BUTTERFLIES                     2,730 words

   The day they found out I had meningitis wasn’t the first time I saw Duncan. I’d seen him around a lot before that. I’m only saying that because afterwards, when I was talking about it, when I had the really high fever, they said I was just delirious. Well yeah, but that wasn’t why I saw him. Duncan was there, and it wasn’t like it was the fever that made me create him. That’s all I’m saying.

   I can’t remember when the first time I saw him was, but I think it was before Christmas. We were hanging out at the War Memorial and I remember seeing this guy watching us, smiling, like, and kind of interested in what we were doing. He looked weird, I thought, dressed up like an Army cadet or something. They’d had this parade in November like they always do, for Remembrance Day, and I remember thinking maybe he’d put on his cadet uniform for that. Like maybe he was mental, and he’d forgotten it had already happened or he’d got the days wrong or something.

   Me and Tom were eating chips and Tom was trying to get Louise’s attention. Louise is one of the girls who hang out with us sometimes, and Tom has this thing for her. So he was showing off, and whenever Tom shows off, one thing he does is pick a fight with his mates. Like me and Ben and Paul. He shoved Ben around a bit and Ben shoved him back, and they were swearing at each other too, and I got a little nervous ‘cause I suddenly saw one of our neighbours over by the Visitors’ Centre, and I knew she could see me. And hear Tom and Ben. She’s not too bad, this lady, but I know she tells my Mum stuff if she sees me out with my mates, especially when we’re hanging out at the War Memorial, so I was looking past her and putting on this nice face like I wasn’t really a part of what was going on. Which in a way I wasn’t. And all of a sudden, there he was, the cadet. Watching me, all interested, this sort of half-smile on his face.

   It got to me, that smile. So I said ‘What are you looking at, you wanker?’ and he smiled again and shook his head and kind of drifted off. And Tom thought I was talking to the lady, Mrs Henderson, and he said ‘Ooooh!’ But not like he thought it was bad, like he thought it was cool. I wouldn’t call Mrs Henderson names, though. When I was really little, she used to come over and sit with me and Spencer, before Mum met Kevin.  She had these hand puppets: a black and orange spider, a bluebird, a dog with droopy eyes. Spencer used to love them, and she’d sit and show him the puppets and make them do these funny voices.

   Spencer has Down’s. He can’t talk properly or do normal stuff like go to a regular school. Some kids with Down’s can talk okay, but not Spencer. I feel bad for him. He wants to hang out with me now, and I can’t let him. It would be weird having him with us. A couple of times Tom has come over to our house and Spencer always wants to come out with us, and Tom takes the piss out of him, and Spencer doesn’t twig. He’s dead chuffed to be with me and Tom, and he can’t tell that Tom’s making fun of him. That just kills me, so I can’t let him hang out with us. Sometimes if Kevin, or Mum are out, though, Mrs Henderson still comes over and sits with him and she’s really cool. I would never call her names.

   I think I saw Duncan again a week or two after that, just before Christmas. We were coming home from Carlisle and the bus was late because there was ice on the road. And we walked past the War Memorial, and there he was, and he still had on that uniform. He smiled at me again and that was when I thought that he must be mental.  Not bad mental, though, but mental like Spencer. Kind of lame, like not knowing what to do or say or what not to do or say. Not Down’s, ‘cause you can tell when someone’s got that, but something like it. He was still wearing that scout uniform, and I thought to myself maybe he had an older brother or somebody else in the family who was a cadet, and he just liked the uniform, so he wore it all the time. It was late and dark and really cold, and he was just sort of hanging out there, all dressed up in that uniform, and I suddenly felt sorry for him, so I waved. He got all happy at that and waved back, like he was really thrilled someone’d noticed him. He looked like he was getting ready to cross the street, to come over and join us. That got me worried: Spencer will hang on to anybody who’s nice to him, and I didn’t want this guy hanging on to me. Maybe he twigged, though, ‘cause he just waved again and smiled and stayed where he was.

