The Round House

by Louise Erdrich

  He came down quick.

  He’s sitting there watching!

  Did he see you?

  I dunno.

  We went back around to the most hidden side of the house. There were footsteps inside and a sudden spill of light out the window just above our heads. There was a pause. The priest’s silhouette loomed behind the curtain. We pressed ourselves to the clapboard. Just behind our heads a gentle splattering started.

  Cappy mouthed the question Taking a piss? I shrugged because it sounded more like someone had taken the cap off a bottle and was gently shaking a delicate stream of water into the toilet. It took a long time and there were pauses. Then the toilet flushed, the faucet went on and off, the light went out, a door shut.

  He’s a low-key pisser, said Cappy.

  Well, he is a priest, said Angus.

  Do they piss funny?

  They don’t have sex, said Angus. With no regular use, maybe the plumbing could get rusty.

  Like you know, said Cappy.

  You guys stay here.

  I crawled around the side of the house to the bluish TV glow. Anyone who came into the yard or passed beneath the black pines would have seen me. I stood and leaned slowly to the edge of the window. It was open, to catch the June breeze. I could see the back of Father Travis’s head. He was sitting before the television in an easy chair and at his elbow there was a city beer, a Michelob. I couldn’t tell what he was watching at first, and then I realized it was a movie. Not a television movie.

  I sank down and crept back.

  He’s got a VHS player!

  What’s he watching?

  This time Cappy went to look and after a little while he came back and said it was Alien, which had played two hours south of our reservation and which we’d only heard brain-bending stories of because we had no way down there and besides were too young to get in. There were no rental places on the reservation yet.

  He must own it, I said, forgetting the open window.

  He owns a copy? Owns it?

  Shut up, you guys, whispered Cappy. He’s got his screens in.

  Angus leaned back against the foundation of the building and drew his legs up to his chest. We put our heads together and spoke low.

  Could you see it very good?

  I could see it fine. He’s got a thirty-inch.

  So that’s how we finally saw Alien—standing at the window behind the young priest we suspected of an unspeakable crime. Father Travis even turned the sound up so we could hear the whole movie. When the credits started to roll, he switched it off and we ducked down and crawled around to where the bedroom had to be. We were still in delicious shock. Angus lay down and poked his fist up from his stomach and jerked his legs. The light went on in the bathroom again and there was the trickling noise. Then toothbrushing and gargling noises. Then the light went on in the bedroom. We edged along the foundation. Slowly rose. There were curtains and rolled-down shades, but there was a gap where the shade met the window. The curtains were transparent panels. We could see just fine. We watched Father Travis take off his wizardly cassock and hang it up. He had big hard muscled shoulders and rocklike pecs. Crazed scars looped down the divided slabs of his stomach. He shed his boxers and stood butt-naked, then turned around. His scars all connected in a powerful tangle around his penis and balls. His equipment was there, but obviously sewn back on, said Angus later, awed, telling Zack. Everything down there was scar tissue—ridged, slick, gray, purple.

  We panicked, scrambled away. The lights went out. We darted toward our bikes but Father Travis was unbelievably swift out the door and with a sure bound he seized Angus. Cappy and I kept running.

  Come back here, you two, said Father Travis in an even voice that carried perfectly. Or I’ll rip off his head.

  Angus yelped. We slowed and looked back. He had Angus by the throat.

  He means it!

  Say your Hail Marys, said the priest.

  Hail Mary, Angus choked.

  Silently, said Father Travis.

  Angus’s mouth began to move. Cappy and I turned and walked back. The night wind came in and the pines sighed around us. The flickering yard lamps that lighted the church parking lot didn’t reach beneath the black trees. Father Travis walked Angus before him, to the house. Behind us. He ordered Cappy to open the door and once we were in he threw a dead bolt and kicked a chair up to the door.

  As you know, there’s no back way out, he said. So you might as well make yourselves comfortable.

  He flung Angus at the couch and we jumped forward and sat down on either side of Angus, hands folded in our laps. Father Travis pulled a plaid shirt on and grabbed his easy chair. He turned it to face us. Then he sat down. He was wearing the boxers and the plaid shirt hung open. His chest was massive. I noticed a set of free weights on the floor and barbells in the corner.

