The Round House

by Louise Erdrich

  No, I thought, as I crept into my bed, I’ve got Cappy and the others. I’ve done what I had to do. There is no going back. And whatever happens, I can take.

  I was down. I was sick for real now, with the summer flu, just as I had pretended. Whitey vouched for us. When first Vince Madwesin, then another tribal police officer, then finally Agent Bjerke, pressed him, Whitey gave up that we’d gotten into his booze stash and passed out behind the station. He showed them our hideout in the weeds, the bottle, which was fingerprinted, and my shirt. My mother identified it as the one she’d washed for me to wear that day. But the rifle. Doe’s 30.06. I was running a fever of alternating sweats and chills and my sheets were sodden. While I was ill, I watched the golden light pass across my walls. I could feel nothing, but my thoughts ran wild. Always I kept going back to the day I dug the trees out of the foundation of our house. How tough those roots had clung. Maybe they had pulled out the blocks that held our house up. And how funny, strange, that a thing can grow so powerful even when planted in the wrong place. Ideas too, I muttered. Ideas. Dad’s case law, the Cohen, and then that hot dish. I’d think of the black noodles. The noodles became a carcass—the human, the buffalo, the body subject to the laws. I’d wonder how my mother got her spirit to return to her body, and if it had returned, and if mine was fleeing now because of what I’d done. Would I become a wiindigoo? Infected by Lark? And it occurred to me how even pulling trees that day, just months ago, I was in heaven. Unaware. I had known nothing even as the evil was occurring. I hadn’t been touched yet. Thinking finally exhausted me. I turned over, away from the light, and slept.

  Dad, I said, once, when he came into the room. Does Linda know? Is she okay?

  He’d brought me a glass of Whitey’s cure—warm ginger ale.

  I don’t know, he said. She won’t pick up her telephone. She’s not at work.

  I’ve got to get to her, I thought. And then I slept hard again until late the next morning. When I woke from that sleep everything was clear. I had no fever, no sickness at all. I was hungry. I got up and took a shower. Put fresh clothes on and came downstairs. The trees at the edge of the yard swayed and the leaves showed their dull silvery undersides. I ran myself a glass of tap water and stood at the kitchen window. My mother was outside, kneeling in the dirt of the garden with a colander, picking the bush beans that my father and I had planted late. She dropped down and crawled the row on all fours sometimes. Sat back on her heels. She gave the colander a little jounce, to settle the beans. That’s why I did it, I thought. And I was satisfied right then. So she could give her colander a shake. She didn’t have to look behind her, or fear he would sneak up on her. She could pick her bush beans all day and nobody was going to bother her.

  I poured out a bowl of cereal and added milk. I ate it slowly. The cereal felt good going down. I rinsed my bowl and went outside.

  My mother got up and walked over to me. She put her stained palm on my forehead.

  Your fever’s gone.

  I’m fine now!

  You should take it easy, just stay home and read or . . .

  I won’t do much, I said. It’s just that school starts up in two weeks. I don’t want to waste any of my last days.

  I guess they would sure go to waste if you stayed home with me. She wasn’t angry, but she didn’t smile.

  I didn’t mean it that way, I said. I’ll come back early.

  Her eyes, one sadder than the other with its sinking squint, moved softly over me. She pushed back my hair. I looked over her shoulder and saw an empty pickle jar sitting on the kitchen step. I froze. The jar. I’d left the jar on the hill.

  What’s that?

  She turned around. Vince Madwesin came by. He gave me the jar and said to wash it out. He said he likes my home-canned pickles. I guess it’s a hint. She looked back at me, closely, but I didn’t change my expression.

  I am worried over you, Joe.

  It was a moment I still linger on in my thoughts. Her standing before me in the riot of growth. The warm earth smell of her hands, a slick of perspiration on her neck, her searching eyes.

  Whitey said you boys got drunk.

  It was an experiment, I said, and the results came back negative. I wasted good vacation being sick, Mom. I think my drinking days are done.

  She laughed in relief and the laugh stuck in her throat. She said she loved me and I mumbled back at her. I looked down at my feet.