   I’d see him around town after that. Always in the evening or at night, usually at the War Memorial, but sometimes in front of the Visitors’ Centre or walking down the high street. He’d be in his own world, smiling that gormless smile. He always looked a little lost, too. Whenever I saw him I was almost always with my mates. Once I mentioned him to Tom, but Tom was too cool to even turn around and look at him. Tom’s like that, though. He’ll dis a kid if he’s not cool, or act like they’re just not there.

   After Christmas, I was having trouble at school. I was failing maths, mainly because I stopped showing up in class, but also because I just stopped doing homework. Mum never asked me about it until the teacher started giving her a hard time about me missing classes and all. Then Mum started having a go at me, wanting to know where I was going and what I was doing all the time, and if I’d done my homework. Kevin backed her up. Kevin is such a loser. He never does anything on his own, he just waits for Mum to take a stand and then he acts like he’s the one who thought of it. So he started in on me too, so I left, slammed the door, went wherever I felt like going. A couple of times I took the bus to Carlisle on my own. Or I’d meet my mates and we’d hang out and smoke, or we’d get one of Tom’s older rothers to get us some booze and we’d drink that.

   Spencer would be really worried about me and try to follow me every time I had a row with Mum or Kevin. He’d start blubbering and be hanging on to me, wanting to go with me. I had to be kind of cold and push him away. Spencer goes to a special school which isn’t really a school, it’s more like a babysitting place, and he takes the bus there and back on his own now. Sometimes when he’d get off the bus, I’d see him look for me. Once he just stood there and stared at me, like he wanted me to notice him and walk home with him. I pretended not to see him, though, and he finally gave up and went home on his own.
 

   The day I got meningitis, I saw Spencer get off the bus from school and just stand there, staring at Tom and Ben and me from across the street. And then I saw Duncan come up and stand next to him. Spencer started talking to him, and Duncan just smiled that smile and they looked like they were having a real conversation. Which was weird, ‘cause sometimes I can’t even understand Spencer. Then after a while they both started staring at me and it was really creepy.

   Tom and Ben were being assholes and getting on my nerves. Tom kept bragging about his brother who’s fighting in Iraq, and they both kept kicking at stuff and swearing, and after a while Ben put on this face like Spencer’s, sticking his tongue out and acting clueless and taking the piss. I hate it when they do that. So I ignored them for as long as I could, then I got up and left. Went the opposite direction, along the river.

   I wasn’t feeling so great. My head hurt and my eyes ached. I’d been up late the night before and got smashed, so I thought that was why I felt so bad. When I got to the river, the sun came out and my head started pounding. I started feeling all hot and sweaty, and I wished I hadn’t had chips for lunch. I just walked along the river bank. Someone had thrown a bottle against some rocks and there was broken glass everywhere, green, I remember. The sun hit it and I felt like it was splitting my head into hundreds of pieces. I felt dizzy, sick to my stomach. So I sat down to rest. It was February, and my hands and feet were dead cold, but my body was burning up.
 

     I can’t remember when Duncan showed up. He sat down next to me and put his hand on my head and it felt good. His hands were cool, like Mum’s used to be when I was a kid and had the flu. He said his name was Duncan, Duncan V. McCulloch. Then he just sat there and talked to me, about all kinds of stuff. Butterflies, mainly. I just listened. He said butterflies had been his thing when he was my age. He looked youngish, not that much older than me, but he had a funny accent too, like he was on telly, kind of.  He told me about all these butterflies he and his brother used to collect. About how they used to catch them in a net and kill them, then pin them on this board and label what they were and put them in a collector’s case. But how sometimes they just let them go, ‘cause it was sad to see them going from beautiful living creatures to dead things. It sounds funny, I know, but the way he said it, it sounded okay. He said sometimes he and his brother would just look at butterflies and try to remember where they’d seem them. And they’d write that down – what kind of butterflies they were and where they’d seen them. And try to draw pictures of them instead of pinning them in a case.

