Louise Erdrich - The Master Butcher's Singing Club

“I need a hair of the dog if you please,” he said, blinking through aveil of strings of dripping worms. “I got the shakes, little daughter, got the deliriums. Need the whiskey. I know it’s not real, but I could swear that worms are covering me.”

“You’ll be all right, Dad, just stand still,” said Delphine, knocking pads of worms from his arms, his shoulders, and then tugging him forward. Cyprian clawed handfuls away, tried to comb the hordes from Roy’s head, to shake them off his trousers and gently pluck them from his ears.

“Just stand still and you’ll get your whiskey,” he echoed Delphine.

“They’re in your head,” she told him, “stay still. They’re all in your mind.”

IT WAS TRUE that Cyprian was good with engines. By now, Delphine had totally revised her view of him and touted him to Eva as outstanding for his practical abilities. Repairing cars wasn’t as satisfying to him as balancing, but still he had a knack for mechanical work. He babied the DeSoto, and it ran so clean it purred, as he said, like a kitten in a butter dish. Before he left the next day, to reassure Delphine, he did a free once-over on the shiny brown delivery car Eva was so proud of— Waldvogel’s Meats , it said on the side. The Freshest. The Finest. Old World Quality.

Old World Quality. Eva was most proud of that, for it was true that in this country you could simply not get sausages prepared with the simplicity and perfection common in the German street. And she missed that. Other things, too, were impossible to find, she said, and when she said so she sounded a bit like Tante. Marzipan. Herring. Pickles with the right degree of spice. Rolls as soft. Down beds as deep. Fur as lustrous. Cream as thick.

Well, she often admitted, they couldn’t do everything. They could only make the sausages. Pity about the bread, she often teased Fidelis. He had come to this country on the evidence of bread, machine bread, a slice of it sent in a package as an example of an everyday American marvel. He’d never tasted that preserved slice, of course. She despised the stuff — it was thin and salty. It crumbled. You could not get it fresh and it turned hard by noon if by chance you did. It wasn’t real bread. The crusts were soft and the interior tough. Everything about the bread was backward, said Eva, so she made her bread herself. She sold loaves when she made extra, and sometimes pastries too, from a tall glass case that she rubbed transparent with a sheet of newsprint wetted with vinegar.

Eva prided herself on triumphing over anything that circumstance brought her way, yet she could not keep the butcher shop functioning in the heat with the efficiency she usually demanded. As the heat wave and the drought wore on, the glass collected steam and the counters and floors were slippery with melted grease. Everything was more difficult, for Delphine, too. Nights alone in the tent without Cyprian were unpleasant. It was harder to watch Roy destroy himself down by the river with two buddies who now slept with him in sour comfort. Delphine felt vulnerable in the open, and was afraid to plug her ears for fear one of the drunks might sneak up on her. So she endured the mad whining of the bugs until sleep took her and still, within sleep, she woke restlessly from time to time. It occurred to her that Cyprian had left in order to make her miss him. If so, enough. She did. They were like an old married couple, except that the romance of their youth had lasted about six hours. To get some sleep herself, and help out in the crisis, Delphine started sleeping on Eva’s couch every two or three nights. Waking early, Delphine could put in a couple of hours cleaning before the crush of heat.

Now that she was around her friend from early morning on, Delphine could see how Eva suffered. Eva’s face was pale with daily effort, and sometimes she declared she had to lie down, just for a minute, and rest. When Delphine checked on her, she found Eva in such a sunken dead shock of slumber that she hadn’t the heart to wake her.

After an hour or two, anyway, Eva woke to a frenzy of energy and pushed herself again.

They mopped down the floors of the killing room with bleach every single day. The meat cases were run on full cold, yet they were lukewarm and the meat within had to be checked constantly for rot. A noisy generator was hooked up to power the meat locker and that thick-walled closet was jam-packed with all they were afraid to lose. They bought only the slightest amount of milk to sell because it often soured just from the drive to the store. The cream turned, too, but Eva tried to culture it and use it in her cooking. They stored almost no butter or lard. The heat hardened to a cruel intensity. The boys slept outside on the roof in just their undershorts. Eva dragged a mattress and sheets up there as well and slept with them while Fidelis slept downstairs.

As a gesture, perhaps, of reconciliation, the Kozkas gave Fidelis a dog. She was not a chow, for they’d had too many disappointments with the breed — Hottentot now ran wild, his offspring showed no respect for their masters, and all of his puppies sank their teeth into their buyers. The Kozkas had gone into a steadier line of dogs. They gave Fidelis a white German shepherd of ferocious energy. The dog roamed the downstairs halls all night and chewed happily all day on great green bones. The dog immediately loved Eva like a sister, and though it was tied outside the door most of the time, its ears pricked when she passed by in the house. When Eva freed the dog, it wildly bounded about, racing and leaping in astonishing arcs. When it had released its puppy nature, it walked gravely to Eva and stood near her. It didn’t beg or gaze at her longing for scraps. The dog was very dignified and treated Eva as its peer. Clearly, the dog considered Eva her colleague, her mate in the task of protecting the dim-witted sheep, the men, from blundering into danger. Eva didn’t pat the dog absently, but scratched the dog in places it couldn’t reach. Even used an old hairbrush to untangle its fur when it matted. Delphine watched Eva look into the dog’s eyes, listened to the way she crooned to it, and thought that her friend’s behavior was remarkable. She’d never known anyone who thought that dogs were much. Eva’s sensitivity to this animal, as well as the way she treated the outcasts and oddballs who came to the shop, including Step-and-a-Half, convinced Delphine that Eva was a person of rare qualities, and she loved her all the more.

Every day, the sky went dark, the dry heat sucked the leaves brown and nothing happened. Rain hung painfully near in the iron gray sheet stretched across the sky, but nothing moved. No breeze. No air. On the mornings she came from Roy’s, Delphine walked through the back door sopping wet, washed her face, and donned the limp apron by the door. The air was already stiff and metallic. The dew burned off in moments. There was the promise of more heat. If it broke, it would break violent, Delphine thought as she filled a bucket. She didn’t care how the heat broke — bring on the twister, bring on the volcano, the mighty wind of a hurricane — only make it cease.

She began stripping the wax off the linoleum on the floor in order to reapply a new coat. She had finished with that, and was about to open the shop, when out of the wringing wet-hot air walked Sheriff Hock.

Either it’s news of the dead, thought Delphine, squeezing an ammonia-drenched rag out and draping it on the side of the bucket, or he wants to talk about Clarisse.

“Would it be better for me to visit you out at the house?”

For the moment, the place was silent.

“Nobody’s here,” said Delphine. “Go ahead.”

As it happened, she entirely forgot about Eva’s son Markus, up early in the heat as well. He was going over the books just on the other side of the counter. He was so quiet, his pencil moving among the columns of debts and credits. Young though he was, Eva had him check her work and he was proud to do it. Delphine was unnerved by the presence of the sheriff, or she might have remembered that Markus could hear all that was said. Maybe the heat, or a low level of panic, dulled her thoughts. She wanted to get the talking over with.