Butterfly (28 page)

nothing to eat. It was no time to be putting their possessions in the wagon and moving on.

Danny was scared that night. He’d never known such fear. She lay on the other bed,

coughing, her skin burning hot.

He had sat by her side, holding her feverish hand, listening to the “blue norther” come

down from the Panhandle to remind folks that there was in fact something worse than

hellfire. Young Danny had sat and squeezed her hand and begged her not to die and

prayed to a dimly conceived God, who couldn’t seem to hear a boy’s plea over the wind.

That was when he decided to give up on God and take matters into his own hands.

“Just goin’ out for a few minutes, Ma,” he had murmured to her. Then he had struck out

into the frigid night, running as fast as he could down the snow-covered road. He reached

the doctor’s house an hour later; it stood at the edge of town like a glowing Christmas

ornament on a white counterpane. The windows were lit and music was coming out.

Danny ran to the door, fell exhausted against it, and knocked with the last of his strength.

Dr. Simon Waddell came to the door himself, his generous belly spread with a dinner

napkin. “What is it?” he said, peering down at the ragamuffin.

“Ma’s terrible sick!” Danny had blurted, wishing he could go inside, into the warmth

and music and good smells of food.

“I’m sorry, son,” Dr. Waddell said, “but there’s nothing I can do for her.”

“You gotta come!” Danny cried.

“You go on home now,” the doctor said, closing the door.

“She needs your help!”

As the door closed in his face Danny heard the man say to an unseen occupant in the

house, “Sorry I ever left New Orleans—”

Danny went out of his mind. He continued to pound on the door and call Dr.

Waddell’s name. Then he raced around the house, trying to open windows, peering

through gaps in curtains. He pounded on the back door, then came back to the front.

He gasped for breath and the frosty air seemed to cut his lungs. His hands and feet

were numb; his face throbbed with the cold. He slumped down on the front step and

started to cry. Then, from inside the house, he heard a bell ringing. Danny ran around

and looked through a window. Dr. Waddell was on the telephone. Danny pressed his ear

to the glass. He heard the doctor telling Reverend Joshua Billings that he would be right

over. “Keep her warm until I get there,” the doctor said. “It doesn’t sound serious. But I’ll

take a look anyway.”

Danny stood with his back pressed against the house as he watched the doctor hurry

out into the night, wrapping a muffler around his neck; he climbed into his black

Chevrolet with his medical bag in hand. As the car disappeared into the snowy blackness

Danny felt the winter storm enter his body and gather in the pit of his stomach. It was as

if a ball of ice had settled down there, and it caused him tremendous pain.

Simon Waddell,
he thought as he plunged through the snow in the direction of home.

Simon Waddell,
Danny’s mind said over and over as he stumbled in the drifts and sobbed

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and tried to fly back to his dying mother. And in his anger that grew with each icy step he

took, the twelve-year-old mind called up another name,
Reverend Joshua Billings,
because

he had taken the doctor away, and it was then, as Danny finally drew near to the shack

and found a last scrap of strength to get him to the door, that the list of special names was

started. Names never to be forgotten.

He sat at his mother’s side, weeping and wringing his hands, feeling utterly defenseless

and powerless, until, sometime around dawn, she came out of her delirium, looked at her

handsome son for a brief lucid moment, ran her hand over his almost-reddish hair and

said, “Grow up to
be
somethin’, Danny.” And then she died.

He had gone mad with rage and grief, and hadn’t been found until days later, his nig-

ger-shooter worn out from the vengeance he had taken upon innocent nature. Augustus

Mackay hadn’t been able to control his son after that, no matter how many razor strap-

pings he resorted to. When the sweet soul of Danny’s ma had left her body, something

black and malevolent had flown into his. He was twelve at the time—a grown man.

The song ended and Danny focused back in on Hazel’s hot kitchen, where he was sur-

rounded by baking smells and girlish laughter coming through the open door. From

where he sat he could see down the hall into Hazel’s parlor, where men were mingling

among the whores and taking their pick of them.

On the night of Mary Mackay’s death a strange and complex love/hate relationship

with the memory of his mother had been born in Danny. He had worshiped her and she

had let him down. So Danny had grown up knowing two things for certain: that no

woman in the world was ever going to measure up to his beautiful ma, and that, just like

his ma, all women were going to let him down.

“You okay, Mr. Danny? Somethin’ wrong with that pie?”

He looked at Eulalie, her sweating face like polished ebony. By her own scale of

human worth, she had placed herself at the very bottom of the ladder. She was “black col-

ored.”

Well, he thought as he finished the pie and pushed away from the table while reaching

for his Camels, if this old nigger-woman was doomed to be fixed forever at the bottom

rung, Danny Mackay was most definitely not going to stay white trash.

Someday, quality was going to have him in their living rooms and expect him to bed

their daughters. He’d show his ma, he’d show them all, that Danny Mackay was a man

going places.

The San Antonio night was so hot that it was like driving through soup. Danny and

Bonner Purvis talked for a while about going to the pictures, but the theater would be hot

and unless it was a John Wayne movie or you had a girl in the back row, going to the pic-

tures was no fun.

Bonner Purvis was a year younger than Danny and he still had pimples. He had been

rejected by the army because of flat feet, and that was why he sold bad liquor and “dirty”

girls to the flyboys, out of spite. Bonner was a walking irony: ever since he was very little

he’d had a cruel streak in him that no amount of beatings from his pa could drive out of

him, but he also possessed the most angelic face ever to grace a man. Men and women

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alike would stare when Bonner Purvis walked by; he was pure Angel Gabriel, they told

themselves, with that limp blond hair like silk off an ear of corn, and those blue eyes,

and the dimpled chin. His smile, they all declared, could charm the warts off a hog, and

he had nice hands, too, kind of like a woman’s. Although his reputation was known in

this part of San Antonio—everyone knew what he had done to poor old Fred

MacMurphy’s dog—folks still couldn’t completely dislike Bonner Purvis, he was just so

nice
-looking. Which was why the flyboys trusted him and gave him good money when

they didn’t have to.