  Long time no see, he said to me and Angus.

  We were petrified.

  Got an eyeful, huh? You dumb monkeys. Whaddya think?

  He kicked me in the shin, and although he was barefoot my leg went numb and I rocked backwards.

  Say something.

  But we couldn’t.

  Okay, dogface, he said to Cappy. You tell me why you were spying on me. I know these two, but I don’t know you. What’s your name?

  John Pulls Leg.

  A jolt of admiration shot straight through me. That Cappy could give a fake name at this moment.

  Pulls Leg. What kind of frickin’ name is that?

  It’s an old traditional name, Sir!

  Sir? Where’d you get that Sir!

  My father was a Marine, Sir!

  Then you’ve disgraced him, you puling ass-wipe shit. Son of a Marine spying on a priest. What’s your dad’s name?

  Same name, Sir!

  So you’re Pulls Leg Junior?

  Yes, Sir!

  Well, Pulls Leg Junior, how’s this?

  Father Travis reached out and yanked Cappy off the couch with one streaming jerk of his leg. Cappy hit the floor hard but didn’t cry out.

  Pulls Leg, huh? Is that how you got your dumb-shit name?

  He loomed down and Cappy put his dukes up but the priest just reached down and threw Cappy back on the couch.

  All right, Pulls Leg Junior, what’s your real traditional old-time name?

  Cappy Lafournais.

  Doe’s your father?

  Yeah.

  Good man. He pointed a thick finger at Angus. And I know who your aunt is.

  He stuck his finger in my face next. I couldn’t breathe.

  I know your dad, and I think I know why you pathetic scum-butts are here, spying on me. You. I started thinking about your question earlier this evening. Why you would ask me what I was doing on Sunday, May fifteenth, at such and such a time. Like you were asking for my alibi. I thought it was funny. Then I remembered what happened to your mom. And bingo.

  Our knees, our feet, our shoes, had taken on a profound significance. We were studying them closely. We could feel his hammered silver eyes on us.

  So you think I hurt your ma, he said softly. Well? Answer.

  He kicked me again. The numbness turned to pain.

  Yeah. No. I thought maybe.

  Maybe. Then the answer came in a flash, so to speak, huh? Im-poss-ee-bley. So you know. And just for your information, you little rat-pukes, you cat farts, you jerk-off freaks, I wouldn’t use my dick that way even if I still could. You yellow-shit horndogs, I have a mother and I have a sister. I also had a girlfriend.

  Father Travis leaned back. I glanced up at him. He was watching us from under his brow, his hands folded in his lap. His eyes had taken on that cyborg gleam. His cheekbones looked like they were going to break right through his skin. Not only did he own a copy of Alien, not only did he have an amazing and terrible wound, but he had called us humiliating names without actually resorting to the usual swear words. Besides that there was the deft speed with which he’d caught Angus, the free weights beside the television, the fanc
y Michelob. It was almost enough to make a boy want to be a Catholic.

  You had a girlfriend?

  Father Travis’s face tightened to bone-white. I could not believe Cappy’s nerve. For a moment I thought he was dead. But Cappy hadn’t asked it in a taunting or sarcastic way at all. That was the thing about Cappy. He really wanted to know. He’d asked the question the way I know now a good lawyer might interview a potential witness. To find out about the other person. To hear his story.

  Father Travis didn’t speak for a time, but Cappy maintained a silent willingness to listen.

  Yes, said Father Travis, at last. His voice was thicker now, and low. You skinny creamers don’t know about women yet. You may think you do, but you don’t. I was engaged to a real one. Extremely beautiful. Faithful. Never faltered. Not even when I got hit. She would have stayed. I was the one who . . . Do you boys like girls?

  I do, said Cappy, the only one who dared answer.

  Don’t waste your time on sluts, said Father Travis. You in high school?

  Going into high school, Cappy said.

  All the better. There’s a beautiful girl nobody else has noticed. You be the one to notice her.

  All right, said Cappy.

  So, said Father Travis. So.

  He spread his hands over the arms of the chair. He watched us in silence until finally we raised our eyes to meet his lock-in stare.

