The Butterfly Forest

TWENTY-NINE

He thought of Jurassic Park. It was the first movie Luke Palmer had seen in prison. And now he was walking through ferns that grew up to his shoulders. Bromeliads hung from live oak branches by the dozens. And then he saw something that took his breath away. An oval-shaped spring, at least a hundred feet in width, bubbled up from the earth. The water was a blue diamond shimmering beneath the cloudless indigo sky. Wild red roses grew along the opposite side of the spring.

Palmer simply stood there for a minute absorbing the beauty. Never had he seen anything like this. So untouched. God’s garden. Maybe the last piece of pie left from the Garden of Eden. Some of the things ripped away from a man in prison could be restored here. This was a waterhole for the soul. He stepped to the edge of the spring and filled his jug.

Then he heard voices.

Palmer capped the jug, stood and slipped back into the foliage, his ears tracking the talking. Sounded like a man and a woman. Palmer picked up his gear and followed. He walked next to the spring as it flowed from its azure bowl into a creek bed that snaked its way through the forest. It seemed as if the people talking and laughing were following the stream, too. Another hundred feet and Palmer spotted them. He recognized the girl and the man. Both young. Maybe out of college, maybe not. They carried a cardboard box with dime-sized holes poked into the sides. What was in the box? Could be an animal. Might be something that was injured and these young people were returning it to the woods. Squirrel? Rabbit?

The woman seemed to lead. She pointed toward some plants that looked a little like the ferns he’d walked through earlier. The girl set the box down next to the plants. Her friend took pictures with a small camera as she smiled and opened the box.

Palmer had to grin. Butterflies seemed to float out of the box. A dozen or so. Dark color. They flew around the couple then darted off into the woods.

Butterflies.

Why the hell not? The girl reached one hand into the box. She slowly lifted her hand with a butterfly riding on the tip of an extended finger. The girl raised her arm to the sky, the butterfly opening and closing its wings, testing the air. Palmer watched as the girl smiled and said something to the butterfly. Maybe she was coaxing it to fly. And then it seemed to jump from her finger, flew around the couple and ascended high into the blue sky. The man laughed and tried to snap pictures. The butterfly flew about fifty feet away and alighted on one of the fern plants. The woman hugged the man, said something to him, and pointed inside the box. Maybe there was one more.

Palmer smiled again. He could walk up and introduce himself. See if he might buy some food from them, if they’d brought some. As he started to step out from the undergrowth, he saw three men approach the couple. The men had their backs to him. Although he couldn’t see their faces, he could read their body language. He’d seen it a hundred times in the prison yard. Gangs approaching prey with one man picked as the killer, the rest acting detached as they closed the human noose, each man’s eyes tracking the victim.

These men in the forest didn’t encircle the couple. Didn’t have to. They didn’t think anyone was watching. No guard towers. No rival gangs. No one. Palmer wanted to do something. Say something. If only he had a gun. The man in the middle carried a lever-action rifle. The girl held her hands up, like her palms could deflect death. The young man started to say something when a bullet hit him between the eyes. The girl screamed. It was the most horrific scream Palmer had ever heard. The man in the middle shot her in the chest. She fell to her knees, one hand clutching her wound.

As the man stepped closer, the girl reached for the box next to her, a trembling bloody hand on one of the cardboard flaps. Then the man stood over her and fired a shot into the back of her head the moment a lone butterfly flew from the box.

Palmer felt bile erupt in the back of his throat. He coughed.

One man looked his way. Palmer ducked farther back, dropping his water jug and running. Had he been seen? Heard? Or was it a coincidence that the man looked his way. Regardless, Palmer wouldn’t forget the man’s face. He’d seen it earlier. He ran as fast as he could. Ran toward the spring. He’d hide deep in the jungles. He tripped, falling on his outstretched palms. Was it a root that tripped him? He sat up and looked at the dark hose. It was partially buried beneath leaves as it made its way toward the spring.

Run! He could hear the men in the distance. A second shot rang out.

Run! The echo from the shot reverberated through Palmer’s soul as he ran deeper into the forest. He ran through growth so dense he couldn’t see the sun. Sweat rained from his face. Plants ripped and bloodied his arms and chest. He’d gone at least a mile when his lungs felt like acid was bubbling up, legs rubbery. Too weak to go. Run! He stumbled and fell. He lay there. Breathing. Listening. Palmer watched a tick crawl onto his arm. He didn’t have the strength to knock it off his skin. For a full two minutes, he lay on his stomach as the tick began to feed.

Sunlight warmed the back of his neck when he looked up at the largest oak tree he’d seen. Some twenty feet away, he could barely make out on old carving etched into the tree.

He managed to get to his knees as he pulled the tick from his skin and studied the carving in the tree. Through the years, the two hearts had changed as the tree grew, the trunk expanding, the carving changing.

The two hearts looked like a pair of butterfly wings.

For the first time in forty years, Luke Palmer allowed himself to cry.