Virgin With Butterflies (12 page)

So, here I was, mixed up in something I didn't mean to get into. And that I sure didn't know much about, like a lot of other things I didn't know about—like the law, which I ought to know so much about, me having been in on court trials and coroner's inquests.

That poor Dr. Harwood, wasn't he only keeping poor little Darlene McComber from having a baby that she surely wouldn't have known what to do with?

Well, anyway the law said he was a criminal. But now comes the part I couldn't understand. The first thing was that Dr. Harwood—who didn't have much money—had a lawyer that everybody said was the highest paid one you could get. He certainly was worth it, because he got Dr. Harwood off free. So then you'd think he wasn't a criminal anymore, although everybody must have known he did what they said.

But after he got free, it turned out that there was a society of all the other doctors, and they had a meeting, and they kicked Dr. Harwood out anyway, so he wouldn't have ever been able to practice anymore, even if what had happened to poor Dr. Harwood hadn't happened.

But of course we didn't know that then. So there was Willie, not tried yet, and out on bail. Because they naturally didn't believe it was Uncle Ulrich who was to blame about Darlene. So Willie was out on bail, as I said, but he wouldn't come home because the only home there was to come to was Uncle Ulrich's house where we lived.

W
ELL, HERE
I
WAS IN
A
FRICA
being a kind of a Mata Hari, only dressed in white, and not knowing just what a decoy was supposed to do but going right on doing it.

Soodan is a desert, and it seems there's a good many kings of it. So we went to see one that wasn't young—but sure had young ideas—and a big bushy beard as red as fire, and robes and some stuff over his head like fine muslin, and his nails had what Aunt Mary called little black mourning bands along the edges. He was a bad old boy and crazy about me.

He called me the funniest name. He called me Palace Theater, which was the only English or American word he knew—except kiss, which he never stopped saying and trying to do.

He had a palace that was right out of Hollywood and wives with veils over the lower parts of their faces.

This king had sixteen sons, all different sizes but dressed like him. They were scared of him when he was there, but when he wasn't, oh boy.

Aunt Mary said they had to work off their youthful energy some way, so they got up a kind of a show out in the desert that we all went to, and after seeing how
wild these boys really could get, I was more scared of 'em than ever.

We rode on camels right out of Barnum & Bailey—that is, the boys and me did, the rest went in the Rolls-Royce.

My camel was white and her name was Wo Baby. Everybody called her that because that's what I named her, even though I hadn't meant to.

It was like this. The king's wives didn't ride camels, and that ain't all. They didn't do anything at all but sit around and eat. They put black stuff on their eyelids that they never washed off but just put more on. And they painted the palms of their hands orange. At least I thought they was painted, but I found out it wasn't from paint but from rubbing henna leaves. And I found out where they rub 'em, too. That's why the king's beard was red like that. So that's all the wives had to do—to rub henna and get fat and have sixteen sons.

Well, me not being a wife of the king and having new white riding britches, I said I had always wanted to ride a camel, so they let me.

Well, the boys thought it was funny enough to see me in my britches, and they thought it would be fun to see me ride one, even if I got killed, which, being wild, I soon found out would seem to them like a very funny joke. So being playful, they put a couple of scorpions under the red saddle.

Well, I got on it, and the camel that was lying down got up. Naturally I sat on the saddle, and the saddle sat on these scorpions, and the scorpions didn't like it so they stung the camel. So that camel made that desert look like a Wild West rodeo for about ten minutes.

Everytime we went up in the air I yelled, “Wo Baby,” but the camel paid no attention, not speaking English. So down we came, and I'd yell, “Wo Baby,” as we went up again higher and twistier than the last time. And it went on like that till I had landed hard enough to kill the scorpions.

But I didn't fall off, and that seemed like such a miracle to the old king that he had his people catch the boys that did that with the scorpions and put scorpions under their saddles. Their camels jumped even crazier than mine had till they both fell off on their heads, and one broke his wrist. And that's how I named the white camel Wo Baby.

