Master Butchers Singing Club

by Louise Erdrich

  “So,” said Delphine, after they’d complained to each other about the heat, “what have you found out about the Chavers? Roy and I are wondering.” She didn’t mention Cyprian, for it struck her that Sheriff Hock might ask where Cyprian traveled off to from time to time, and she wanted to avoid the story about his being a brush salesman. But Hock didn’t seem at all interested in Cyprian’s excursions; he was, he said, interested in talking to her. Just lately, he said, he’d been wanting to ask about costumes.

  “Costumes?”

  “What you and Cyprian wore when doing your shows, your balancing acts. What did you have on?”

  “We wore regular clothes. Cyprian said that part of the surprise of what we did was that we looked so normal, then our act was all the more unusual. Besides, at first we couldn’t afford anything fancy, no sequins.”

  “Or red beads?” said Hock.

  Delphine understood, thinking of the pantry floor. “Oh, now I see what you’re getting at. Are you saying that we could be suspects?”

  “Well,” said Hock, “you know the beads. They’re still the odd component. Your dad says that nobody at the wake wore anything like a sequin or a bead or anything fancy that he remembers.”

  “Not that he would have noticed, stewed as he got.”

  “Likely,” said Sheriff Hock. “So I’ve also gone through the props department of our local company. You probably don’t think I remember!” He wagged a finger at her, twinkling his eyes in a way she didn’t like to see on a sheriff’s face. “I know you and Clarisse had a good time with that witch scene. I have a feeling either one of you’d have made an excellent Lady Macbeth.”

  “We just understudied the part,” said Delphine carefully. She didn’t know if Hock was veiling an accusation. She attempted to lighten the moment. “Why don’t we revive”—she was careful not to tempt bad luck by saying the actual title—“the Scottish play!”

  “Sadly, I am bound to my profession. I haven’t the time anymore, and anyway, do you think that the people of this town want to see their sheriff as, say, the eponymous murderer? I would lose their confidence.”

  “People wouldn’t think . . . or you could always play Banquo.”

  “No, no, no, to many, art is life. I am the sheriff, so I must play the sheriff round the clock. To accept any other role while wearing the badge would only confuse people.” Sheriff Hock squeezed his chin in his fist now, frowning. In a low voice he asked, “How is Clarisse?”

  “She’s busy.” Delphine said this quickly to disguise her jolt of unease.

  “Is she really?” Hock said in a light, menacing voice. “Busy? Or is she just avoiding her destiny? I like to think of myself as inevitable.”

  His sly self-assurance tripped a wire in Delphine. “Inevitable!” she cried. “You’re a mental wreck. She hates you. I don’t care if you are the sheriff, you should leave her alone.”

  “Caramel?” Hock extended a dish that had lain beneath some papers. He unwrapped one from its waxed paper and slowly fitted it between his lips.

  Delphine shook her head and turned to leave. Already she regretted having lost her temper. Insulting Hock was a bad idea.

  She stopped by the drugstore and bought a phosphate, drank it quickly to calm herself. Then she walked straight to the funeral home.

  EVERYTHING ABOUT THE Strubs’ establishment was tasteful—painted gray and trimmed in dark maroon; even the awnings on the windows were made of matching, striped canvas. The porch was railed with turned cast iron. The lawn was a perfect swatch of muted green and the flowers in the summer garden were hushed lilac and mauve hollyhocks, white petunias, delicate blue bachelor’s buttons, nothing too colorful. The back door, also painted a calm gray, was fitted with a modern electric bell. Delphine pushed it, heard a pleasant stroke of music from inside. She looked nervously around to see whether she had been followed. When Clarisse came to the door, Delphine gestured at her to quickly let her in.

  “Is it Roy?” said Clarisse, in an anxious, knowing way that temporarily unnerved Delphine.

  “No!” she cried out.

  “I’m sorry,” said Clarisse. “What was I thinking? Come in, come in. How stupid of me.” She put her arms around Delphine and led her into a soothing little back entry room.

  “We have to talk now. Where can we talk?” asked Delphine.

