Butterfly's Child (10 page)

She held up a book about Japan and showed them pictures: farmers in rice fields; a statue she said was famous; and a family—mother, father, and children in kimono—sitting at a low table. “Japanese people are known for their intelligence, hard work, and peacefulness,” she said. “What is peacefulness?”

The girl next to Benji raised her hand. “No fighting,” she said.

“That is correct. And we will have no fighting in this school.”

At lunch Jonas and Eli played jump board while Benji watched. He was too small to play; he couldn't make his side stay down. Benji glanced at Marvin playing marbles, across the school yard, then sat near Flora to eat his lunch.

“Japan is nice,” she said.

“So is America,” he said, and then couldn't think of anything else.

On the way back inside, Marvin walked close to Benji and whispered, “Why's your hair yellow, Jappie?”

Benji pretended not to hear, but all afternoon he thought of things he wished he'd said: Why does your hair look like cow plop? Why do you smell like manure? Why don't you sit on a nail? He imagined Marvin without any clothes on, sitting on a chair full of sticking-up nails.

After school, when he and Father Pinkerton were milking, Benji asked why his hair was yellow. “Is it because your hair is yellow?”

“Don't talk like that,” Father Pinkerton said. “You mention that again and you'll be in big trouble.”

Why? Benji wanted to ask, but Father Pinkerton looked too mad.

The season of 1897
looked to be prosperous. By the Fourth of July, when Frank drove his family into Stockton for a holiday celebration at the Moores' house, the corn was flourishing, field after field of green regiments marching to the horizon. If the farm turned a profit this year, he could make up for last season's shortfall and perhaps even afford some of the improvements to the house that Kate was so set on. She was still after him about a servant girl, and she wanted a new buggy, too—essential, she said, if they were to be accepted in local society. By “society” she meant the ladies of Stockton, and particularly that Moore woman, who was causing him no end of expense, as his mother had pointed out. His mother was wearing her usual church costume, but Kate had bought a new dress and hat for the party, and she'd wanted Frank to be measured for a white suit. An extravagance, he'd said; he could wear his white naval dress uniform, though in the outdoor light he could see that it was dingy in spite of Kate's best efforts and had a small, urine-colored stain on the left breast.

Kate had also ordered an impractical white shirt and new knickers for Benji, both already streaked with grime. He had run off just before it was time to leave; Frank found him in the hayloft with that cat and gave him a spanking. Now he was sulking in the backseat of the buggy beside Frank's mother, not responding to her descriptions of firecrackers and sparklers or the promise of ice cream.

Butterfly would judge him too hard on the boy; the Japanese spoiled their children. This is America, he wanted to tell her; he has to learn to
behave here. He stared out at the corn, imagining her face tight with disapproval. He'd seen her angry only once—when he told her he had to leave Japan—but afterward they had made love with abandon, her silky hair brushing his chest as she sat astride him. Perhaps Benji had been conceived that day.

“Well?” Kate said.

He glanced at her; she'd said something.

“I'm sorry, dear. What is it?”

“Never mind—a trivial matter. ”

He looked at her profile, her regal expression. “Your dress is quite fetching,” he said. “Though you look beautiful in anything.”

She rewarded him with a smile and he took her hand, cool in spite of the afternoon heat. She was nervous about the party, he realized. “You're lovely as an angel,” he said. “There will be no one to rival you.”

The Moores' grand white house, which dominated the central block of Maple Street, was studded with stained-glass windows and crowned with a turret. Designed by an architect from Chicago—so Kate had told him several times—it was said to have an indoor privy and a porcelain bathtub with running water, the first such facilities between Chicago and Galena.

In the yard were snowball bushes and a sizable planting of elephant ears. A boy in someone's idea of a sailor suit was sitting astride an iron elk, pretending to whip him with a stick. There were other children in the distance, playing croquet. When they alighted from the buggy, Frank pointed out the children to Benji, but the boy shadowed Frank's mother into the house.

Aimee Moore, a dark-eyed beauty with a generous bosom, greeted them effusively and, before flitting off to her other guests, introduced them to the Stockton pharmacist Louis Hill and his bilious-looking wife.

