Butterfly's Child (18 page)

“Yes, indeed.” Mr. Moore cleared his throat. “I know the family well.” He would not look at Benji. “My wife has sent me to escort you,” he said, with a slight bow to Miss Cross.

Miss Cross rummaged in her valise, took out a folded fan, and gave it to Benji. “It's Japanese,” she said. “For good luck. I hope you will travel to Nagasaki. And this may interest you …” She pulled out a small paper book; on the front, printed in black letters, was
Women's Suffrage: A Brief History
. “I wrote it myself.”

She shook his hand and said goodbye. As she and Mr. Moore walked out together, talking in low voices, Benji felt a spike of glee.

Outside, the crowd had dispersed. Benji looked down the street at the saloon. Frank's buggy was still there.

He started running down the street toward home. But that would look suspicious, he thought. He slowed to a walk. The moon illuminated the fronts of houses, cast deep shadows between them. He shivered and, at the edge of town, began to run again.

It wasn't his fault; he hadn't meant any harm. He'd only wanted her to translate the writing. Anyone would understand that. Miss Cross understood. She wouldn't tell, and Mr. Moore probably hadn't been able to really see the photograph. He'd take the picture back to Keast's tomorrow, and no one would know.

In the morning, Kate
prepared finger sandwiches and apple tarts, then took a rest so she would be fresh when Aimee Moore and Miss Cross arrived for tea. She had just dressed in her loosest frock, not yet tight about the waist, and gone down to find the children when the Moores' colored manservant arrived with a note.

There had been some confusion about the train timetable, Aimee wrote, and Miss Cross deeply regretted that she would be unable to call. Aimee would be taking her to the station, so—alas!—she would have to suspend her own visit until a later day.

Kate stared at Aimee's pretentious handwriting, the way the end letters looped back across the words. Now Aimee would be able to claim full proprietorship of Miss Cross, dropping allusions to their intimacy at every meeting of the women's circle from now until eternity.

It was just as well; she was tired. She ate two of the tarts and took herself back to bed.

On Monday morning, Kate and her mother-in-law were struggling with the week's wash, Kate perspiring and her hair undone. As she was wringing out one of Frank's union suits, she was dismayed to see, through the front window of the kitchen, Aimee Moore descend from her buggy.

She ran upstairs to repair her coiffure. Such uncivilized timing. Aimee knew she didn't have a servant girl for wash day.

By the time Kate returned, Mrs. Pinkerton had shown Aimee into the
parlor, where she sat perched on the davenport in a voile dress and feathered hat, looking around at the furnishings. At least the room had been tidied in anticipation of Miss Cross's visit.

“How are you, dear?” Aimee said, rising and looking into Kate's eyes with an expression of exaggerated concern, as if her condition were a terminal illness.

They sat down, Aimee apologizing for the impetuous timing of her visit; she politely refused tea.

“I'll come straight to the matter.” Aimee took one of Kate's hands in hers. She was wearing lace gloves, soft as a second skin, but her grip was firm. “Although I hesitated,” she said, “given that you are—” She broke off and looked once more around the room.

“Has someone died?” Kate said. She thought of her mother, a telegram.

“Nothing so simple as that, I'm afraid.” Aimee turned her gaze back to Kate; her expression of sorrow had deepened.

“What is it?”

“I wouldn't mention it at all, but if word somehow …”

“Word of what?” Kate's mouth went dry.

“Miss Cross is a highly principled woman, as I'm sure you understand, but quite passionate in her convictions and not one to restrain her views.”

Kate stared at the feather curling down over Aimee's forehead, not quite grazing her skin. Frank must have committed some indiscretion at the party, perhaps even an attempt with Miss Cross.

“I have to confess that Charlotte is a bit outspoken for my taste and lacks certain nuances of judgment. That is why I feared …” Another squeeze of the hand.

Kate's heart began to flutter. “Feared what?”

“That you would hear of this eventually.” She took a deep breath. “Charlotte has spoken to me of Benjamin's parentage. The boy meant no harm, I suppose.”

“He's lying,” Kate burst out.

“No doubt, though he did show Miss Cross a photograph of your husband and a Japanese woman—”

“What photograph?” Kate cried.