  You want to know how it happened. You want to know how I deal with it. You want to know things that you have no right to know. But you’re not bad boys. I can see that now. You wanted to find out who hurt your mother, his mother. He stared at me.

  I was at the U.S. Embassy in ’83 and got lucky. I’m here, right? The spigot works. I have to take extremely good care of it. Otherwise, infections. Some sex drive. All sublimated. I was in seminary school before becoming a Marine. Had a spell of anger. Came home like this, a sign. Finished up. Ordained. Shipped here. Any questions?

  I told him no priest here had ever shot the gophers.

  Sisters gas ’em. You like to be gassed in a tunnel? Better thing to die clean, outside. They die like that. He snapped his fingers. Turn over and look at the sky, huh? The clouds.

  He wasn’t looking at us. He wasn’t looking at anything now. He waved his hand, dismissing us. We half rose. He was far away. He steepled his hands together and lowered his forehead to rest against his fingers. We edged past him to the door, quietly moved the chair, and undid the dead bolt. We shut the door carefully and then we walked over to our bikes. The wind was blowing harder now. Beating the hood of the yard light so it flickered. The pines groaned. But the air was warm. A south wind, brought by Shawanobinesi, the Southern Thunderbird. A rain-bearing wind.

  Chapter Six

  Datalore

  The wind passed over us in a rolling mass of clouds that just kept moving until the sky went clear. Just like that, as if nothing had happened between us, my father and I began to talk. He told me he’d had an interesting conversation with Father Travis, and I froze up. But it was all about Texas and the military; Father Travis hadn’t ratted on us. Whatever suspicions my father had expressed that night to Edward were gone, or submerged. I asked my father if he’d talked to Soren Bjerke.

  The gas can? I asked.

  Pertinent.

  Now that Father Travis was off the list, I’d been thinking about the cases and bench notes my father and I had pulled. I asked my father if Bjerke had questioned the Larks, brother and sister.

  He’s talked to Linda.

  My father tensely frowned. He had promised himself not to involve me, or confide in me, or collaborate with me. He knew where it went, what I might get into, but he didn’t know the half of it. And here was the thing I didn’t understand then but do now—the loneliness. I was right, in that there was just the three of us. Or the two of us. Nobody else, not Clemence, not even my mother herself, cared as much as we did about my mother. Nobody else thought night and day of her. Nobody else knew what was happening to her. Nobody else was as desperate as the two of us, my father and I, to get our life back. To return to the Before. So he had no choice, not really. Eventually, he had to talk to me.

  I should visit Linda Wishkob, he said. She stonewalled Bjerke. But maybe . . . you want to come?

  Linda Wishkob was magnetically ugly. Her pasty wedge of a face just cleared the post office counter. She regarded us with mooncalf, bulging eyes; her wet red lips were curls of flesh. Her hair, a cap of straight brown floss, quivered as she pulled out commemoratives. She displayed them for my father. She reminded me of a pop-eyed porcupine, even down to her fat little long-nailed paws. My father chose a set of fifty states of the union and asked if he could buy her a cup of coffee.

  There’s coffee in back here, said Linda. I can drink it free. She regarded my father warily, although she knew my mother. Everyone knew what had happened but nobody knew what to say or what not to say.

  Never mind about the coffee, said my father. I’d like to have a word with you. Why don’t you get someone to cover for you? You aren’t busy.

  Linda opened her wet lips to protest but could not think of a good excuse. In a few moments she had cleared things with her supervisor and came from around the counter. We walked out of the post office and across the street to Mighty Al’s, which was a little soup can of a place. I couldn’t believe my father was going to question someone in the close quarters of Mighty’s, which had six scrounged tables crammed together. And I was right. My father asked no questions of Linda but proceeded to have a useless conversation about the weather.

  My father could out-weather anybody. Like people anywhere, there were times when it was the only topic where people here felt comfortably expressive, and my father could go on earnestly, seemingly forever. When the current weather was exhausted, there was all the weather that had occurred in recorded history, weather lived through or witnessed by a relative, or even heard about on the news. Catastrophic weather of all types. And when that was done with, there was all the weather that might possibly occur in the future. I’d even heard him speculate about weather in the afterlife. Dad and Linda Wishkob talked about the weather for quite a while and then she got up and left.

