Like a butterfly

Just as the beautiful creatures did each year, Marie and her family were moving on . . .

The dust had forced hundreds of thousands of people out of Oklahoma. Marie Dorland read her newspaper every day, and the numbers in it were hard to comprehend. “Out of Missouri, Iowa, Nebraska, Kansas, Texas, Colorado, New Mexico.”

She was reading to her mother-in-law, who sat quietly in a corner behind the shop counter, her knitting – untouched for days – on her lap.

The shop was empty, and had been empty for an hour or more. Nobody had any money to buy anything.

“It says here that farmers and farmworkers make up only half of the folks leaving,” she told Rosa.“and there are dust clouds blowing all the way to the east coast. I bet the city people won’t like that!”

It was 1936, and countless acres of farmland across the American prairies had turned to dust and were blowing away.

Marie was 60 years old and it felt exhausting to have to close the shop, and impossible to take her sick motherin-law with them, but soon there would be nothing left to do here. At least Marie knew where she would go if she did move her family on. There was a region she knew in the north.

Marie had come to Oklahoma from the Rocky Mountains after she met her husband Ruben. That had been the most exciting time of her life, travelling to a church conference where folks from all across the States were gathered.

Ruben had come up from a farm in Oklahoma, and she had fallen in love with him in an instant. She’d followed him home and married him.

She missed him every day, because nearly 30 years of a happy marriage is hard to forget. Marie had felt all at sea since becoming a widow. She knew now that she was what her mother had called a “natural wife”. She felt safe and happy when she was a half of something.

“Heading north will be an adventure,” her daughter had begun to say.

Bernadette knew they had to leave, and so did her husband. They had a daughter now – Lucy – and they deserved a fresh start. Both Bernadette and Johnnie worked in the shop, but they were twiddling their thumbs now and worrying about Lucy’s future.

At least Marie had time to read these days. She had always been a reader, while Ruben had been a doer.

“I know you love books,” he’d say with a smile and a kiss when, every Christmas and every Thanksgiving, there would be a book wrapped up in brown paper and waiting on the kitchen table.

“When will I get time to read it?” she’d ask. Bernadette would begin handling the book in her sticky little hands and Marie would gently reclaim it.

“You will get time,” Ruben would say. Now Marie had the time, but only because they were selling so little.

Ruben’s mother, a tiny, sweet-natured woman whom Marie adored, seemed to have been disappearing lately, so silent was she and so small in her illness.

Marie tended to her, and in between she wandered into the small back parlour. In their busy years the room had barely been entered. She ran a finger along the cloth spines of the books. There were red volumes of essays, a beautiful little book about art, and a novel of Mr Hawthorne’s.

That day, her finger stopped at one of the first books Ruben had given her, called “Butterflies Of The World”.

She pulled it from the shelf. The pages were bent and there were stains, and Marie remembered that she had allowed Bernadette to look at this one, with its pictures of butterflies from tropical climes. She took the book back into the shop, and looked at the pictures, then read the life cycles and habits of the delicate insects as she watched Rosa. Marie’s decision about leaving Oklahoma was made for her when Ruben’s mother went to sleep one warm afternoon and didn’t wake up.

She looked so peaceful that it took Marie some days to begin to cry, and when she did, the tears were cleansing, and the feelings of distress came with a sense of rightness. It pained Marie to know that Rosa had seen the store failing. It had been Rosa who had first suggested they up sticks and migrate north, back in 1930 when it became clear that overfarming had dried the land past recovery.

Johnnie and Bernadette were sad about Rosa, but keen to go. If they could settle soon, Lucy could begin her schooling at the right age. Johnnie and Bernadette deferred to Marie on the matter of where to go.

“We’re Okies through and through,”

Bernadette said.“you’re the cosmopolitan in the family, Ma.”

It wasn’t as though Marie had family waiting for her in Montana – her mother and father were long dead. But she remembered the country and she knew that there were jobs there. They began the process of choosing what to take and what to leave. It was slow and tiring.

There were crates to find, furniture to sell for a pittance and railroad tickets to seek. They decided that they would lodge cheaply at three or four places en route.

Bernadette was due to have another baby in April, but they would be there long before that, and the time had come to quit. It was winter, but staying longer in the Dust Bowl would use up their last cents in simply staying alive. The shop and the house began to look very different, and to calm herself Marie read her butterfly book.

The Blue Morpho was so blue that Marie marvelled at it; the Zebra Longwing was dramatic with its stripes. The increasingly dark evenings meant that she read more, and as they packed up the last rooms she reached the less glamorous species at the back of the book.

“So many ordinary ones,” Johnnie said, looking over her shoulder as he passed by her chair carrying a box.

“This is the Monarch Butterfly,” Marie explained.“it’s orange. I like this one. It says it has a complicated migratory pattern.”

“When we set off next week you can tell us about it on the train, Marie.”

