Butterfly's Child Read Online Free PDF Page B

trees in the distance like a mirage in the shimmer of heat. For a moment it seemed to him that much of his life had been a dream and it was only lately, with the shock of Butterfly’s death, that he had wakened to his foolishness, his vanity, and his lust—a no-good, his father had called him—and that now, as if in punishment for his sins, he walked a furrow in the ground behind his father’s Percherons, reaping a harvest of stones.

 
    The farmhouse parlor
was a lugubrious room, long and narrow, which made rearrangement of the furniture impossible, Kate found. A hideous pump organ favored by Frank’s mother dominated the room. There was a love seat of punishing horsehair, a platform rocker with frayed upholstery, and a wicker rocker better suited for the porch. The room faced westward, so that only wan light fell between the dusty brown draperies, and in the summer it was airless and hot. Kate had added to one corner of the room a curio cabinet filled with souvenirs of Frank’s travels and of her childhood in China; it would make an interesting focus of conversation when she began to entertain. In the basement she had found a rather handsome bookcase with glass doors. She had Frank carry it upstairs and, after she had dusted and polished it, she placed in it her sets of Dickens and Trollope, her Emerson and Thoreau, and the collected works of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow. Situated between the windows, in lieu of the plant stand with its spindly ferns, the bookcase was a welcome and cultivated addition to the room. Kate planned to replace the wall decorations—a morbid hair wreath; a foxed print titled
The Stag at Eve
—with examples of her own handiwork. Her first sampler, made in childhood—an alphabet with a cross-stitch rendition of Mary and her lamb—now hung above the love seat; she hoped Benji would eventually learn his letters from it.
    Benji seemed observant and bright, but he had yet to make progress with English. Of course, it was early for that. He must be frightened in his isolation, and perhaps bored. In the pocket of his overalls he always carried the string ball from Japan. Kate often saw him seated beneath atree or on the porch, shifting the ball from one hand to the other. The boy needed some new playthings.
    On the afternoon that two boxes arrived from Montgomery Ward, Kate sat on the parlor floor with Benji while she opened the larger box. “Toys,” she said. “All for you.”
    She took out a stuffed bear, golden brown with fuzzy ears, and held it out to him. “Bear.”
    He looked at it, then at her. That stare of his was unnerving. She rocked the bear in her arms, then arranged his arms around it. He looked down at it and set the bear carefully on the floor. Had he never seen a toy animal before? She should have waited until Frank was here with his dictionary to translate, but she wanted Benji to know that the toys had been her idea.
    â€œHere—you’ll like this.” She took the wooden top out of its box—it was shiny, with red, white, and blue stripes—and set it to spinning in front of him. The colors blurred as the top whirled, then it listed and sped across the floor, knocked against the rocker, and fell over. Benji laughed—you darling, she wanted to say; she had never heard him laugh before—but he made no move to retrieve the top.
    She took out a book of Mother Goose rhymes and a silver spoon with his name engraved on the handle, the latter a motivation for him to learn to use table utensils properly. Neither of these items evoked any interest.
    He liked the blocks, though, light wood with a high varnish, made in three different sizes. She helped him build a wall, and he began to make stacks of his own. She sat for a few minutes watching him as he carefully placed one block on top of another; he seemed to be counting under his breath.
    â€œI’m glad you like the blocks,” she said. He didn’t