The Butterfly Killer Read online

  “What’s foundation?”

  “The things we sit on that supports us. Our house sits on a foundation. Without it, the house would sink into the ground. That hospital is going to be tall. Going to almost touch the sky with all them sick people in it. It’s got to be on good solid earth. A man needs a good foundation too. His foundation is supposed to be his wife. Without a good woman a man sinks into the ground.”

  I was full of hamburger, shake, and French fries. They was selling plastic yellow hardhats with the name Hermann stamped across the front. That was the name of the hospital they were building. The hat wobbled on my head as we walked. My eyes were

  full of the deep hole in the earth. I turned and asked him how soon would they hit the rooftops of China? He smiled.

  “Well Sweet Pee I will answer your question with the best scientific knowledge, if you answer mine.”

  I agreed eagerly.

  “Why you ask Doctor Brown, was he going to take his pants off.”

  “I take mine off when I doctor on Gram’s chest.”

  “Why do you do that, Sweet Pee?” Gramp looked at me like he was reading the

  paper.

  “Cause Gram said that’s what Doctors do when I doctor on her chest.”

  The colors in Gramp’s face told me I had said something I shouldn’t have said. He was purple for a moment, then red, then pink. He grabbed my hand and walked so fast I tripped and he dragged me the rest of the way to the car. He threw me in the back seat. I started crying.

  “You gonna burn my Doctor’s coat, ain’t you.”

  “Shut up! I ought to burn the goddamn house down.”

  In the house after we got home, there was much cursing, screaming, and crying

  behind him and Gram’s bedroom door. The walls and doors vibrated as if horses was running through. I heard glass shatter. The mint smell of Absorbine Junior seeped under the door and made my eyes water. Gramp stomped out of their room and into mine. He grabbed my Doctor’s coat and the whole doctor’s kit. He went out into the yard grabbed some tree branches and set them on fire in in the bare spot where he burned stuff. All of it went up in a black cloud of smoke.

  Gram didn’t get out of bed for almost a week. When Gramp went to work he made

  me go across the street to Miss Della and her girl’s.

  “Plenty of stuff for a boy to play Doctor on,” he’d shout back into the house just before he slammed the door behind me and him. I felt bad. Gram started coming out of her room a week later. She tried to fix supper. She looked like a tramp woman. Her hair was all over her head. Her legs were ashen and had dark blotches all over them. She’d stand at the stove and stir a pot until all the water was gone out of it and it burned. Gramp took a bite out of what she cooked and spat it back into his plate.

  “I’m sick, Ben,” she’d say softly.

  “You need a Nut Doctor. That’s what you need. Me and this boy is going to starve to death around here. Baby Sister is coming to look after things. Maybe she’ll get your ass in gear.” He banged his fist on the table and got up. I scraped at the beans and ham that wasn’t burned and took small bites. After a moment I felt Gram’s eyes on me. I stopped eating but kept my eyes on my plate.

  “Sweet Pee, you betrayed me like Judas betrayed Jesus.”

  She got up and walked out into the yard. I sat there heaving until the tears and snot covered the pieces of ham.

  Aunt Beulah who Gramp called Little Sister roared up our driveways in her new red and white Plymouth. It was a big ass convertible that looked like a fish. She got out and looked at me and Gramp sitting on the porch. She shook her head at us like we was a couple of sad sacks. In the back seat luggage and hatboxes was scattered like a mad woman had been driving. In the middle of all that was an open box. She reached in and brought out a puppy just a trembling and pissing as all get out. He was white and had

  black spots all over. She cradled it like a baby and gave it a tiny bottle it nursed between his paws.

  “I declare Little Sister, I done called a nut to help a nut,” Gramp said as he spied the puppy.

  “Now hush your mouth, Ben talking about me and your wife like that. You know

  how much I love animals. And Lordy look at Sweet Pee here. Just a growing up. Last time I saw him…”

  Gramp cleared his throat. Aunt Beulah looked at him and said nothing else about the last time she saw me. She put the puppy in the box on top of the hood of her car and gave me a hug. She smelled like cigarette smoke. I let her hug me for a moment and pulled away. Something told me that men not women should smell like cigarette smoke. She said the puppy’s name was Brutus.

