The Butterfly Plague (17 page)

Ruth took a very deep breath and folded her fingers tightly around the swastika as if she could make its message disappear, the way its messenger had.

If I close my eyes
…she thought. And she did. She closed them tight as her fingers. But it did no good. It would never do any good again. She had seen—and been seen. She had chosen—and been chosen. She would never be rid of it, ever. Bruno’s damned perfection.

3:00 p.m.

Of all the people inside Alvarez Canyon Paradise, only Naomi sat staring at the birds. Only she was at peace.

The pain came and went in what seemed to be a sort of tidal flow, ebbing and rising, always in motion, always there, but mostly bearable and only occasionally not. And at these moments she would clutch her stick and say things to the birds.

She didn’t want to leave, not just this Paradise, but life itself.

For a moment it did not matter that she was lost—or that no one came for her—or that Ruth had disappeared. What did it matter if there was not another soul in Paradise? These things that were—the earth, the trees, the creatures and the sky (though she could not see it), they were enough, if only she could stay immobilized in Alvarez forever.

But that would be wrong. That would be unreal.

And so Naomi rose to go.

It is a strangeness that those who take part in others’ dreams are always safe. But it is so. Therefore, Naomi returned to the gate and asked that extremely polite, still sleepy Negro to help her up into the rumble seat of the Franklin.

3:00 p.m.

Myra was weeping. She wore nothing now but the vine and a few large welts where she had scratched herself. She also wore her shoes and carried her handbag. She tore a leaf from a tree and blew her nose.

“Oh, this is awful,” she wailed. “Oh, why did we come?”

Dolly could not answer her. It had been his mother’s idea, or Ruth’s. At any rate, he certainly disclaimed it. Standing there, dressed only in his underdrawers, his blue socks and blue garters, his blue shoes and his hat, he felt as unforgiving as he had ever felt in his life. He struck out with his stick and broke some flowers at the edge of the path.

“Of course it’s got to be some sort of a plot,” he said vehemently to himself. “Look at us, we’re two grown people—
lost!
It’s impossible. Somehow, they’ve switched the paths around, or altered the terrain. They’ve done something. I tell you, it’s not natural.”

Of course it wasn’t. It was a dream. But whose, Dolly wondered.

He bashed down some more flowers and Myra wailed. Dolly gave her a look. For the first time he noticed the large purple welts she had raised on her arms, buttocks, shoulders, the backs of her legs—her stomach and her face as she scratched.

“My God, Myra! What are you covered all over with?”

The expression on Dolly’s face made Myra scream with terror, for he seemed to be saying she had been mounted by a troop of giant spiders. She flung her arms in the air, and ran and screamed again, flying amidst a cascade of vine leaves and flowers, right into a dark pool of water that lurked close at hand by the path.

There was a terrible noise of splashing and choking and loud cries of “Quicksand!” and “Alligator!” and “Can’t swim!” and “
Dolly!!!
” until, moments later, Dolly felt moved to rush to her assistance.

“Myra, Myra! Be calm!” he called, sliding and falling knee-deep into the waterhole. When he had fully assessed he was neither drowning nor being attacked himself, he regained his composure and asked Myra to pass him his stick, which was floating in the middle of the pool.

She retorted that she was too busy removing leeches from her arms to take time to pass him his damn walking stick, but at the word “leeches” Dolly had already gone berserk.

If ever a more natural enemy had been created for a hemophiliac, surely it had not been heard of.

Literally unable to speak in his terror, Dolly thrashed about like a man possessed. Myra, certain he would harm himself, made for the opposite shore, got out and ran stark naked around the pool and hauled him out onto the bank.

He refused to stop jabbering, so she threatened to hit him on the mouth and, as always, the merest hint of earnest violence persuaded him to faint.

While he was passed out, Myra took the opportunity to check him carefully for leeches. Finding none, she proceeded to divest herself. Or at least she tried.

Of course, without benefit of either salt or a match, it was impossible to make the leeches budge. There were three of them—one on her leg and two on her arms. She yanked at them, pulled at them, scratched at them, and swore at them.

Dolly began to recover. Before he had a chance to panic, Myra told him he had no leeches. But she had, and she was frightened.

