The Round House

by Louise Erdrich

  Joe, here’s another loaf for you. She pulled another brick from the bag. She didn’t thank me for the bananas in front of my parents, which surprised me. Most grown-ups think everything a young person does should be common knowledge. They brag about the slightest gesture from a boy. I’d been prepared to play down my banana giving, but Linda didn’t put me in that position. She did, however, start in on the weather chatter with my father. Just the way they had before, they pulled out their favorite all-eternal commonplace-choked subject. Sure enough, my mother folded and went into the kitchen to make tea and slice up the banana bread. I decided to try a whole other ploy and sat down across from them on the couch. Sooner or later, they would slog through the atmosphere and say something important. Or Dad would leave and I could bring up golf. They were on rain: inches fallen in which county, and whether we might see hail. They got to hail they’d seen and various forms of hail damage, when I yawned, lay back, and closed my eyes. I pretended to fall into a deep, impermeable slumber, twitching once and then breathing with such deep regularity I was sure they would be convinced. I let myself go limp and heavy. They were talking hail big as golf balls, perfectly round as peas, hail that penetrated roof shingles like BB shot. The couch was wide, the pillows giving. I woke an hour later. Mom was calling my name softly, sitting on the edge of the couch, patting my shin. As happens sometimes drifting out of an unexpected sleep, I did not know exactly where I was. I kept my eyes closed. My mother’s voice and the childhood sensation of her hand stroking my ankle, which was always how she woke me, flooded me with peace. I allowed my consciousness to sink to an even younger hiding place where nothing could touch me.

  When I finally did wake, all was dark, the house silent. Pearl panted in her sleep, curled on the braided oval rug across the room. A knitted afghan had been thrown over me. I’d kicked it off and I was cold. I had missed supper and was hungry, so I wrapped myself in the afghan and padded into the kitchen. Pearl rose and followed me. A tinfoil-covered plate of food glinted on the table. The moon was full again and the kitchen was alive with pale energy. Now that I have lived some, I understand what happened to me in the kitchen that night, and why it happened when it happened. During my sleep I’d dropped my guard. The thoughts that protected my thoughts had fallen away. I was left with my real thoughts. My knowledge of what I planned. With those thoughts came fear. I had never really been afraid before, not for myself. For my mother and father, yes, but that fear had been shared and immediate, not secret. And my worst terrors of loss had not materialized. Though damaged, my parents were sleeping upstairs, in the same room, the same bed. But I understood their peace was temporary. Lark would appear again. Unless they found Mayla dead, or she showed up alive and filed a kidnapping charge, he was free to walk this earth.

  I had to do what I had to do. This act was before me. In the uncanny light a sense of dread so overwhelmed me that tears started in my eyes and a single choking sound, a sob maybe, a wrench of hurt, burst from my chest. I crossed my fists in the knitting and squeezed them against my heart. I didn’t want to blurt out the sound. I didn’t want to give a voice to this roil of sensation. But I was naked and tiny before its power. I had no choice. I muffled the sounds I made so that I alone could hear them come out of me, gross and foreign. I lay on the floor, let fear cover me, and I tried to keep breathing while it shook me like a dog shakes a rat.

  I lay under this spell for maybe half an hour, and then it went away. I hadn’t known whether it would or not. I had clenched my whole body so tightly that it hurt to let go. I was sore when I got up off the floor, like an old man with joint pains. I shuffled slowly up the stairs to my bed. Pearl had stayed by me all along. She’d huddled next to me. I kept her with me now. As I fell into a darker sleep, I understood that I had learned something. Now that I knew fear, I also knew it was not permanent. As powerful as it was, its grip on me would loosen. It would pass.

  I could not use the bananas a second time, so I decided to run into Linda around noon. I knew that she brought her own lunch most days, but treated herself once a week to what women always got at Mighty’s—the soup and salad bar. I checked the window every day, or went inside and had a grape pop. On the third day, I saw Linda approach the café with her cheerful Tonka Truck walk. She waved at Bugger, who was sitting on the narrow strip of stained grass between the two buildings. She stopped and gave him a cigarette. It was a surprise to me that she smoked, but I found out later she carried around a pack just to give a mooch to people when they asked. I parked my bike where I could see it from inside and followed her in. Of course, she knew everyone and talked to everyone. She didn’t notice me until she sat down. I pretended to suddenly see her. Her eyes popped with the thrill of it.

