The Master Butcher's Singing Club

by Louise Erdrich

  Cyprian bought mosquito netting for the two of them. Draped around their army cots, it allowed them enough rest to see straight the next day. At first they thought they would go mad listening to the bugs clustered an inch deep at the tiny holes through which their warm-blooded scent must have exuded, tantalizing. The next week they bought cotton wax from the pharmacist and pressed it into their ears. No sooner had they solved the problem of the mosquitoes than they were infested with a plague of armyworms. If you looked at just one, it wasn’t bad … olive brown with an intricate racing band of blue dots. It was their numbers that made them horrible. The worms crept up and down the trees in such thick droves that the bark seemed to be moving. They inched across the tent roof by the thousands and it was impossible to keep them off the ground cloth or even out of their blankets, no matter how tightly Delphine and Cyprian pegged down the tent’s bottom. She got used to walking on them, an awful carpet, and leaving footprints of slime when she stepped into the shop. As for Roy, he slept half in the river some nights or on the starry banks, in grass, and all bugs left him alone, perhaps because his blood was eighty proof, said Delphine.

  “You’d think the mosquitoes would bite him, at least, I mean, to get drunk themselves. Roy’s a walking party bar,” she complained one night, irritated that her father could sleep peacefully in that infested heat. She and Cyprian were sweating safely underneath their nets. Lying side by side, before they agreed to lose consciousness, they rolled the cotton wax between their fingers and argued over whether Cyprian should use the DeSoto to run some liquor out of Canada. Avoiding the slap of sales tax was not only a very common thing to do, it was patriotic if you were German, or supplied the liquor to them. No one had hated Prohibition like the Germans, who were convinced it was a law passed as a direct comment on their tradition of Zechkunst, the art of friendly drinking. Since Prohibition was over, heavy taxes on liquor were the new source of resentment and no one took such pleasure as Germans in thwarting the government. On a recent visit up north, even Tante had filled hot water bottles with whiskey and worn them as a bosom in her dress, smiling regally at the customs man as she sailed across the border.

  “I’d rather stay legal,” said Cyprian, “but the offer’s good.”

  “That means I walk to work one whole week.”

  “That’s not what gets you.”

  “Damn right.”

  “I will not, and I mean this,” Cyprian said, propping himself up on one arm and staring at her intently, “get caught.”

  “Scares the hell out of me to think you would,” Delphine offered.

  “Does?”

  “For what it’s worth.”

  Even then, Cyprian just didn’t feel like kissing her, but he loved her so much at that moment he nearly overcame his reluctance. It seemed to him that since the end of their traveling show, and since the house was cleaned and fumigated, things were slowing down to normal. He missed balancing, and the travel, but not the insecurity of where to perform and how to set up shows. He wanted things predictable but he also wanted something else. It was a problem with men who had come back from the war, he’d heard, normal wasn’t good enough. They had to jack up every situation. Make it dangerous. Maybe he was like that. Or it could be that Delphine’s job made him jealous. Not only because she was so tight with Clarisse and then Eva, but because she now bought everything, their food, their clothes, Roy’s whiskey. He did feel as though the man should make the money.

  “I’m gonna do it.”

  “Oh God,” said Delphine.

  “I’m not bad with a engine.” Cyprian tried to placate her. “I learned a lot in the war. When I finish this, tell you what, I’ll get a job. Maybe set myself up to fix automobiles.”

  “What do I tell the sheriff?”

  “I’ll get back here before he even knows… .”

  His reassurance was cut off by Roy’s wild hollering, and the two of them pushed aside their nets and jumped out of bed. Gingerly slipping along a rutted path, they made their way toward Roy’s drinking camp down along the river. Delphine carried a small kerosene lamp that cast a pool of light just before them, so she was the first to see, when she reached the source of the panicked howls, why Roy was in hysterics. He had finally been discovered. The armyworms had come across him during a long drunken sleep, and they’d settled in, perhaps to feed on his clothing, or maybe just to rest on their way toward a banquet of leaves. His hair was packed. They dripped from his ears. Not a fraction of an inch of a wormless Roy was visible and he was, indeed, a supremely horrifying sight. So it was a surprise when at Delphine’s voice he calmed down pathetically.