  “Looks more like a “poot-us” to me,” Gramp said.

  “Hush Ben. All things start out small and not everything ends up a big old lump like you.”

  “Speaking of lumps, how is Clyde? What’s he husband number four?”

  “Now if you gonna grill me like a DA, I’m gonna just pack up me and Brutus and

  head home. And you can handle this mess yourself.”

  Gram clearing her throat caused all of us to look at the screen door.

  “Hello Lou Helen,” Aunt Beulah spoke to Gram.

  “Hello, Beulah. Come to clean up another mess?”

  “Ben is worried about, you Lou. How are you doing?”

  Gram didn’t say anything. She looked at the puppy for a minute and then looked at me for a long time. I kept my head to the ground. I was kind of glad Aunt Beulah was there. Maybe she could be the bridge me and Gram could meet half way on. Well I didn’t think it in that kind of adult way. But a child knows sometime they needs a live wire to bring some laughter into the house to take off the pressure. Give the grown folk something to think about and focus on besides you. Maybe Aunt Beulah could stop me from being a Judas in Gram’s eyes and she would love me again.

  “I’ll put on some supper,” Gram turned and walked away.

  “You want Little Sister to help you?” Gramp hollered after her. There was silence.

  Gramp tried to get Aunt Beulah to go in the house.

  “Let me ease my way in, Ben. I will not come storming into this woman’s kitchen

  and house like some kind of militia. Let me ease my way in.”

  After a few days Aunt Beulah’s easing way took over the whole house. First it was her cigarettes. When the ashtrays filled up, she pulled Gram’s nice saucers and cups from the cabinets. When them saucers filled up, she plunged them butts into beer cans. Gramp and her drank beer in the evenings when he got home. Gram stopped going to the kitchen or the dining room for anything to eat. Aunt Beulah had her own way of cooking. Black pepper ruled. You sneezed at the breakfast table and you sneezed at the dinner table. Her scrambled eggs were almost black with pepper. She was loud and chewed with her mouth opened. In the spare room where she slept, her panties and bras were flung all over the place. It wasn’t nothing for me to come home from school and find her puppy dragging one of her bras across the floor or chewing on Gramp’s house shoes. Gram hardly came out of her room. Well it was all her room now. Gramp slept on an old cot in the corner of the dining room close to the spare room.

  “Elliot, this house sounds like a beer joint,” Gram said to me one day when she called me into her room. She never called me Sweet Pee anymore. The way she said Elliot was very formal and very distant like she had kind of pushed me away. “Elliot go get me a box of sardines and a box of crackers. That woman’s cooking ain’t fitting for that beast she brought into my house. And bring me a coca cola.”

  I’d watch her take the sardine and kind of mash it on the cracker without breaking it and put the whole thing in her mouth kind of like when she put her false teeth in. She’d chew in silence. for a moment then break out into a gospel song just when Gramp’s and Aunt Beulah’s squawking laughter cut into the room. When she’d let me, I’d sit and watch Gram for a long time until either Gramp or Aunt Beulah busted into the room.

  “Lou Helen, why don’t you get out that bed and c
ome join life. I just made a mess of tamales in the kitchen.”

  “No thanks, Beulah. I’m fine.”

  “Come on out here, boy let me teach you to dance.” I’d look over at Gram, but she be looking out at the darkness washing over the window.

  “What was he doing in there, Little Sister?”

  “Oh nothing just watching his Gram.”

  “Humph!” Gramp huffed.

  Sometimes when I got home from school, Aunt Beulah and Brutus would be fast

  asleep on the couch. I’d go into Gram’s room and she’d have the television on low where the voices sounded ghostlike. I’d sit and watch her for a moment. I got up and tried to rub her legs, but she stiffened and drew them up under her. She looked off. I quietly closed the door behind me. I didn’t know what I could do to win Gram’s love. I felt lower than the butterflies I killed. And I was killing plenty. I learned to draw ‘em in with old fruit rinds—maybe a cantaloupe or watermelon. Then whack the hell out of them as they ate as they ate.