“Hello, little boy,” Mrs. Hill said, bending down to Benji. “I understand that you're from Japan. Look at this.” She unfurled a painted silk fan and held it out before him. “From your country. Mr. Hill bought it for me at the Exposition in Chicago five years ago.”

“Isn't it pretty, Benji?” Kate said.

“Very pretty,” Frank's mother said, to reinforce Benji's nod.

“Those Japanese are darned clever,” Hill said, scratching his beard.
“Edna and I went into one of their quaint houses with the sliding doors made out of paper. Quite something. Must be mighty cold in the winter, though.”

“And so empty,” his wife said. “Hardly a stick of furniture. Is that how they live in the country itself?” she asked, looking at Frank.

“I'm no expert,” Frank said. He could feel Kate measuring his answer. “I was stationed there for only a short time.”

Kate led Benji off to the croquet game, and Mrs. Pinkerton headed for the dessert table. Frank excused himself and threaded through the crowd, looking for a familiar face.

Aimee Moore materialized. “I've been quite neglecting you,” she said, pressing a glass of lemonade into his hands and smiling up at him. She had sloe eyes and her skin was olive and pink. Italian? He glanced at her neck and shoulders. “I hope someday you'll tell me about your adventures,” she said. “I'm partial to travel, but my excursions have been quite tame.” She touched his arm before moving away. He felt a little spurt of pleasure; he still had a way with the women.

Red Olsen, proprietor of Moresville's general store, was on the porch with a corpulent man sporting a red, white, and blue hatband in honor of the day, the two of them drinking from a flask and discussing the rise in railroad tariffs. Red—still with the mischievous devil-may-care glint in his eye that Frank remembered from their days as school-yard chums—introduced Frank as a naval officer and man of the world, presently a gentleman farmer. The beefy man was Austin Burdett, new president of the Stockton Bank and Trust.

“Ever see any action, Captain?” Burdett asked, offering him the flask.

Frank took a draw of the whiskey: smooth bourbon. “There was a small uprising in Samoa,” he said, which wasn't quite true. “The presence of our ships was usually enough to forestall trouble.”

“Frank's been all over,” Red said. “Spain, Brazil, all those islands, the Orient …” He leaned forward with a wink; Frank could smell the whiskey on his breath.

“You the one that brought back that mongrel Jap,” Burdett said.

Frank straightened and handed him the flask. “Japan is a superior country, very civilized and mannerly. Yes, my wife and I have taken in an unfortunate orphan. He's a bright boy and already a help on the farm.”

There was a stirring inside the house. Kate came out the door, her face vivid with excitement. Frank made introductions while Burdett—none
too subtly—assessed Kate's figure. No doubt his own wife resembled a blancmange.

“There's to be a tour of the house,” Kate said, taking Frank's arm. “Mrs. Moore is doing the honors.”

Frank took his leave with a smile and a slight bow. “You've rescued me from a beast,” he whispered as they joined the throng.

She squeezed his arm. “I anticipate the details.”

They shuffled along with the crowd as Aimee led them through the frilly parlor, the sunroom, the music room, with its gleaming piano; her husband's library, lined with law books and dominated by the mounted head of a rakish-looking moose, and a large expanse of kitchen, the stove decorated with tile imported from Belgium—“at tiresome expense,” Aimee confided.

Upstairs, they peered into fancy bedrooms and had a glimpse of the famous privy—a water closet, Aimee called it, quickly opening and shutting the door. Frank was disappointed; he'd wanted to see how the thing worked. Aimee led the way to the bath.

It was a spacious corner room; the light, filtered through the stained-glass windows, was yellow with streaks of red. The bathtub, gleaming porcelain with a wide lip and bowed legs that tapered to monstrous paws, stood on a rose-patterned carpet. Mrs. Moore demonstrated the miracle to appreciative murmurs, turning the water on and off several times. As she bent forward, a band of ruby-colored light fell across her neck.

Kate was silent as they descended the steps.

“Someday we'll have one of those,” Frank whispered. “An even finer one.”

His mother was waiting at the foot of the stairs with Benji. There was a red gash across Benji's face, and his clothes were streaked with dirt.

“Goodness, what's happened?” Kate cried.

