The Master Butcher's Singing Club

by Louise Erdrich

  “You gotta wait, they’re out burning slash,” he told them.

  So Markus and Fidelis sat in the car, the doors open, breathing the green air of pines and eating some chocolate bars Markus had bought back at his PX. They weren’t the kind that could be bought almost anywhere else. They saved one. Then they tried not to smoke too many cigarettes or to say too many times, “I wonder if it’s one of them,” or “it’s probably not.” They tried to keep a lucid conversation going, but without Delphine their meanings tangled and finally it was best to simply sit there, silently, letting their thoughts drift, lighting and stubbing out cigarettes.

  They tried not to jump up when the men came back, but couldn’t help it, and stood on one side of the car scanning the men intently as the work crew neared from down the road. At once, they recognized Erich. He was still strong, bull-chested, ruddy, and had the same gold lights in brown hair. He was wearing an old rumpled uniform jacket, the blue POW clothing, and a pair of washed-out dungarees. He saw them too, right away, startled by their shouts. They could tell he knew them from the involuntary wildness in his eyes, a shock he covered as he looked away from them both. Erich gazed straight ahead at the entrance, kept a rigid profile as they rushed toward him, didn’t turn when they were held away from the men by the American guards. As Erich passed, they talked to him, called out to him, names and anxious questions. But he locked his features, narrowed his stony eyes, jammed his hands in his pockets when they started to shake.

  Something in Erich’s boy stubbornness, so like his own, sent Fidelis over the slippery edge of worry and relief into a blood bent rage. So immediate was his anger that he opened his mouth and roared, at the back of his retreating son, an old threat he’d used when Erich was a child. Then he swore his full swear, which always stopped everyone around him and made the boys shrink away and go still. HeilundKreuzmillionenDonnerwetternocheinmal!

  Some of the other prisoners did stop, and one or two of them smiled in startled recognition, as though at their own fathers’ oath, but Erich did not turn to look. He kept on walking. His hands hardened and his mouth twitched slightly with derision. He gathered himself, his thoughts. He wasn’t about to put himself in danger for reasons of mere sentiment. Besides, he was not who they thought he was, not at all. His father was an old man now and ruined, lost, foolish to have come here looking for someone whom he thought was Erich. This man who had sold his sausage all the way to North Dakota—now he looked bony and defeated. Not heroic or even strong. What he’d come to here was nothing, and the man was nothing, thought Erich. What absurd threats, too, as though he could hurt a trained soldier far more powerful in body and cunning in mind than Erich believed Fidelis Waldvogel ever had been in his life. As though anything that Fidelis roared could possibly affect Erich. He almost laughed, thinking of the bull’s pizzle hung on a nail behind the door—that used to frighten him. Now it seemed stupid, almost benign. His father’s arm had once been hot iron. His father’s blue glare had ruled him. And the gentleness, occasionally, that his father showed had made his sons slaves to its possibility. No more. Erich strode on, did not even turn when they cried out Emil’s name again. So they didn’t know yet! Ist gestorben, he thought angrily. Killed by one of your land mines. Leck’ mich am Arsch, he wanted to scream. They’d killed his brother, the other half of him. What did they want now? But after all he had been trained not to show his reaction and reminded himself that this was still war. Unlike most of the other men around him, Erich hadn’t swallowed Germany’s defeat with either the abundance of food or the friendliness of the people in the nearby town or even the American guards, with whom they spoke German. Erich’s fanaticism was that of the culturally insecure. He’d struggled to be a German, and not even captivity was going to destroy what he’d gone through when shipped off to Ludwigsruhe. Erich’s new father was a boundary on a map, a feeling for a certain song, a scrap of forest, a street. It was a romance as enduring as the spilled blood of his brother or the longing of Fidelis or the pains of this war. It was an idea that kept him walking through the prison gates.

  FIDELIS WAS SILENT as Markus backed the car into the road, then turned around and steered down the way they had come. They drove south through the pine and then the mixed birch, maple, and popple groves of second-and third-growth trees. They passed through the small towns, each with its orderly main street layout of church, post office, grocery, hardware store, and café. Once or twice, Markus opened his mouth to say something to his father, but then lost the impulse and continued on and on in a meditative state of sadness, until they were low on gas.

