Butterfly's Child (25 page)

“Well,” Frank said. “I guess that's about it, then.”

He started to rise, but Burdett tapped his fingers on the desk.

“How do you plan to spend this sum?”

None of your beeswax, Frank wanted to say. He stared at Burdett; with his double chin and dewlaps and hard little eyes, he looked like a hog with its head just lifted from the trough. “General expenses,” he said. “I've fallen behind—we all have.”

Burdett sat silent, waiting for more.

“Itinerant labor, mostly.”

“Soon you'll have a new little addition, I understand,” Burdett said with a wink. “Before you know it you'll have a—what—ten percent increase in your labor force.”

Frank's face went hot. “Not for long. If it's a boy, we plan to send him to a university. Brains run in the family, on my wife's side. Franklin's a genius, his teacher says. He can go anywhere. Yale, Harvard.”

“I guess that will be hard on the farm,” Burdett said, rising.

“The farm will be self-sufficient by then. I'm planning to invest in livestock—Guernseys and hogs.” Frank stood. “How's
your
wife?” he asked, smiling at the thought of her huge rump and belly, Burdett mounting her.

Burdett frowned. “Just fine. Enjoying spending my money.” He stood and rounded the desk, clapped a hand on Frank's shoulder.

They walked out of Burdett's office and to the front door of the bank in silence. Frank burned to punch him.

“The transfer will be made this afternoon. Good luck.” Burdett held out a white paw; Frank squeezed hard, enjoying Burdett's wince.

“Good luck yourself,” he said.

He went down the steps and swung up onto Admiral. He thought of going by the post office. Keast had heard from Benji, and Frank hoped for a letter himself, but there wouldn't be one. He ought to get back to Kate anyway.

He headed out of town, taking a road that skirted Morseville and Plum River.

Benji had always preferred Keast, ever since he gave him that horse—now stolen out from under him—but it hadn't been Keast who'd saved him from a life in the gutters of Nagasaki, who'd fed and clothed him. No one seemed to appreciate—least of all Benji—how much Frank had done for the boy, what it had cost him.

He'd treated the boy badly—a thousand times he'd wished he could take it back—but, damm it, seven months was a long time for Benji to hold such a grudge that he wouldn't even write to his grandma.

It was a hard thing about Kuro, though; he knew the boy was suffering over that.

He took a short detour to the east forty, to check the most recent planting of corn. It was up six inches and looking frisky. If they had some decent rain this year, he might turn a profit from the corn and the barley. He'd planted the back forty entirely in barley, more resistant to drought; last year Bud Case had done well with it.

He turned onto the road that led home. At the Case farm, Franklin and Mary Virginia were in the front yard with a passel of those redheads. “Papa!” Franklin yelled, and ran out to him. “Mama's having the baby!”

Frank dug his heels into Admiral and they flew toward the house. He shouldn't have dallied in the fields.

Several hundred yards from the house, he heard her screaming. “Kate,” he called, “Kate, Katie,” and charged toward her.

He left Admiral at the gate, ran indoors. He'd never heard such screaming, hardly a pause for breath. He pounded up the stairs.

His mother stepped outside the bedroom, closed the door behind her, holding the knob.

“Let me in,” Frank said. “I have to see her.”

“Not now, dear. You wait downstairs. Or go on to the fields. It'll be a while.”

There was a long bellow, ending in an “Oh, God, no.” He heard the doctor's voice, a low murmur.

“What's wrong? Why is she screaming like that?”

“She's just stalled.” His mother squeezed his arm. She looked exhausted, dark hollows under her eyes. “You run on now. She'll be fine.”

He paced through the house, picking things up, putting them down. She wasn't going to be fine. Nothing was going to be fine. He was losing everything. There was a pile of green spring onions by the sink. He ate one—gritty; it hadn't been washed. In the parlor he tried to read the newspaper, a story about the farmers' effort to unionize, but Kate's screams drove into him like long, hot nails. “Dear God,” he whispered, “don't let her die.”

His head began to itch. He took off his cap and scratched hard, digging in with his fingernails until his scalp was on fire. If only she'd stop screaming.