  “I need a hair of the dog if you please,” he said, blinking through aveil of strings of dripping worms. “I got the shakes, little daughter, got the deliriums. Need the whiskey. I know it’s not real, but I could swear that worms are covering me.”

  “You’ll be all right, Dad, just stand still,” said Delphine, knocking pads of worms from his arms, his shoulders, and then tugging him forward. Cyprian clawed handfuls away, tried to comb the hordes from Roy’s head, to shake them off his trousers and gently pluck them from his ears.

  “Just stand still and you’ll get your whiskey,” he echoed Delphine.

  “They’re in your head,” she told him, “stay still. They’re all in your mind.”

  IT WAS TRUE that Cyprian was good with engines. By now, Delphine had totally revised her view of him and touted him to Eva as outstanding for his practical abilities. Repairing cars wasn’t as satisfying to him as balancing, but still he had a knack for mechanical work. He babied the DeSoto, and it ran so clean it purred, as he said, like a kitten in a butter dish. Before he left the next day, to reassure Delphine, he did a free once-over on the shiny brown delivery car Eva was so proud of—Waldvogel’s Meats, it said on the side. The Freshest. The Finest. Old World Quality.

  Old World Quality. Eva was most proud of that, for it was true that in this country you could simply not get sausages prepared with the simplicity and perfection common in the German street. And she missed that. Other things, too, were impossible to find, she said, and when she said so she sounded a bit like Tante. Marzipan. Herring. Pickles with the right degree of spice. Rolls as soft. Down beds as deep. Fur as lustrous. Cream as thick.

  Well, she often admitted, they couldn’t do everything. They could only make the sausages. Pity about the bread, she often teased Fidelis. He had come to this country on the evidence of bread, machine bread, a slice of it sent in a package as an example of an everyday American marvel. He’d never tasted that preserved slice, of course. She despised the stuff—it was thin and salty. It crumbled. You could not get it fresh and it turned hard by noon if by chance you did. It wasn’t real bread. The crusts were soft and the interior tough. Everything about the bread was backward, said Eva, so she made her bread herself. She sold loaves when she made extra, and sometimes pastries too, from a tall glass case that she rubbed transparent with a sheet of newsprint wetted with vinegar.

  Eva prided herself on triumphing over anything that circumstance brought her way, yet she could not keep the butcher shop functioning in the heat with the efficiency she usually demanded. As the heat wave and the drought wore on, the glass collected steam and the counters and floors were slippery with melted grease. Everything was more difficult, for Delphine, too. Nights alone in the tent without Cyprian were unpleasant. It was harder to watch Roy destroy himself down by the river with two buddies who now slept with him in sour comfort. Delphine felt vulnerable in the open, and was afraid to plug her ears for fear one of the drunks might sneak up on her. So she endured the mad whining of the bugs until sleep took her and still, within sleep, she woke restlessly from time to time. It occurred to her that Cyprian had left in order to make her miss him. If so, enough. She did. They were like an old married couple, except that the romance of their youth had lasted about six hours. To get some sleep herself, and help out in the crisis, Delphine started sleeping on Eva’s couch every two or three nigh
ts. Waking early, Delphine could put in a couple of hours cleaning before the crush of heat.

  Now that she was around her friend from early morning on, Delphine could see how Eva suffered. Eva’s face was pale with daily effort, and sometimes she declared she had to lie down, just for a minute, and rest. When Delphine checked on her, she found Eva in such a sunken dead shock of slumber that she hadn’t the heart to wake her.

  After an hour or two, anyway, Eva woke to a frenzy of energy and pushed herself again.

  They mopped down the floors of the killing room with bleach every single day. The meat cases were run on full cold, yet they were lukewarm and the meat within had to be checked constantly for rot. A noisy generator was hooked up to power the meat locker and that thick-walled closet was jam-packed with all they were afraid to lose. They bought only the slightest amount of milk to sell because it often soured just from the drive to the store. The cream turned, too, but Eva tried to culture it and use it in her cooking. They stored almost no butter or lard. The heat hardened to a cruel intensity. The boys slept outside on the roof in just their undershorts. Eva dragged a mattress and sheets up there as well and slept with them while Fidelis slept downstairs.

