The Round House

by Louise Erdrich

  Sonja left. I sat with Mooshum. Time collapsed. My head rang like I’d been clocked. Sometimes with the ancient, their breath comes so shallow it cannot be discerned. The afternoon went on and the air went blue before he finally stirred. His eyes opened and then closed. I ran for water, and gave him a little sip.

  I’m still here, he said. His voice was faint with disappointment.

  I continued to sit with Mooshum, at the edge of his cot, thinking about his wish for a happy death. I’d had a chance to see about the difference between Sonja’s right and left breasts, but I wished I never had. Yet I was glad I did. The conflict in me skewed my brain. About fifteen minutes before Clemence and Edward returned with the freezer, I looked down at my feet and noticed the golden tassel by the leg of the cot. I picked it up and put it in my jeans pocket.

  I don’t keep the tassel in a special box or anything—anymore. It’s in the top drawer of my dresser, where things just end up, like Mooshum’s limp stray sock where he kept money. If my wife has ever noticed that I have it, she’s said nothing. I never told her about Sonja, not really. I didn’t tell her how I stuffed the rest of Sonja’s costume in a garbage can by the tribal offices where the BIA was contracted to pick it up. She wouldn’t know that I put that souvenir tassel where I’ll come across it by chance, on purpose. Because every time I look at it, I am reminded of the way I treated Sonja and about the way she treated me, or about how I threatened her and all that came of it, how I was just another guy. How that killed me once I really thought about it. A gimme-gimme asshole. Maybe I was. Still, after I thought about it for a long time—in fact, all my life—I wanted to be something better.

  Doe had built a little deck onto the front of the house and it was filled, as all of our decks tend to be, with useful refuse. There were snow tires stored in black garbage bags, rusted jacks, a bent hibachi grill, banged-up tools, and plastic toys. Cappy slumped amid all that jetsam in a sagging lawn chair. He was running both hands over his hair as he stared at the dog-scratched boards. He didn’t even look up when I stepped next to him and sat down on an old picnic bench.

  Hey.

  Cappy didn’t react.

  So, aaniin . . .

  Still, nothing.

  After a lot more nothing it came out that Zelia had gone back to Helena with the church group, which I already knew, and after still more nothing Cappy blurted out, Me and Zelia, we did something.

  Something?

  We did everything.

  Everything?

  Everything we could think of . . . well, there might be more, but we tried . . .

  Where?

  In the graveyard. It was the night of your Mooshum’s birthday. And once we did a few things there—

  On a grave?

  I dunno. We were kind of on the outskirts of the graves, off to the sides. Not right on a grave.

  That’s good; it could be bad luck.

  For sure. Then after, we got into the church basement. We did it a couple of more times there.

  What!

  In the catechism room. There’s a rug.

  I was silent. My head swam. Bold move, I said at last.

  Yeah, then she left. I can’t do nothing. I hurt. Cappy looked at me like a dying dog. He tapped his chest and whispered. It hurts right here.

  Women, I said.

  He looked at me.

  They’ll kill you.

  How do you know?

  I didn’t answer. His love for Zelia was not like my love for Sonja, which had become a thing contaminated by humiliation, treachery, and even bigger waves of feeling that tore me up and threw me down. By contrast, Cappy’s love was pure. His love was just starting to manifest. Elwin had a tattoo gun and traded for his work. Cappy said he wanted to go to his place and get Elwin to etch Zelia’s name in bold letters across his chest.

  No, I said. C’mon. Don’t do that.

  He stood. I’m gonna!

  I only convinced him to wait by telling him that when his pecs swelled from his workouts, the letters could be bigger. We sat a long time, me trying to distract Cappy, that not working. I finally left when Doe came home and told Cappy to get to work on the woodpile. Cappy walked over to the axe, grabbed it and began splitting wood with such crazed thwacks that I feared he would take off his leg. I told him to take it easy, but he just gave me a dead look and hit a piece of wood so hard it shot up ten feet.