  “I can take you downstairs,” said Clarisse. “I’m working with Mr. Pletherton.”

  Delphine nodded. The basement was a carefully planned space, cool in summer, heated minimally in winter, always just the right temperature for work. There, Clarisse and her uncle and Benta concentrated their attentions on the town’s dead. Delphine knew that she was privileged to be permitted to enter—no one else, except Doctor Heech and, in a case of suspected foul play, the sheriff, was allowed downstairs. Delphine had never been particularly bothered, and now she found the Strubs’ preparation room much less upsetting than the back cooler of the slaughterhouse. And for sure, anything they said there would go no further. So she went down the back stairs, following her friend, who wore a crisp white coat and now peeled off her gloves with a snap.

  “I thought I had a date with a guy from South Dakota, but he stood me up,” Clarisse’s voice floated back. It seemed that her profession was still as unsettling to potential boyfriends as it had been in high school. The boy had quickly made it clear that if she wanted to date him, she’d have to quit. For a while she and Delphine talked the way they used to, exchanging news of the states of their emotions. Clarisse said she wondered how she could respect a man who was afraid of her job.

  “He called me an undertaker, Delphine. You know how I hate that! He’s like the others. None of them would probably come down here, even if I asked them. They’re chicken.” Her expression shifted to a startling mask, and she hunched and croaked, “They fear I’ll drain them dry as hay.”

  Delphine laughed, although Clarisse’s sudden transformation, in the basement surroundings, slightly unsettled her. In one corner, a phonograph record played lovely, swelling opera music. Clarisse played the music not only for herself, but also, she claimed, the notes had a soothing effect upon the flesh of the bodies she was working on, causing them somehow to absorb the fluids she pumped into them more evenly. She swore it was true, but perhaps her current client did not appreciate opera music. The place was brilliantly lit and Mr. Pletherton, whom Clarisse paused to regard critically before she wheeled him back into the cooler, looked gray and actually dead. Perhaps Clarisse was still trying to get the quality of dye right. She was constantly experimenting, trying to choose the exact right mixture of arterial solution for the peculiarities of each body. “They’re all so different.” Clarisse gave his arm a clinical stroke as she put him away and there was a small crackling sound. She frowned and muttered, “Postmortem emphysema.

  “I’m having a lot of trouble with him, Delphine. He died of food poisoning. Fargo restaurant.” There was a whisper of distress in her voice. “Tissue gas.”

  The north wall was outfitted with glass-fronted cabinets, the top shelves neatly decked with small tubs of lip pins, mouth and eye cement, bandages, and glue. There was a small box of leftover calling cards from visitations. Benta kept the cards to dip in paraffin and she used them instead of cotton to make a durable barrier between the gums and lips. There was Bon Ami, used as a tooth polish, massage cream and lemon juice, vinegar and soap. Piles of clean towels. Hand brushes, hairbrushes, nail files, and clear lacquer. The broad lower shelves were stocked with serviceable gallon bottles of methanol or wood alcohol, ethanol, arsenic solution, formalin, and smaller bottles of oil of cloves, sassafras, wintergreen, benzaldehyde, oil of orange flower, lavender, and rosemary. Aurelius Strub’s original embalmer’s diploma, the first awarded west of Minneapolis and east of Spokane, hung from the wall in an elaborate frame. Although the basement was always cool, the general heat was wreaking havoc with the burials. Amid all of this Clarisse maintained her cheerful curved smile and her graceful prettiness. She s
uddenly put Delphine in mind of Malcolm’s line, Though all things foul would wear the brows of grace, yet grace must still look so. She pushed the quote from her head.

  There were two nice plush chairs in the corner, and even a tiny electric stove and a pot for brewing coffee.

  “All right,” said Clarisse. “I’m all ears. Now, what is it, really?”

  Of course, an afternoon visit signaled some emergency, inner or outer, and Delphine got immediately to the point.

  “What costume did you wear when you played the lady in The Lady and the Tiger?” asked Delphine.

  “It was a cute little number, all—”

  “Red, pink, peach flapper beads, those tube iridescent kind.”

  “I sewed a million on that dress, remember? It was practically a work of art.”