  As a gesture, perhaps, of reconciliation, the Kozkas gave Fidelis a dog. She was not a chow, for they’d had too many disappointments with the breed—Hottentot now ran wild, his offspring showed no respect for their masters, and all of his puppies sank their teeth into their buyers. The Kozkas had gone into a steadier line of dogs. They gave Fidelis a white German shepherd of ferocious energy. The dog roamed the downstairs halls all night and chewed happily all day on great green bones. The dog immediately loved Eva like a sister, and though it was tied outside the door most of the time, its ears pricked when she passed by in the house. When Eva freed the dog, it wildly bounded about, racing and leaping in astonishing arcs. When it had released its puppy nature, it walked gravely to Eva and stood near her. It didn’t beg or gaze at her longing for scraps. The dog was very dignified and treated Eva as its peer. Clearly, the dog considered Eva her colleague, her mate in the task of protecting the dim-witted sheep, the men, from blundering into danger. Eva didn’t pat the dog absently, but scratched the dog in places it couldn’t reach. Even used an old hairbrush to untangle its fur when it matted. Delphine watched Eva look into the dog’s eyes, listened to the way she crooned to it, and thought that her friend’s behavior was remarkable. She’d never known anyone who thought that dogs were much. Eva’s sensitivity to this animal, as well as the way she treated the outcasts and oddballs who came to the shop, including Step-and-a-Half, convinced Delphine that Eva was a person of rare qualities, and she loved her all the more.

  Every day, the sky went dark, the dry heat sucked the leaves brown and nothing happened. Rain hung painfully near in the iron gray sheet stretched across the sky, but nothing moved. No breeze. No air. On the mornings she came from Roy’s, Delphine walked through the back door sopping wet, washed her face, and donned the limp apron by the door. The air was already stiff and metallic. The dew burned off in moments. There was the promise of more heat. If it broke, it would break violent, Delphine thought as she filled a bucket. She didn’t care how the heat broke—bring on the twister, bring on the volcano, the mighty wind of a hurricane—only make it cease.

  She began stripping the wax off the linoleum on the floor in order to reapply a new coat. She had finished with that, and was about to open the shop, when out of the wringing wet-hot air walked Sheriff Hock.

  Either it’s news of the dead, thought Delphine, squeezing an ammonia-drenched rag out and draping it on the side of the bucket, or he wants to talk about Clarisse.

  “Would it be better for me to visit you out at the house?”

  For the moment, the place was silent.

  “Nobody’s here,” said Delphine. “Go ahead.”

  As it happened, she entirely forgot about Eva’s son Markus, up early in the heat as well. He was going over the books just on the other side of the counter. He was so quiet, his pencil moving among the columns of debts and credits. Young though he was, Eva had him check her work and he was proud to do it. Delphine was unnerved by the presence of the sheriff, or she might have remembered that Markus could hear all that was said. Maybe the heat, or a low level of panic, dulled her thoughts. She wanted to get the talking over with.

  Sheriff Hock nodded sharply; his features pinched inside the frame of firm, thick fat. He removed a sharp pencil from a case in his pocket, and flipped a page over on the hard surface of his notepad. He had the exquisite budded lips of a courtesan, and when he spoke it was hard not to watch them move, just as a rose might if it were to speak. He told Delphine that he had a few questions, and since she was willing to answer them, he went down a predictable list. They were not particularly intrusive questions, having to do mainly with her life with Roy and Cyprian. Apparently, their answers matched up, because he seemed to take no exception to anything she said. Not until he came to a question about the red beads pasted into the floor of the pantry.

  “Do you remember them, there in the pantry?”

  “Of course I do.” The quality of the brittle substance that sealed the cellar door shut was extremely memorable, and Delphine had wondered at that one particular ingredient.

