Butterfly Boy

I am nine years old.
It is a sun-bright, unseasonably warm, early fall afternoon
at the exclusive, private elementary Belmont Day School.
A sleek, black top driveway covertly egresses
from a bumpy, pot-holed public road
and luxuriously slinks through the woods
till it cul-de-sacs
at an L-shaped, one story, flat-roofed, box building.
The neo-Bauhaus school-house has
contoured in front
a fragrant, verdant and meticulously manicured lawn.
Secreted in back,
undulating to a neglected stone wall,
unexplored,
save by the adventurous,
is an abandoned field of thigh high straw grass.


It is Harvest Festival,
an annual event of
bobbed apples, baked goods, smoky barbecues,
pin the tail on the donkey, blind man's bluff, rube goldberg races,
half-hearted rustic costumes,
improvised, hurried, soon forgotten crafts,
where
adults exhibit a contrived spontaneity, and
children
thankful for the fleeting, but sweet, lack of strict supervision
revel
as the school's coffers are replenished.

I stand alone,
leaning against a shaded wall,
ambivalent as to whether to take another sip
from a lukewarm cup of pulpy, homemade lemonade.
Through a glass door, across the darkened, empty classroom,
out the back window,
and onto the field of straw grass,
a large, unwieldy and exotic butterfly net in hand,
I spy Alfred,
a cat before its prey,
poised...
...until
with flowing, elongated jerks he passes out of sight.
I drop my cup and dash around the building.

Alfred,
an Armenian immigrant,
with
a moon face
brown sad eyes
ears angled comical-akimbo
and
sun-starved, pasty skin,
is a child
who never once
ever
permits a smile to adorn his lips.
Unlike his casually dressed peers,
Alfred,
fastidiously clothed
in creased white shirt, black pants
and spit-polished, long-laced, hob-nailed boots,
is so utterly un-suburban, so un-American, so...un-us.
To punctuate with a defiant flair his rebellion
against our despotic, informal attire,
his top shirt button is always buttoned.
Uncoordinated, aloof, different,
he is universally and rabidly despised.
However,
much to the bewilderment and chagrin of his tormentors,
when mocked or teased,
he makes no attempt to mollify,
but rather,
truculently scorns the abuse,
as if it is beneath him.

The festivities are out of sight and muted,
as I lurk onto the field of thigh high grass.
The net resting precariously against his back,
Alfred kneels entranced near the stone wall.
I approach tentatively.
Between his thumb and forefinger,
he examines an intermittently
flapping
still
butterfly,
while his free hand rustles through a carrying sack.
Out comes a folder-sized wood-framed glass case,
where, after several back and forth glances,
Alfred snorts, returns the case and releases his prey.
As he stands to watch the herky-jerky flight,
the net silently falls to the ground,
I pick it up, hold it, and with the air of a polished domestic, politely wait.
The butterfly flutters over the stone wall and is gone.

He turns, sees me, snorts, grabs the net,
scoops up his sack,
and stomps away.
Taken aback, I cry out:
"Hey, I was just?

Alfred stops, turns, strides up to within an inch of my face,
his mournful eyes blazing.
A foreign, musky, harsh, strangulated voice snarls:
"I don't care.
I am caterpillar, I am caterpillar!
Crawling caterpillar, just crawling caterpillar.
Wait till I am butterfly.!.
I fly.!.
I fly.!.
I fly away.!."

This said,
Alfred again snorts, again stomps away,
only this time,
before impetuously exiting behind the building,
he thrusts the butterfly net up high and crows:
"Beauty me!"