“I gather it's about so …” Aimee released Kate's hand and arranged
her fingers to describe a small rectangle. “Your husband was younger, though still quite recognizable, Charlotte says, and she thinks the woman is probably a geisha. Benjamin said that the woman is his mother.”

“He's an orphan. We don't know who his parents were.”

“The photograph might be quite beside the point—a souvenir that gave Benjamin a misimpression. On the other hand, Miss Cross is so persuasive.” A little smile played at one corner of her mouth. “Not that I agree with her, necessarily. But my husband saw the photograph as well.”

Kate jumped up. “Please leave,” she said.

Aimee's hand went to her throat. “I was only … I'm your friend,” she said.

“I hate you,” Kate said. “Get out.”

Kate fled from the room and up the stairs, flung herself on the bed, biting the pillow to keep from screaming. When the sound of the buggy wheels receded into the distance, she flew back downstairs, through the kitchen—Mrs. Pinkerton was outside hanging clothes—and into Benji's room.

The little traitor. She yanked open the top drawer of his desk: pencils, erasers, protractor, a butterscotch candy covered with lint, a small drawing of that girl, the undertaker's daughter. A Japanese fan. She opened it, threw it on the floor, and ground her heel against it. Heathen. She dumped the contents of the side drawer on the bed and searched through the papers, her hands shaking badly. Schoolwork, articles from some veterinary journal, folded notes written in a childish hand. She went through the papers again, felt around the edges of the drawers, bent down to look for an envelope pasted to the underside of the desk. She began to go through the shelf of books, flipping through each one, upending and shaking them. A few pressed flowers fell out, and a canceled stamp.
Women's Suffrage: A Brief History
, by Miss Charlotte Cross. She ripped off the cover, tore it into bits, fanned through the pages, shook it upside down, and spat on it.

In the closet, she turned out all the pockets and felt inside the shoes. There was a box on the floor. She pulled it out: the top she'd given him, the bear, a turtle shell, a whittling knife. She stabbed the bear with the knife, then grabbed the pillow from the bed, ripped it open, and pounded it on the bed. Feathers flew into the air.

“Kate!”

She spun around. Mrs. Pinkerton stood gaping in the doorway, laundry spilling from her basket.

“He's ruined us,” Kate said, squeezing the knife against her palm until she felt nothing at all.

Benji walked home
from school alone, avoiding the Cases and even Flora. The other boys had talked about Miss Cross's prostitute pictures at recess in high, excited whispers, and Marvin said Benji's mother was probably a prostitute. They'd gotten in a fight, and Benji held Marvin's face against the dirt until he said she wasn't. Somebody had told Miss Ladu and now he had extra homework for tomorrow. He picked up an Osage orange from the road and aimed it at an old shed; it splatted against the tin. He was sorry Miss Cross had come. She didn't even know Japanese.

If Marvin could see the picture of Mama, he'd know she was a geisha; even an idiot like him could tell the difference.

The Guernseys were crossing the road to the house. They came earlier now that it was late fall and there was less grass in the meadow. The sky was heavy with clouds too; it smelled like rain. Bossy, the lead cow, didn't like to get wet; Benji stopped to rub her head and tell her he'd be back soon. He'd eat whatever Grandmother Pinkerton had laid out for him before he did the milking.

Frank was leaning against the door of the barn. “Get in here,” he said, gesturing with his whip. His face was blotched. Drunk again. Benji hurried on past.

Frank ran after him and caught his arm.

“Where's that picture?” he said.

Benji's mind slid into a smooth hard place. “What picture?”

“You know damn well what picture, you bastard. That Moore woman
was here, and Mother Pinkerton is in a hell of a state. The doctor had to come.” Frank raised the whip.

“You can't whip it out of me,” Benji said. “I'd die first.” He turned, pivoted around Frank, and ran toward the barn.

Benji moved fast, throwing the saddle on Kuro, tightening the girth, slipping on the bridle.

“Where the hell you think you're going?” Frank shouted, stumbling toward him.

“To get the picture of your bastard's parents. If you follow me, I'll tell everyone in town.”

