The Butterfly - James M. Cain [1]
"I never put her out. She left me."
"That was after the mine closed down?"
"It was after the mine closed down, and after the camp broke up. The seam feathered out to nothing, from a seven-foot seam of the finest steam coal in all this section, to just a six-inch layer that couldn't be worked. And for a year twenty or thirty of us drove tunnels in the rock, where they were hoping it would thicken up again, and we even put down a shaft, so if there was a jag in the seam we'd know it. We never found anything, but all during that time people were moving out, and she said them empty shacks got on her nerves. Then they backed up the trucks and took the shacks away, down to their No. 5 mine near Carbon City. Then they took the church and the store and the tipple and the railroad and everything away, so there was nothing there to get on your nerves. And then she moved out."
"Maybe she liked people."
"Maybe she liked a lot of things."
"You sound awful bitter."
"I told you once I don't want to talk about it."
"You ever see her anymore?"
"No, never."
"Or the children?"
"Not since she took them away."
"You ever want to?"
"Sometimes I think of them. Specially little Kady. Jane, she took after my grandmother, and had the same stony disposition. But Kady was cute."
"You know where they are?"
"Yes, I know."
We had hominy and chicken, that I had killed the day before and put in the well for the preacher, and after we ate she helped me wash up and it only took a little while. Then she wanted to see where the mine had been and the camp, so we took a walk in the moonlight and I showed her how it was laid out. Then we came back to my place and I showed her my cornfields and hog pens and stable and barn, and explained to her how I had been just over the line from the company land, so I never had to pay them rent when I worked in the mine, and I could make a little extra selling pop and stuff to the men, because I did it cheaper than the company store.
"Did you buy their land when the camp was taken away?"
"No, I didn't."
"That your corn growing on it?"
"I don't say it's not."
"You rent that field?"
"It might be I just plant it."
"You mean they like you?"
"Once a year they come out here and warn me to get off and stay off. Something about the law, I forget what. They can't admit I got a right there, I guess that's it."
"And what do you do?"
"I get off and stay off. One hour."
"You mean they just let you use that land?"
"I accommodate them a little bit. When they were first moving out, and all that machinery was up there in the tipple, I watched it for them. Things were kind of lively around here in those days, what with the union moving in and all, and sometimes dynamite got left in dangerous places, with the caps and stuff all ready to go off. Then later, if a rock got washed down, so it might fall on somebody and they'd be sued, I moved it for them or let them know. They treat me all right."
"I should say they do."
Under my apple trees she hooked little fingers with me. "Miss, you can stop doing things like that."
"Mister, why?"
"How old do you think I am?"
"I know how old you are. You're forty-two."
"Well, to you forty-two may look old, but to me it don't feel old. You don't watch out, something might happen to you."
"Not unless I want it to."
"If your name is Morgan, you would want it to."
"Even with you?"
"If he's a relation, that just makes it better."
"And if your name is Tyler, you wait at the head of the hollow till he goes by and then you shoot him in the back."
"I never shot anybody."
"We were talking about names, weren't we? Some people have got a name for one thing, some for something else."
"All I'm saying is, some things run in the blood."
"And all I'm saying is, there's blood and blood."
"And if it's there, you better fight it."
"What good does that do you?"
"If you don't know, nobody can't teach you."
"Maybe I already did some fighting. Maybe it didn't get me anything. Maybe I'm tried of fighting. Maybe I feel like cutting loose. Maybe I just want to be bad."