  Joe!

  I came over and stood looking around, as if for my friends, until she asked if I was hungry.

  Kinda.

  Then sit down.

  She ordered a shrimp basket. Then without asking me, another shrimp basket. The most expensive thing on the menu. And a coffee for herself and a glass of milk for me because I was growing right before her eyes. I shrugged. I tried to look trapped as I sat there.

  Don’t worry, said Linda. When your buddies show up you can go sit with them. I won’t mind.

  Geez, I said. I didn’t mean to . . . anyway, thanks. I only had enough for a pop. Do you always get the shrimp basket?

  I never do! Linda twinkled at me. It’s a kind of treat. It’s a special day, Joe. It is my birthday.

  I told her happy birthday. Then it occurred to me this was her twin brother’s birthday, too. Could I bring him up? Then I remembered something about the story of her birth.

  Wasn’t it winter, though, when the two of you were born?

  Why yes, you’ve got a good memory. But I was only physically born that day, you see. The way my life has gone, I was born several other times. I picked a date out of those important turning points to be my birthday.

  I nodded. Snow Goodchild brought our drinks. I could hear the sizzle of our shrimps and fries. All of a sudden I was very hungry. I was happy that Linda was buying me lunch. I forgot I hated her and remembered that I’d liked talking to her and that she had always loved my parents and was trying to help even now. The tense prickling left my throat. The right moment would come for questions. I took a drink of cold milk and then a drink of cold water from the ripply plastic glasses.

  What day did you pick? The day that Betty brought you home from the hospital?

  No, said Linda, I picked the day the social worker brought me home the second time. It was marked on Betty’s calendar. She only put the most special things on her calendar. So I knew she loved me, Joe.

  That’s good, I said. Then I didn’t know what to say. We were in a grown-up conversation and I could only go so far. I was stuck. I expected Linda would ask me either how my summer was going or if I was looking forward to getting back to school, the way grown-ups were doing if they did not ask after my dad. Nobody ever asked after my mother, exactly. Instead, they made some comment—I saw your mother going in to work, or I saw your mother at the gas station. The tribal council had given Lark notice that he was barred from the reservation, but there was really no way that could be enforced. It wouldn’t work any better than the persuasion. When people said they saw my mother, it meant they were keeping an eye out for her. I thought that Linda might make such a comment. But she startled me.

  Listen, Joe, I’ve got to tell you this. I am sorry that I saved my brother’s life. I wish that he was dead. There, I said it.

  I paused a moment, and then said, Me too.

  Linda nodded and looked at her hands. Her eyes popped again. Joe, he says he’s gonna get rich. He says he’ll never have to work again. He’s sure he’ll have money in the bank now, he says, and he’s going to fix up the house and live here forever.

  Oh? I was dizzy at the thought of Sonja.

  That was all in a phone message on my machine. He said a woman would give it to him in exchange for somethin
g, and he laughed.

  No, she won’t, I said. My brain cleared and I saw the broken bottle on Sonja’s side table. I saw the look on her face when she threw her Red Sonja bag down. Lark would not get to her.

  These are grown-up things, said Linda. They probably make no sense to you. That don’t make sense to me, either.

  Our shrimp baskets came and she tried to put ketchup on the side. She shook the bottle with both hands like a little kid. I took the bottle from her and hit the bottom carefully with the heel of my hand, the way my father did, setting a precise glop of ketchup down.

  Oh, I can never do that, said Linda.

  This is the way. I put some ketchup on my plate. Linda nodded and tried the technique.

  You learn something new, she said, and we started eating, piling the little plastic-looking pink tails at the sides of our baskets.

  What she’d said about her brother was so full of adult complexity that it threw me off. This was not the way I’d meant to bring up Linden Lark. I didn’t know if I could take any more information. So I said the safest thing to deflect her honesty.

  Wow, it’s hot.

  But she wouldn’t go to the weather with me. She nodded, closed her eyes, and said, Mmmm, as she ate her birthday shrimp.