He needed a drink. Kate wouldn't mind, in these circumstances. He went out to the barn, climbed to the hayloft, reached to the top of the beam that was his hiding place. The bottle was almost empty; he drained it.

The Swede had a bottle somewhere. In the bunkhouse, he looked in a closet, in the chest of drawers, under the bed. Finally he found it, in plain sight, by the washbasin. White whiskey of some kind; it scalded going down, then it soothed him.

He went out, stood in the road. The screaming seemed fainter. Maybe it was just the distance. The cows came toward him from the pasture, bells clanking. Animals knew what to do. He followed them to the barn and milked them, then carried the pail of milk to the cistern near the house.

There was silence in the house now. He ran inside and up the stairs. The door was locked. He jiggled the knob. “Mother,” he whispered.

Dr. McBride opened the door partway; Frank couldn't see in. “She's resting,” he whispered.

“Is she …”

“She's all right. A breech birth, but she should be all right. Please make some coffee—just leave it on the stove. Then take yourself for a walk.” He closed the door.

Frank started the coffee, spilling grounds on the table, the stove, tried to sweep them up with his hands. There was a scream; he jumped, dropping the grounds on the floor. The screaming continued, pulsing in his ears.

He found the bottle of cooking sherry in the pantry, sat down at the table with it, waited for the coffee to boil. He took a long drink, put his hands over his ears.

The Swede came in, expecting supper. “She sounds in a bad way,” he said.

“No, she's not, she's fine. What would you know?”

Frank pushed up from the table, took a dollar from his wallet, and handed it to the Swede. “Go get yourself something to eat in town.” He went past the Swede, out to the barn, up to the loft. He mounded some hay—not much left, they'd just made it through the winter—and lay down. The horses were munching their oats; the Swede had fed them. He should have thought of it himself. But he was so tired.

He closed his eyes, dozed for a moment. The sound of the Swede saddling his horse woke him.

The coffee. He sat up. He'd forgotten. He ran up the hill, breathing hard, and burst in through the front door. The whole place smelled of burnt coffee; the pot's contents were bubbling on the surface of the stove. He snatched up the pot and set it outside on the kitchen steps, cleaned the stove, then started over.

Kate was moaning now, a normal sound, like animals giving birth. After the coffee had boiled, he took a cup of it to the doctor and went to sit on the porch. Dusk had fallen; a bobwhite was calling from the edge of the field. He put his head on the back of the rocker. He was a little dizzy. “Please,” he whispered. Then he was asleep.

It was dark. Someone was tapping his shoulder. “Frank.” It was Dr. McBride; his hair was wild and his shirttail loose, but he was smiling.

“Congratulations, Frank,” he said, pumping his hand. “You have two healthy new babies. And Mother is doing fine.”

Frank blinked. “Two? Are you sure?”

The doctor laughed. “Yes. Twins.”

“Twins,” Frank said. The word was strange in his mouth. “Boys?”

“A boy and a girl.”

A boy. And she was fine. He grabbed the doctor, kissed his rough cheek, and ran up to Kate. His luck had finally turned.

Shin hired Benji as
a dishwasher at Waraji's; he liked the work, surrounded by the newly familiar smells of Japanese food, and soon was able to carry on simple conversations with the other men in the kitchen and the customers. There were occasional white customers, loggers and farm workers mostly, and Benji was in charge of waiting on them and ringing up their meals at the cash register.

Willa Overstreet, a white waitress, had recently begun working in the restaurant. She spoke no Japanese, which caused some grumbling among the customers, even though they knew Shin didn't have a choice; there was a shortage of Japanese women in the community. The owner of the Beef and Noodle, a Japanese restaurant near the Platte River that catered to workingmen of all races, had hired a white woman and a mulatto as waitresses in the past year.

Benji was enlisted to teach Willa some simple phrases and the names of Japanese dishes, so she could communicate with the customers and the cook; they quickly became friends.

