Chapter 9: Wishes & Butterflies

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My daddy saw me as soon as we stepped out of the woods. It didn't take a genius to see that he was upset by the way he moved all stiff-like and all. When he got close enough I could see his turned down mouth and furrowed forehead. That beatin' I deserved, and didn't get because of the salamander. I was goin' to get it now, for sure. He growled, "Wishes, what the hell have you been doin' in the woods! You know it is dangerous even in daytime!" Then he looked at Freck who was covered with drying mud and me. Then Freck again, then me again, like he didn't believe what he saw the first time. I could imagine what he was thinkin', and it warn't good.

I tried to make up a believable excuse. "Well," I said, "there was this white rabbit..."

He cut me off. "Don't give me that Wishes. That was Alice in Wonderland. There's no sense in lyin' ta me. I always know when're spinnn' a tale." I wondered how he knew, but then I remembered Mizzus Appleton, my fourth grade teacher, she knew I was fibbin' 'bout droppin' the pencil on Crystal's leg. Lie detection is somethin' that just must come with bein' a grownup.

"It was all my fault," Freck sobbed. "Wishes came after me. He saw me go into the woods and he followed me in ta save me."

"That's a nice try Freck, but you are lying too. I can tell by the backpacks that you both intended to go in there."

"Sorry," Freck said as she shrugged her shoulders givin' me that I tried gesture.

Daddy softened a little and said, "Freck you'd better hurry on home fast as you can. Your daddy is frantic. He's probably already organized a neighborhood posse to go in to the Magic Woods after you." Freck took his advice and skedaddled away as fast as she could leavin' chunks of near dried mud in her wake.

Gettin' scared in the woods is one thing, but anticipatin' what your daddy was going to do was quite another. He roughly held my arm up by the elbow through the field until we reached Elm Street. All the time we was walkin', or I should say Daddy was fast walkin'. I was kinda flappin' behind him. Only a miracle would save me now. Maybe the Salamander would save me again. I would've crossed my fingers if my hands hadn't gone numb. We hurried up our driveway to the side door. Once inside, Daddy insisted that I take off my muddy things and go take a bath. He didn't want any more stinky mess in the house than was necessary. He said that we would talk after I got cleaned up. I don't know what is worse gettin' punished right away and havin' it over with or waitin' and wonderin'. I think it's like removing a Band-aid. I would rather have it ripped off fast. Some want it taken off slow, but not me. Let's get it done with. It's going to hurt either way. Daddy didn't give me no choice.

I got cleaned up and put on fresh clothes, then I went downstairs to face my doom. That old folksong "Hang Down Your Head Tom Dooley...poor boy you're gonna die" was playing in my head. Not that I expected to die, but I sure wasn't lookin' forward to what was 'bout ta happen. I was caught red handed. You know, it's a funny thing about guilt. Guilt can hurt way more than the actual punishment.

My daddy was waitin' for me at the kitchen table. He still looked upset, but now it was more like intense frustration jumbled up with fear. "Daddy?"

"Sit down Wishes," he said roughly. "We have to talk about what you did today." I pulled out a chair and sat down with my head still hangin'. Wishes you need to look at me."

"But I'm afraid to."

Daddy said with just a little less upset, "I'm not goin' ta take a switch to you, if that's what you're afraid of."

"Oh." I lifted my head like he told me.

"You've earned a good whippin', but not today, and not for what you did. I'm pretty sure I know why you went there. I'll bet you were lookin' for your momma, huh?"

I said, "Well, sort of."

"Do you care to explain that Wishes?"

I started out slowly, "Freck and I were lookin' for the Whistlin' Salamander. We heard that if you could catch it and kiss it on the head, you would have all your wishes come true." I told him my idea about the jelly doughnuts. That life without a momma was like a jelly doughnut without the jelly.

"Freck's momma died when she was just a baby," I said. "So both of us got doughnuts without jelly. We thought that the salamander might be able to grant our truest wishes."

He looked at me like he was studying me, and asked, "Do you remember me telling you that your momma was a butterfly?"

"I've never forgotten it, but I don't know what it means."

"The honest-to-god-truth Wishes is that she is not exactly a butterfly, but she can appear as one sometimes. She checks in on you regularly. You've probably noticed out of the corner of your eye a sparkly colored movement from time to time. If you have, you can be sure it was her."

I was dumbstruck. My momma is a butterfly sometimes? What the heck does that mean? So I asked, "Daddy you always said you would tell me more about that, but you never have. Do you think I'm old enough now?"

"Yes, Wishes, I think maybe I should have told you sooner. For you to understand, though, I'll have to start from the very beginning when I met her."