  Slow down, Linda, she told herself. She laughed and dabbed her lips.

  I’ve got to do this, I thought.

  Okay, I said. I get it about your brother. Sure. Now he thinks he’ll be a rich piece of scum. I’m just wondering, though, could you tell me when he plays golf? If he does play golf? Anymore?

  She kept her napkin at her lips and blinked at me over the white paper.

  I mean, I said, I need to know because—

  I crammed a fistful of fries into my mouth and chewed and thought furiously.

  —because what if my dad wants to golf or something? I was thinking it would be good for him to golf. We can’t run the risk of Lark being out there, too.

  Oh, gosh, said Linda. She looked panicked. I never thought about that, Joe. I don’t know how often, but yes, Linden does golf and he likes to get out there very early, right after the course opens at seven a.m. Because he doesn’t sleep, hardly. Not that I know his habits anymore. I should talk to your . . .

  No!

  How come?

  We were frozen, staring across the food. This time I picked up two shrimp and ate each one, frowning, and picked apart their tails, and ate that little bit too.

  This is something I want to do on my own. A father-and-son thing. A surprise. Uncle Edward has golf clubs. I’m sure he’ll let us use them. We’ll go out there. Just me and Dad. It’s something I want to do. Okay?

  Oh, certainly. That’s nice, Joe.

  I ate so quickly, in relief, that I finished the whole plate and even ate some of Linda’s fries and the remains of her salad before I understood I had all I needed—the information and an agreement to keep it secret. Which gave me both a sense of relief and the return of that whirling dread.

  Bugger floated by the window. He was riding my bicycle.

  I have to go, I said to Linda. Thank you, but Bugger’s stealing my bike.

  I ran outside and caught up to Bugger, who was only halfway across the parking lot. He meandered along slowly and didn’t get off the bike, just glanced at me with his wobbly eye. I walked beside him. I actually didn’t mind walking because I didn’t feel so well. I’d eaten so much, so fast, maybe on a nervous stomach like my father sometimes said he did. Plus, after all, those frozen shrimp had traveled a couple of thousand miles from where they had started to land on my plate. I’d had to cover the piled tails with a napkin while Linda waited for the check. Now the walk seemed better than the jolting of a bicycle. I wanted to get away from other people, too, in case I had to puke.

  As I walked beside Bugger in the hot sun, I started feeling better and within a mile I was okay. Bugger didn’t seem to have a destination that made any sense to me.

  Can I have my bike now?

  I’ve gotta get somewhere first, he said.

  Where?

  I needa see if it was just a dream.

  What was just a dream?

  What I saw was just a dream. I needa see.

  Whatever it was, it was, I said. You snaked out. Can I have my bike?

  Bugger was getting too far out of town, going the opposite of the way to Cappy’s house. I was worried that he might swerve into a passing car. So I persuaded him to turn around by talking up Grandma Ignatia and her generous handouts.

  True. A man gets hungry from all this bicycling, said Bugger.

  We got to the senior citizens and he dropped the bike in front of me. He staggered away like a man in the grip of a magnetic force. I turned around and rode back to Cappy’s. We had planned to practice shooting, but Randall was there, off work early, fixing his bustle at the kitchen table. The long, elegant eagle feathers were carefully spread out from the circle where they joined, and he was working on a loose one. Randall had a handsome traditional powwow outfit, which he had mostly inherited from his father, though his aunties had beaded flower patterns on the velvet armbands and aprons. When he was all fitted out, he was a magnificent picture. All kinds of ordinary and extraordinary things had gone into his regalia. Two giant golden eagle tail feathers topped his roach, his headpiece. Stabilized by lengths of a car antenna, the feathers bobbed on the springs of ballpoint pens. The elastic garters of one aunt’s old girdle were covered with deerskin and sewn with ankle bells. He had a dance stick that was supposedly taken from a Dakota warrior, though it was actually made in boarding-school shop class. Wherever the components of Randall’s outfit had originated, they were all adapted to him now, each feather fixed and strengthened with carved splinters of wood and Elmer’s glue, the soles of his moccasins soled and resoled with rawhide. Randall won prize money sometimes, but he danced because Doe had danced, and also because those moving pieces caught girls’ eyes pretty good. He was getting ready for our annual summer powwow this coming weekend. Doe as usual would be up behind the MC’s microphone making jokes and making sure that things ran along, as he always said, in a good way.