When I saw people riding the circus camel in Mattoon, they just sat on the hump straddle and got led along slowly as the camel chewed cud with long yellow teeth and a tongue hanging out the side. But riding with fourteen crazy Soodan boys was like riding behind the Twentieth Century Limited train and bumping over the ties. It was just bumps and grinds, and the camel's long yellow teeth were just the same as in the circus, but instead of chewing cud, everytime I stopped or slowed up, the camel turned around its long neck and those yellow teeth chewed on my foot.

And, added to that, the camel had a voice that I never knew a camel had, sounding like four seals at feeding time and an elephant being really sick.

Well, by remembering Pop's advice and just relaxing, riding got to be a kind of a rumba. And it got to be fun, because I went with the camel instead of meeting it coming back, and it was easy.

So we were all ready to follow the king's car to the place where the rodeo was to be at. And the boys on their camels began to yell to me what sounded like “Le's race.” So I took a silver whip somebody had hung over my wrist and I took up the single bridle and I said, “Okay” and I let Wo Baby have it. And it sure was a race.

Only two boys got to the playground before me and Wo Baby. All the rest that came trailing in behind us in a cloud of our dust got a royal Soodanese razzing from the old king sitting in his car at the finish with the prince and Aunt Mary and Mr. Bosco.

When Wo Baby stopped, I threw my leg over just before she bit the toe of my new boot right off, and without waiting for her to lay down like they make 'em do I slid off the side of her.

Well, one of the older boys, seeing what I was going to do, jumped off of his camel while it was running, sending his white cape flying out behind him in the air like wings.

He landed running and got to me in time to catch me in the strongest arms I ever felt before I hit the ground. He carried me over to the car with his black whiskers that smelled like incense tickling my face where he was kissing me and he hoisted me up into the seat beside his father.

“Palace Theater,” the old king yelled, roaring with laughter, and he patted me all over pretty much. All the boys yelled and fired off guns, and it sure was different.

Aunt Mary showed me a medal on the king that King George gave to him in London after the last war, when he went there to tell the King of England he was glad his side won. And Aunt Mary said that must have been
where he got the name he called me. She said a lot of Soodan kings had gone there to congratulate the English king and that she remembered one of the places they was taken to in London was the Palace Theater.

While they were getting the games organized, Mr. Bosco whispered to me, “The king is very rich, he says you are nice so he will show you his machine.”

“What kind of a machine?” I says.

“You will see,” says Mr. Bosco, and he giggled.

The games began, and they sure made football and basketball and even hockey look like tiddleywinks.

There were beautiful horses with small heads and long white manes and tails that those boys rode all over. They got off and on 'em and rode 'em back and forth and around the car, yelling all the time. And there was a kind of a band with drums of all sizes on horses, with long horns and flutes and they made me deaf.

Well, after the riding there was a kind of a stunt with a lion. All of the boys that weren't too badly hurt got off of their horses and got onto some camels that didn't have any bridles or saddles at all and could only be guided by kicking 'em in the neck. Then some big men dragged out a cage with a mean looking lion in it.

With long poles, these men opened the front of the cage in a big circle of these boys on the camels. The riders didn't have any guns or poles or anything, just some bamboo things that Aunt Mary said were blow pipes and a lot of little darts like arrows to blow through these pipes.

Then the lion stood in the middle of them all, lashing his long tail with a duster on the end of it. The boys
kicked their camels in the rump to make 'em go, and they rode all around him. He'd start at one to kill him, camel and all, and that one would put his peashooter to his mouth and shoot a little dart into the lion. And the lion roared and went kind of crazy with all those little poison darts in him. This went on till the lion got killed dead.

Then there was a bad fight between a cheetah (that is like a tiger) and a lot of things that looked like police dogs, but were wild. The cheetah killed three of the dog things, but the rest of them killed it, and it was as bloody as Uncle Ulrich on Saturday night in the butcher shop.

Even that Saturday after he had carried the dying doctor out of the shop and to the ambulance. That's when the whole town started looking for Willie, and we knew it was all up for him.

Because I'd been working at the beauty shop, I hadn't seen Ulrich for a long time until Pop came to the beauty shop with that piece of window cord in his hand. I ran out and went with him, and there was Uncle Ulrich carrying the doctor out to the ambulance.

