Round House, The: A Novel

by Louise Erdrich

  Right, I said.

  So you have to wonder why a being of this immensity and power would allow this outrage—that one human being should be allowed by God to directly harm another human being.

  Something hurt in me, shot straight through me. I kept walking, my head down.

  The only answer to this, and it isn’t an entire answer, said Father Travis, is that God made human beings free agents. We are able to choose good over evil, but the opposite too. And in order to protect our human freedom, God doesn’t often, very often at least, intervene. God can’t do that without taking away our moral freedom. Do you see?

  No. But yeah.

  The only thing that God can do, and does all of the time, is to draw good from any evil situation.

  I went cold.

  He does, said Father Travis, his voice rising a little. In every instance, Joe. In every heart-soaking instance. As the priest here you know well I have buried infants and whole families killed in car accidents and young people who made terrible choices, and even people who got lucky enough to die old. Yes, I’ve seen it. Every time there is an evil, much good comes of it—people in these circumstances choose to do an extra amount of good, show unusual love, become stronger in their devotion to Jesus, or to their own favorite saint, or attain an unusual communion of some sort in their families. I have seen it in people who go their own ways, your traditionals, and never come to mass except for funerals. I admire them. They come to the wakes. Even if they are so poor they have nothing, they give the last of their nothing to another human. We are never so poor that we cannot bless another human, are we? So it is that every evil, whether moral or material, results in good. You’ll see.

  I stopped walking. I looked at the field, not at Father Travis. I shifted the book he’d given me from hand to hand. I felt like throwing it. Gophers were popping up and down, uttering their cheerful tweets.

  I’d sure like to shoot some gophers, I said through my teeth.

  We won’t be doing that, Joe, said Father Travis.

  Our dusty old midsummer reservation town sparkled all washed clean as I rode down the hill, past the BIA houses, up the road past the water tower place toward the Lafournais spread. There were three Lafournais allotments bordering on one another and although they were divided many times they never did go out of the family. The houses were connected by threads of roads and trails, but Doe’s was the main house, the ranch style closest to the road, and Cappy was there leaning on the deck rail with his shirt open and a set of free weights on the decking by his feet.

  I stopped, sat back on my bike seat.

  Any girls come by to watch you pump iron?

  Nobody came by, said Cappy. Nobody worth this vision.

  He pretended to rip his shirt open and pounded his smooth chest. He was better since last week—he had got two letters from Zelia.

  Here. He made me come up on the deck and lift his weights for a while.

  You should get your dad to buy you some weights. You can lift in your bedroom until you’re presentable.

  Presentable like you think you are. Is there any beer?

  Better than that, said Cappy.

  He reached into his jeans pocket and took out a sandwich bag rolled carefully around a lone joint.

  Hey, blood brother!

  Me sparkum up, kemo sabe, said Cappy.

  We decided to smoke it on the overlook. If we walked along the spine of a small wooded ridge down Cappy’s road we could climb to a higher spot from which we could see the golf course from close up, though we were hidden. We had watched the earnest players before—Indians and whites—as they wiggled their hips, gave shrewd looks, swung well or disastrously. Everything they did was funny: puffing out their chests or smashing down their golf clubs. We always watched the arc of the ball in case they couldn’t find it. We still had our bucket full of golf balls. Cappy put some bannock, two soft apples, pop, plus a lone beer in a plastic bag and tied it to his handlebars. We rode off, dragged our bikes into the brush at the turnoff, and walked up the hill and along the ridge to our lookout spot.

  The ground was almost dry. The rain had been sucked into the porous leaves and thirsty earth. The ticks were mostly gone. We leaned our backs against an oak tree that gave perfect shade. I held the joint too long. Quit chiefin’ it, said Cappy. I’d got lost in my thinking. The weed was harsh and stale. We drank the beer. A little party of big-bellied men in white hats and yellow shirts, a team of some sort, came into view and we laughed at every move they made. But they were good golfers and didn’t lose any golf balls. There was a lull after they passed. We smoked the roach and ate the tar bits with our food. Cappy turned to me. His hair was so long now, he flung it back with a certain head shake. Angus and Zack were already trying to fling the hair from their eyes, but couldn’t bring off the imitation. It was a gesture sure to drive girls crazy.

  How come you went to mass and took catechism from that asshole?