Dolly said, “Unless we can get you back to the car in half an hour, they will kill you.”

“Yes,” said Myra, disconsolate. “What a way to end my lovely life.”

Then a foot crunched on the path behind them and Dolly whirled.

It was Miss Bonkers, looking very odd.

“Have you got a match?” said Dolly.

Miss Bonkers merely stared at him through her goggles.

“Miss Bonkers? Where have you been?” Dolly demanded. His wrath needed an outlet. He glared at her hotly, but she did not seem to comprehend. He tried another tack—the tack of compassion and pity. “Miss Bonkers,” he implored, “have you a match or not? Surely you have a match somewhere on your person. Miss Myra is being eaten alive by leeches—see them?—and we must burn them to save her.”

At the word “burn” a strange look came into Miss Bonkers’s eye. She lifted up her nose like a dog, tasting the air, and she waggled her head up and down like that, indicating that Dolly should do the same. She clutched at his arm with her gauntleted paw.

“She seems to have been struck dumb,” said Dolly over his shoulder to Myra. He looked inquisitively into Miss Bonkers’s face. “What is it?” he asked.

Miss Bonkers shook his arm and gazed off into the treetops, bobbing her head and sniffing loudly. Delicately, Dolly did likewise.

“I don’t…” he began, but then he did. “Fire,” he barked. “Oh, holy God. This canyon is on fire.”

Miss Bonkers nodded. She agreed.

Myra rose. The leeches were becoming larger by the minute, and now they seemed to be very, very heavy. Each of them had grown from an inch or so in diameter to the size of a small fist, and they were lengthening constantly, like grotesque balloons. The welts on her body had turned from purple to blue and her hair hung down in muddy blond ringlets to her shoulders. She was a mess.

Dolly searched Miss Bonkers’s pockets for a match, but could find nothing save his mother’s hypodermic set and the bottle of morphine. There was not time to wonder what effect the morphine might have on the leeches, for by now they could hear the distant roaring of the flames and, far off through the trees, Dolly could see their yellow and orange reflections on the rubber leaves.

“Please—please—oh, please! Haven’t you got a match?” he bellowed into Miss Bonkers’s goggles. But she shook her head violently. The noise of the fire was beginning to mount and would soon deafen them completely.

“Well, I don’t know,” said Dolly, turning to Myra, who wavered and felt faint. “I think we’d better get out of here. Don’t you?”

“All right,” said Myra. “Anything you say.” Her voice was flat and bloodless.

Dolly looked around. There was only the one path, the one they had been on for hours, and he did not know where it went, but he was certain, the way things were slanted and fated, that it probably led into the growing holocaust. Still—it was the only path they had and a number of animals seemed to be making use of it, so he concluded they would use it too.

“Are you coming?” he yelled at Miss Bonkers.

She smiled and coughed and nodded and, like a child, she took his hand.

With his other hand, Dolly gingerly clung to Myra’s elbow, well away from the bag-like leech that hung nearby at her wrist, and they began very slowly to walk away from the flames.

“We’re going to die! We’re going to die!” Myra whispered.

“Yes,” said Dolly. “You’re probably right.”

3:30 p.m.

Letitia Virden, of course, refused to run.

She gave the flames a steely glare. It occurred to her that she had been in worse positions before this, albeit most of them in pictures.

She turned to Cooper Carter. “Well, Cooper,” she said, “it looks as though we must make a bold decision. Right or wrong, we must choose a direction and follow it up.”

Cooper called to the three men in leather coats. He took them a little to one side and counseled them. “It may be necessary for some of us to die,” he said. “I want you to devote your last energies entirely to Miss Virden. Whatever happens, she must be saved.”

Not a flicker of emotion crossed the faces of the henchmen. Cooper gave them each a pat on the shoulder and turned back to Letitia.

“My men will see you get through, my dear,” he said. And then, “Pick her up, gentlemen.”

Two of the fellows joined hands to form a chair and knelt before the Virgin. She smoothed her skirts and sat down, supporting herself serenely on their leather shoulders. They raised her up. Her veiling billowed and she looked all at once like the Empress of China riding forth to war on the arms of her servants.

Cooper raised his arm dramatically.

