Louise Erdrich - The Master Butcher's Singing Club

Now, as Roy turned from setting his traps and walked toward them, Delphine had the idea that she would make a Hungarian-style goulash that Eva had taught her, a thick stew of braised meat in paprika sauce, ladled over spaetzle. Sour cream topping it. As she turned to walk into the kitchen, a sense of the fugitive sweetness of the scene assailed her. It was like a gift from Eva when she died — all good things to follow. Her dad acting like one, Cyprian so attentive, playing checkers or cards with the old man and helping him stay off the sauce. As terribly as she missed Eva, there was also the relief of having done with the grand horror and the mess of death, the organized tedium, the vigilance and dragging heartbreak. She didn’t have to put up with men drinking underneath the clothesline or with the sharp wing of Tante’s scorn. She could smell the maples, the pine, the ooze of the river instead of the raw primitive cavernous smell of cows when they are split. And now, it was good to turn toward her cooking in the cool day’s remaining light, and to have in her new icebox both meat and butter. In her apple bin, apples. In the onion box, onions. So why, when she felt this goodness, did a wave of fear and sorrow pass through her? Why the sudden memory of looking down into the cellar, and the dead moving their mouths, their words rising toward her in flashes of green fire?

It was because she must have known even then that more was coming. She must have known that there would never be an end of it. No peace. For even now, as she made her way dreamily toward the cooking, the boy, bruised and aching, slipped out his back door. He had decided to run to her. She stirred more flour and an extra egg into the spaetzle, cut two more onions into the goulash. Used all the meat. For some reason she made extra. It was as though she knew that by the time he figured out the back roads and cut through the corn, the sand pickers, the ditches and the pastures, he would be tired. He would be ready to drop. He would be hungry, that Markus.

* * *

LOOKING CLOSELY at Tante’s face as she complained about Markus the next morning, Delphine picked out each one of Fidelis’s features. On his face they were precisely placed with a level and a ruler. On her face the angels had been less attentive to their work. Every feature was off — the frozen blue eyes too far apart on the skull, the nose thicker and too short, the upper lip much thinner than the lower, and the whole mouth so small that Delphine wondered how so many words came out of it, or how she ate more than one pea at a time. Delphine had to examine the talking face to remove herself from the words it said. If I listen to the meaning, I’ll paste Tante right in the chops, she thought. So she calmly watched the odd concoction of flesh and bone, then she shrugged and said, “I haven’t seen him.”

“Lie!” said Tante, but she didn’t leave the little front porch. Delphine, in the doorway, folded her arms. Tante understood with disappointment that she wouldn’t be asked in for a piece of that astounding cinnamon cake she smelled, and she swallowed hard as Delphine dusted flour off her blouse. Or maybe it was powdered sugar. Tante clamped her teeth together and bit back her hunger.

Delphine had been successful in not listening to all of the specific details of the diatribe, but she did know that it was a self-serving lecture that might explain his bruises. A calculated effort to undermine his innocence, for Tante repeatedly made reference to the contrast between his frail looks and devilish wiry ways. She’d had to switch him, then beat him, and then for some reason he ran off. Delphine said again, yawning, “Haven’t seen him.”

“If Fidelis was here…” Tante muttered. But Fidelis had the truck, packed with sausage, out on a wide sweep of deliveries to various grocery stores.

“The kid’s no dummy,” said Delphine. “He’ll find a place to hole up for a while. At least until his dad gets back. Don’t worry about him.”

“Oh, I’m not worried about him ,” said Tante. “But what does his dad do when he comes home and finds the boy is gone?”

“What,” said Delphine, “are you scared Fidelis’ll take down the bull’s pizzle and give you a good whacking?”

Tante reared back, not certain whether she should be severely offended or laugh at Delphine’s joke. She did try to laugh, but as always the chuckle came out thin from her tiny mouth. The bull’s pizzle was a homemade switch, a dried bull’s penis that hung on the backside of the door to the shop. Used with disciplinary intent, it was painful but it left no marks. Eva had once told Delphine that Fidelis almost never used it on the boys — twice on Franz for dipping into the till, and he had used it on the little boys for setting the outhouse on fire, never on Markus. The existence of the pizzle, its customary threat, was enough.

“I’ll be going then,” said Tante. “Got to feed Erich and Emil. Those two eat like little pigs.” She swirled off in her rusty black. As though her leaving were an insult and not a blessing, thought Delphine. Satisfied, she retreated into the house and watched the car jounce around the road’s bend.

“Come on out,” she said to the bedroom door.

Markus slipped out and ran to the window.

“Is she coming back?”

“I doubt it.”

For some reason, he’d put his best clothes on to come to her last night. This morning, they were all he had to wear. They were the same clothes he’d worn at the funeral, the store-bought shirt with the front pockets and the notched collar. Short itchy brown pants, which he hated, good wool socks with no holes in them and Franz’s formal hand-me-down, lace-up shoes, still too big but shined up nicely.

“We should put you in some overalls,” said Delphine, and she directed Cyprian to go buy a pair in town.

“Now,” she pointed to the kitchen, “let’s get you some breakfast.” And she made him what she’d made the others, a stack of pancakes studded with the last of the sweet wild blue saskatoons. Dabbed butter on the top. Drizzled on a little maple syrup that Cyprian had traded for with a Chippewa up north on his last run. She carefully put the tin jug back in the icebox. Then she poured herself a cup of hot coffee and sat down while Markus ate. She talked while his mouth was full, not expecting him to answer her. Last night, he’d simply appeared, eaten, his eyes drooping while he chewed. He’d gone limp and let them tuck him into bed. She hadn’t had the heart to ask him a single thing.

“You’re going to stay with us, here, until your dad gets back,” she said now. His eyes went round and he nodded quickly, relieved. Delphine kept talking.

“I don’t need to know how come you left, though you can tell me if you want. Or you can tell Cyprian. Don’t tell my dad, Roy, though. He blabs. What I do want to know is this: Why did you come to me?”

The boy stopped chewing, suddenly, swallowed and looked at her with his fork and his knife poised. The roan freckles stood out on his pale face. He bit his lip, uncertain, and his eyes… there was all the sadness in the world in his eyes, thought Delphine. All the sadness there could possibly be. And as they were Eva’s eyes, for a moment she swam into them and then he spoke, and his words were clear, though very low.

“You took care of her.”

He started eating again, his face darkening, going hot and red while Delphine blinked and stirred the coffee round in her cup. So what the boy said — that meant Delphine could take care of Markus, too? Or was it his way of saying that since Delphine loved the mother, she would love and defend the son? She watched him eat with some satisfaction. He shoveled the food into his mouth as though he’d seen no food for over a week, and soon Delphine got up and made him more pancakes.