He took off down the road, urging Kuro into a gallop. His heart was hammering but his mind was clear. He took a mental inventory: twenty cents, and, in his saddlebag, an apple from lunch. He glanced back: The road was empty. Frank would be fumbling with Admiral's tack. Benji could outrun him easily if he didn't have to stop by Keast's.

He took a back way to Morseville, pushing Kuro hard down a rutted lane and through a pasture, then a patch of woods. He tied Kuro to a post around the corner from Keast's boardinghouse.

There were only a few people in the street—women looking in the dry-goods-store window and a colored man leading a horse toward the livery stable. One of the women glanced at him briefly; later she'd say she saw him, the Pinkerton orphan on the run.

When she turned away, he hurried inside the boardinghouse and up to Keast's room, yanked open the desk drawer, and took out the tin with the picture in it and the leather pouch full of money.

Back down the stairs—Mrs. Bosley's voice, the smell of supper cooking—but no one saw him as he went out the door and down the street.

He took the back road west toward Galena, Kuro's legs pumping beneath him as a plan began to gather in his mind. He'd make his way across the country, working on farms; they always needed help making barns snug for the winter, repairing tools. Then he could get a job on a merchant vessel going to Japan. He hadn't meant to go to Japan so soon, but nothing ever happened the way you planned it. He wished he could have told Flora and Keast, but he couldn't think about that now.

Ahead, two walls of corn stalks made a long rattling tunnel and the sky bore down on him. He touched the right pocket of his trousers where
the picture was. Once he was in California, he'd have someone read the writing and then he could find his family in Nagasaki. He could make it, he and Kuro. What would he do with Kuro? They might not take him on the ship. He'd think about that later too.

It was a long way, six thousand miles. He saw himself on Kuro, a small speck moving slowly across the globe, and the reins went slippery in his hands.

A breeze had come up, moving through the corn, a hollow sound. The stalks above his head made him dizzy. He'd been lost in a cornfield once, every direction he went the wrong one, walking, then running, his feet slipping in the mud, his mind confused about the sun. He could have died; even grown men died in the corn. It had happened to Jed Stevens last year. He rubbed his face hard with both hands. He was thinking crazy.

He let Kuro slow to a trot as they passed out of the fields and into pastureland, a cattle farm. Herefords mostly. Frank had always talked big about raising cattle. “You couldn't cut it,” Benji said aloud, “you goddamn sousehead, you stinking piece of dung.” He thought of Frank coming toward him with the whip and put his heels to Kuro's sides again. The road behind was still empty.

When Kuro tired, Benji let him walk and concentrated on the remnants of prairie at the edges of the road. The grasses in their fall colors and the bobolinks swooping above made him think of Flora. She said the bobolink's song made her happy even when nothing else could. The bobolinks were migrating; what would cheer her up now? He swiped away tears. He couldn't be a sissy; he had to concentrate on his plan.

The road passed a small stream, where Kuro drank, the rings on his halter clinking. They followed the stream across the railroad tracks into a cluster of trees beside the water. He would spend the night here, sheltered in the woods, and just in time too; it was getting dark. He removed Kuro's saddle and tack, brushed him down, and tied him to a sapling. Upstream, he found a skirt of hickory nuts beneath a tree. He ate the nuts and shared his apple with Kuro. He'd have to stop in Galena for food and other supplies. He wished he had his knife with him, and his slingshot for killing jackrabbits. There was a lot to wish for. He had to stop that kind of thinking. Using the saddle for a pillow, he settled down for the night at the base of a large pine.

Images raced through his mind: Flora's pretty feet in the water when
they sat beside the creek last summer; the family at the table tonight, Franklin crying when he heard his big brother had left, Frank with the whip. Miss Cross looking at the picture. She must have told. Damn suffragist, cross-eyed bitch. Not that Frank didn't deserve it, the lying bastard. Then he thought of Franklin; he would never hear the end of it at school, and Benji wouldn't be there to protect him.

The ground was knobby beneath the pine needles and he was shivering with cold; he'd buy a poncho and blanket, a bedroll. He turned again and again, thinking he would never sleep, but then it was morning and a light rain was falling.