  You really put her through the wringer, Dad.

  The blackboard menu today advertised Hamburger Soup, all U could eat. We started on our second bowls of steaming hot soup: ground meat, commodity macaroni, canned tomatoes, celery, onion, salt, and pepper. It was especially good that day. Dad had also ordered Mighty’s coffee, which he called the stoic’s choice. It was always burnt. He kept drinking it expressionlessly after we’d finished the soup.

  I wanted to get a feel for how she was doing, said my father. She’s been through the wringer enough, for real.

  I wasn’t sure what coming down to talk with Linda Wishkob was about, but apparently some exchange I didn’t understand took place.

  Dad had finally allowed Cappy to come over that day. It was a grueling hot afternoon so we were inside playing Bionic Commando, quietly as we could, with the fan on. As always, my mother was sleeping. There was a soft tap. I answered the door, and there was Linda Wishkob, her bulging eyes, her tight blue uniform, her sweaty, dull, makeup-less face. Those long fingernails on the stubby fingers suddenly struck me as sinister, though they were painted an innocent pink.

  I’ll just wait for her to wake up, said Linda.

  She surprised me by stepping past me into the living room. She nodded at Cappy and sat down behind us. Cappy shrugged, and as we hadn’t played our game for a while and were not going to quit for any small reason, we continued: For years our people have struggled to resist an unstoppable array of greedy and unstable beings. Our army has been reduced to a few desperate warriors and we are all but weaponless and starving. We taste the nearness of defeat. But deep in the bowels of our community our scientists have perfected an unprecedented fighting weapon. Our bionic arm reaches, crushes, flexes, feints, folds. It pierces armor and its heat-seeking sensors can detect the most well-d
efended foe. The bionic arm combines the power of an entire army in itself and must be operated by one and only one soldier who can meet the test. I am that soldier. Or Cappy is that soldier. The Bionic Commando. Our mission takes us through the land of a thousand eyes, where death awaits us around every corner and through every window. Our destination: enemy headquarters. The heart of our hated foe’s impregnable fortress. The challenge: impossible. Our resolve: unflagging. Our courage: quitless. Our audience: Linda Wishkob.

  She watched us in such utter silence that we forgot about her. She hardly breathed or moved a muscle. When my mother left her room and went to the upstairs bathroom I didn’t hear that either, but Linda did. She padded to the foot of the stairs and before I could say or do anything, she called my mother’s name. Then she started walking up the stairs. I quit playing and jumped up, but already Linda’s soft round body was at the top of the stairs and she was greeting my mother as if my mother weren’t skinnily tottering away from her, disoriented, discovered, and invaded. Linda Wishkob did not seem to notice my mother’s agitation. With a kind of oblivious simplicity she just followed her into her room. The door remained open. I heard the bed creak. The scrape of Linda’s chair. And then their voices, as they started to talk.

  A few days later there was finally a steady downpour of rain and I stayed inside for the second time that summer, playing my games, drawing cartoons. Angus had been working on his second portrait of Worf, but Star had called up and told him to borrow a plumber’s snake from Cappy’s place. They were over at Angus’s now, probably, drinking Elwin’s Blatz and pulling goop out of a stinking drain. My pictures bored me. I thought of sneaking the Cohen handbook, but reading my father’s cases and notes had set up a despair in me. On a day like this I might have gone upstairs, locked myself in my room, and paged through my hidden HOMEWORK folder. My mother’s presence upstairs had killed that habit off. I was thinking of slogging over to Angus’s or even of taking out the third and fourth Tolkien books my father had got me for Christmas, but I wasn’t sure I was desperate enough to do either thing. The rain was that endless, gray, pounding kind of rain that makes your house feel cold and sad even if your mother’s spirit isn’t dying right upstairs. I thought it might wash all of the plants out of the garden, but of course that wouldn’t worry my mother. I took her a sandwich, but she was asleep. I took out the Tolkien set. I had just started reading as the rain came down and down, when out of the drumming pour, like a drenched hobbit, Linda Wishkob arrived again to visit.