  News flies fast, I said.

  Yeah, said Cappy, it sure does. He wouldn’t let up. Why? he asked again.

  Wouldn’t you think, I said, a guy whose mom suffered what she did and the skin of evil shows up.

  The skin of evil, oh yeah, the tar guy who killed Yar. So, Lark.

  For no reason. The skin of evil shows up in the fucking grocery and his dad has a fucking heart attack trying to kill him. Wouldn’t you think that a kid who witnessed all this would need spiritual help?

  Cappy looked me over. Nah.

  Right. I brooded down at the clipped green for a while.

  Nah, he said again. There’s something else.

  Okay, I said. I needed practice shooting. Like I thought he’d let me help shoot the gophers. But he just gave me a book.

  Cappy laughed. You dumb-ass!

  Yeah. I imitated Father Travis talking: We won’t be doing that, Joe. Good will always come out of evil. You’ll see.

  You’ll see? He said that?

  Yeah.

  Butt-fucker. If that was true, all good things would start in bad things. If you wanna shoot, said Cappy, you coulda gone to your uncle.

  I’m off Whitey.

  Better me. You shoulda come to me. Anytime. Anytime, my brother. I been hunting since I was two. I got my first buck when I was nine.

  I know it. But it wasn’t just shooting gophers. You know that.

  I might. I might know that.

  You know what it is. What I’m talking about.

  I do. I guess I do. Cappy nodded, looking down at a new set of golfers, Indian ones this time, who didn’t match.

  So if you know, you also know I won’t implicate anybody else.

  Implicate. Big lawyer word.

  Should I define it?

  Fuck you. I’m your best friend. I’m your number one.

  I’m your number one, too. I do it alone or I don’t do it.

  Cappy laughed. He reached around to his back pocket suddenly and took out a squashed pack of his brother’s cigarettes. Shit, I forgot about these.

  They were crumpled but not torn apart. This time I noticed the matches had Whitey’s station on them.

  Now he’s got matches, I said.

  My brother got ’em. I never went there. But Randall said he’s moving on, he’s gonna rent out movies. Anyway, back to the subject.

  What subject.

  I don’t need to know. We’ll take my dad’s deer rifle out and practice, because, Joe, you can’t hit the side of a truck.

  Maybe not.

  And then where would you be when the side of the truck gets pissed off and runs you down? Shit outta luck. I can’t let that happen to you.

  Except his rifle. I can’t use his rifle.

  Just to practice. Then Doe’s gun gets stolen while we’re gone. While the house is empty. We hide the gun, the ammunition. And we’re not here anyway to laugh at geezers, are we.

  No.

  We’re scouting.

  In case he comes along. I know he golfs, used to anyway. Linda told me.

&n
bsp; Everybody knows Lark golfs, which is good. Anyone can miss a deer and hit a golfer.

  We rode back to Cappy’s and went out back where Cappy had started practicing when he was five years old.

  My dad taught me on a .22, said Cappy, just gophers or squirrels, hardly no kick to speak of. Then the first time we went deer hunting he hands me his 30.06. I tell him I’m worried it’ll kick, but he says no more than the .22, I promise you, my boy, just go easy. So I get my first deer on one shot. Know why?

  ’Cause you’re an Emperor?

  No, my son, because I didn’t feel the kick. I wasn’t worried about the kick. I shot smooth. Sometimes you learn on a 30.06 and you flinch while you jerk the trigger, ’cause you can’t help anticipate the kick. I wish I could teach you on a .22 like my dad did, but you’re ruined already.

  I did feel ruined. I knew I’d jerk the trigger, knew I’d flinch, knew how awkwardly I’d work the bolt action, how I’d probably jam it up, knew how I might as well cross my eyes as sight a target.

  There was a rail fence where we set out cans and shot them down, and set up cans and shot them down. Cappy shot the first off neatly, showing me exactly how, but I couldn’t hit a single one of the rest. I was probably the only boy on the whole reservation who couldn’t shoot. My father hadn’t cared, but Whitey had tried to teach me. I was just no good at it. I couldn’t aim straight.

  Lucky you’re not an old-time Indian. You woulda starved, said Cappy.

  Maybe I need glasses. I was discouraged.

  Maybe you should close one eye.

  I’m doing that.

  The other eye.