Before we got there, the bell on the ambulance had stopped. As we ran up, we saw the crowd on the sidewalk, then Uncle Ulrich coming out carrying Dr. Harwood. Pop said just one word under his breath and he let the piece of window cord drop against my foot.

“Willie.” That's all Pop said. And he was right, too, it was Willie, as the whole town knew in ten minutes.

But, as I say, that time Willie for once was in the right, though we couldn't know it then. We just thought he must have gone crazy to shoot poor Dr. Harwood. But of course we didn't know what really happened in
the shop, because it wasn't till Sunday night we heard any side of it but Uncle Ulrich's.

Anyway, that's what these games reminded me of as I sat there beside the king watching his fourteen sons kill things.

I knew that this wild kind of dangerous sport was considered all right for people to do here, and manners is different in different places according to what kind of people has the manners. So I tried to look as if what happened here happened in Mattoon every time we gave a strawberry festival at the church.

When the games were over, I rode back in the car. It was night suddenly over the desert and cold. At the palace, great big torches flared in the wind to show us out of the car.

As soon as we got in the main hall, the king began pulling me towards a door, but I thought I'd had enough so I got away from him.

“What does he want to show me in there?” I asked Mr. Bosco.

“His machine,” Mr. Bosco says, “he wants to show it to you.”

The king began yelling to me to come on, but I got away and followed Aunt Mary up to our rooms.

“Good girl,” says Aunt Mary, and we got ready for the banquet.

I was sure glad Aunt Mary had gotten my formals with long sleeves and a simple round neck line. Because I sure didn't trust those boys with any bare skin around.

I got into my white crepe dress with the silver oak leaves that made a kind of wreath around the neck, and
the same embroidery made a kind of a girdle nice and flat and low down on the hips. The skirt was full at the bottom, but far from loose around the middle. There was one silver leaf on the bottom of each long sleeve. It was embroidered on a kind of a point that laid flat on the back of my hand. The skirt was long. I had silver slippers to go with it and a kind of a half wreath of metal leaves around the back of my hair under the knot, but reaching up on the sides. They had a border of white beads on 'em, so you could tell where my hair stopped and the silver leaves began.

So Aunt Mary and I left the girls that had oh-ed and ah-ed while we was dressing and we went out in a hall and down steps into a kind of a front yard. Only it wasn't one because the palace was all around it and it had a roof over most of it, but not all.

There was a fountain in the middle made out of pretty colored tiles making a splashing sound. The floor was a big design of black and white and yellow tiles. There were round-topped doors opening off of this place in all directions. It was all lit up with lanterns and looked pretty.

And there was Mr. Bosco in his shiny black suit. All he did for the banquet was to take off his hat and leave just his ears sticking out. He was smiling and seemed to think we looked pretty sharp.

Aunt Mary began to talk to him about Japan, and as I didn't know anything about Japan, I just wandered around looking at the flowers that seemed to spill out of everywhere and at the gold and silver and spotted fish, big enough to eat.

It seemed like I could hear machinery running, but I
couldn't be sure. Suddenly I saw a door open right by me, and a big man in a white nightgown beckoned with his big knotty hand for me to come in there.

I backed off towards Aunt Mary and Mr. Bosco pretty quick.

Then he opened the door a little wider, and this time I was sure I heard a machine running.

When he opened the door enough for me to see into the little room behind him, I knew darn well I had heard machinery, and my eyes bucked out like poached eggs. For there, in that little room, sitting all in white like a wicked old prophet out of a picture book was the old king working the machine, pushing something through it with his fingers.

His sleeves were thrown back so his arms would be free. And buzz, chuckachuck chuckachuck went this machine that I had been sure was going to be something to chop up people with. And for me to be seeing him working it so hard was just more than I could stand, so I let out a yell that must have woken up those sleepy wives all the way off in the harem. And no wonder I yelled when at last I saw his machine. It was a Singer sewing machine, exactly like Aunt Helga's that I learned to sew on from the day I was six years old.

I just yelled with laughing and couldn't stop. And even Aunt Mary looked a little scared—which she never did—and I knew she was afraid I'd hurt the old boy's feelings, so I tried harder to stop.