The Butterfly

Chapter 6

Why she couldn’t go to Blount right away she didn’t tell me till one day when all four of us were sitting out under the trees and I spotted a big car coming up the creek from the state road. Then she owned up she had wired the boy, and yet she wasn’t going back till he came and got her. So she and Jane ran in the house with Danny to get slicked up and in another minute there he was, kind of a tall, dark boy in slacks and blue shirt. He didn’t put on any airs with me at all, but shook hands quick, and went around the cabin looking at it, and said it was just like the one his uncle had on Paint Creek, where he used to spend part of every summer. So then it turned out his father had got himself a mine, but his family were mountain people, like us. So that went with his bony look, and made me feel still better about him. Then when Kady came out and he took her in his arms, I had to begin fooling around with my shoe for fear they’d see the tears in my eyes. Then when he saw Danny for the first time in his life, in Jane’s arms laughing and trying to talk as she brought him out, he went over and bent over and looked and bent down and called him old-timer and shook hands just like it was somebody he was being introduced to and could say something. Then he tried to brush off the butterfly, just like I had, and we all laughed and had some Coca-Cola and were friendly. But when they went in to get supper he said he’d have to leave for a little while. “If you’re going back to town, I’ll ride along with you. There’s some things I ought to get.”

“I’m going up the creek.”

“There’s nothing up the creek.”

“There’s a heel named Moke Blue.”

“You know Moke?”

“I’ve seen him and I guess I’ve spoken to him, but I’ve never shaken his hand and until I got Kady’s wire I never even thought about him. I’m thinking about him now, though. And I’m putting him in jail for kidnapping my boy.”

“You’re taking him in, yourself?”

“That’s it, Jess.”

“I’ll go with you.”

“You mean we’ll do it together?”

“Soon as I get my rifle.”

“I won’t need it.”

“How you know?”

“He’s got no gun, I’m sure of it.”

“He could get one, and anyway, all he’d have to do is holler and about eighteen brothers and in-laws and cousins would be there, and at least half of them have guns.”

“If we bring a gun, Jess, I’ll kill him.”

“Maybe we better not.”

We got in his car and rode up as far as the church, then got out and walked up the hollow to the end of the path, then followed the gully up to Moke’s shack. Nobody was in it, and except for some beans in one corner that didn’t prove much, there was no way to tell if anybody had been there for the last two or three days, or had just stepped out and would be right back, or was up the hollow or down the creek. But while we were whispering about it he held up his hand and I looked. Through a cornfield, just below us, a boy was moving on tiptoe, toward the woods on the other side of the gully.

“You know him, Jess?”

“Birdie Blue. He’s Moke’s cousin.”

“He’s gone to tip him.”

“Then he’ll be back, to keep watch.”

“If we time him, we’ll know how far he went.”

He took out his watch, and we waited and I kept an eye on him, and the more I saw of him the better I liked him. He didn’t talk, but kept staring at the place the boy had to cross on his way back, and he had that mountain look in his eye that said if it took a week he’d still be staring, but he’d do what he came for. In a half hour the boy showed, and then all of a sudden Wash got up.

“We’re a pair of boneheads, Jess.”

“What we done now?”

“The banjo’s gone!”

“Well?”

“If he was in hell waiting to be fried he’d still have to pick the damned thing. Come on.”

There was no window in the back of the shack, but there was a loose log, and we pushed it out and crawled through. Then we crept up the gully, keeping the shack between us and the boy, where he was squatting in the bushes, keeping watch on my hat, that we left in the doorway to keep him interested. It was around sundown, and the mosquitoes were beginning to get lively, but we kept from batting them somehow, and pretty soon we came to a place where Wash stopped and looked around, and whispered if there was any sounds in the neighborhood, we’d catch most of them here, because sound travels upward. And sure enough, there were all sorts of things you could hear, from the creek going over the stones near the church to people talking in cabins and birds warbling before going to sleep. And then he grabbed my arm, and we listened, and there was the sound of the banjo. He stood up, and turned first one way, then the other way, then covered one ear, then the other ear, and in a minute he knew where it was coming from, and we crept over there. And when we got there it was a little stone well, with a frame over it and an iron wheel, and Moke was sitting on the rim, his head lopped over on one side, the banjo across his belly, plunking out sad chords that weren’t like the comical tunes he used to play, and looking so little he was more like some kind of a shriveled-up, gray-haired boy than what he was, a man. Wash crept around the well from behind him, grabbed him by the shirt collar, and jerked him over on the side, so he let out a little whimper. “What you doing to me? Wash, what are you doing here?”

“Didn’t the boy tell you I was here?”

“How would he know? He said Jess and a man.”

“I’m taking you to Carbon City.”

“What for?”

“Put you in jail. For what you did.”

I stepped out then and told him to shut up with his bawling and told Wash to cut it short with his talk. Because you pass three cabins on the way down, and four more up the mountainside that you can’t see but they see you, and if we ever gave them a chance to wake up to what was going on we might see something cutting the leaves. We hustled him down to the car and Wash drove and I sat on the outside. So when we got to my cabin, the table was set out under the trees with some candles on it and both Kady and Jane were looking down the creek to see what had become of us. Wash began talking to Kady. “Don’t wait for us. We’ll be back soon as we can after we get this thing booked, but don’t let the stuff get cold waiting for us.”

“Booked? What are you talking about?”

“Didn’t he kidnap our boy?”

“He didn’t mean any harm.”

“It could have cost Danny his life.”

“Wash, Moke is a friend of my mother’s, and she’s not well, and maybe she needs him. He’s not any more than half-witted anyhow, no matter what he did, so why can’t we forget it and go about our business instead of putting him in jail for the next five or ten years, where’s he’s not any good to anybody?”