  Meandering back toward our house, where my mother and father were supposed to have returned that afternoon, I had that feeling again of not wanting to go home. But I didn’t want to go back to anywhere Sonja was, either. Thinking of her made me think of everything. Into my mind there came the picture of that scrap of blue-and-white checked cloth, and the knowledge I kept pushing away about the doll being in that car. By throwing out the doll I’d obviously destroyed evidence, maybe even something that would tell Mayla’s whereabouts. Where she lay, in a place so obscure that even the dogs could not find her. I put the thought of Mayla from my mind. And Sonja. I tried also not to think of my mother. Of what had maybe happened in Bismarck. All of these thoughts were reasons I did not want to go home, or to be alone. They came up over me, shrouding my mind, covering my heart. Even as I rode, I tried to get rid of the thoughts by taking my bicycle over the dirt hills behind the hospital. I began to course violently up and down, jumping so high that when I landed my bones jarred. Whirling. Skidding. Raising clouds of grit that filled my mouth until I was sick and thirsty and dripping with sweat so I could finally go home.

  Pearl heard my bike approach, and she stood at the end of the drive, waiting. I got off the bike and put my forehead on her forehead. I wished I could change places with her. I was holding Pearl when I heard my mother scream. And scream again. And then I heard my father’s low voice grinding between her shrieks. Her voice veered and fell, just the way I’d just been riding, crashing hard, until finally it dropped to an astonished mutter.

  I stood outside, holding my bike up, leaning on it. Pearl was next to me. Eventually, my father walked out the back screen door and lit a cigarette, which I had never seen him do. His face was yellow with exhaustion. His eyes were so red they seemed rimmed with blood. He turned and saw me.

  They let him go, didn’t they, I said.

  He didn’t answer.

  Didn’t they, Dad.

  After a moment he dragged on the cigarette, looked down.

  All of the electric poison that had drained out of me on my bike flooded back and I began to harangue my father, with words. Stupid words.

  All you catch are drunks and hot dog thieves.

  He looked at me in surprise, then shrugged and tapped the ash off his cigarette.

  Don’t forget the scofflaws and custody cases.

  Scofflaws? Oh sure. Is there anywhere you can’t park on the rez?

  Try the tribal chairman’s spot.

  And custody. Nothing but pain. You said yourself. You’ve got zero authority, Dad, one big zero, nothing you can do. Why do it anyway?

  You know why.

  No, I don’t. I yelled it at him and went in to be with my mother, but there was nothing to be with when I got there. She was staring blankly at the blank of the refrigerator and when I stepped in front of her she spoke in a weird, calm voice.

  Hi, Joe.

  After my father entered, she went upstairs in a slow devotional walk with him holding on to her arm.

  Don’t leave her, Dad, please. I said this in dread as he came back down alone. But he did not even glance at me to answer. I stood awkwardly across from him, dangling my hands.

  Why do you do it? I said to him, bursting out. Why bother?

  You want to know?

  He got up and went to the refrigerator and rummaged around and pulled something from deep on the back shelf. He brought it over to the table. It was one of Clemence’s uneaten casseroles, there so long the noodles had turned black, but stashed near enough to the cold refrigeration coils that it had frozen and so didn’t stink, yet.

  Why I
keep on. You want to know?

  With a savage thump he turned the casserole over onto the table. He lifted off the pan. The thing was shot through with white fuzz but held its oblong shape. My father rose again and pulled the box of cutlery from the cabinet counter. I thought he’d gone crazy at last and watching him I could hardly speak.

  Dad?

  I’m going to illustrate this for you, son.

  He sat down and waved a couple of forks at me. Then with cool absorption he laid a large carving knife carefully on top of the frozen casserole and all around it proceeded to stack one fork, another fork, one on the next, adding a spoon here, a butter knife, a ladle, a spatula, until he had a jumble somehow organized into a weird sculpture. He carried over the other four butcher knives my mother always kept keen. They were good knives, steel all the way through the wooden shank. These he balanced precariously on top of the other silverware. Then sat back, stroking his chin.

  That’s it, he said.

  I must have looked scared. I was scared. His behavior was that of a madman.

  That’s what, Dad? I carefully said. The way you’d address a person in delirium.

  He rubbed his sparse gray whiskers.

  That’s Indian Law.

  I nodded and looked at the edifice of knives and silverware on top of the sagging casserole.

  Okay, Dad.

  He pointed to the bottom of the composition and lifted his eyebrows at me.

  Uh, rotten decisions?

