The Butterfly Forest

NINETY-FOUR

The next morning we awoke at sunrise and showered; then Elizabeth put on one of my old shirts. She moved around Jupiter’s small galley and made omelets, turkey sausage, fried potatoes and onions. Her body language was more relaxed preparing breakfast, moving between three pans, the toaster, and the brewed coffee in the pot. “Can I fix Max a little plate?” she asked, picking up a paper plate.

“Cut the links into pieces and maybe she’ll eat slower,” I said, opening the side windows and salon door, allowing a cross-breeze to take the place of the air conditioner.

We ate and Elizabeth said, “Living on a boat makes you want to downsize and toss all the clutter in your life into a big dumpster somewhere. I wonder what it’d be like to actually travel around on a boat.”

“Sailboat is the way to go. Quiet, it’s just the wind and the water.”

She sipped a glass of orange juice and looked across the marina. “This world is so different from your old home on the river. It’s a different kind of quiet there. Which do you prefer, the marina life or the solitude of the river?”

I remembered what Gonzales said about solitude, my stomach tightening as I swallowed the eggs. “Both places have their pluses and minuses. Right now, because you are here, I’d rather be at the marina. If we were on the river, my shack of solitude, I’d rather be there with you.”

She smiled. “That’s sweet. Maybe when this is over, we can take a boat trip. That would be a world I’ve never experienced, one that you might have to pry me away from, assuming I don’t get seasick and become a green-faced pain-in-the-butt for you.”

My phone vibrated on the bar. It was Dave. “Good morning,” I said.

“That term is indeed relative,” his voice deep as his pipes opened.

“What’s the matter?” I almost didn’t want to hear the answer.

“I was watching the daybreak newscast… they’re reporting that the body of a park ranger, Ed Crews, the man you thought went MIA from the forest, was found last night.”

“Where?”

“In the forest. Found by two teenagers on ATVs. Kids will probably have nightmares for life.”

I pushed the plate back and stood. “What’d they find?”

“The corpse was sitting upright, under a tree. The body had been decapitated. The head was stuck on the end of a broken limb.”

I said nothing. Elizabeth’s eyes were wide, her lips growing tighter.

Dave said, “Police say there was a note, a piece of paper stuck in Crews’ mouth. Someone wrote: ‘Heads up, the spineless one will be next.’ Sounds like Pablo Gonzales sent you a personal and very graphic message.”

I held my breath for a long moment. “Want some coffee?”

“Do you have a fresh pot brewed?”

“Yeah, and if your stomach wasn’t turned by the newscast, you might like some of the hearty breakfast Elizabeth made.”

“Twist my arm. I’ll be right over. It’s a beautiful blue-sky morning. Let’s dine on Jupiter’s cockpit.”

“No sign of a fake fishermen or other intruders in our little boat world?”

“Seems to be clear as the sky.”

The three of us sat in deck chairs at the small table in the cockpit. Elizabeth didn’t want to hear any of the details surrounding the discovery of Crews’ body. Dave sipped from a mug of black coffee, a slight breeze tossing his white hair. He said, “I’ve been thinking about what Gonzales told you.”

“And, have you reached a conclusion that us non-sociopaths can relate to?” I asked.

“Perhaps. The overriding theme in Marquez’s novel, A Hundred Years of Solitude, is how man is doomed to repeat his mistakes, even when five years of rain washes away every semblance of indiscretions made in the village of Maconda. Marquez, incorporating a linear style of storytelling with surreal prose, leads us to believe that man is doomed to repeat his atrocities because we’re all wired with some defective, inherited genetic material since the Garden of Eden. He contends that man is destined to recycle the mistakes and imprudence of his forefathers… Paradise Lost.”

“I don’t follow you,” Elizabeth said.

Dave nodded. “I’m just thinking, verbalizing aloud. Blame it on the strong Blue Mountain coffee. I guess my point is this: Gonzales sees no hope, no salvation for the sins of our fathers because most of us are doomed to repeat them. He’s put himself in a self-ordained position to eliminate the repeat offenders from the docket. In other words, he’s got a God complex, maybe similar to Hitler, whereby he feels he’s been chosen to cut the diseased or the weak ones out of humanity’s herd. That would make him the worst kind of psychopath because he would believe all that he does, all he accomplishes, is for the greater good. A killer who can rationalize his deeds because he believes a higher power has chosen him as an elite foot soldier is extremely dangerous.”

I said, “So you think Gonzales believes rendering me in a state of paralysis will stop a repeat of the evils that cycled through a village like Maconda.”

“That’s so sick,” Elizabeth said.

“Indeed,” agreed Dave, “but a psychopath only needs a fantasy cause to create a platform of illusions.”

The sun went behind a cloud.

The crimson light was no bigger than a dime.

The shade of tomato soup as it swept across Jupiter’s transom. It was almost subliminal. It could have been a reflection from any of the dozens of boats bobbing in the moorings. But there is no reflection when the sun goes behind a cloud.