He cleared his throat. "One sunny day," my father began, "When I was a just few years older than you are now, I spied an amazing butterfly as it tickled the flower tops. It was landing briefly, then almost immediately lifting, and sailing over to another blossom, and another, then yet another. It was a variety that I hadn't seen before and I couldn't identify. It was the size of a large Monarch but the colors were bright blue, blue-green, and deep ocean blue, with hotspots of red, surrounded by yellow, and dazzling white. It was so beautiful it looked like the expensive rings in jewelry store windows, and like those rings, it reflected light every which-a-way.

"I couldn't take my eyes off her. I supposed that it must be a 'her' because no guy could ever be that beautiful. She skipped and flitted around the Black-Eyed-Susan's. Trying first one, and then another. She spied the clematis and shooed over to the vine. I'll bet it was the purple she couldn't resist. Purple is a royal color, ya know. Who can resist purple? Not anybody I knew, and certainly not incredible butterflies. 'When you can't resist a thing, it's best to embrace it because that is where you'll find your heart' is what your Gramma used to say.

"She must have filled her belly full of clematis nectar because it appeared that she could barely get her wings to carry her further. She landed heavily on the peeling painted windowsill of my bedroom to rest. As she rested on the sill, slowly moving her wings up and down, I looked out that open window and observed closeup the most unbelievable sight I'd ever seen. The butterfly's body didn't look quite normal. It looked, and I don't blame you if you don't believe me, it looked like a teeny-tiny person; an exquisitely beautiful miniature woman. She glanced over her wings and saw me staring. Maybe she was caught-up by the same thought. This young boy-man with farm hardened muscles was the most amazing thing she had ever seen. Then I thought I heard a small voice. The sound weren't in my ears though; it came from inside my head. It was like she was speaking to me, but not with her mouth. In that moment, I knew without words, that she was pretty doggone interested in me too.

"After a while, she had to leave. She had to return home. What could I do? I was so fascinated with this awesome creature that I followed her when she flapped out of the yard and over the wood fence in the back. There was a loose board in the fence and all you had to do is push it aside and you could slip through it easy as pie. It was my shortcut to the field then. It's probably still there to this day, but I haven't gone through it in many years. I doubt if I would fit.

I followed her over the furrowed acres that used to be our family farm before Daddy sold it. Nearby, beyond the fields were the beginnings of the Magic Woods. Few people had the courage to venture in there because of the strange going-ons associated with those woods. Things happen in there that people only whisper about and they certainly wouldn't discuss out loud and never around children.

"I have often wondered if anyone saw me following that rare and beautiful butterfly past the fence, through the fields, and into the woods. If anybody had been looking, they would only have noticed a young man taking a stroll on a nice day. They wouldn't have known that I was enchanted, that there was a gleam in my eyes that hadn't been there before. They would have watched me disappear into the underbrush and maybe got a chill as they realized where I was going, but it would pass and they'd think nothing more of it. Just a boy being a boy--nothing more, nothing less--and here was my whole life about to change and no one would have even known. Heck, I didn't even know.

"Even if they had foreseen what was about to happen they wouldn't have believed it, and if by some miracle they did believe, they wouldn't understand, not really. People say they know how you feel, but how can they? They cain't unless they are in exactly the same situation themselves and no situation is ever exactly the same, is it?

"Even the words hot and cold don't have any meaning at all to someone who hasn't ever felt them. You can tell a child, 'Don't touch it's hot, but until the youngster experiences hot and cold, it doesn't mean nothing at all. It's just blah, blah, and blah. It's the same way with everything else. You have to experience a thing before you can truly understand.

"That's all I'm saying, before I became your father, I was following my heart. What I was feeling wasn't logical; it was coming from someplace other than my five senses. It didn't matter to me. I was experiencing something I had never felt before. There are times you just have to accept it when a special feeling comes from inside, especially when the feeling is so completely overpowering as this one was.

"I cain't recall if I heard the whistlin' salamander just then, I was too enthralled by that incredible butterfly to notice. I'd be willing to bet a million--billion bucks that I did though. I'd bet that ol' salamander was whistlin' to beat the band. Maybe the butterfly heard it and she was following the sound like I was following her."

"So," I said, jumping ahead "this butterfly woman led you to somewhere where you found my mother?"

"Not exactly Wishes, that butterfly and I fell in love and she became your momma."

You could have knocked me off the chair, like they say, with a feather. I didn't know what to do with this information. It was like some bizarre fairy tale; only instead of it happening a long time ago in a faraway land, it was my story. "No! That cain't be true Daddy. That doesn't make no sense at all! I wanted to know about my momma and you tell me this fairytale." I was very upset. Who wouldn't be? I had just been told that I was a cross between a human being and a flying bug. I didn't want to hear any more, so I pushed away from the table and ran to my room.

Just before I slammed the door closed I heard Daddy say, "Wait Wishes, there's more I need to tell you about the Keepers and Lair..." That's all I heard. Keepers and Lair...didn't mean a dog gone thing to me.

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