  You’ve been into my dad’s old Cohen Handbook. You’ll be a lawyer if you don’t go to jail first. He poked at the fuzzy black noodles. Take Johnson v. McIntosh. It’s 1823. The United States is forty-seven years old and the entire country is based on grabbing Indian land as quickly as possible in as many ways as can be humanly devised. Land speculation is the stock market of the times. Everybody’s in on it. George Washington. Thomas Jefferson. As well as Chief Justice John Marshall, who wrote the decision for this case and made his family’s fortune. The land madness is unmanageable by the nascent government. Speculators are acquiring rights on treaty-held Indian land and on land still owned and occupied by Indians—white people are literally betting on smallpox. Considering how much outright grease is used to bring this unsavory case to court, a case pled by no less than Daniel Webster, the decision was startling. It wasn’t the decision itself that still stinks, though, it was the obiter dicta, the extra incidental wording of the opinion. Justice Marshall went out of his way to strip away all Indian title to all lands viewed—i.e., “discovered”—by Europeans. He basically upheld the medieval doctrine of discovery for a government that was supposedly based on the rights and freedoms of the individual. Marshall vested absolute title to the land in the government and gave Indians nothing more than the right of occupancy, a right that could be taken away at any time. Even to this day, his words are used to continue the dispossession of our lands. But what particularly galls the intelligent person now is that the language he used survives in the law, that we were savages living off the forest, and to leave our land to us was to leave it useless wilderness, that our character and religion is of so inferior a stamp that the superior genius of Europe must certainly claim ascendancy and on and on.

  I got it then. I pointed at the bottom of the mess.

  I suppose that’s Lone Wolf v. Hitchcock.

  And Tee-Hit-Ton.

  I asked Dad about the first knife he laid on the casserole, stabilizing it.

  Worcester v. Georgia. Now, that would be a better foundation. But this one—my father teased a particularly disgusting bit of sludge from the pile with the edge of his fork—this one is the one I’d abolish right this minute if I had the power of a movie shaman. Oliphant v. Suquamish. He shook the fork and the stink wafted at me. Took from us the right to prosecute non-Indians who commit crimes on our land. So even if . . .

  He could not go on. I hoped we’d clean the mess up soon, but no.

  So even if I could prosecute Lark . . .

  Okay, Dad, I said, quieted. How come you do it? How come you stay here?

  The casserole was starting to ooze and thaw. My father arranged the odd bits of cutlery and knives so they made an edifice that stood by itself. He had suspended Mom’s good knives carefully. He nodded at the knives.

  These are the decisions that I and many other tribal judges try to make. Solid decisions with no scattershot opinions attached. Everything we do, no matter how trivial, must be crafted keenly. We are trying to build a solid base here for our sovereignty. We try to press against the boundaries of what we are allowed, walk a step past the edge. Our records will be scrutinized by Congress one day and decisions on whether to enlarge our jurisdiction will be made. Some day. We want the right to prosecute criminals of all races on all lands within our original boundaries. Which is why I try to run a tight courtroom, Joe. What I am doing now is for the future, though it may seem small, or trivial, or boring, to you.

  Now it was Cappy and me, the two of us trying to break ourselves on the bike course. I’d ridden over to our construction site with him because he’d chopped up every piece of wood in his yard and reduced length after length to kindling. Still this was not enough and he wanted to go out and ride Sonja’s ponies. In his state of mind I thought he’d ride them to death. Besides, I didn’t want to see Sonja, or Whitey either, but I was desperate to distract Cappy so I told him that after we had cruised around and found Angus, we’d catch a ride to the horses though I didn’t mean it. From time to time, when we paused or wiped out, Cappy folded his hand on his heart and something crackled. I finally asked him what it was.

  It’s a letter from her. And I wrote one back, he said.

  We were breathing hard. We’d raced. He pulled out her letter, waved it at me, and then carefully folded it back into its ripped envelope. Zelia had that cute round writing that all high-school girls had, with little os to dot the is. Cappy waved another envelope, sealed, with her name and address on it.

  I need to get a stamp, he said.

  So we biked down to the post office. I was hoping Linda would not be working that day, but she was. Cappy put his money out and bought a stamp. I didn’t look at Linda, but I felt her sad pop eyes on me.

  Joe, she said. I made that banana bread you like.

  But I turned my back on her and went out the door and waited for Cappy.

