Beams of sun angled into the clearing from the east, so complexly figured with droplets of moisture that they appeared to embody flaws and fracture planes, like artifacts of golden crystal snapped off in midair. The three men stood and took positions at the rim of the clearing. Apprehension spidered Mingolla’s backbone, and he popped two ampules to clear his head. Then, tired of waiting, he walked to the center of the clearing, his nerves keyed by every shift of shadow, every twitching leaf. Clouds slid across the sun, muting the sky to a platinum gray; a palpable vibration underscored the stillness.
Less than a minute later, Coffee came jogging toward him from the east, a grin splitting the wild thatch of his beard. Mingolla had expected formalities, but Coffee broke into a run, and he barely had time to brace himself before the man hurtled into him, his head catching Mingolla in the side and knocking him to the ground. He went with the fall, rolling out of it and up to his feet; he circled away, amazed by the fluidity of his movements, and though his ribs ached from the impact, he laughed in delight.
‘Aw, David!’ Coffee balanced on one hand and a knee, still grinning. ‘I hate to rob ya of this joy.’ He hopped to his feet, held both fists overhead as if squeezing power from the air.
Laughter bubbled out of Mingolla. ‘You too crazy to live anymore, man. This ain’t a test.… I’m here to relieve you of command.’
‘Are ya, no shit?’ Coffee dropped into a crouch.
‘Come to me inna dream,’ said Mingolla. ‘Your soul ascending into the light, your body all maggoty and hollow.’
Coffee gave his head a good-natured shake, pawed at a butterfly that fluttered into his face. ‘I love ya, David. Swear I do.’ He stared admiringly at Mingolla. ‘Wish there’s another way.’
He lunged, swung his left fist, catching Mingolla on the cheekbone, rocking him; a second blow landed flush on the mouth, but he managed to keep his feet. His head spun, pain spiked his gums. He spat blood and the fragments of a tooth.
‘See what I’m sayin’, David?’ Coffee flexed his left hand, swiped at some butterflies that danced before his eyes; two others had settled atop his head, like a bow tied in his stringy hair. ‘Just a matter of time.’
He charged again, ducked Mingolla’s looping right, and nailed Mingolla twice to the head, knocking him down; he planted a kick in Mingolla’s ribs, the same spot he’d rammed with his head. Mingolla yelped, crawled away, and was flattened by another kick. Coffee hauled him to his knees, slapped him lightly as if to gain his attention.
‘Well, David,’ he said. ‘It’s cryin’ time.’
A couple of dozen butterflies were preening on Coffee’s scalp—a bizarre animate wig—and others clung to his beard; a great cloud of them was circling low above his head like a whirlpool galaxy of cut flowers. Coffee noticed those in his beard, and with a befuddled look, he swiped at them. Two more perched on his brow. Ignoring them, he threw a punch that landed on the side of Mingolla’s neck with stunning force. Threw another that clipped his jaw. He cocked his fist for a third punch. Mingolla fought to retain consciousness, but darkness was flittering at the edges of his vision, and when his head thudded against the ground, he blacked out.
He came around to cappistol noises, to a sky that was a hallucinatory blur of color. Reds, blues, yellows. He couldn’t figure it out. Something odd lurched past, turning, staggering. Mingolla sat up, watched the thing reeling about the clearing. Matted with delicate wings, man-shaped, yet too thick and bulky to be a man. It screamed, tearing at the clotted wings tripling the size of its head, pulling off wads of butterflies, and then the scream was sheared away as if the hole had been plugged. Butterflies poured down in a funnel to thicken it further, and it slumped, mounded, its surface in constant motion, making it appear to be breathing shallowly. It continued to build, accumulating more and more butterflies, the sky emptying and the mound growing with the disconnected swiftness of time-lapse photography, until it had become a multicolored pyramid towering thirty feet above, like a temple buried beneath a million lovely flowers.
Mingolla stared at it, disbelieving yet also terrified that it would fall on him, bury him under a ton of fragile weights. The cap-pistol noises were coming more frequently, and a bullet zipped into the ferns beside him. He went flat, whimpered at the pain in his ribs, and belly-crawled through the ferns. Blight-dappled fronds pressed against his face, slid away with underwater slowness. It seemed he was burrowing through a mosaic of muted browns and greens into which even the concept of separateness had been subsumed, and so he didn’t notice the boot until his hand fell upon it: the rotting brown boot of a man lying on his stomach, holed at the ankles and with vines for laces. Several butterflies perched on the heel. He inched closer, spotted a rifle stock protruding from a mound of butterflies. Carefully, afraid to touch them, he pulled the rifle to him. About a dozen butterflies came with it, clinging to the barrel and the clip. One fluttered onto his hand, and he squawked, shaking it off. Then he eased around the body and into the margin of the jungle.
The firing had become sporadic, and bullets were no longer striking near. Mingolla dragged himself behind a fallen tree trunk. He popped an ampule, had a resurgence of energy, but still felt like shit. His ribs were on fire, and the lumped bruises on his face were heavy and sick-feeling, full of poison. He spat more blood, probed with his tongue at the hole where his tooth had been. Then he turned onto his back, thinking about Coffee under all those butterflies, throat stuffed with their prickly legs, ticklish wings. He looked through a screen of brush at the clearing. Butterflies everywhere, a storm of them whirling and whirling. They’d be coming for him soon. And that was all right. He lay drained and thoughtless, watching the butterflies, not really seeing them, seeing instead the afterimages of their flights, streaks of color that lingered in the air. Time seemed to collapse around him, burying him under a ton of decaying seconds.
Something snapped in the brush to his left, and a man stumbled out of the cover. The red-bearded man who had stood guard over him. He’d lost his little piece of mirror. Dirt freckled his cheeks, bits of fern ribboned his hair. A survival knife dangling from one hand. He blinked at Mingolla. Swayed. His fatigues were plastered to his ribs, and a big bloodstain mapped the hollow of his stomach. His cheeks bulged: it looked as if he wanted to speak but was afraid more than just words would come out. ‘Jesus,’ he said sluggishly. His eyes rolled back, his knees buckled. Then he straightened, appeared to notice Mingolla, and staggered forward swinging the knife.
Mingolla tried to bring the rifle up and found that the stock was pinned under his hip. But somebody else got off a round. The bullet pasted a red star under the man’s eye, stamped his features with a rapt expression, and he fell across Mingolla’s ribs, knocking the breath from him. Shouting in the distance. Mingolla heaved the man off, his eyes squeezed shut against the pain. The effort mined a core of dizziness inside him. He resisted it, but then realizing that there was nothing attractive about consciousness, nothing he cared to know about the someone in charge of death and butterflies, he let himself go spiraling down past layers of darkness and shining wings, darkness and mystical light, and a memory of pain so bright that it became a white darkness wherein he lost all track of being.