Willa was a slender woman with sandy-brown hair, older than Benji—about twenty-five, he guessed. Her eyes were small and her face was a little too long, but there was something in her manner that reminded him of Flora—her erect posture, a way of holding her head. Though poorly educated, she was clever and learned the Japanese phrases quickly. Their tutoring sessions gradually lengthened, and they often sat talking in a corner of the restaurant until well after closing. Benji was relieved to have long, easy conversations in English again, and he felt a kinship with Willa, both of them homeless.

Willa's mother, a seamstress, had died nine years ago—she had never known her father—and she dropped out of school to work as a maid. She liked it better at Waraji's than at her rich employer's house, she said, even though the pay was less, because she didn't have to put up with any guff from hoity-toities.

She had been engaged twice, most recently to a man who worked for the railroad and left her for a woman he met at a stopover in Kansas City; earlier, she had an understanding—or so she thought, she said—with a boy she had known at school.

“I knew a girl at school,” Benji said. “Someone I liked—but I never could have married her.”

“Why not?”

“Look at me. A mongrel Japanese.”

“That doesn't bother me.”

He told her about his parents, how his mother killed herself and he was taken away from Japan to live in Ilinois. When he showed her the picture of his mother and Frank, she reached to take his hand. “You poor kid,” she said, “you've had it rough.”

That night he walked her to her trolley; on the way, they stopped in an alley, where he kissed her and she let him touch her breasts.

Benji asked Fumio, the owner of the dry-goods store, if he and Willa could occasionally meet in the attic above the store, after closing.

Fumio agreed. “It's hard to be without a woman,
ne
? I'm lucky to have a wife.” But he warned Benji not to cause him any trouble with “the white man.”

Benji promised to be careful; they would enter and leave separately, and only when the street was deserted.

They met two or three times a week, making love and talking. Once they fell asleep in the attic; when they woke there was light at the small window. Benji looked out; already there were people on the street. He went down to the shop and borrowed a furoshiki cloth for Willa to wear as a scarf. A few white laborers worked in the area. “Don't let anyone see you,” Benji said.

“Nobody's business but ours.” But she looked frightened; her lips and her hands were cold. He watched from the window as she appeared on the street and, head bent, walked quickly out of sight. Damn the white men, he thought; hypocrites, as if none of them visited the Negro prostitutes
or the Japanese women at the bathhouse. It was time for him to go home, to Japan.

He'd been saving a portion of his wages in Shin's safe. By next spring, he calculated, he would have enough to get there. Not as a rich man, but maybe he could get rich in Japan, in the import/export business as Matsumoto's partner.

He wrote to Matsumoto, who had reestablished himself in a new building outside San Francisco's Chinatown, and asked if he could stop in on his way to Japan. The man who had saved his life was welcome at any time, Matsumoto wrote back. He had a new enterprise, he said, in which Benji could be useful.

Benji couldn't bring himself to tell Willa about his plans; the time never seemed right. She brought him gifts—a scarf she'd knitted for next winter and a flannel shirt that fit perfectly. “You did it without measuring me,” he said, astonished.

“Oh, I've taken your measure,” she said, running her hands down his body. “I know your measure exactly.”

One morning when Benji was having breakfast, Shin laid a folded newspaper in front of him. There was a letter to the editor: A Japanese laborer and a white waitress from the Beef and Noodle had been seen spooning on the bank of the river.
What have we come to that this should be tolerated in the Queen City?
the writer asked.

“You have to stay away from Willa,” Shin said.

There were more letters published in the paper; the city council looked into the matter. A delegation came to Waraji's—three men in business suits and bowler hats, which they didn't remove. Benji was cleaning the tables; he kept his face turned away. Shin offered them beer, some excellent Japanese tempura, but they remained standing.

“Where's that white waitress?” one of them said.

“She's not here,” Shin said. “She comes at dinner.”

“Not anymore she doesn't,” one of the men said. “There's a new law—no white women in Jap or Chink joints.”

When they left, Shin and Benji looked at each other. One of Shin's eyelids was twitching.

“No one ever saw us,” Benji said.

“It's not your fault.” Shin dropped to a chair, rubbed his face and head with both hands until his hair was sticking up in clumps.