Louise Erdrich - The Master Butcher's Singing Club

TO GET TO THE RING in the floor, they had to chip away a seal of shattered jars of canned peaches, the turds of some stray locked-up dog, and strange handfuls of spilled red beads mortared into the peach juice. Once they had pried off this layer, they hammered on the stuck ring. Gradually, the sky grew dark and they had to stop, find a lantern. They stalled, took some time filling it with kerosene. Cyprian fussily trimmed the wick, finally lighted it. By now, they were determined to finish what they’d started. They used a crowbar and a can opener to pry up the hinged hatch in the floor.

Thinking back later, Delphine had the sensation that the door had blasted off, but of course, that couldn’t have been the case. It was just that they had been mistaken about the mighty odor they’d fought. That smell was only an olfactory shadow. Now came forth the real smell, the djinn, the source. Both of them dived through the back door and rolled, addled, in the scroungy backyard grass.

“What the hell was that?” said Cyprian, once they’d crawled to the beer crates and lighted their cigarettes with rubbery fingers. It was as though they’d been thrown from the house by a poltergeist. They could not even recall exactly whether they had actually lifted off the hatch.

“I think we did,” Delphine said.

“I do too,” said Cyprian.

“There’s someone down there.” Delphine breathed out a long smoky sigh.

“Who?”

“Someone dead.”

She was right. There was someone, plus another someone, and maybe another person, too. It was hard to tell. They were kind of mixed together, said Cyprian later. Afraid of the consequences of calling up the sheriff — what had Roy done? — they gathered every particle of traumatized energy and ventured back. They raced in holding their breaths, grabbed the lantern, leaned over the open hatch, looked down, and bolted back outside, all without breathing. Far from the house, they stopped and gasped.

“Did you get a good look?”

“Yeah.”

“It was a person, right?”

“Monsters.”

Which was exactly what those pitiable bodies had become — huge of tongue and pop-eyed, brain blasted, green, bloated, iridescent with fungal energy, unforgettably inhabited by a vast array of busy creatures. The bodies were stuffed upright in the cellar surrounded by many empty bottles.

What had Roy done?

“Now is it time to burn the house?” Delphine was panicked.

“We can’t. If we do, it means that we suspected foul play. There’s no way if we burn the house the sheriff won’t come investigate, or the fire chief. There’s no way to burn up the basement — I mean, what if even fire won’t destroy what’s down there? Then we’ll really be in trouble.”

Even at such a moment, Delphine was touched by his casual use of we . He could have ditched her right then, left her to handle her father and the stinking house and the bodies generating strange life in the cellar. But he stuck with her, uttered not a single word of exasperation with the mess. Besides this new competence, he is even loyal , thought Delphine, I would marry him if he did not have to do what he did with other men. It was an odd time to take his measure as a potential husband, perhaps, but as Cyprian faced this great challenge beside her, his brow furrowed in grave thought, Delphine observed that he had never looked more handsome. The planes of his sculpted cheeks were drawn and his eyes were somber. She liked this weighty, serious, considered quality he now displayed. She liked his patience with the problem.

“We will have to go back and tell Roy about the bodies,” he stated. “We need more information, Delphine.”

ROY BAWLED in a helpless rage at the two of them upon their return. He’d inadvertently rolled himself up tightly in the bedsheets and believed that they had put him into a rudimentary straitjacket. He’d been through the d.t.’s in a sanitarium once, and as part of his treatment the staff had fastened him in a cold wet sheet. They had tightly pinned together the edges seam to seam. He was left to experience whatever he would experience. It had been lonely snaking out in a soundproof padded room. Spiders had leaked from the walls and giant lice had crawled underneath his skin. The experience itself had driven him back to drink, he said, and he never even contemplated quitting again. His mind couldn’t take its own power.

“Can you take this?” said Delphine, unrolling him. “There’s dead people in your cellar.”

“Release me! I implore you!” Roy begged. As usual, his manner was a mixture of pretension, low need, and melodrama. “I need a blast here. Can you get me a good blast?”

With a resigned gesture, Delphine directed Cyprian to offer her father a sip of the whiskey they’d bought for him on the way.

“We’re going to let you down slow, Dad,” she said. “You’re going to have to talk to us. There’s dead people in your cellar,” she repeated.

“And who might they be?” he asked huffily.

“Well, we don’t know who.”

“Perhaps you could describe them.” Roy’s eye gleamed with a mad fire upon the pint of whiskey. He grew slyly meek. “What, may I ask, do they look like?”

“Hard to describe,” said Cyprian, with a helpless glance at Delphine. “One had on a porkpie hat, I think. There was a bow tie, or maybe it was something else… you know, come to think of it, one was wearing a suit.”

“A black suit?” Roy was suddenly alert.

“Delphine, do you think one was wearing a black suit?”

Delphine paced the floor, shut her eyes to recover the hideous picture in her mind. “I do think so. A black suit,” she faintly agreed.

Roy jumped up in a sudden fit of energy. He grabbed the whiskey from Cyprian’s hand before the other man could react, and he swilled as much as he could before, with a struggle, Delphine and Cyprian wrested the bottle back from him.

“Oh God, oh God!” Roy swiped his sleeve across his mouth and staggered around the room twice before he stood before them, hands thrown wide. “It’s Doris and Porky and their little kid, too!”

“What? What?” Delphine grabbed his shoulders and shook him so hard his head snapped back and forth.

“Hold off!” Roy slumped onto the bed, held his hand out for the whiskey bottle, which Cyprian put instead to his own lips. With a feral swift movement Roy tried to grab the flask, but Cyprian plucked it out of his reach and brandished it high.

“Who are Doris and Porky?”

“And their little… what… boy?” added Delphine. She knew the family, but not that well. Her friend Clarisse was a relative. In fact, Clarisse had told her a few things about Portland “Porky” Chavers, Delphine now remembered. Things so bad that she couldn’t feel sorry for him, at least.

“They were guests,” Roy said in a tranced voice. “At the funeral party.”

“Whose funeral?”

“Your girlfriend Clarisse’s dad. Friend of mine too, of course. He wanted a party, not a funeral, because he’s a Strub. I was the only one who would throw him a party instead of your typical funeral proceedings, which he’d attended all his life. I was the only one who would do it.” Roy paused, then spoke rather pompously. “You could call it an act of corporeal mercy.”

“Only you would think of that,” said Delphine.

“I was an extremely gracious host. We had tubs of beer,” Roy said in a longing, confessional hush.

“Bought with the rent money,” said Delphine in utter fury.

“It doesn’t matter about the beer,” said Cyprian. “Tell us about Doris and Porky.”

Roy gulped like a dutiful and panicked child, nodded, and went on.

“Weeks after, we did notice they were gone.”