  Clarisse was, in fact, a clever seamstress and used a variation of herstitching to create perfect hidden sutures in her clients, even using two crisscrossing needles sometimes and hiding the knots. Even underneath the clothing, where no one would ever see, her work was perfect and she scorned lock stitch or bridge sutures—That’s just sewing, she’d say.

  “Where is it?”

  “I think it’s in my closet somewhere,” said Clarisse, easily. “Why?”

  “Get rid of it,” said Delphine.

  “After all that work I put into it?” Clarisse dropped her jaw in false outrage.

  “Listen, I got wind of the way Sheriff Hock is thinking. You know the cellar door at my house was pasted shut with this awful solid goop and in it there were beads just like your beads.”

  Clarisse opened her mouth, but then a look of pain and panic suffused her face, and she put her hands to her pretty cheeks. Her little oval nails whitened with the pressure of her fingers, “Oh God, Delphine! I told you that Sheriff Hock practically ripped the dress off me that night . . .”

  “I have this feeling that Hock’s cooking something up in his fat, fevered head.”

  “Hock is baiting me,” said Clarisse. “He’s . . . impossible. I can’t reason with him. He’ll use this coincidence—the dress, poor Ruthie and Doris . . . how can he? There was a little girl down there!” She burst into quick, frustrated tears, but after a few moments, she took down her hands and said, “No, no, I’ll not let him get the better of me. He should lay off. I’m a professional and I have to finish Mr. Pletherton by five, and he’s a really difficult case.” She suddenly drooped, very tired, frowned at Delphine, and then shook her curls. “Hey, would you be a real girl pal and grab that dress from my closet? Just go home and throw the damn dress in the fire.”

  Delphine said yes in the conspiratorial intensity of the moment and walked out the door in a blur. When she reached her friend’s house and opened the back door, she realized that she was doing something stupid. It would look terrible if Sheriff Hock caught Delphine removing the dress from her friend’s closet or in fact found her anywhere near the dress at all. And anyway, what was she supposed to do with it? The beads might melt but it looked as though they wouldn’t burn up and disappear. Swiftly, worried, she walked up the stairs to the room in which she’d stayed over often with her friend. She had treasured those nights, normal family dinners, an easygoing family life, all she didn’t have. No wonder the Strubs liked their jobs so much—no emotional surprises from the dead, though Delphine knew very well they often presented difficulties. The only joke Aurelius Strub had ever permitted himself, and it might have been simply an exhausted mistake, was to refer to the boy who went through the corn picker as a grave challenge.

  Delphine entered Clarisse’s room—childishly messy—her friend needed some place to let her hair down, after all. What to do with the dress, the dress that she knew, already, from a hollow feeling in her chest, would be composed of the same color of apricot and sweet pink and red beads she remembered pasted into the pantry floor? Delphine argued with herself, but eventually she walked smoothly out the door with the dress in a sack and ducked around the back of the house. She couldn’t fulfill her promise to Clarisse to the letter, she decided. If she brought the dress home the piece of evidence, realistically she had to call it that, was in her hands. There would be no explaining it away. She could just see the beads glittering in the ashes of the outdoor fireplace. Delphine got a shovel from the shed beside the house and began gardening instead. She worked for about half an hour. In case anyone should see her, she thought it best that she just be thinning her friend’s iris bed, taking some extra perennials home for herself. In the process, she dug a deep hole and then very quickly stuffed the dress down into it. She shook the bag out, making certain every single bead was in the ground. She put some iris roots into the bag, a few crowded daylilies, and then returned the shovel to its place and walked home.

  AS SOON AS she got back to the farm, Delphine made a quick outdoor cooking fire in the fireplace, let it burn down to a perfect bed of coals. She rolled some potatoes into the glowing embers, next, put the grill over the coals, and built a bit of a fire over the ashes to pan-fry some fish in bacon grease. She took a second picking of beans from the icebox, where she had left them to marinate all day. They were cold and sweet and vinegary. Outside in the cool of the evening, the mosquitoes quelled by the smoke, Roy, Markus, and she ate. Delphine took out the cream she’d bought in town and the raspberries Markus picked. That cream was a luxury. She had to admit she liked the money that Cyprian brought back—he gave her most of what he made—because it gave them leave to eat like kings and she had fixed up the house. Still, she was hit with a wave of irritated relief when he drove up as they were finishing, for although she kept him in the back of her thoughts, his absence had been a nagging worry. She hated to admit how glad she was to see him safe, and she grabbed him, hugged him, and shook him, all at the same time.