  “The stuff was so hard to chip that I wondered if it wasn’t some kind of glue.”

  “I wondered the same,” said Sheriff Hock, very solemnly. “I am currently having it tested in the state laboratory.”

  What state laboratory? thought Delphine, but she tried to humor him.

  “Red beads, off a dress? Red beads at a wake?” she said with a dutifully mystified expression.

  “Exactly.”

  “Have you asked my dad?”

  “He’s vague about it.”

  “He’s … not well,” said Delphine, coughing discreetly.

  Sheriff Hock folded his notebook, tucked it underneath his arm, and took one of Eva’s doughnuts from the glass case. The heat weighed on his bulk. He moved with a palpable weariness, and his shirt was darkened with sweat down the spine and below the arms. He ate the doughnut in tiny bites, lost in physical misery and abstract thinking, then he asked. “Where does your father obtain his whiskey?”

  “I buy it for him,” said Delphine.

  “I don’t mean the stuff you buy,” the sheriff said. “I mean the supply he kept in the cellar.”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Delphine, you’re protecting him now,” said Sheriff Hock, shaking his head. “I suspect that the answer to the tragedy lies in the fact that the cellar was littered with empty bottles.”

  “I suppose,” said Delphine, seeing her ruse was useless, “he might have saved the bottles for Step-and-a-Half. She would resell them for home brew.”

  The sheriff nodded sagely. “Was your father a friend of the Chavers?”

  “Well, you know he was, as well as I do,” said Delphine.

  “For the record,” said the sheriff.

  “Okay, yes, he was.”

  “Was he horrified? Shocked?”

  Delphine became animated by the question, perhaps because she could rightly answer it. “What do you think? After he learned the Chavers’ identities, my father was wild. You should have seen him. He pulled the last pathetic tufts of hair off his head and rolled around on the floor like a baby. Well, you know Roy. He kept howling something about believing the family had gone down to Arizona. I thought, you know, for the winter.” Delphine finished in a subdued voice.

  “Winter was nearly over when they were locked in.”

  Fidelis’s voice boomed suddenly from down the hallway, and Sheriff Hock turned his attention away from Delphine. Much to her relief. For she was suddenly gripped with an anxiety for her father, and the fear that he had done something to set the deaths in his cellar into motion. Still, having already questioned him about the red beads and in some desperation asked him everything he knew or could think of about the three who died, she was at a loss. Ro
y Watzka had seemed as bewildered by the dead as anyone, entirely unprepared to provide any useful knowledge.

  Fidelis and the sheriff went out back, humming the melody to a song they were complicating with contrasting harmonies, probably over a jar of Fidelis’s dark, cold, homemade beer. Delphine’s throat ached for a swig of it. Just as she bent over to squeeze out the mop again, Delphine heard a low rustle of paper, the creak of the chair at the desk in the corner, and she straightened up in time to see Markus stepping quietly away from the account books.

  “You heard?”

  Markus turned to look at Delphine. His thin cheeks had been recently and fiercely burned by the sun, and they still glowed hot red. In the long pause as he looked at her, Delphine gazed clearly back at Markus and saw in his face Eva’s steel. He wouldn’t speak. For some reason, Delphine was later to think, the boy knew all that was to come. He understood the future, knew why she was there, fathomed the reason that her place in his life would so drastically change. Knowing all of this, he was closed to her, sealed.

  “You must be very smart,” said Delphine. “You’re only eight years old and your mother trusts you to check the accounts.”

  “I’m nine. She does the math,” said Markus, poker-faced.

  “But you are smart,” Delphine persisted. His indifference was a challenge, and she wanted him at least to admit what he’d just heard, if only so that she could prepare Eva for any questions that he might have. “You’re a smart boy, so you know that the sheriff was asking me questions only to figure out the truth.”

  Markus now looked down at the floor.

  “I didn’t do anything!” Delphine blurted out, surprising herself. It was only after Markus turned back to her and stared from the perfect mixture of the greens and blues of his mother’s and father’s eyes that she realized that the boy in the cellar was his age and that of course Markus must have known him.