  That lady gave me this for you, said Cappy. He handed me a foil-wrapped brick. I hefted it. We got on our bikes and rode over to find Angus. I thought of throwing the banana bread at the side of a wall or in a ditch, but I didn’t. I held on to it.

  We got to Angus’s and he came out, but said his aunt was making him go to confession, which made us laugh.

  What is that? He nodded at the brick in my hand.

  Banana bread.

  I’m hungry, he said. So I tossed it to him and he ate it while we made our way toward the church. He ate the whole thing, which was a relief. He balled up the foil and put it in his pocket. He’d redeem it with his cans. I had assumed that while Angus went inside the church and made his confession, Cappy and I would wait outside under the pine tree, where there was a bench, or down at the playground, though we didn’t have a cigarette to smoke. But Cappy put his bike into the bike rack right alongside Angus’s and so I parked mine too.

  Hey, I said. Are you going inside?

  Cappy was already halfway up the steps. Angus said, No, you guys can wait outside, it doesn’t matter.

  I’m going to confession, said Cappy.

  What? Were you even baptized? Angus stopped.

  Yeah. Cappy kept on going. Of course I was.

  Oh, said Angus. Were you confirmed then?

  Yeah, said Cappy.

  When was your last confession? Angus asked.

  What’s it to you?

  I mean, Father will ask.

  I’ll tell him.

  Angus glanced at me. Cappy seemed dead serious. His face was set in an expression I’d never seen before, or to be more accurate, his expressio
n and the look in his eyes kept shifting—between despair and anger and some gentle moony rapture. I was so disturbed that I grabbed him by the shoulders and spoke into his face.

  You can’t do this.

  Cappy terrified me then. He hugged me. When he stood back, I could tell that Angus was even more dismayed.

  Look, I think I got the time wrong, he said. Please, Cappy, let’s go swim.

  No, no, you’ve got the time right, said Cappy. He touched our shoulders. Let’s go in.

  The church was nearly empty inside. There were a few people waiting for the confessional and a few up front praying at the feet of the Blessed Virgin, where there was a rack of votive candles flickering in red glass cups. Cappy and Angus slid into the back pew, where they knelt hunched over. Angus was closest to the confessional. He looked sideways at me over Cappy’s bent head, made a rolling-eyed grimace, and jerked his head at the church door as if to say, Get him outta here! After Angus went into the confessional and closed the velvet drape after him, he poked his head out and made that face again. I squeezed close to Cappy and said, Cousin, please, I beg you, let’s get the hell out of here. But Cappy had his eyes closed and if he heard me he made no sign. When Angus emerged, Cappy rose like a sleepwalker, stepped into the confessional, and shut the curtain behind him.

  There were arcane sounds—the slide of the priest’s window, the whispering back and forth—then the explosion. Father Travis burst from the wooden door of the confessional and would have caught Cappy if he hadn’t rolled out from under the curtain and half crawled, half scrambled along the pew. Father ran back, blocking the exit, but already Cappy had sprung past us, hurdling the pews toward the front of the church, landing on the seats with each bound in a breathtaking series of vaulting leaps that took him nearly to the altar.

  Father Travis’s face had gone so white that red-brown freckles usually invisible stood out as if drawn on with a sharp pencil. He didn’t lock the doors behind him before he advanced on Cappy—a mistake. He didn’t count on Cappy’s speed either, or on Cappy’s practice at evading his older brother in a confined space. So for all Father Travis’s military training he made several tactical errors going after Cappy. It looked like Father Travis could just walk down the center of the church and easily trap Cappy behind the altar, and Cappy played into that. He acted confused and let Father Travis stride toward the front before he bolted to the side aisle and pretended to trip, which caused Father Travis to make a right-hand turn toward him down one of the pews. Once the priest was halfway along the pew, Cappy flipped down the kneeler and sped toward the open door, where we were standing alongside two awestruck old men. Father Travis could have cut him off if he’d run straight back, but he tried to get past the kneeler and ended up lunging along the stations of the cross. Cappy exited. Father Travis had the longer stride and gained but, instead of running down the steps, Cappy, well practiced as we all were at sliding down the iron pole banister, used that and gained impetus, a graceful push-off that sent him pell-mell down the dirt road with Father Travis too close behind for him to even grab his bike.