“Maybe I’m not so half-witted as you think.”

“Maybe a skunk don’t stink.”

It was me that said that, and then I told her there were some things that can’t be forgotten, and that Moke was lucky we didn’t shoot him, as that’s what he had coming to him. But while I was talking she kept looking at me, and then she said: “Jess, you’ve had plenty to say since I’ve been living here about things that had to be fought if they were wrong and they were in you, and all I’ve got to say is that remembering things long after they do you any harm is another thing that people might fight a little bit, specially if they live up the creeks in this part of the country, and got the habit of remembering things long after anybody could remember what they were trying to remember.”

“Do we take him in, Jess?”

“Let’s go.”

He had cut his motor, but now he started it again, and she stood aside. “All right, Wash, but you’re taking a lot of trouble for nothing.”

“You think it’s for nothing?”

“He’s not yet your child.”

“He will be tomorrow.”

“I’m not talking about what he will be. I’m talking about what he is, and what he was when he was taken. If they ask me, I’ll tell them I’ve got nothing to say, and if the mother won’t sign the writ, that ends it, unless of course the child has a father.”

“Kady, why are you standing up for Moke?”

“Jess, are you crazy? Who’s standing up for Moke? I’m standing up for myself, and for my little boy that nobody else is thinking about that I can see. Do you think I want this in the papers, and then have it come out that Danny is what they call a love child, and God knows what else they would think up to put in?”

“It’s not any piece for the papers.”

“A kidnapping?”

She stepped up to the window and talked straight at Wash. “Haven’t you done enough to me without this, and for no reason except to give a simple-looking imitation of a West Virginia bad man?”

“I’m turning him over to the law.”

“You can’t even do that, right.”

“So you know a better way?”

“You’re turning him over to Carbon County when the crime was committed in Blount? Gee, but you’re smart, aren’t you? Gee, but you’re going to look wonderful when you get to Carbon City with him and they say, sorry, son, you’re in the right church but the wrong pew. Gee—”

“Suppose you shut up.”

For a minute, steel had been facing steel, but now they weren’t anything but a pair of kids jawing at each other, and next thing they were laughing and he got out and she said he was so dumb it was pitiful but there was no steam in it and the fight was over. So I got out and told Moke to get out of there and get quick. So he got out and started up the creek. So Wash, he ran after him and gave him a kick that knocked him over on his face. So he got up and began to cuss out Wash, mean, whispering cusswords, all covered with spit. That was when Kady walked over and slapped his face, and told him he’d got off pretty lucky. He stood there panting, and once or twice he stared to say something, and didn’t. But when Jane got his banjo, where it had been pitched in the car, he went.

But there was one thing that could make us all feel good, no matter what had been said, and that was Danny. When Jane brought him out for a little whiff of air before tucking him in for the night, we were laughing and talking to him and me and Wash were taking turns holding him. And then without anybody knowing he was going to do it, he turned to Wash and stead of the goo-goo stuff he’d been saying, he said “Wash,” and laughed. It was the first word he ever said, and it made us all so happy we didn’t look at each other at all, and Kady picked him up and held him close, and pretty soon he said it again, like he was pretty proud of himself. And then we heard a car, and down the road I see the white tow car from the filling station on the state road that the fellow uses now and then to haul passengers up the creek for fifty cents. And it stopped and somebody got out and it went away and we all stood there trying to see who was coming up the path, a little satchel in her hand. And then I could feel my heart sink, because that funny walk, go three steps fast and then shuffle one, couldn’t be but one person. That was Belle.

“Jess, what is she doing here?”

“It’s got me buffaloed.”

When supper was over, Kady and Wash went for a ride, and when Belle went to bed, Jane and I took a walk down the creek. Once Belle got there the party was ruined, because the half dirty Morgan jokes started right away, and the way she dressed made you feel the place had turned into a joint. I don’t know what she did to clothes, but soon as she got them on they weren’t clean any more, and they let you see more than you wanted to see. All she would take for supper was milk, and she kept explaining she had had to see Danny before Wash and Kady went away, though when they were going away, if they were going away, was something that nobody but her seemed to know about. And how much attention she paid to Danny, now at last she could see him once more, was about one look and a wave of the hand. In between, she seemed to be thinking about something, and even the dirty jokes didn’t get the pounding she generally gave them. Belle always told a joke three times, once to tell it, once to tell it over again because maybe you didn’t understand it, and once to holler and whoop at how funny it was. So when Jane fixed her a place to sleep in the front room, and she said she wanted to turn in, nobody put up any argument. Wash was staying at the Black Diamond Hotel in Carbon City, but he and Kady wanted to talk how they would get married, so they went off in his car, and Jane and I took our walk, trying to figure out Belle. “She’s quite a lot thinner, Jane, and don’t look like a fat little wood pigeon any more, but at that she don’t look so bad, considering it’s eighteen years since she went away.”

“At night she don’t.”

“Of course candle light is not like sun.”

“It’s not the light, it’s the fever. In the evening, when she’s running over two degrees, her eyes are bright and her cheeks are red and she really looks pretty. But in the morning, when she’s running below normal, she looks awful. Her face is gray, she coughs all the time, and her eyes have that look they get, like they see something far off.”

“All this is the consumption?”

“She’s got it, bad.”

“I’m sorry.”

“But what’s she doing here?”

“If you ask me, it’s got nothing to do with us, and nothing to do with Danny. Any time you try to figure Belle out, you can begin with Moke and go on from there.”

“I don’t think so.”

“She’s changed, then.”

“She and Moke haven’t got along since Danny came. Until then she didn’t pay any attention to what Kady and I thought about him, and they got along all right. But soon as Danny came they started to fight, and there’s more to it than they ever let on to anybody but themselves.”

“Like what?”

“I don’t know.”