  “You’re staying,” she said.

  He kissed her hand and slowly lifted his hot black eyes to hers. He could flirt, even worn out, with great conviction—had he learned it as a kind of protection for his secret, or was it just in his blood?

  There was plenty of fried fish left, and she heated up the string beans in more bacon grease. She prodded a baked potato from the edge of the coals, juggled it from hand to hand before she forked it open on his plate. A jet of steam rose from the potato, and she spooned bacon drippings into the soft meal. He made a grateful sound.

  “Tomorrow,” she told him, “I am going to try getting a job as a telephone operator. Do you think I have a good voice?”

  “Everything is good about you,” said Cyprian, sighing over his full stomach and the good feeling of lounging around a fire in the gathering dusk. He really meant what he said. He was glad to be back. Outside the crackle of the flames, the mourning doves uttered their delicate, cool, evening chant. A catbird went through its repertory, song after complicated song, and brush-stroke clouds scattered across the green sky. After a short time, Roy, who had the stamina and routine of a mere mortal now that he was sober, dragged himself off to his little sleeping shack. Markus sagged and then toppled over, dead asleep, and Cyprian carried him into the house. When he returned, Delphine asked a question.

  “The way you like men,” she said, “do you like boys too?”

  Cyprian gaped at her in the firelight, and made a grotesque face. “No!”

  “Don’t act so shocked,” said Delphine, “I had to ask. You sprang that other on me. How was I to know? Anyway, I have this idea I need your help with. Markus. You have to teach him to piss.”

  Cyprian had just driven twelve hours straight, and he thought that maybe he was hearing things.

  “I mean it,” said Delphine, “he doesn’t know how.”

  “He sure does know!” said Cyprian.

  “Not good enough.” Delphine was adamant. “You have to teach him self-control, then the fancy stuff to do with his pecker, like write his name in the sand. You have to teach him to turn the faucet off without touching the spigot. That kind of thing. Otherwise I can’t send him back to the aunt.”

  N
ow Cyprian got the picture. He knew about the floor and the boy’s routine on rising every morning. He nodded slowly as Delphine’s intent came clear and then he looked at her with some respect. How many women would think of this? Not a one in all creation, which was why he loved her. It might work. So he agreed to it, and then, the very next morning Delphine made two pitchers of lemonade. One for each. She sent them out behind the henhouse with the lemonade, and every morning after that she did the same. They practiced, and by the end of the week, Markus was dry in the morning. But that was only the beginning of what she felt she had to teach him about survival.

  DELPHINE DIDN’T HAVE the chance to go on to the next phase of her teaching plan—how to deal with a raging Tante Maria Theresa. Her idea was to teach Markus to throw a convincing and horrifying epileptic fit. He could learn to roll his eyes back to the whites and bubble spit between his lips. That would fix Tante. Before she could start his lessons, the meat-market truck pulled into the yard, and once again Fidelis stepped out in his rumpled shirt. This time, his pants were oddly shrunken and he wore no socks. There was a tired gloom about him; the skin underneath his eyes was soft and bruised looking, and he was very quiet. Some of his power was sucked away. That was exactly it. He looked as though he’d been deflated, and then Delphine realized that he’d grown almost thin. His raw bones came to the surface, knobs of wrists and knuckles, and his cheeks had slightly hollowed. This time he stood outside the door and refused to come inside even for a glass of water. It was plain that he needed to say something.

  “Please.”

  He wasn’t one to say this word, to anyone, not a woman or a man, and he especially wasn’t one to say it with the aching quality she heard in his voice. Delphine wondered right then if she’d ever hear the word again, from Fidelis, and she let it sit between them like a small monument.