had said I was only shot once. Those were precisely the kind of discrepancies I was hoping to find.

  On our way home, Liz and I stopped in North Clarendon to pick up the money from Nicole’s father. He unlocked a small safe, removed a brown string-tied envelope, and handed it to me. I opened it and peered down at a brick of money.

  “All hundreds.” Mr. Adams shook his head and grinned. “And there’s more on the way. I just sold the other coins.”

  “Jesus,” I said, sliding out the bundle.

  Liz’s mouth fell open. “Whoa!”

  “My aunt once gave me a hundred-dollar bill for Christmas,” I said, “and I thought that was cool.” I thumbed the edge of the stack, flipping through the bills.

  chapter twenty

  John

  I awoke as the morning light penetrated the little windows high up along the outside corridor wall. From where I lay, I could only see gray sky. It provided just enough light to reveal the bleakness of my new home. I pushed off my blanket and dropped my feet to the floor. Snoring came from a cell farther up the corridor. My uncle and I were not the only prisoners there.

  I imagined Tess nudging my shoulder, her face close to mine. “How about a cup of coffee?” she’d whisper. Had we not happened upon that letter from my aunt, I’d likely be sitting on Tess’s deck, at that glass-topped table, admiring her angelic face.

  The corridor door swung open, and Sheriff McNeil stepped into the hall. Behind him, a lady carried a tray of steaming tin cups and bowls. She set the tray down on the stool outside our cell then stood there with her eyes lowered.

  “Grab this, boy,” McNeil said.

  I jumped up and took the two cups he shoved between the bars. Uncle Ed woke up and worked himself into a semi-upright position.

  McNeil disappeared down the corridor with the third cup, presumably to give to the recently snoring prisoner. The lady, shuffling along behind him with one of the bowls in her hands, glanced our way as she passed. She was a handsome woman, a few years younger than my aunt, with a round face, amber eyes, a button nose, dimpled cheeks, and an unusually thick upper lip. She wore her clay-brown hair in a loose bun. I had the impression she was nervous, as if a quick movement or sudden noise might send her running. I handed Uncle Ed one of the coffees then sat down beside him.

  “Joe, git up, you lazy no-account,” I heard McNeil say.

  “The sun ain’t hardly up.” The raspy voice sounded as though it belonged to a man who had suffered a long, hard life.

  Keys rattled against the bars. “You gonna stand there like a dumb wench, or are you gonna give this dung heap his breakfast?”

  “Pay no mind to that sorry mistake for a man you were cursed with, Mary Anne,” Joe said.

  “You think maybe she’d been better off with the likes of you, huh?”

  “Ain’t no question to it, Henry. You don’t deserve her. Never did.”

  “You dried-up piece of dung, slide that honey pot this way. Christ. I’ll take that. Git the bucket.”

  “Yes, sir.” Mary Anne’s whisper was so low that I almost didn’t catch it.

  Then the barred door clanked shut, and the keys rattled again.

  “Mmm, mm,” Joe said. “This is the usual delicious, Mary Anne. Much obliged.”

  McNeil returned to our cell and unlocked the door. Mary Anne stood off behind him, gripping the handle of a covered bucket.

  “Here you go, boys,” McNeil said. “This ought to cheer you up. A serving of my old lady’s finest cookin’.” He handed each of us a bowl then nodded toward the bucket in the corner. “Got anything for barter in there?”

  I got up, carried the bucket over, and set it down just outside the door. “Thank you, ma’am,” I said.

  “Now ain’t y’all the charmers,” the sheriff said, “so gracious an’ all.”

  Mrs. McNeil hefted our pail in her free hand and left.

  McNeil locked our cell door. “Once you’ve scraped your bowls clean, which I know you will, slide ’em under the door here. You’ll git your honey pot back shortly.” He turned and walked away, leaving the jail area quiet.

  Again, I pictured that moment on the mountainside, the sheriff holding up a hand, trying to see past the beam from the flashlight that Tess had given me. It was just a moment. Two seconds. I’d had him… and let him go.

  The coffee was weak, and the oats were pasty and bland. But I was famished and ate every speck of the mush. My uncle only managed two-thirds of his, so I finished off the rest.

  “Hey, y’all down the way!” Joe shouted.

  “Sir?” I said.

  “Joseph P. Ferguson. Friends call me Joe.”

  “John’s my name.”

  “Paulson,” my uncle said.

  “Where y’all from?”

  “Greendale,” I said.

  “You ever had a sorrier breakfast than what they serve up here?”

  “I’ve gone without a few times,” my uncle said.

  “And I,” Joe said. “I suspect Mary Anne catches the devil for wastin’ butter on us here no-accounts. Her ham ’n’ beans ain’t so bad, though you’ll need some luck findin’ the ham in ’em.”