The weather became unusually severe when they reached Colorado, and they had to hole up in a chilly boarding house near the railway station for more than a fortnight. The next train got them another hundred miles further on, but then there was another stop for snow.

Somebody would have to bring in some money before they moved on again, or they risked having nothing.

Johnnie and Bernadette both got jobs in the industrial town where they found themselves.

“I don’t like you working when you’re expecting,” Marie told Bernadette.

But there was nothing to be done. Marie looked after Lucy as the cold days wore on. In Buffalo, Lucy got sick. It looked like a cold at first, but then it grew worse and the doctor was called.

“I think this may have turned to pneumonia,” he said. He looked at the family around Lucy’s bed.“you people up from the south?”

They nodded.

“Dust Bowl pneumonia?” Johnnie asked in a thin voice. It was a scourge – grit in the lungs and symptoms like lung disorders. There was no treatment but rest, so they stayed put and bought extra coal to keep the room warm. They talked about how relieved they were to have taken Lucy and Bernadette out of the dust. By the child’s bedside Marie read the butterfly book, because she recalled how much Bernadette had liked it.

“The Monarch Butterfly migrates south for the winter,” she read.“it says here that some of them go to Florida.”

“Florida sounds nice,” Lucy said. She was feeling better and talking more.“it means flowery, Grandma.”

“It does. The book says that once the winter is over, the Monarch goes back north again.”

“Like you, Grandma.”

“Well, I suppose like me. Look at this! It takes four generations of the butterfly to complete the migration.”

“What’s a generation?”

“Well, having a child makes a new generation, so we have three in our family.”

“And four if Great-grandma Rosa was here.”

“That’s right.” Marie bent over the book.“as this butterfly goes north, new generations are born, so they are having babies to keep the journey going. They make a family the size of ours in one summer!”

Lucy’s eyes were closing and Marie closed the book. Johnnie’s job, though temporary, paid well, and that kept the family from continuing their trip for six weeks more. Marie became used to the town, and she did most of the shopping and the cooking. Their landlady had allowed them to use a little scullery kitchen below their rooms to save them money on board.

Marie got to know the man who owned and ran the local store, and he began to remember what the family liked.

“This’ll be for the child,” he said whenever Marie asked for oats.

Lucy had a passion for Scottish porridge, with the eccentric addition of maple syrup. Leonard Miller, the store owner, was a mild, friendly man with an engaging smile and an intelligent way of talking.

Marie guessed he was her own age, or a little younger, but she’d always been told that she was a pretty woman, with the hair and smooth skin of her Norwegian forebears, and that she looked younger than her sixty years.

“I never married,” Leonard told Marie.“i guess shop-keeping kept me too busy to find the right woman.”

Marie shared her own story, then the two talked about wholesale prices, stocktakes and the problem of giving credit. Marie would walk back to the lodgings feeling that she’d had a good conversation for the first time in a while.

Leonard turned out to have a small library of his own. It was arranged below shelves of dry goods out back, and he showed his books to Marie.

“I’m reading a biography of Washington just now,” he said.

“I’m reading a nature book to my granddaughter. We’ve been looking at the life cycle of the Monarch Butterfly.”

“Four generations to reach their destination,” Leonard said.

“Fancy you knowing that!” Marie exclaimed.

Johnnie’s job came to an end, and he and Bernadette were anxious to set off north again.

“There’s only Yellowstone between us and our destination,” Johnnie said.

Bernadette was antsy because Lucy had been born early, and she did not want to be on the road when March arrived.

“I wrote to a lumber yard in Great Falls and there’s a job for me,” Johnnie said.

They were ready to go, but Marie found that she was in doubt. It seemed crazy to think it, and crazier to say it, but she didn’t like the thought of leaving Leonard behind.

That same night, she finished reading the latest chapter of the butterfly book to Lucy.

“The fourth generation is different,” she read.“it can live up to nine months. It is these final butterflies that later migrate back south, for wintering.”

“And it all begins again!” Lucy cried. “Grandma, am I the fourth generation?”

“You could look at it like that.” Marie looked at Lucy. She was wiry and little, like Ruben’s mother.“you could say that Great-grandma was the first.”

“So I am the important one,” Lucy said. “It doesn’t matter about the others.” Marie laughed.

“You are always the important one,” she said.“you come first.”

Marie made the decision to stay in Wyoming. She was in love.

There were two generations to keep the journey north going, to new places and a new life.

Marie kept most of her books with her in Wyoming.

“The Monarch Butterfly,” Leonard said after their wedding, and he flicked through the book,“keeps the cycle of life rolling on. The generations fall away as the species travels on. The older butterflies pass on everything to the younger.”

“My babies and theirs,” Marie said, taking his hand.“and theirs to come.”

“I caught one butterfly.” He smiled. “That’s all I need on my journey.”

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