Curse him, George thought, mindful of his own face and figure, and of his own disgrace in Letitia’s eyes. Curse him with his profile and his money and his age. He has it all, George thought. He has it all! And now he’s going to save her life.

They marched off down the path, Cooper striding first, like a superman, followed by the Virgin-Empress in her leather cradle. George was last, as if forgotten.

3:45 p.m.

The cars and the motorcycle faced the gates of Alvarez Canyon Paradise. Their metal bodies reflected a wall of distant fire.

The people sat upon the ground, disconsolate and lost.

At last, the noise of the animals was heard.

Naomi said, “They will all die.”

But Ruth said, “No. Pay attention. Wait.”

Gazing at one another, the survivors neither advanced nor withdrew recognition. They were figures in a dream-scape. They were there, but this had no connection with the reality of their names and faces. Naomi would claim later she had had a dream about George. George would swear he had not laid eyes on his wife since the day of their divorce. Letitia, in or out of reality, would not have divulged her identity in any case.

Myra, Dolly, Miss Bonkers, the men in leather, Cooper Carter and the woman in the pith helmet were all blurs. Fading in and out of sight. The Negro chauffeur, the apelike custodian and the wardens in their green jackets were just so many shadows on the grass.

The light dimmed.

It began.

At first, there was a pause. Silence. Whatever had cried did not cry. Whatever had run was still. The fire itself did not roar. The wind changed. It changed down the canyon from the peaks. It harried the wavering flames. It gusted—and blew them up into tree-high torches. It licked and cajoled and persuaded. Sparks flared. Dead embers reared into balloons of fire.

The animals quit all thought of individual flight and joined in mutual panic and terror—fleeing mindlessly in concerted directions, not knowing what death was, but smelling death—not knowing what fire was, but being burned. Some turned back into the furnace. Others crept into flaming trees. Some attempted impossible flight into the sky. Some went into caves where the scorched air burned their lungs. The reptiles devoured their young and were swallowed themselves by fire. Birds fell down like stones and hives of bees and nests of hornets exploded. The living closed ranks.

The wheeling wall of flesh turned round and round. Perhaps it remembered the gate. It seized on that direction. It fled through the corridor of fire toward space. The clearing, with its people, became visible. Green.

“They’re coming!” someone shouted.

“Close all the gates!”

“Keep them back! They’ll kill us! Back!”

Someone ran and flung himself against the height of the gates and swung them closed.

“Why? Why?” said Naomi.

“Wait,” someone said.

“But why?”

They all stared.

The wave of beasts appeared. It had one voice.

“Help them!” cried Naomi, and fell back into Miss Bonkers’s arms and was engulfed at once in drugs.

Ruth took a step toward the gate.

But she was halted.

The chains of the fence bulged; almost gave—but did not. Paws reached through. Beggars. Dead. Noses, eyes, portions of torn and unrecognizable anatomy dropped before Ruth, melting in the grass at her feet. She turned back. It was over. No more noises. Four thousand creatures had perished against a wall.

But no one saw it. No one heard it. No one was there. Or, so they all claimed. Everyone heard about it, of course, but afterward. In the reports.

Days later Miss Bonkers said to Ruth, “What wall?”

And Ruth said, “The wall they died at.”

And Naomi said, “There was no wall, dear.”

And Ruth said, “The animals…”

But then Miss Bonkers just laughed and shook her white-capped head.

“Oh, no,” she stated flatly, opening her copy of
Come and Get It
, “no animals, Mrs. Haddon. There were no animals. Nothing died. Nothing. It was a miracle. The papers said so.”

“But we were there,” said Ruth. “We saw.”

“No, dear,” said Naomi. Her patience, in pain, gained an edge. “We read about it. Don’t you remember?”

Ruth looked along the beach.

Children played.

“We didn’t see it?” she asked. “We weren’t there?”

“No, dear,” said Naomi. “No.”

Miss Bonkers flipped her page.

“It’s all in your mind,” she announced to Ruth quite comfortably. “It’s only in your mind, Mrs. Haddon. You dream too much.”

And she read her book.

But Ruth believed. She could feel the swastika in her pocket.

Alvarez Canyon Paradise did burn down. And someone was there. I was.

“Everything isn’t a dream or a nightmare,” she wanted to say. “Some things happen!”