  Deputy Hoffman showed up with the two privy pails. He unlocked our cell door, set the pail down inside, locked the door, then went on to Mr. Ferguson’s cell.

  “Mighty humble of ya, Al,” Joe said, “a big bug such as yourself a-doin’ the woman’s work.”

  “And what kind of work you been doin’ lately? Helpin’ yourself to Harvey Watt’s corn?”

  Joe laughed. “Well, I’ll tell you something, Al. I growed up in a time when everyone’s word was counted for good. Leastwise until somebody could prove otherwise. And it took more than some yahoo jus’ a-sayin’—”

  “I’ve got work to do, Joe.”

  “Go on then. Get back to your knittin’ and what have ya.”

  Uncle Ed got to his feet for the first time since we’d arrived, took a few feeble steps, and grabbed hold of the steel bars. As the deputy passed by, he said, “Sir, are we going to have a chance to talk with an attorney anytime soon?”


  “I don’t know nothin’ about that. You’ll have to ask the judge.”

  “And when might we be seeing a judge?”

  “Not today. Shop’s closed on Sunday. I reckon you’ll git a chance to say your piece tomorrow.”

  chapter twenty-one

  Tess

  I peered over the hood of my car toward the woods at the end of Greendale Road. I tried to imagine a road with wagons and horses, houses and barns, a gristmill to the right, its waterwheel slowly turning in the creek. I could almost hear the shouts of children playing, barefoot girls in dresses chasing boys in suspenders.

  John and I had talked a few days before he’d disappeared about the question of the chicken and the egg. We explored the possible correlation between my having traveled back in time to warn him of a fire and the actual manifestation of the fire. He didn’t blame me. I hadn’t actually struck the match, but there was no denying the connection. So with me in my proper time, and he in his, why was there still no Greendale?

  I had seen The Butterfly Effect. Supposedly, any little change in the past could affect the future. Perhaps if I had not traveled back to warn John, my name would be Donna rather than Tess, and I’d have friends living in a bustling little tourist trap called Greendale, and my mom would be addicted to Beanie Babies rather than booze. But I did travel back, and a village was destroyed, and a very nice guy was executed. The only way I could see to fix it required my going back again.

  The idea made me nervous. Anything could go wrong. I could end up in the wrong time—too late or too early—or not be able to return to the future. I could get stuck in the nineteenth century for the rest of my life—no TV, no car, no CD player, no cell service, no computer, no microwave, no electricity, not even a trickle for my nightlight. But people lived without those things and survived—even thrived.

  I started my car then turned around and headed home. I got on my computer and spent the rest of the day researching what people did before all the modern-day conveniences. I found that they wrote poems, whittled, played checkers, and went to dances. Instead of watching TV, they read books, played musical instruments, and sang. Pianos were like the MP3 players of the nineteenth century.

  Things were being invented left and right: light bulbs, flush toilets, Kodak cameras, record players, telephones, Gillette razors, Coca-Cola, airplanes, cars. It was the crack of dawn of the modern age. And many famous dead people were alive then, too. I could meet Susan B. Anthony, who lived just a day’s train ride from Wallingford, or Thomas Edison, who was busy inventing postage stamp adhesive two hundred miles south of there. I could take a job babysitting Calvin Coolidge, who’d be living a few miles up the road from Greendale, just three years old in 1875. If I wanted to go on a really big adventure, I’d take a train and go see the first movie ever shown in the US, though I’d have to wait a few years, until 1894, and travel halfway across the country. And if I was to wait a couple years more, I could take a quick trip to Buffalo and see a movie in America’s first movie theater. I might have to go by myself though, as I wasn’t sure I could trust John to behave.

  Ironically, history was my weakest subject in school. I’d gotten my first ever D in the seventh grade—Mr. Garfield’s history class. The more I read, however, the more intrigued I became with the idea of being a witness to what may have been the greatest period in American history—not just a witness, but a participant.

  But I needed to look at the more practical issues, like money. John’s seventeen dollars in change had been turned into twenty thousand dollars. But those twenty-first-century paper bills would be less than worthless in 1875. I needed to convert the money into a form that would hold its value when I took it back in time. The first thing that came to mind was gold. I Googled it and discovered that gold would cost about nine hundred seventy-five dollars per ounce. With the money I had, I could buy twenty ounces.

  I did the calculations to find out how much that would be worth in 1875—three hundred seventy-nine dollars. That paltry amount didn’t seem right. I could only assume that inflation accounted for that.

  I did more research and more calculations to see what that three hundred seventy-nine dollars would equal in today’s dollars. I stared at the dismal figure on the screen: nine thousand six hundred dollars.

