Flight Behavior

The cloudburst was winding down. The rain would move on, sweeping its chill up the valley. Ovid stood up from his log and smacked the tarp with the flat of his hand, discharging the puddle that had collected there. He drained his coffee cup and set it with finality on the plywood table. “I think we can safely return to our posts,” he said. “I should get down to the lab. I want to dissect some of these females under the scope to see if they might be coming out of diapause. What did you see this morning?”

“Some flying around,” she said. “A lot, early on when the sun was almost out. Mostly they were headed down the valley to the west.”

He shoved his hands into his raincoat pockets. “If the rain stays away, it would be good if you could keep watching this afternoon. I’m curious to know if they’re coming back to the roost. Probably these are short forays for water or nectar, rather than the start of a spring dispersal. But we really don’t know.”

He picked up the red-and-white cooler they used for transporting live butterflies and stepped outside the shelter, squatting on his heels to pick through the fallen pile. He was choosing among the already doomed to get specimens for his afternoon’s dissections. At least they would give their bodies for science. Dellarobia knelt beside him to help. They would need to pack up the equipment. This front was supposed to bring a lot more rain and possible high winds. “When they do that, the spring dispersal,” she said, “if we get that far, where will they go from here?”

“Where will they go from here,” he repeated. He said nothing else for such a long time, she stopped waiting for an answer. She picked up stiff, brittle bodies, one after another, and flicked them away. Most of these were already too dead.

Finally Ovid said, “Into a whole new earth. Different from the one that has always supported them. In the manner to which we have all grown accustomed.”

She found a live female, still pliable, faintly flapping, and dropped it into the open cooler. These little six-pack-size coolers were also used to carry organs from a deceased donor to the hospital where someone waited for a transplant, maybe with an empty chest, the old heart already cut out. She’d seen that on television. It seemed such a dire responsibility for just an ordinary cooler.

“This is not a good thing, Dellarobia,” he added. “A whole new earth.”

“I know,” she said. A world where you could count on nothing you’d ever known or trusted, that was no place you wanted to be. Insofar as any person could understand that, she believed she did.

She was unprepared to meet Leighton Akins at the top of the trail, still occupying the small gravel territory she would like to have had to herself. He was sitting in her lawn chair, no less. He had made a sort of tent over himself and the chair with a plastic poncho and seemed to have entered a dreamy state. He jumped when she hailed him.

“I was just about to go,” he said, surrendering her chair. “I ran out of my flyers. The paper airplane, that was all she wrote. But I had to wait out that rain.”

“Shoot,” she said. “I wanted to see one of those.”

“I have one,” he said. “But I need to keep it. To make more copies. Is there a copy shop in the little town here? Because I’ve looked, and I see nada.”

“Did you happen to see the bank?” She settled into her chair, grudgingly grateful he’d kept it dry. The sky was beginning to lighten, and she saw movement in the lower valley. She scanned a stretch of empty fog. These binoculars took some skill.

“The bank?”

“Yeah. They’ve got a copy machine they’ll let you use. Everybody does.”

“The bank. Who would have thought.” Mr. Akins just stood there. She wondered what he went home to at night, if anything. Probably the Wayside.

“So it’s a pledge?” she asked, keeping her binoculars trained on the mist of the valley, hunting out the bobbing specks. Finally she caught it, one butterfly. Three butterflies. “So what are we people here supposed to sign on to?”

In her periphery she saw him digging in his backpack. “I could read it to you,” he offered. “It’s a list of things you promise to do to lower your carbon footprint. That means to use less fossil fuel. To relieve the damage of carbon emissions to the planet.”

“I know what it means,” she said.

“O-kay. Sustainability Pledge,” he read. “The first category is Food and Drink. You want me to read down the list?”

“I could just look at it.”

He gave her a clouded look, clutching that paper like a last will and testament. Was he thinking she might pull a Dimmit on him and launch it? “Okay, fine,” she said. “Hit me. I’m supposed to be keeping my eyes on the prize here.” She had five butterflies in her sights now, moving together in no solid direction. She thought of the flying ants in Preston’s book. If Preston came tomorrow, they would remember to ask Dr. Byron about the mysterious reference to “perfect females.”

“Number one. Bring your own Tupperware to a restaurant for leftovers, as often as possible.”

“I’ve not eaten at a restaurant in over two years.”

“Jesus. Are you serious? May I ask why?”

She was tempted to glare, but didn’t want to lose the butterflies in her sights. Cub had been known to get fast food while he was on deliveries. She’d find the evidence on the floor of his truck, and he’d swear it wouldn’t happen again, like a man caught fooling around. He knew it was not in their budget. Cub was not the subject of this discussion.

“Okay, number two,” Mr. Akins said. “Try bringing your own mug for tea or coffee. Does not apply, I guess. Carry your own cutlery, use no plastic utensils, ditto ditto. Okay, here’s one. Carry your own Nalgene bottle instead of buying bottled water.”

“Our well water is good. We wouldn’t pay for store-bought.”

“Okay,” he said. “Try to reduce the intake of red meat in your diet.”

“Are you crazy? I’m trying to increase our intake of red meat.”

“Why is that?”

“Because mac and cheese only gets you so far, is why. We have lamb, we produce that on our farm. But I don’t have a freezer. I have to get it from my in-laws.”

Mr. Akins went quiet. His dark eyes swam like tadpoles behind his glasses.