  He pulled into a rowdy-looking little station attached to a tavern. The attendant came out to pump the gas, and Markus and his father looked at the doorway of the bar. It was a battered red door surrounded by a bristling trim of deer antlers. There were no windows in the place.

  “Let’s get ourselves a drink,” said Fidelis.

  Markus parked the car and then the two walked through the odd, fanged door, into a dark little bar of wooden booths. Amber light glowed in the early evening calm from small candle-shaped wall lamps. Each ordered an expensive whiskey. Fidelis tossed his back and put out his shot glass for another. Markus asked for a ham sandwich and gestured for the bartender to bring one to his father, who was frowning at the tabletop and taking his second whiskey and then his third drink, a cheaper beer, more slowly. They still hadn’t said a word about the visit. Maybe they wouldn’t, thought Markus. The comforting darkness of the bar enveloped them. There were no other customers, and no sounds except for the soothing, muted clink of dishes and glasses being washed out in back. Markus looked steadily at his father, then looked away. Fidelis’s hands, cupping the glass between them, were startlingly pale in the barlight, and Markus had noticed that under all the nicks and roped scars and red callus those hands were rebelling from Fidelis’s control. He was careful not to show any sign of clumsiness, and firmly steadied his fingers on the table. Still, at one point he nearly knocked the glass over. Another time, he absently grasped at his drink and missed—the sight filled Markus with a stricken awe and he was glad when the sandwiches came to occupy their hands and mouths.

  It was a beautiful, prewar sandwich. The bread was fresh and heavy, just baked. Country bread thickly spread with real sweet butter. The ham was perfectly smoked, cured, and cut fresh in a generous slab. There was a plate of crisp dill pickles alongside, sliced into thin green spears. They ate with slow gratitude. Fidelis said, “He must have thought he lost his mind when he saw the two of us.”

  “I bet,” said Markus.

  “We should write him, get him used to the idea,” Fidelis went on, growing optimistic as the beer and whiskey smoothed his thoughts. “Let him know we’re coming back.”

  “We’re coming back?”

  “He’s stubborn, but we’ll break his stubborn.”

  Now that Markus knew how to play it, he laughed a little. “He thinks he can play stubborn. Well, fine. We’ll play stubborn, too.”

  Fidelis asked for another beer now and drank it with a pleasantly congenial air now, addressing his son like a conspirator.

  “We’ll kidnap the little son of a bitch.”

  “Damn right,” said Markus.

  His father drank the rest of the beer in a long, smooth gulp, and then he rose to find the men’s room and take a piss. He had to steady himself on the booth’s table as he cleared the space. Markus noticed that his father’s hand groped for the backs of the chairs as he passed among the tables, and that, as he reached the end of the bar, he staggered and righted himself, then proceeded with a slow formality that nearly hid the fact that he was drunk.

  “FRANZ WROTE MORE than a page—that proves he’s crazy for you,” said Delphine to Mazarine, who came by to sit with her in the store. “In fact, six whole pages.”

  “Well, actually, it’s seven,” said Mazarine, only a bit self-conscious. Her baby curved seven months over her thighs now, underneath a flowered and foolish maternity dress top with a
spanking white bow. She had taught school up until the previous week, and there were some who said that she should not be seen in that condition, not be influencing children. At least they couldn’t say all they would have liked to include in the gossip. Early on, when Mazarine had told her about the baby, Delphine had taken care of things. She’d gone to a jeweler up in Fargo, bought a wedding ring in Mazarine’s size, and gave it to her, saying, “This will shut them up.” And then Franz had an engagement diamond delivered to her, so she had one for either hand. She wore them both and let people speculate, though who cared, thought Mazarine, when there was the war. Wasn’t it enough that there be one new life?

  Delphine raised her eyebrows. “And you kept the last page in your pocket.”

  Mazarine had brought the long letter from Franz—all except the last page, in which he concentrated all that was private between them. He knew that Mazarine and his parents shared all of the letters they received from Franz because he couldn’t write often. They existed in a state of suspense that wore into months and showed mostly in Mazarine’s eyes.

  “It’s going to be over soon,” said Mazarine. “I can feel it. Just read between the lines.”