  Both eyes?

  Yeah, you might do better.

  I hit three out of ten. I shot until we used most of the expensive ammunition, a problem as Cappy pointed out. We couldn’t let anybody know I was practicing. He couldn’t ask Doe for ammunition without explaining why. We also decided I should only practice when there was nobody home. In fact, Cappy said we had to find a more remote place for me to practice—we could go two pastures over and be out of sight, although people would hear us.

  We have to get money though, hitch over to Hoopdance or get a ride. We’ll go into the hardware and I’ll buy the ammo.

  No, I said, I should go myself.

  So we argued back and forth until I had to leave. I had strict hours—my mother had told me she would send the police out after me if I was not home at six.

  The police?

  Just a figure of speech, she’d said. Maybe Uncle Edward. You wouldn’t want him out looking for you, would you?

  No, I didn’t want Uncle Edward out looking for me in his big car, riding slow and rolling down his window, questioning everyone who happened to be out. So I went home. I had the money that Sonja left me. One hundred dollars hidden in my closet in that folder labeled HOMEWORK. Thinking of Sonja was like punching a bruise. As I rode back I decided on a plan to get my mother to drive me to Hoopdance. She still thought I was taking catechism classes. I’d need candles, maybe. Or dress shoes to be an altar boy.

  The shoes were a good touch. After work the next day she drove me to the shoe store and bought the dress shoes, which I regretted for the waste of money. But I got into the hardware and sporting goods store on a casual excuse, and she waited outside while I bought forty dollars’ worth of ammunition for Doe’s rifle. The clerk did not know me and examined the large bill closely. I looked over at the paints, the basketballs and baseballs, the golf corner, the nail bins and spools of wire, at the home canning section, the shovels, rakes, chain saws, and I noticed gas cans for sale. Exactly like the one I’d found in the lake.

  I guess it’s okay, the clerk said, giving me change.

  When I came back out, I told my mother that I’d bought a surprise for Dad, who was supposed to take it easy. Besides the ammo, I had bought spinners for bass, our favorite fish to catch. I was building lie upon lie and it all came naturally to me as honesty once had. As we were driving home, I realized that my deceits were of no consequence as I was dedicated to a purpose which I’d named in my mind not vengeance but justice.

  Sins Crying Out to Heaven for Justice.

  I might have murmured this aloud. I was in a kind of trance, looking at the road, imagining the amount of practice it would take.

  What did you say?

  My mother had kept that edge. She was protective of my father and it gave her an intent authority, but more than that, there was what she had told me in Fargo when she put down the hamburger. I will be the one. No you won’t, I thought. But she was keen as a blade, as if during that time she lay dull in her closed room she had actually been sharpening herself. And then in Fargo, we’d talked about Dad, about things the doctors said. We’d weighed facts and questions together. She had treated me like someone older than I was, and this, too, had continued. She saw too much, didn’t have the same mild patience with me. She had quit indulging me. Never laughed at things I did. It was as if she had expected me to grow up in those weeks and now to not need her. If she expected me to act alone on my instincts, I was doing just that. But I still needed her. I had needed her to drive me to Hoopdance. No, I needed her in ways that now were lost to me. On the drive back from Hoopdance that day, after I had muttered that phrase about Sins Crying Out to Heaven, I asked her directly the thing my father would not ask. It was a childish thing, but also grown-up.

  Mom, I said, why couldn’t you have lied? Why couldn’t you have said that sack slipped? You stumbled over something and you put your hand up, pulled it out, saw the ground? That you knew where it happened? It wouldn’t matter where, if you had just said where.

  She was quiet for so long that I thought she wouldn’t answer. I felt no anger from her, no surprise, no embarrassment, merely a period of concentration.

  I wish I knew, she said at last, why I could not lie. Last week, in the hospital, I sat there looking at your father and I suddenly wished that I had lied from the beginning. I wish I had lied, Joe! But I didn’t know where it happened. And your father knew I didn’t know. And you knew, too. I told you both. How could I change my story later on? Commit perjury? And remember, I knew that I didn’t know, too. What would happen to my sense of who I am? But if I had understood all that would come of my not knowing, exactly what happened, him going free, him with the sick gall to show himself, I would have.

  I’m glad you would have.

  She looked straight ahead.

