The Butterfly (6 page)

"You deef and can't hear me?"

"I asked you something."

"She crept in there while I was asleep. I don't know where she came from. First thing I knew somebody was slashing at me with a knife."

"I don't see any cuts on you."

"You will on the dog."

"What dog?"

"Birdie Blue's puppydog, that was out when I got home, and that I brung in for company. He was laying close to me, where I was sleeping on the gunny sacks, and he took the first stab and maybe some more. She stabbed like a wild woman, and when she felt the knife go in she thought she had me till I wrestled her off and the blood begun coming out of her mouth."

"Why did she do this?"

"I don't know."

"Come on, don't lie to me."

"Suppose you ask her."

There was no asking her anything, though, by the time we got there. By putting one side of the truck on the path and letting the other side bump, I got pretty close to the shack, and she was still laying on the floor, but two or three people from the hollow were there by that time with lanterns, and they were trying to get her up and move her. So the way Kady explained it to me, that was the worst thing in the world, so we stopped it and had those people carry the bed up, and the door was too small for it, but they began putting it up outside, and used the loose log, the one Wash and I had pushed out of the way, to wedge it up level. Then Kady rolled up a sheet to the middle, and laid it down beside Belle, and shoved the rolled part under her, then unrolled it, and we all helped lift and at last she was off the floor and on a bed. But the blood that was in a puddle on the other side of her, and the dead dog that was laying in the middle of it, you could see all that, and the blood began to run in a stream toward the door, and stunk, and it was a mess. So I told one of those people to take the dog out and bury it, and get started washing out the blood, but Kady said quit worrying about that, and get started after the ice. So I burned the road to the hotel, and called Wash, and told him to get a doctor out there, and told the man on the desk I wanted some ice, and be quick about it, so he hopped pretty lively. Because the last thing I did when I left the cabin on the way to the hollow was to strap on my .45 that hung across from my rifle, and there's nothing like having a six-shooter on you to get action when you want it.

The rest of the night was like a whirl-around dream you have when you're sick, with the doctor giving her some kind of stuff to inhale, and Kady tearing up sheets to make bags for the ice, and more and more people from the hollow standing around, watching what was going on and giving help whenever it was wanted. What they had heard when Belle and Moke were having it there in the dark, before he came to my place, if they heard anything at all, I don't know, but by the time Wash got there with the doctor the dog was gone and the knife was gone and nothing was said about anybody trying some killing. All the doctor saw was a woman bleeding from lung trouble, and so far as what was said to him went, that's all there was. Around daylight he got the bleeding stopped, and went home, but before he went he called Kady off to one side, and Wash and I drifted over to hear what he said to her.

"You're Mrs. Tyler's daughter, miss?"

"Yes, I am."

"You know what this means?"

"You think she's pretty sick?"

"If, I had her in the hospital, where I could force-feed her with what she needs, sock a couple of quarts of blood into her, and then when she's in shape, collapse that lung for her, I might pull her through for a few more months, or even years. But I can't do it here, and by the time I got her to town she'd be dead. She's on the end of the plank. It could come any time now, but she'll probably last until tonight. Her mouth temperature is down to 97, and I can't get it up on account of the ice that has to stay there. It'll slip to 96, and then it'll take a sudden drop. With that she'll go in the coma, and then it's just a matter of when."

"We've more or less expected it."

"Call me, and I'll sign the papers."

"I'll do it from the filling station on the state road."

She was looking up at the trees, and was waxy color from losing the blood, but Kady had combed her hair out nice and put a ribbon in it, and just for a minute, with the sun coming up and the birds starting to sing, she looked like she had when I first saw her, in church one night, just after her father moved to town to work in the mine. She was looking up then too, and singing
Stand Up, Stand Up for Jesus,
and I kept looking at her, and next thing I knew she was looking at me, and winking. We got married the next month, she fourteen, I four years older, just the regular age for a coal camp. It seemed funny, after all that had happened, she was still only thirty-nine years old. After a while she put out her hand and took mine, where I was sitting near by. "Jess, I'm going to die."

"We're doing all we can."

"I know, but I'm going to die."

"I'm awful sorry, Belle."

"I'm not. I made a mess of my life, Jess."

"You lived it like you wanted it."

"I lived it like I liked it, but not like I wanted it. We could have been happy, you and me, because we loved each other, and that's enough. But I was born to mess things up, and I began to hold things against you. That you went to church, and believed what you heard there, and took things serious, and never took a drink. I thought that was all a pack of foolishness, and after I got the taste for liquor I couldn't hardly stand you at all. And I began doing things. I did a lot more than I ever told you, Jess. And then I started up with Moke. Ten of him wasn't worth what you was, and I knew it, but I couldn't help how I was going. He sung comical songs at me, and we'd meet by the creek and drink applejack, and when I'd come home I'd be so I could hardly stand up, and have to pretend I was sick after I chewed sassafras root so you wouldn't smell my breath. And then I went off with him."

"If he made you happy, I'm glad."

"He didn't."

"More than you think, maybe."

"Maybe worse than I could have imagined."

She closed her eyes, and I thought there would be more, and at last I would know what she had come up here for, and why she had tried to kill Moke, and why he had stolen Danny, and all the rest of what had been going on the last few days that I didn't understand. But she just asked if she could see Danny and I ran down in the truck to the cabin, and as soon as Jane could get him ready we brought him up. She looked at him a long time, and talked to him, and took his hand and played with it. All that time I was holding him. I liked that better than anything I had ever had in my life, and she must have seen it because she said: "You love him, don't you, Jess?"

"Love's no word for it."

"I want you to."

She began to cough then, and sank back on the pillow, and Kady came up in case there was trouble. But what I noticed was Moke, sitting there in the door of the shack, looking at me with such hate in his eyes I don't think I ever saw in a man before.

