Mad Boys by Ernest Hebert

University.”
    “I guess I can call you the Autodidact, then,” I said.
    “Done deal,” he said, and we shook hands. I smelled something that made my mouth water.
    “What’s that?” I sniffed the air.
    “Breakfast. I suppose you’ll want some.”
    The next thing I knew I found myself sitting down for victuals with the Autodidact. He’d set up a camp about fifty feet into the woods, with cooking gear, a small fire, a log to sit upon, and, inevitably, a book. We ate bacon, eggs, and toast off paper plates.
    “Why don’t you eat in your trailer?” I said, and shooed away bugs.
    “I like to be among the birds and the bees.”
    “Don’t forget the black flies and the mosquitoes.”
    “And the snakes in the grass. And the hawks above. Enemies everywhere. Even in the midst of beauty. It’s nature’s way. I willingly submit myself to it.”
    “Is that so?” I dug into the food. A minute passed with no conversation, just eating. Then I took a break from chewing, and just to be polite I asked him about the book he’d been reading.
    “I’m glad you’re interested. In this book, you’ll find example after example of how nature mediates against necessary violence with elegance.” The Autodidact picked up the book and showed me a picture of an orange and black butterfly. “Do you know what this is?”
    “Sure, it’s a monarch.”
    “That’s correct. It’s marked so vividly to warn off birds. You see, it’s poisonous.”
    I thought about Royal, whose colors were orange and black.
    The Autodidact showed me a picture of another orange and black butterfly. “What’s this?” he asked me.
    “Trick question,” I said. “I’m supposed to say it’s a monarch and you’re going to call me a liar.”
    “I can see that you have some experience in the world of deception. This is a viceroy, which is not poisonous and which therefore is a fine meal for a bird. But the viceroy, like the monarch, is orange and black and good-sized. It’s a deceiver. It fools the birds into thinking that it’s a monarch.”
    The Autodidact talked on. Father and I used to finish our food quicker than you can say oink oink. With this fellow, eating was different. It was dining. That meant food for thought as well as belly. It took forever to get through the meal, though, and I was anxious to put some miles between New Hampshire and me.
    “There’s another butterfly whose name escapes me at the moment, but which I find even more intriguing than the monarch and the viceroy.” The Autodidact flipped through the pages of the book, and showed me a picture of a drab bug with wings. “In its caterpillar state, this creature crawls down into an ant hole.”
    “And the ants kill it and eat it,” I said.
    “No, the ants bring eggs from their queen for the caterpillar to feast upon. You see, the caterpillar gives off an essence which intoxicates the ants.”
    “It gets the ants stoned?”
    “That’s correct. You are worldly indeed. This creature is a like an entertainer. As long as it intoxicates its audience, it’s loved and revered. The minute its charm wears off it’s attacked and destroyed by its audience. With luck, the caterpillar pupates.”
    “What?”
    “Pupates. It means transformation. Its body is transformed from a caterpillar to a butterfly. It crawls out of the ant hole, spreads its wings, and flies away.”
    If a caterpillar could pupate, why not me? Maybe it had already happened. Maybe before coming out of the mud, I had not been a boy at all, but some other kind of being. I thought about the Alien. The Autodidact sounded like a robot at times—maybe he was a robot!—and the Alien had sent him to confound me. I mulled all this over and concluded I had not yet pupated.
    “Where you from?” I said.
    “Native of New Hampshire, via French Canada. When I was a kid, the Yankees and the Irish called us Frogs. That made me mad, and I got into a lot of trouble.”
    “Are you still mad?”
    “At times, yes, but I am