“He won't tell me. Some trouble with the children, I believe. He wants to go home.”

Benji stared at the floor. “Be a little soldier,” Frank said, squeezing his shoulder; the small bones beneath his hand, delicate as a bird's, brought him close to tears.

“Captain Pinkerton.” Frank turned; he'd forgotten Mrs. Moore behind them. “If you want to take the boy home, my husband and I will see that your wife is safely returned.” She gazed at Benji. “Poor little fellow. Did you fall?”

He shook his head.

“I'll come too and get us some supper,” his mother said.

Frank's mother sat beside him in the buggy; Benji was curled up on the backseat, his eyes closed. “Hey, bud,” Frank said, reaching to shake his foot. “Why don't we stop by the drugstore for a sarsaparilla?” Benji didn't move.

“Let him be,” his mother said. “I'm not surprised—that was as snoot-nosed a crowd as I've seen.” After a pause she said in a low voice, “I don't know what you were thinking, Frank, bringing him to Plum River.” He glanced away and pretended he hadn't heard. “Your wife is a saint,” she added.

They passed through town and into the countryside. Dark clouds were gathering and a wind had come up; the air smelled of rain. He'd felt there was no choice but to take the boy, and Sharpless had insisted on it. But maybe Benji would have been better off with his own kind. Frank stared out at the cornstalks stirring in the breeze, his mother a dark weight at his side. She would never understand what he had to contend with—the pitiless life of farming, Kate's delicacy, and the boy, trying to do right by the boy.

He glanced back at Benji. If the boy was going to turn out to be a sissy, he'd never survive here. An image of his father flashed into Frank's mind—the time he'd called Frank a pantywaist because he'd cried at a hog-butchering. I'll give you something to whine about if you don't dry up, he'd said.

At home, he left his mother to tend to Benji, changed to coveralls, and went to the barn. The Swede hadn't mucked out the stalls. Furious, Frank banged on the bunkhouse door, then opened it. Empty. The Swede had gone off on his own Fourth of July toot, probably to the whorehouse near Elizabeth. There was a bottle of white whiskey on the nightstand. He sampled it—corn liquor; it burned like Hades—then returned to the barn, where he looked for the bottle of bourbon he'd hidden in the haymow. Gone, damn that Swede. He gave Daisy a few swipes with the currycomb and, cursing, attacked the Percherons' prodigious heaps of excrement with the pitchfork. The cows came jangling across the road, their udders full. He milked them savagely—what this family needed was another hired hand, not some prissy servant. He carried the milk to the cistern, then
went back to the Swede's place for the bottle. As he walked to the farmhouse, a light rain began, raising dust on the road. No fireworks in Stockton this year. “Ha,” he said aloud.

In the house, assaulted by the odor of liver and onions, he went up to his office and sat at his desk, gazing out at tree limbs thrashing in the wind. There was a crack of thunder, a bright fork of lightning. It was going to be a hell of a storm. He uncorked the bottle, took a long drink, then another. Likely Kate would spend the night. She'd enjoy that, one of those satiny bedrooms and the bath in the morning. He took another draught from the bottle. He could see her naked, stepping into the tub, then Aimee, the two of them together in the water, breasts floating, Kate's flesh-colored nipples, Aimee's dark ones, her dark thatch like Butterfly's. He'd have them take turns, bent over the edge of the tub. He rose to lock the door and relieved himself in private, as rain hammered against the windows and the dark closed in.

Benji went to his room
and took out the kimono. He wanted to talk to Mama in his room, but Grandmother Pinkerton was close by, in the kitchen. “Let's see to that cut,” she called. His hands moving so quick that he didn't get to see Mama's face, he took the picture from the kimono and slipped outside. It had started raining, so he put the picture under his shirt.

He ran to the privy and sat down. No one would come until the rain stopped. He took out Mama's picture and covered the other face with his hand so he could look just at her.

“The Sunday-school children are meaner than Marvin,” he told her. They were playing a game with long sticks, hitting balls across the grass. One ball came to his feet and he picked it up but they yelled at him so he dropped it. A boy with stuck-out ears made a face, pulling the skin back until his eyes almost disappeared, and said he was a Jap and a Chink.