  I come home from school one day and Aunt Beulah was laid out on the couch drunk

  sleep. I guess Brutus had knocked her purse over and all her change landed on the floor. I scooped most of it off the floor and hid it in a corner of my closet in an old shoe. It was mostly pennies and nickels. But I had a plan. I even stole a couple of dimes out of Gramp’s coin purse. On my way from school with my friends we stopped off at the

  Madding Dugan. While the rest of them ran up and down the candy and comic book

  aisles, I snuck over to the drug stuff. The small bottle of Absorbine Jr was seventy-nine cents. I counted out each penny while my classmates stood bouncing around me

  impatient and sticking out there tongues.

  “Eeww Elliot, why are you buying that?”

  I didn’t answer them. As soon as the woman bagged it up, I ran home. Aunt Beulah’s car was gone. I opened the door, pushed Brutus aside and ran straight to Gram’s room. I pulled out the bottle of Absorbine Jr and held it up in front of her. She looked at it for a moment before taking it out of my hand. She squeezed it tight and threw it across the room. Brutus yelped. My breath caught up in my chest. The pungent aroma of menthol burned my eyes and tears ran down my face. My tears come from me knowing Gram

  hated me. I would never be her Sweet Pee again. Look like the more sad I was, the more happier Gramp and Aunt Beulah was. Aunt Beulah brought all kinds of nigger records in the house. She played them loud as she and Gramp talked and drank beer. He ate her cooking belching and farting loud as he lay on his cot. Sometimes they cussed each other

  out as niggers wailed and whined in the background. Beer cans and cigarette butts littered Grams mahogany coffee table.

  “Miss Bloom, Elliot has a beer can in his lunch kit,” Mandy wailed to our second grade teacher as I looked in horror at the brown and silver Schlitz can sitting in the middle of my peanut butter sandwich. That evening Gramp and Aunt Beulah wailed in laughter as they read the note Miss Bloom had sent home with me.

  “And goddamn it Little Sister, I was mad as hell when I opened my lunch box and

  found that that goddamn Captain Kangaroo thermos full of Tang.”

  “I bet Sweet Pee, you was the talk of the town, when your classmates seen that

  Schlitz in your lunch box. Did Miss Bloom take her a swig?” She looked at the note Miss Bloom had written, “Be careful that you don’t contribute to a child’s delinquency. ’ Now just who the hell she think she is?”

  “Probably some pinched face prude like that laying up in that room,” Gramp said

  loudly pointing toward Gram’s room. “Don’t want to give her husband no pussy. Saving it all for her grandson!”

  “Now hush your mouth, Ben. I don’t believe a word of that story.”

  “He told me hisself. Told me how she made him get almost naked and rub that shit all over her chest. And when I confronted her, you know what she said? She said he was more of a comfort than me. Her own husband. I wish she’d die up in that room.

  “Ben, don’t say such hurtful things.”

  “Ever time a sow pig hits the kill floor, I don’t even knock her out before I gut her.”

  “Aw, Ben drink you another beer.”

  Me, my head be so low, I could taste the dirt off the unswept floor. I wished for butterflies but it was not the season for them. Then Brutus would come over and lick my hand as Gramp roared on cussing and saying ugly things about me and Gram.

  Not did the shape of things change inside the house, but the outside changed too.

  “Ben you know what would bring life into this shack?” Aunt Beulah asked one day.

  “What, Little Sister?”

  “A tavern. We ought to build a beer joint out back or attach one to the kitchen.

  That’d be easier. The house already got gas. I’d get a big ol’ stove and cook tamales everyday. You could sell the beer. Hell you right on the corner. Folks couldn’t miss it.”

  Gramps grunted but didn’t say anything. Couple of nights later I heard him and Gram inside her bedroom arguing. After while Gramps come stomping out the room with a bunch of papers in his hand. He waved them and smiled at Aunt Beulah. A few days, later men came out and started knocking down the walls of the kitchen.