  As Delphine sat with her now, poring over the latest letter, the younger woman rested her hand on the swell of her baby. The capacity of her thin body to expand so shockingly was alternately thrilling and tedious. Women told her horror stories of their pregnancies and she was grateful that she suffered only the normal discomforts—a boring nausea, stinging nipples, sleeplessness, backache. Harder for her than the physical changes were the unexpected sweeps of emotion. When she was caught up in those great nets of feeling, tears poured from her eyes. Ashamed of her uncontrollable weeping, she rushed to be alone and found relief in walking to the edge of town, where she stood in the presence of a raw sweep of sky. She checked on its changing incarnations. Great thunderclouds had piled darkly over the horizon that very morning, but although she could see the sheets of rain sweeping in a smokelike blur to the west, not a drop had yet fallen upon the town.

  Mazarine touched the page in her pocket. Franz existed around the corner of each thought or occurrence. She tried to discipline herself to give in to her extremes of feeling only twice a day. At morning and in the evening, she gave herself leave to exist in the sharp reality of memory. Then, she would put away her wild imaginings about his safety. She would make imaginary love with him or reexchange their first words of truth or reargue the foolish arguments or resay their anguished, sexual, good-bye. At all other times, when he entered her mind, she tried to concentrate on anything else—on the housework or her mother or the classroom before her, or now, on sitting here in the sunlight with Delphine. Slowly, as Delphine read, Mazarine smoothed both hands over the flowers of her wide blouse. The baby rippled and rolled underneath her fingers and knocked its fist against her heart.

  At last, Delphine folded the letter back into its envelope, and then rose and went to the refrigerated case, withdrew a half quart of milk and came back to sit with Mazarine. She put the bottle of milk on the table between them and pointed at it. Mazarine removed the cap and grinned at Delphine before she raised the bottle in a mocking toast.

  “Where’s yours?” she asked, meaning of course the milk, but then she saw a thread of shadow pass behind the honey gold of Delphine’s eyes, and with a shock understood that Delphine was hurt, recovered, went on, all in an instant. Mazarine might easily have missed this, were she not acutely tuned to that moment and to Delphine’s emotions. She saw a tiny flash of darkness, an intimate admission.

  “I always hated milk,” said Mazarine.

  Delphine just nodded, watching her drink it, stirred by satisfaction at providing nourishment, and desolation that she herself had never needed to take such pains.

  FRANZ WAS ASSIGNED to the 439th Troop Carrier Group. The fighters wore insignia patches embroidered with eagles, wolves, lions, lightning bolts and broken chains. Franz’s carrier group rallied behind the sign of an angry beaver. He wrote:

  You have to wonder who the hell makes up the insignia—maybe someone like Markus. I like my beaver, though, he’s mean looking and has transport wings growing out of his shoulder blades. We fly under the sign of the Beaver Volant Proper, Incensed (holding a missile in his right paw). Mazarine, I go over that long ago time in my mind you know which time. I do not understand myself. She meant nothing to me, but you knew that. It was my weakness you could not endure. I suppose you could say of this man that he’s toughened up some but the beauty of it is that he looks upon the world from far above and it is a calm world, not a tortured one. He acknowledges a surrender in his heart. It is like the innocent love of a small boy. He was a youth when first he knew you. Flying is forever mixed with those mysterious hours.

  Now we’ll have a boy or girl to tell that we loved each other ever since school days.

  The war here is over and we are doing cleanup so don’t worry, the major peril we face is sunburn.

  DELPHINE HEARD IT first from a customer who got it from the radio that morning. By that night they had the evening edition out of Fargo with the headline ATOM BOMB HITS NIPS. They spread the paper out on the kitchen table and pored over all the front-page stories. Terror Missile Has 2,000 Times More Blast Than Blockbuster. Sun Power Holds Key to Explosive. Churchill Says Germans Had Some Secrets. Kitchen Dream a Reality—Combined Clothes, Dishwasher, Potato Peeler Due in 1946. Quadruple Amputee PFC James Wilson Uses Artificial Limbs. Husband Shoots Wife, Kills Self While They Are Dancing. Delphine read: “’Truman revealed this great scientific achievement today and warned the Japanese that they now face “a rain of ruin from the air the like of which has never been seen on this earth.”’”