  Are you okay now? I asked, low.

  Oh sure, my boy. I’m really good; I’m back to myself. Everything is fine now, fine. She tried to persuade me.

  At least he’s dead, Mom. He paid, whatever else.

  I wanted to add that he did not die easy, that he knew what he was getting killed for, that he saw who was killing him. But then I’d have to say it was me.

  I couldn’t look at her and got on my bike. I rode away with her silent gaze heavy on my back.

  First, I rode over to the post office. There was a chance I might run into Dad if it was lunchtime, so I wanted to slip in before noon and see if Linda was working. She was not. Margaret Nanapush, the grandma of the Margaret in my class at school, the girl at the powwow I turned out to marry, told me that Linda was using up some sick leave. As far as Mrs. Nanapush knew, she was at home. So I went there.

  I was weak enough to feel that ride as endless. Out on that edge of the reservation, the wind cuts hard. I pedaled against its flow for a good hour before I came to Linda’s road, and then finally swerved into her driveway. Linda’s car was parked in a wooden carport. She drove, surprising to say, a cute blue Mustang. I remembered that she’d said she enjoyed taking to the road. I leaned my bike against her porch. I am winded, I said out loud, and wished Cappy was there to laugh at my bad joke. I dragged myself to the door and knocked, rattling the loose screen in its aluminum frame. She appeared behind it.

  Joe! You snuck up on me!

  She touched the screen, frowning at it. Shook it.

  I’ve gotta fix this. Come in, Joe.

  Her dog started barking, too late. He ran up the hill from a field below the sloping ledge of yard where the house sat. By the time he reached the house he was wheezing—a stumpy old black dog with a whitened face.

  Buster, smile, said Linda. He lolled out his tongue, grinning and panting in a comical way. I thought of how I’d heard people looked like their dogs. It was true. Linda let him in with me.

  I suppose we shouldn’t be laughing, considering what happened, she said as she led me into her kitchen. Sit down, Joe. What can I get you? She listed everything she had. Every kind of drink and sandwich possibility. I didn’t stop her. Finally, Linda said she was fond of a fried egg sandwich with horseradish mayonnaise, and that if I picked that one she’d make it for the both of us. I said that sounded good. While she was frying up the eggs, she told me I could look around and so I wandered into the living room and took in the odd order of her place. At my house, although we kept it neat enough, there were always piles of papers and other interesting stuff here and there. Or books that had gotten off the shelves. Not everything was put away immediately. There might be a jacket draped over a chair. Our shoes weren’t lined up by the door. Linda’s house was extremely neat in the usual way, but also in a way that disoriented me until I figured it out. Everything had a double, though not an identical. Her bookshelf had two books by each author, not the same book, though sometimes a hardback with its companion paperback. They were mostly historical romances. She had chosen collections of objects to display, also two by two. Glass figurines of Disney characters on her end tables, paired in different colors, circled the lamps on which she’d glued fake leaves sorted by the same principle. There were swamp-willow baskets hanging on the wall behind the television. Each held nearly the same arrangement of dried grasses and empty seedpods. She also had a gabled Victorian dollhouse that only a grown-up could have owned. I was afraid to look inside but did, and sure enough every room was completely furnished down to toothpick-fine candles and in the bathroom
two infinitesimal toothbrushes and tubes of toothpaste. I had the creeps and we hadn’t even talked. She called me back into the kitchen and I went in, tongue-tied. We sat down at her table, which was old and made of scarred wood. At least it was the only table. There was not another almost like it. She had covered it with a bright cloth and set out plates and glasses. She poured some iced tea. The bread was toasted crisp. There was an extra plate. I pointed at it.

  What’s it for?

  Doe told me in that sweat lodge, Joe, that since I had a double spirit around me I should just welcome it. I set up my house for two people, see, even the little people. And when I eat I always set out an extra plate and I put a bit of the food I’m eating on it.

  There was a crust of bread on the plate.

  Spirits don’t eat much?

  Not this one, said Linda comfortably.

