Butterflies Dance in the Dark by Beatrice Macneil

Author:Beatrice Macneil
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Breakwater Books Ltd
Published: 2015-11-01T00:00:00+00:00

THIRTEEN

MAMA MADE NEW clothes for Lizzie, as if she were a new baby in the house. A bright green dress. Two pink nightgowns. She knit a soft warm blanket and wrapped it around her. She sat by the stove in the evenings and said her rosary. I went upstairs and turned on the light. I sat on Alfred and Albert’s bed. I didn’t want to sleep. A full-faced moon toasted the window. A warm glow drifted in and out and lingered at the top of the stairs.

They had been gone two weeks. Their names were in the paper. They were being congratulated in their absence. Daniel Peter saved the clippings.

He told me he had when I met him on the road. “You eat little, Mari-Jen, too much flesh fall from bones,” he said. He looked older. His shoulders slumped and the light was gone from his eyes.

“Their names are in the paper,” I said to Mama. “People are talking about them.” She didn’t answer.

I hated the nights. They pulled me into a grave of darkness and dangled the faces of the dead in front of me.

Old Zeppie walked around the house. He was hunchbacked and his hair had grown down over his shoulders. He kept calling to his wife, but she didn’t answer, so he kept walking around the house, calling her name. The tomcat, Lasnip, kept running from window to window as Zeppie circled the house. Finally, Zeppie put his right hand up in the air. It was then that I saw the axe. He started to chop at the house and swung at the door. I fell over. He went to the windows and smashed them with the axe. He grabbed Lasnip by the tail and cut him in two. And then Zeppie disappeared with half of Lasnip into a fog.

I woke up screaming. I could hear the sound of my own pain. It was still dark. I slid off the plastic. The light dangled from the rafter. It was too early to get up. I went to the cubbyhole and took out some books. I read Butterflies Dance in the Dark out loud.

Are they sleeping? What strange town looms before their eyes? They would laugh at my dream. I knew they would. “Mari-Jen, I told you that hair grows on the dead.” Alfred would say. They would joke and tease me.

They had told me one day that they went to a Presbyterian wake just to see how they were sent off. “They had a net over the dead man’s face, Mari-Jen.” It was August, and the corpse had his hands down by his sides. “Jesus,” said Albert, “he looked like he was ready to spring on you if he didn’t like what he heard. I was going to nail a few Hail Mary’s on the corpse, but I changed my mind.”

“The people prayed for him in church and sang a dozen hymns and then they sank him into the sod. No smoke, no chains rattling, no blessings—they just sang a few Gaelic hymns at the grave and let him fend for himself.

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