  I come home from school one day and found Aunt Beulah sprawled out on the couch

  and the new television-hifi set blaring. A pot of shredded pork was scorching on her eight-burner stove. “BeuBen’s” hadn’t yet opened for business for the night. Brutus now getting almost grown at six months came loping out of the beer joint to meet me. I pushed him aside as usual with my foot, but like a dumbass Dalmatian he came loping back until I patted his head. All I had to do was pat his head and he’d be all right. Go back and lay down by Aunt Beulah until she decided to wake up, rub his ears and kiss him like he was a man right in his mouth. Gram appeared in the Living room. First time I had seen her up in any part of the house besides her bedroom since Aunt Beulah arrived. She stood in the passageway in her nightgown and some pajama pants. She was barefoot. She surveyed

  the room as if she was trying to recognize it. She glanced at Aunt Beulah and wrinkled her nose. She looked down at Brutus chewing the end of the lace doily hanging off the coffee table.

  “That dog needs to be outside.” She went back into her room and came out again.

  She had a greasy paper bag folded up neat. “Take these sardine cans to the trash, Elliot.”

  She handed me the sack. She looked toward the kitchen and past the gaping passageway that led to BeuBen’s. She snorted and went back into her room. I went into the kitchen to put the bag in the can. My eyes fell on the black blade butcher’s knife Aunt Beulah had used to cut up a chicken the night before. I picked it up. I got a piece of pork roast out of the refrigerator and put it in front of Brutus’s nose. He flopped around and licked at it as I walked toward the door that led out into the garage. The butcher knife scraped against the wood as I twisted the doorknob. Brutus hesitated to follow me out to the garage. I rubbed the roast right up to his nose. He galloped out behind me. The big garage door was closed but there were gaps on each side that let in little white slivers of light that bounced off the beer kegs Gramp had stored. I found the coil of rope on his workbench. I cut a piece with the knife and tied it around Brutus’ neck. He jumped and gnawed at it for a moment until I cut a chunk off the roast and gave it to him. He settled down to chew on it. I dragged him a little ways and tied the other end of the rope to a pile of cow horns Gramp said would make a nice piece of art for the tavern if he ever got around to it. In the dim garage the horns looked like a nest of snakes. Brutus tried to pull himself away from the horns. I cooed at him and gave him the entire piece of roast to calm him down. In the semi dark I could hear him whine as he gnawed and chomped.

  “Hey boy, Yeah boy,” I cooed to him and pat is head. The knife felt light in my

  hands. I held it up to the light to make sure the blade was still attached. As Brutus gnawed on the bone,
I played with the back of his neck. I knew this much about cutting up things from watch Gram and Gramp—especially Gramp, and that is you felt for the gaps between bone. The cartilage yielded to a knife easy. He whined and gnawed and licked at my fingers as if acknowledging the good feelings coming from him at all directions. Then I started making stabbing motions toward his neck. He saw me once and stopped eating. I spoke gently to him and let him sniff the knife. He got comfortable with my playing and went back to chewing. I turned my body in such a way to make sure my aim was going to be good. I gripped the knife with all my might and plunged. Brutus leapt up wild-eyed but didn’t make a sound except for his paws scraping the concrete.

  The knife had sliced through the back of his neck, cut his voice box, and ripped his jugular vein. He fell forward on his front paws. The knife’s blade kept him from falling over on his side. He flopped around a little bit as a dark pool circled him. Then he was still. A cricket chirped in the garage. I felt something wet on my forehead trickle down by my left eye. Gramp had a rearview mirror from an old Ford truck on a shelf. I pulled the mirror down, cleared away the dust and stared at myself. My forehead was splattered with blood. The mirror caught a light from somewhere and it looked like a halo around my head. Brutus was my first blood.

  Chapter 4

  Normalcy

  Things simmered down a few weeks later. Aunt Beulah had been gone. To say the

  least, her leaving was very traumatic. She had called me all kinds of evil sons of bitches as she packed her clothes and loaded them into her car.

  “You got an evil thing in your house, Ben—an evil thing and a crazy woman. I won’t stay another minute in this devil’s den. Not another minute.”

  “Please Little Sister, stay. Don’t go. I’ll get rid of the both of them,” Gramp pleaded with my Grandaunt.

  “Ben you cannot get rid of your wife and that thing like they’re stray cats. They’re yokes around your neck.” Aunt Beulah looked at me crumpled on the floor next Gramp’s booted feet. “My God, you wasting your time beating him. He’s beyond all of that. But you mark my words, he’s gonna kill you just like he did my dog. You mark my words!”