  And suddenly it all seemed okay by me. I was hungry the way you get after an illness. Suddenly ravenous.

  Linda munched away, beaming at me, then at the sandwich. She put the eggy bread down almost lovingly and addressed it.

  Is it a sin to enjoy you when my own twin brother is lying dead in a morgue? I don’t know, but you sure taste good.

  I gulped. The other sandwich made a lump in my throat.

  Wash it down with some tea?

  She poured a bit more into my glass from a plastic pitcher bobbing with cut lemons and ice.

  I didn’t take off work to mourn, you know me better than that, she said. I took off work for other reasons. I had sick leave coming so I thought, hey, I’ll use this time to straighten a few things out.

  What things? I thought of her neatly duplicate living room, but then I knew she meant her thoughts.

  I’ll tell you, said Linda, if you’ll tell me why you came here.

  I put down my sandwich, wishing I had eaten it all before we got to this.

  Wait, said Linda. As if she’d read my mind, she said that we should eat first and talk later. She apologized for being a bad hostess. Then she lifted her food in her chubby little hands, the sharp nails newly shellacked, and gave me such a look—it was a merry twinkle but at the same time it suggested insanity. I ate slowly, but eventually I had to take the final bite.

  Linda patted her lips with her paper napkin and folded it into squares.

  The golf course, she said. You pumped me for information. She wagged her finger at me. Two and two makes three. However, I have decided that you are too young to have accomplished this. Maybe you’re not, but I’ve decided you are. My theory is you gave the information about Linden golfing to someone older. But someone nearsighted, not your father. Your father is a very good shot.

  He is?

  This was of course a big surprise to me.

  Everybody knows that. He brought down anything he aimed at as a young man. Kids don’t know their parents’ history. What did you come here for?

  Can I trust you?

  If you have to ask me that? No.

  I was stuck. That mad sparkle came back and lighted up her tiny round eyes. She seemed about to explode with laughter. Instead, she leaned toward me and peered around as if the walls were bugged, then she whispered.

  I would do anything in the world for your family. I am devoted to you guys. Though you’ve been using me, Joe, and you want something from me now. What is it?

  Right then, I thought I was going to ask about the rifle. Instead, I heard myself ask the question I knew had no answer.

  Why, Linda? Why did he do it?

  I caught her off guard. Her eyes bulged and filled. But she answered. She answered like she thought it was so obvious I wouldn’t need to ask.

  He hated your family, I mean, your father mostly. But Whitey and Sonja too. His thinking was all crooked, Joe. He hated your father but he was afraid of him. Still, he wouldn’t have come for Geraldine except for he became a monster when it came to Mayla. By filling out that form in Geraldine’s office, Mayla had named old Yeltow as father of her child—meaning she got pregnant while she worked for him. A high-school girl. From that old lech, excuse me, she got a car to travel home with, and payoff money not to talk, but she still insisted on enrolling her baby. Linden worked for the governor, but he was always jealous, always possessive, sick, smitten to death with Mayla. He wanted to run away with her on that money, and here she won’t share. Won’t go with him. Probably hates him, scared of him. Tries to get Geraldine to help her—so now both of them know the truth. All this eats at him. He idolized Yeltow. Maybe he thought if he had that file he’d save Yeltow. Or maybe he’d blackmail Yeltow. I could see him doing either. And of course your mother wouldn’t give him that file. But why he did this to your mother had more to do with a man who set loose his monster. Not everybody’s got a monster, and most who do keep it locked up. But I saw the monster in my brother way back in the hospital and it made me deathly ill. I knew that someday he would let it loose. It would lurch out with part of me inside. Yes. I was part of the monster too. I gave and gave, but know what? It was still hungry. Know why? Because no matter how much it ate, it couldn’t get the right thing. There was always something it needed. Something missing in his mother, too. I’ll tell you what it was: me. My powerful spirit. Me! His mother couldn’t face what she did to her baby, but even more: that what she did could not destroy me. Still, Linda brooded, she could call me after telling the doctor to let me die. All those years later. Call me and say, Hello, it’s your mother.