  Clearly, she was done talking. I looked at the road coming at us, thinking: If you had lied, if you had changed your story, so what. You’re my mom. I’d love you. Dad would love you. You lied to save Mayla and her baby. You did that easy. If they could prosecute Linden Lark, I would not have to lie about the ammunition or practice to do what someone had to do. And quickly, before my mother figured out her version of stopping him. There was no one else who could do it. I saw that. I was only thirteen and if I got caught I would only be subject to juvenile justice laws, not to mention there were clearly extenuating circumstances. My lawyer could point out my good grades and use that good-kid reputation I had apparently developed. Yet, it was not that I wanted to do it, or even thought I could do it. I was a bad shot and I knew that. I might not get much better. Plus, the reality of the thing. So I didn’t let the whole of it enter my mind at any one time. I only let one piece and then another piece fall into place. We fell silent again. After a while, I realized the next piece: I was going to have to go to Linda Wishkob. I was going to have to find out if her brother played golf anymore, for sure, and if he had some kind of schedule. I was going to have to get some soft and spotted bananas, or buy some firm bananas and allow them strategically to rot.

  Three days of shooting practice later, I showed up at the post office with a bag of bananas I’d watched carefully in my room. They were soft and spotted, but not black.

  Linda peered over the scale at her window, her round eyes glistening. And that unbearable, doggy grin. I bought six stamps for Cappy, and gave her the bag of bananas. She to
ok the bag with her chubby little paws, and when she opened it her whole face glowed as though I’d given her something precious.

  Are they from your mother?

  No, I said, from me.

  She flushed with pleasure and wonder.

  They are perfect, she said. I’ll bake when I get home and drop them by tomorrow after work.

  I left. I’d learned from my mistake with Father Travis that unusual politeness from a boy my age is an instant suspicion-raiser. I would have to maintain my course until the moment was right. I would have to have more than one conversation, maybe several conversations, before I would dare fit in a question or two about Linda’s brother. So I made sure I was hanging around the house the next day at five o’clock when Linda pulled her car into the driveway. I looked out the window and said to Dad, There’s Linda. I’ll bet you a buck she has banana bread.

  You win, he said without looking up.

  He was sipping water. Reading yesterday’s Fargo Forum. Mom walked downstairs. She was wearing black pants and a pink T-shirt. Her hair was fluffy and tinted to a shiny darkness. She wore black-and-pink-beaded earrings and her feet were bare. I saw she’d painted her toenails pink. There was the subtle coloring of makeup—her features more dramatic. And that light lemon lotion as she passed by. I got close to her. Stood behind her as she opened the door and accepted the familiar foil brick. She was dressing up for Dad. I wasn’t too dumb to figure that out. She was looking nice to keep his spirits up. Linda entered, sat down in the living room, and Dad put down his newspaper.

  Joe, here’s another loaf for you. She pulled another brick from the bag. She didn’t thank me for the bananas in front of my parents, which surprised me. Most grown-ups think everything a young person does should be common knowledge. They brag about the slightest gesture from a boy. I’d been prepared to play down my banana giving, but Linda didn’t put me in that position. She did, however, start in on the weather chatter with my father. Just the way they had before, they pulled out their favorite all-eternal commonplace-choked subject. Sure enough, my mother folded and went into the kitchen to make tea and slice up the banana bread. I decided to try a whole other ploy and sat down across from them on the couch. Sooner or later, they would slog through the atmosphere and say something important. Or Dad would leave and I could bring up golf. They were on rain: inches fallen in which county, and whether we might see hail. They got to hail they’d seen and various forms of hail damage, when I yawned, lay back, and closed my eyes. I pretended to fall into a deep, impermeable slumber, twitching once and then breathing with such deep regularity I was sure they would be convinced. I let myself go limp and heavy. They were talking hail big as golf balls, perfectly round as peas, hail that penetrated roof shingles like BB shot. The couch was wide, the pillows giving. I woke an hour later. Mom was calling my name softly, sitting on the edge of the couch, patting my shin. As happens sometimes drifting out of an unexpected sleep, I did not know exactly where I was. I kept my eyes closed. My mother’s voice and the childhood sensation of her hand stroking my ankle, which was always how she woke me, flooded me with peace. I allowed my consciousness to sink to an even younger hiding place where nothing could touch me.