She called for the girls and said good-by to them, and when she talked to Kady she ran her fingers over her face, and looked up at her with an expression that hit me in the throat somewhere, because it was beautiful, and I was glad, because maybe you could understand why things had come between, but they were her daughters, and now she was going, both sides should feel some love.

And then she called for Moke, and he never even raised his head. "Moke, I want to talk to you."

"I got nothing to say to you."

"Moke, I'm dying."

"Then die."

"Moke, I've loved you, and there's something I've got to ask of you, and it's my right to do it, and you've got to listen to me."

"I won't."

"Then, Moke, will you sing to me once?"

To that he didn't say anything for a minute, then he came over to her and put his head on her shoulder and let her pat him and whisper in his ear. And if he sang to her I don't know. The last I saw of them, they were together up there, and I ran down to the cabin and watched Danny with Jane while he had his nap. Then Birdie Blue rode up on a mule, and told us Kady sent word to phone the doctor.

It was late afternoon when I got to Tulip with the doctor, and Kady was there at the church, and she and I waited while he went up to certify the death or whatever it is they do. In a minute a wagon came up the creek with two men in it, and they had a tool chest from the old drift mouth of the mine. They went on up to a cabin, and pretty soon here came the sound of hammering. "You hear that, Jess?"

"What are they up to?"

"They're making a casket."

"Who asked them to?"

"Moke I guess."

"What's he got to do with it?"

"He's burying her."

"Him and who else?"

"These women here, these relations of his, they've already got her washed, and soon as the doctor gets through they're going to lay her out."

"Funny they didn't speak to me about it."

"Is there any reason they should?"

"Before the law, she was my wife."

"Before God, she was his."

"He certainly didn't act much like it."

"They made up their quarrel, whatever it was about. He loved her, even if he is such a poor excuse for a man, and it seems to me you don't have to get up on your ear and be onry just because you don't like him."

"I loved her once."

"This is now."

Three boys came down the hill with bunches of laurel, for the funeral, and Kady took them inside the church and showed them where to put it. I knew them all, Lew Cass, Bobby Hunter, and Luke Blue, but I didn't pay any attention to it till later that not one of them spoke to me.

In the morning Mr. Rivers, that was doing the preaching, stopped by in his car to take us up to the church. Kady got in, and Jane got in with Danny, and I started to get in. "Hold on, Jess. Nothing was said about you."

"Does there have to be?"

"Well now I don't know."

"I don't need any special invitation."

I got in, and he sat there holding the wheel a minute or two, like he was thinking, then he drove on. In the clearing by the church were some cars and that's where he parked. The girls got out with the baby and we all started for the church. "Hold on, not so fast."

Ed Blue came out with three or four others, and they had rifles. "It's all right for Kady and Jane and the baby. But Jess, he stays out."

"Who says so?"

"Moke."

Kady and Jane looked at each other, and after a while Kady said: "Jess, I think it's awful of him, and if I could I'd leave with you, right now. But it's my mother. I can't just turn my back on her."

"That how you feel, Jane?"

"Yes, Jess."

"Then there's nothing I can do but go, but you're not taking Danny in there. That runt stole him once, and maybe he takes some other fool notion now. I'm taking him home."

"Maybe you better."

When I got back to the house with him, walking, Wash was there, in his car, reading the morning paper. "Funeral too much for him hey?"

"It wasn't him, it was me."

When he heard what had happened, he cussed and raved and said we should each take a gun and go up there and clean the place out.

"We can't do it, Wash."

"Why not?"

"In the first place, it's a funeral, and it's entitled not to be busted up by any shooting. And in the second place, if I start anything like that, I got to leave Danny, and they'll find some way to get back at me by getting back on him."

"I'd forgot about that."

He marched up and down by the creek, snapping his fingers, and then pretty soon he went in the cabin and came out with my rifle.

"Don't worry, I won't do any more than I have to. But we still got that little lookout back of his cabin, that I can get to up through the woods without being seen, and when he gets back from the church we're going to start right where we left off. I'm going to throw down on him, and he's coming with me, and he's going right off to jail, where he was headed before. What he's forgot is that he's still the kidnapper of my boy, and if Blount's where I've got to take him, I got all day, and not any stuff about Danny not having a name is going to stop me this time. He'll have a name in plenty time for the grand jury to do their stuff."

And he went up the path through the woods. But when he came back he was alone.

"Jess, you remember why we picked that spot?"

"So we could hear."

"And I heard everything. I could hear every word the preacher said, and the hymns they sung, and somebody crying. And then, when I crept out to the bank of the gully and looked down, I could see them all. They came out of the church, six men, carrying a little gray casket."

"Made from a tool chest they stole."

"That's just about it. They had taken two pieces of rope, and stapled them along each side, so they had handholds. They carried it to the graveyard back of the church, and there they had some more preaching. Then they lowered it with two other pieces of rope into the grave. Then it broke up. And then I got my gun ready, because here came Moke, up the gully to his shack, alone. But Kady called him, and came running up to say good-by. He didn't pay much attention to her, and said he had heard she was going to get married, and he'd see her at the wedding. And she said she had decided to get married in town, in Carbon City, the first I had heard of it."

"First I heard of it too."

"She had wanted it in that little church."

"Until they kicked me out."

"That's probably it. So he said all right, he'd come to the cabin, and ride in to the church with her. She said there might not be room. He said he'd go in on the bus. And then, Jess, do you know what she said?"

"I'm listening."

"She said, 'Moke, at my wedding I only want friends, though I've tried to treat you as decent as I know how on account of my mother. And if you show up, I'm going to ask Jess to do to you exactly what you did to him. Keep you out, if he's got to take a rifle to do it. Good-by and good luck, but from now on, you keep out of my life.'"