Louise Erdrich - The Plague of Doves

“Call the cops, then,” Bliss bawled. “Call the cops and dump her in the slammer too!”

“She wasn’t doing anything,” said Earl.

“I was enjoying a peaceful meal with my children,” said Marn, dancing a little on her toes. She was shedding electricity. This confrontation seemed to make her happy and it looked to me like she was ready to stick that knife right into the big woman. She was moving the point of it back and forth, as if trying to decide where it would go in easiest. Her other arm was cocked up with the hammer ready to come down. I was behind her and behind Earl, and Whitey was behind me. He’d come out to see what was going on.

“My goodness,” said Whitey. He tapped me on the shoulder and leaned close to my ear. “Marn has a kamikaze grace, don’t you think? Or would you call it catlike?”

“You have a crush on her too?”

“I’m content,” said Whitey, “with very distant admiration. Let’s stay behind Earl’s abdominals.”

Bliss paused and licked her lips. She shook her hands like she was wringing water off them. Her swollen red eyes went slitty and mean. She took a huge breath of air into her cheeks, gathering herself up, then crashed forward. She grabbed the arm with the hammer and twisted Marn’s wrist. Then she slammed Marn into Earl, who staggered backwards slowly enough so I could step aside and let him plow his ass across the booth where I had been filling the ketchup bottles. The bottles went toppling away, cracking on the table, rolling across the floor, at first with the sound of cascading glass and then with smaller sounds of movement as they continued clinking and skittering. Whitey and I edged away, against the doors, ready to bolt through. Marn had dropped the hammer but the knife had entered Bliss’s green coat under one arm and Marn was silently trying to rip it away. The serrated edges had been caught in the threads. Bliss began slamming her hands across Marn’s face and shoulders; she was speechless at first, shocked with fear probably. Then, realizing that the knife hadn’t penetrated and was hung up in the lining of her coat, she looked down, snarled, took two handfuls of Marn’s hair, and started yanking. Marn yelled in pain, pushed forward again, and this time the knife went into Bliss. It only could’ve stuck in about an inch, nowhere near a vital organ, but when Marn stepped back Bliss fell away, clutching the handle, and began to weep with desolate fervor. There was ketchup all over the floor, but only a few of the bottles had broken. I don’t think Bliss was bleeding much. You could still see the handle sticking out of the coat and most of the knife itself was even visible. As Bliss walked out the door, sobbing, we just watched her, saying nothing. She dragged herself over to a dull mustard-colored car I hadn’t seen pull up, wrenched the door open, got in, and drove away.

“A mere flesh wound,” Whitey said to me. He had shelves of crime and adventure paperbacks with sexy women on the covers wearing tight blue sweaters or low-cut red evening gowns. “But look, the aftershock of violence.”

Marn was standing in the aisle with her arms hanging limp, shaking. The kids were still underneath the table. Earl was trying to ease himself off the top of the table without knocking any more bottles off. I took a few of the bottles out of the way, setting them down carefully on another table.

“You are fired,” Earl told me shakily.

“I am not,” I said.

“Yes, you are.”

“What for?”

“I told you never to balance those ketchup bottles like that again. Plus, I am fed up with your attitude.”

“Qu’est-e que c’est,” I said, “big whup.”

“You can’t fire her,” said Whitey, “not only is she a woman of grace and intellect who will go far, but you don’t have anybody else.”

“Marn said she’d work.”

“I won’t, if Evey’s fired,” said Marn. She seemed pretty much recovered and crouched down to talk to her children, who crept out from under the table, into her arms.

“Careful now,” said Marn. “Don’t touch your heads to the table bottoms, people stick gum there.”

Earl liked Marn partly because she not only cleaned off the tops of the tables, but scraped underneath at the gum and dried candy. Now she helped her children back onto the booth and settled them while I got rags and a bucket of water to wipe up the spilled ketchup. While we were doing this, a couple of people came in and I had to serve them, so I brought new coffee cups and dessert plates for Marn and Earl, because they’d sat down to make up a schedule.

One of the things I liked about the 4-B’s was the motif of B ’s. There were four B ’s hooked together, an old livestock brand belonging to the first owner, but there were also honeybees. Bees here, bees there, bees printed on the napkins. The waitresses wore yellow shirts with black pants or skirts, our “uniform.” I also liked that we didn’t pool or share our tips, although that meant we bussed our own tables. At closing time, we had to mop down the floors, clean the booths, even wash the windows on slow days. We had to clean out the soda machines and maintain the bathrooms.

The restaurant had once been the National Bank of Pluto, and it was solid. The ceilings were high and the lights hung down on elegant brass fixtures fixed to decorative scalloped plaster bowls. There were brass rails along the counters and the floors were old terrazzo, the walls sheeted with marble, and in the corners there were a set of dignified marble half columns. The orange booths were set alongside the tall windows and light flooded from three sides under the old cornices.

Across from us there was a gas station and a reeking movie house that showed B movies. At times, a fake flower or decorative basket shop would spring up — some farm wife’s hopeful crafts project outlet — or a secondhand clothing store that smelled of sweat and mice would suddenly appear in an old closed-down storefront.

Marn Wolde was brooding while her kids ate a second helping of pie when Mama dropped off Mooshum. He sat down in the booth with Earl, whom he liked to annoy. Earl left. Marn’s children were so full their eyes drooped. She let them keel over in the booth. I brought their jackets for pillows, then poured out more fresh coffee. I brought Mooshum’s sour cream and raisin pie. He would usually draw a line down the middle with his knife, and we’d each eat toward the mark. But that day we shared the pie three ways, with Marn.

“I think I look French, don’t you?” I said to Marn.

“Well, you are French, aren’t you?”

“La zhem feey katawashishiew,” said Mooshum.

“Watch out,” I said to Marn, “he’s going to flirt with you.”

“Aren’t French girls pretty? You are.”

“I’d rather be chic,” I said. “Of course, I have to wear this uniform. But my brother Joseph is at the University of Minnesota. I’ve visited him twice. He’s in science. I’m going to go into literature. I’m learning French, see?”

I showed her the Berlitz book I’d found on a stellar day in the mission rummage, brand-new, not a mark in it.

“Say something, say something!” Marn cried.

“La nord, le sud, l’ouest, et l’est sont les quatre points cardinaux!”

Mooshum looked disgusted. “That’s not how it goes! She tries to speak Michif and she sounds like a damn chimookamaan.”

“I sound French , Mooshum. Je parle franais!”

“Ehhh, the French, Lee Kenayaen!” He swiped his hand at me and bit daintily, gingerly, into his pie. His new teeth had been hard to fit and loosened easily. I still missed his old teeth, how he used to shovel the food right past them. He seemed happier then, even when they hurt. And the toothaches had always been a good excuse for whiskey.