But, like Danny, Bonner had outgrown small-time schemes. He was restless. San

Antonio was suddenly too small, and he was getting ambitious.

Anyway, it was a hot night and they had nowhere in mind to go, so they got them-

selves a bottle of Jack Daniel’s and headed off out of town in Bonner’s old pickup. They

were thinking of visiting one of the border towns, where you could get a Mexican whore

for a dollar.

But along the highway they came upon a sight that made Bonner jam on his brakes.

“Well, well, Danny. Looky there, will you?”

Danny, having just taken a swig of the sour mash, ran his hand across his mouth and

gazed out the open window of the pickup. There, about a hundred yards off the road, in

the middle of a big field, was an enormous tent, all glowing and looking like a birthday

cake against the black Texas night. There were a lot of cars parked around it, and hun-

dreds of people, it seemed to the two San Antonio boys—quite a mixture of Mexicans,

colored and poor whites, they saw—all streaming into the tent while an unseen organ

piped out “When the Saints Go Marching In.”

“Well, I’ll be,” Danny said under his breath.

“You ever been to a revival meetin’?” Bonner asked, already reaching for the door han-

dle. “My ma took me to a couple when I was young. A real show they are!”

“Let’s take a look.”

They sat in the back on a bench that creaked and threatened to collapse under the

weight of so many people. The tent was packed to its canvas walls, with people standing

all around the sides and back, fanning themselves, their clothes dark with sweat and fill-

ing the tent with the smell of unwashed humans at midsummer.

The Reverend had the magnificent name of Billy Bob Magdalene, and he wore an ice-

cream-white suit with a black string tie and he spewed fire and brimstone over his per-

spiring congregation.

It wasn’t a remarkable meeting, as far as tent revivals went. But Billy Bob Magdalene

knew his business, he knew that in order to get the people to part with their money he

first had to put the scare of eternal hellfire into them and then convince them that with

his intervention the Lord might spare them. “God can be bribed” was the subliminal

message. And it worked. By the end of the evening, Billy Bob Magdalene had those peo-

ple clapping and rocking and so scared out of their heads for all the sins they’d commit-

ted that when the baskets came around, in went the dollars and the pesos and the hope

that Billy Bob Magdalene did indeed have some influence with God.

It was during the collection that Danny got his brilliant idea.

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The place was in absolute chaos, what with Sister Hallie pounding away on the organ

and Brother Bud leading the congregation in “Rock of Ages” and a few Pentecostals

rolling in the aisles and jabbering in tongues. So Danny got up, removed his cowboy hat,

and nonchalantly passed it down the row. When Bonner saw what he was up to, he too

removed his hat and went across the aisle, passing down the next row. They didn’t risk

being too greedy, in case they were spotted. But with so many people standing up and

waving their arms and running up to Billy Bob Magdalene to be blessed, well, no one

would notice the two boys slipping out of the tent with their hats pressed to their chests.

“Whoo-ee!” shouted Bonner as they ran to the pickup. “Bet you we got fifty dollars

easy!”

Danny whooped and hollered as he flung the door open and threw himself inside. He

dumped the contents of the hat onto the seat and started counting as Bonner put the

truck into gear and began to grind back to the highway.

When they heard the explosion and felt the truck suddenly rock, they wondered what

they’d hit. When the second explosion made the front end of the pickup dip and they

realized their tires were being shot out, Bonner cried “Jesus Christ!” and dived under the

dashboard.

Danny stared ahead in fright as, through the settling of dust and grit, a figure came

into the beams of the headlights. It was Billy Bob Magdalene, and he was aiming a shot-

gun right at Danny’s head.

“Awright, boys,” he drawled. “C’mon outa that there truck. Nice and slow like.”

Danny was too startled to move and Bonner had peed in his pants.

“Step down, I said! What do I have to do to get you two pecker-heads to hear me?”

Slowly and shakily the two boys got out of the truck and looked down the barrel of the

Reverend’s shotgun, their arms raised.

Billy Bob Magdalene took a long look at Danny’s face. And then, when he saw

Bonner’s pants, he lowered the gun, shook his head and said, “Shee-yit. You two come on

back with me to my office.”

His office turned out to be a battered bus with lettering on the side that said, BILLY

BOB MAGDALENE BRINGS JESUS. It was hot and fetid inside, thick with the smell of sweat

and whiskey. As the boys climbed in ahead of Billy Bob Magdalene and his shotgun they

saw the crowd start to stream out of the tent to the tune of “Amazing Grace.”

“Shoot,” Billy Bob Magdalene said, setting aside his gun. “You two pissants are the

poorest excuses for small-time crooks I ever did see! Siddown, the both of you.”

“Listen, Mr. Magdalene,” Bonner began. “We’ll give the money back. We was only

foolin’ you.”

The Reverend heaved a sigh of boredom and eased himself into a chair that groaned.

He opened the bottom drawer of the desk that was wedged behind the driver’s seat and

produced a bottle of whiskey. But he poured a glass only for himself.

“You two pudknockers sure think you’re smart, don’t you?” he said after draining the

glass in one gulp. “Don’t you know that’s the
oldest
scam since the serpent sold the apple

to Eve? You think we didn’t spot you two the minute you come into the tent? An audience

fulla wetbacks and niggers and poor white trash, and here come two lusty young bucks

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just thirsting for mischief. You let me down, boys. I kinda hoped you’d be more original

than the rest.”

Bonner and Danny shifted self-consciously.