  “You have got to be kidding me. I would lose money?” I re-did the math only to arrive at the same conclusion.

  I called Liz. “Hey, is your computer up?”

  “Jeff’s on it, downloading friggin’ games—and probably viruses.”

  “Kick him off. I’m trying to figure something out, and it’s not making sense.”

  “And you think my internet’s more sensible than yours?”

  “No, but your brain is… different.”

  “Oh.”

  “I mean, like outside the box. Look, I have twenty thousand dollars. I will in a few days, anyway. John’s money. I want to convert it into some form that would have equivalent or greater value in 1875.”

  “Why?”

  “Just thinking. I mean, like what if?”

  “Right,” she said.

  “What?”

  “Nothing,” she said.

  “Jesus, I’m just curious.”

  She sighed. “I’m guessing you tried gold.”

  “Yeah, and it’s crazy. I did the math three times and came up with the same thing. It loses half its value if I buy it here and sell it there.”

  “And you don’t know why?”

  It was as if someone had to ask before it’d come to me. “Because gold has doubled in value since then?”

  “Uh… probably. Have you looked at silver?”

  I groaned. “I was just about to.”

  “Seriously, Tess, horse racing. You could win gazillions betting on horses. Or… no, no, I got it. Patent bottled water… or McNuggets. Then when you come back…”

  “Yeah, brilliant,” I said. “But, hey, you wanna go with me to Andover tomorrow? I thought I’d take John’s book to that book guy.”

  “You’re going to sell it?”

  “I’m just curious.”

  “Tess, what are you doing?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Oh, man, you’re not really thinking of trying the time travel thing, are you?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Oh, man! You are thinking about it. You wouldn’t be wasting your time with this gold and money crap if you weren’t.”

  “I’m just wondering. Really, that’s all.”

  “Well, quit it. It’s crazy. It’s dangerous.”

  The next day, while we were on our way to Andover, the question again popped up. “You’re really thinking of leaving, aren’t you?”

  “Come with me, Liz.”

  “Are you nuts? There’s no way in hell.”

  “I know what you’re thinking. You’re thinking corn cobs and Sears catalogues for the rest of your life. But you know what? I found that we can have toilet paper imported from England. Apparently, toilet paper was invented before toilets.”

  I described my plan to sabotage the prosecution’s case against John. I had that and a backup plan and then even a backup for the backup, all of which were still in their early stages—not far from conceptual. Nonetheless, I was confident that the details would fall into place, and I would be able to save John’s neck. And after getting off the phone last night, I had solved the money issue. Though gold had gone way up in value, silver had actually dropped. I could sell whatever I bought here at nearly double its current value there.

  “This is crazy, Tess,” she said when I had finished. “Why am I doing this?”

  “Doing what?”

  “Listening to you, enabling you, when I should be reporting you.”

  “To who?”

  “I don’t know… the authorities, the ones who collect nutzoid time trave
lers.”

  Early that afternoon, we arrived at the used-book store, which was in an old farmhouse at the edge of Andover. The proprietor, Mr. Harrison, could easily have been mistaken for a mad scientist. He reminded me of a photo I once saw of Einstein all in disarray as if he’d just witnessed an atomic bomb exploding. I introduced us then opened the little wooden box and showed Mr. Harrison the book.

  His jaw dropped. “Is that what I think it is?” He pulled it out of the box, handling it with the same reverence someone might afford the Pope’s dentures. “Where’d you get this?”

  “I can assure you it’s not stolen.”

  “A book like this should have a provenance.”

  “A providence?” Liz said.

  “Documentation stating its origin,” he said.

  I shook my head. “I don’t have anything like that. Just the box.”

  He examined the wooden box, studying the corners and then the hinges. “It was kept in this?”

  “Yes.”

  “For a hundred thirty years?”

  I shrugged. “I don’t know.”

  “In all my life, I have never seen anything this old in this good of a condition. It could well be the nicest example of this book in existence. Stunning.” He let out a huff of air.

  “I’m thinking of selling it.”

  “Oh…” He rubbed his chin. “How does fifteen thousand sound?” He pressed his lips together and squinted at me.

  Liz gasped.

  “No,” I said, “I don’t want to sell it… to you. Richard Adams… well, he suggested…”

  “Ah. So this is the book he was talking about. He said something about some old coins being with it.”

  I nodded. “Civil War era.”

  “And he warned you that I’d give you a low offer. Am I right?” He smiled. “Fifteen thousand is a lot of money for a book, any book. But this one…” He sighed. “Yes, it’s worth considerably more.”

  After some negotiating, he agreed to contact a few collectors and try to get a bidding war going. He thought he might be able to get as much as thirty thousand. I signed a consignment agreement and left the book with him.