   The way he talked was kind of soothing. ‘I always thought I’d do something with butterflies after –’ he said. ‘After it was all over, you know. Write and illustrate a picture book, perhaps. Or teach. I could have taught, I think. My folks weren’t rich – far from it –  but Mum wanted to save so that I could go and study.’ He smiled his smile again, kind of like Spencer’s. And I thought how there was nothing behind it but good feeling. You know, when most people smile, there’s all kinds of ways they can do it, all kinds of reasons too. Like you smile when you’re trying to convince people you’re good or you’re cool or smart or whatever. But with Duncan’s smile it wasn’t like he was trying to prove anything. In fact, in that way it was just like Spencer’s:  it was just, I don’t know – full of natural good feeling, that’s the only way I can describe it.

   I lay on my back and closed my eyes. The sun wasn’t strong, but it gave me a headache. Duncan sat there and tried to cheer me up. ‘Your brother will fetch help,’ he said to me, when I didn’t say anything back to him. ‘He’s a good lad, your brother, thinks the world of you. There was a boy like him in our neighbourhood, too. His name was Dennis and he used to sing for us, do a little jig. We teased him, I’m sorry to say. Wish we hadn’t now, but boys can be cruel. He never held it against us, though, he was that sweet-natured.’ Then he asked me what I liked to do, if I liked to fish or hike or go sailing. I tried to shake my head, but it hurt so bad when I tried I almost passed out. ‘Spencer will be here soon, never worry,’ he said to me, and I wondered how he knew Spencer’s name. I mean, I know they’d talked and all, but if you asked Spencer his name, you probably wouldn’t understand him even if he told you.

   I don’t remember a lot after that, only that Duncan just sat with me until Mum and Kevin came. He got up really carefully and quietly. Like he didn’t want to wake me up, even though my eyes were open and I was watching him.  Spencer was with Mum and Kevin. I remember that Spencer was really excited about something. Later they told me that I’d been delirious when they got there, and that they had to call an ambulance, I was that sick. Someone put a blanket over me and I was sick on it, I kind of remember that. I was really bad for a week or so, then I got better.

   Once I started to get better, Mum came in and sat with me. She said it was awful how I’d been all by myself, how it was really lucky that Spencer had seen me and knew where I was. That he’d come home and he’d been trying to tell them about me, but they couldn’t really understand what he was saying, only that it must be really important ‘cause he wouldn’t leave them alone; he kept pulling them and saying ‘Ah-run, Ah-run,’ which is how he says my name. So I told her that Duncan had been with me, and she asked who he was, and I told her what he looked like, and about his uniform and all. She said that there hadn’t been any one like that around, but I know he was still there when they came, ‘cause I remember him saying goodbye to me, how he’d got up and been really quiet.  That’s when Mum said that sometimes when you’re delirious, your mind makes you imagine stuff. But I didn’t imagine Duncan. No way.

   Anyway, it was a couple of months later, in the spring, and we were hanging out at the War Memorial. Me and Tom were just sitting there chilling, when these American tourists came up and started talking to us and asking us if this was the War Memorial, which, like duh – what else could it be? They started walking all around it, then, and reading out the names to each other.  I wasn’t really listening to them at first. And then I hear one of the ladies saying something like, ‘Oh listen, there’s a McCulloch here – one of the Canadians from the First World War.’ And that’s the second time I heard his name. ‘Duncan V. McCulloch, Pte, Thirty-fourth Canadians.’

   I haven’t seen him since then. Ben and Tom still hang out at the War Memorial, and sometimes I go there with them, but I never see Duncan.  Lately, I don’t much like going down there, to tell you the truth. I’m not freaked out or anything, it’s just that I think about him sometimes, and those butterflies. And I reckon if he were still here, still alive and all, he wouldn’t be just hanging out at a War Memorial, he’d be doing stuff. Writing his picture book, or studying about butterflies, or teaching or something. If he hadn’t had to go and fight in a war, I know that’s what he’d be doing. And I feel like – well, I have the chance to do something. He didn’t, but I do.