  C’mon, let’s go pick grandfathers for Randall’s sweat lodge, said Cappy. We always put down tobacco for those ancient rocks. That’s why they were grandfathers. We didn’t always get the rocks. We liked being fire keepers better, but Randall had promised if Cappy could start his old red rez car, he could drive it.

  There was a collapsed gravelly place on their land that filled with water in the spring and had the right kind of stones if you kicked around for them. Randall always needed a specific number dictated by the type of sweat he would give. We dragged an old plastic toboggan out to collect the rocks. They took a while to find. They had to be a certain kind of rock that would not crack too easily or explode when red hot and splashed with water in the sweat-lodge pit. They had to be a certain size that Randall could pick off our shovel with his deer antlers. Finding twenty-eight grandfathers was a good afternoon’s work and more often, especially if Randall was in a hurry, we’d go out to the rock piles in the fields off reservation and load up Doe’s pickup. But this time we needed to be alone.

  I told Cappy what I’d learned from Linda about the morning golf.

  Cappy kicked his feet around in the grass and bent to dislodge a rounded gray rock.

  You gotta move then, Cappy said, before Lark changes his habits. You should take Doe’s rifle while we’re at the powwow.

  Just to think about stealing from Doe gave me a black, sinking feeling and those shrimp began to perk around in my gut. But Cappy was right.

  You have to break in between eight and ten on Saturday night, said Cappy. There’s the off chance that Doe or Randall will need to come back for something after they retire the flags. But for sure Randall will be out there pounding his hooves until then. Or snagging. And for sure Dad can’t leave that microphone. So you go in, Joe. And I really mean break in. Leave a mess. You’ve got to take a crowbar to the closet where the guns ar
e. I’ve thought about this. And steal a couple of other things or pretend to. Like the TV.

  I can’t carry that!

  Just unplug it, knock the junk off it. Take Randall’s boom box—no, he’ll have that—take the good toolbox. But leave it scattered on the porch like a passing car scared you off.

  Yeah.

  And then the gun. Make sure you get the right one from the closet. I’ll show you.

  Okay.

  And you bring a couple black plastic bags to wrap it in because you’re gonna hide it.

  I can’t bring it home, I said. I’ll have to hide it someplace else.

  Like the overlook, in the brush behind the oak tree, said Cappy.

  After we piled the grandfathers by the fire pit, we spent the rest of the afternoon marking out the trail I’d use and deciding on a hiding place that I could find in the dark. The moon was going to be three quarters, but of course there might be cloud cover. We wanted to make sure I could do it all without using a flashlight. And also, after that, I would have to make it to the powwow grounds—three miles away—walking fields and trails without using my bike so nobody would see me. I’d camped out for the last two years with Cappy’s family—an RV for the aunts and a tent for the men. A fire. Randall tipi-creeping. Sneaking off. We’d wake up in the morning next to him passed out, scented low with some girl’s perfume. My parents would expect that I’d go again this year. And even if they said no this time, I’d slip out anyway. I had to.

  Those shrimp or something else I’d eaten stayed with me all that week. I felt sick when I looked at food and dizzy when I looked at my mother or my father, so I didn’t look at anyone and hardly ate. Mostly, I slept. I fell asleep like I was knocked out and couldn’t get out of bed in the morning. Once, on waking, I picked up the book Father Travis had given me. Dune was a fat paperback with three black figures walking a desert beneath a massive rock. I opened it at random and read something about a boy filled with a terrible sense of purpose. I flung the book across the room and left it there. Many months after that morning I would read that book, once, then again, and again. It was the only book I read for a solid year. My mother said I must be getting my growth. I overheard her. Or listened in on her. Eavesdropping was a habit now. My sneaking came of needing to know that there was no other way, that I had to do this. If Lark moved or skipped out or was poisoned like a dog or caught for some reason, I would be free. But I didn’t trust my parents to tell me any of these things, so I had to slip behind doors and sit underneath open windows and listen, never hearing what I wanted. Of course, powwow weekend came.