  I was silent.

  And he could not let go, she said at last. Because he came back and he came back like he wanted his monster killed, though another reason has occurred to me also.

  What’s that?

  He was nervous about Mayla. I just know she’s somewhere on the reservation. He had to keep checking on her, make sure she wasn’t found.

  Do you think she’s alive?

  No.

  After a while, dread stole into me. I asked, Am I like him?

  No, she said. This’ll get to you. Or whoever, I mean. This could wreck you. Don’t let it wreck you, Joe. What could you do? Or whoever do?

  She shrugged. But me, that’s another story. It’s me who is not so different, Joe. It’s me who should have shot him with Albert’s old twelve-gauge. Though if Linden had his druthers, I think he’d rather have got shot with the deer rifle.

  Yeah, it’s about that rifle, I said.

  The rifle.

  It’s under your porch. Can you hide it? Get it off the reservation?

  She grinned at me in a way fit to burst and I thought crazy, but then she bit her lip modestly and blinked.

  Buster found it already, Joe. He knows when anything new enters his territory. I thought he was interested in a skunk. Then I looked underneath and saw the edge of that black Hefty bag.

  She saw my shock.

  Don’t worry, Joe. Want to know where I’ve been on my sick leave? To Pierre, to my brother Cedric’s. He got his training down in Fort Benning, Georgia, and sure knew how to disassemble that rifle. We threw a couple of pieces in the Missouri. I drove back here in a zigzag I can’t even remember, down back roads, and ditched the rest of it in sloughs. She held up her empty palms and said, Tell whoever did it to rest easy. Her eyes clouded, her look gentled.

  Your mom? How is she?

  She was out in the garden, picking bush beans. She said she was fine, but I mean she said it over and over so I’d believe her.

  I’ll come see her. I want you to give her this.

  Linda took something from her pocket and held her fist over my hand. When she opened it a small black screw fell out.

  Tell her she can keep this in her jewelry box. Or bury it. Whatever she likes.

  I put the screw in my pocket.

  Halfway home, blown along all the way back with the usual frozen foil-wrapped brick of banana bread numbing my armpit, I realized of course that the screw in my pocket was part of the rifle. Steadied by the wind, I didn’t have to pause or use my handlebars. I fished it out and winged it into the ditch.


  This time it was Angus’s bottle of Captain Jack’s stolen from his mother’s boyfriend with a handful of Valium pills and a grocery bag halfway filled with cans of cold Blatz.

  We were drinking at the edge of the construction site. After the lazy bulldozers and the Bobcats stopped moving the same dirt piles around, the place was ours. Some days they left our bike tracks alone, other days they obliterated our work. We had no idea what was going to be built. There was always the same amount of dirt.

  A federal project, said Zack.

  Cappy tipped the beer down with a pill, lay back, and stared up into the leaves. The light was turning gold.

  This here is my favorite time of day, he said. He took a small wallet-size school photo of Zelia from his cowboy shirt pocket and held it to his forehead.

  Ssshhh, they’re communicating, Angus said.

  I miss you too, baby, said Cappy after a few moments. He put the photo back in his pocket, pressed down the pearl snaps, and patted his heart.

  It’s a beautiful love, I said. I turned on my side and leaned into the earth and threw up a little. I buried the puke with dirt. Nobody noticed. I mumbled, I wouldn’t mind a beautiful love.

  Cappy handed me a pamphlet. Her last letter, man. It was about the Rapture. This was in it. Cappy smiled upward.

  I looked at the pamphlet steadily, reading the words several times to get their meaning

  Rapture, yeah man, said Zack.

  Not that kind of rapture, said Cappy. It’s a mass liftoff. There’s only a certain number of people who can go. They don’t apparently take Catholics so Zelia’s family is thinking of converting before the Tribulation. She wants me to convert along with them so we get raptured up together.

  Stairway to heaven, laughed Zack.

  Raptured as one, I said. As one. My brain had started on a repeating loop and I had to force my mouth to stop saying everything I thought fifty times.