  Fidelis leaned forward in his chair. “Read everything,” he said. “Everything on the page.” So Delphine continued: “’Mr. Truman said that despite the vast multiplied potency of the bomb, “the physical size of the explosive charge is exceedingly small. It is an atomic bomb,” he said. “It is harnessing the basic power of the universe.”’

  “And over here,” said Delphine, “right beside that story, listen to this. ‘Realization of a housewife’s dream—a combination clothes washer, potato peeler and dishwasher, with the addition of a butter churn and ice cream freezer—was near today.’”

  “Just near?” said Mazarine. Dazed, she was dancing her baby back and forth in the bouncing sway new mothers automatically acquire. “You mean we’ve harnessed the power of the universe and not perfected the potato peeler?”

  “Apparently,” Delphine said. “And listen to this. ‘Friends told police the tragedy occurred in the dimly lit basement of Mr. and Mrs. Michael Wojcik, who were giving a homecoming party for their son, Edwin, an army sergeant back from England. Other guests said three couples were dancing when two shots echoed through the apartment. “Are you shot, honey,” Rzeazutko was heard to ask. “Yes,” his wife replied. “Then, I might as well finish the job,” he said, and fired a third bullet into his head.’”

  “Oh Christ, read back to that stuff about the bomb,” said Fidelis.

  “One bomb equals 1,228 pounds of TNT for every man, woman, and child living in Fargo,” Delphine reported.

  “Stop reading,” said Mazarine.

  “The war’s over,” said Fidelis, very softly and with a surge of emotion in his voice that was startling to the others.

  Delphine put down the paper and the three sat absorbed in their own thoughts and listening intensely. The refrigerator hummed on, and a fly threw itself against the outside door screen. The water ticked, dripping into the sink strainer. Sparrows argued in the grape arbor, twittering, busy. These ordinary sounds provoked great feeling in Delphine. It was as though they held a meaning, representing a cipher of daily pursuits. A script emblematic of a greater whole. If she could only read the pattern, if she could discover more, if she could force her mind to thread the connections. But her thoughts swung disturbingly between horror and relief. She thought she should weep. She wanted t
o shout. She left the others, walked outside, and worked for a long while in the hot and ordered chaos of the garden, pulling and piling great handfuls of rag-and pigweed until her brain was filled with the fresh acid fragrance of broken stems and crushed leaves. Screwing her fingers deep to tug the taproot of a vigorous dandelion, she touched the knob end of what she knew was a bone. They were all down there, still, the ones the dog hid, the bones that Eva buried, the mice, snails, birds that died there on their own, the tiny deaths and the huge deaths, all the swirl and complexity of life, one feeding on the other. Forever and ever amen, she thought, dragging out the root with the bone. Both were thick, stained, vigorous, brown. She tossed them into her weed pile and continued until her hands hurt and her thoughts were no more than a weary hum. They will be safe now. Coming home.

  AS A BOY, Franz always pictured himself dying heroically, if he had to die at all, in a Spitfire, after a thrilling battle to the death, shot down by a German Focke-Wulf 190, his favorite enemy craft—dark blue as a lightning storm and pale as sunrise, with virgin yellow cowling, deadly and sunny and fair. He would, of course, shoot the Focke-Wulf down, too, as he chose to face vengeful immolation in a final burst of fire. They’d salute each other as they spiraled straight down, together. In some corner of his mind he’d held on to some childish vision of triumph through the boredom, terror, the tedium of daily survival in the real war. He would have been surprised that it came down to a stupid mistake of timing. A hungover mechanic. A snapped cable.

  Franz was walking into a supply locker, a kind of big metal closet, when the plane took off behind him. One of the ground crew had forgotten to unhook a heavy steel cable and it played out behind the plane as it lifted. The other men ducked and scattered. If Franz had walked just a little faster, or even slower, he would have been out of reach when the cable flicked out like a bullwhip. With its last touch before it was dragged into the air, it caught Franz neatly across the side of the head. It tapped like a finger, neatly brushing his temple. His hand kept opening the door, but the rest of him couldn’t step through it. He had no thought. No moment of surprise. He hadn’t the faintest notion. He was still looking at the scarred steel frame of the door.