Louise Erdrich - The Master Butcher's Singing Club

“Delphine,” he whispered, after some time had passed, “are you hungry?”

She did not answer, and he felt sure she was pretending to sleep. But he couldn’t sleep. The whole thing made him conscious of his mess — what he called the thing that was the truest desire in his life. But it was a mess, because what was he going to do with it and where would it all end up? For sure, there was no future in living with a man. In setting up a house. He’d never heard of that, except for in the cities, and he imagined they were different than he was. They didn’t get along with regular men, he thought. All that aside, there was Delphine herself. He never talked to men the way he did to Delphine, or had such good times, or felt this sweet impulse to protect. Yet his hands in dreams fit themselves around men’s hard shoulders, and their faces, and God, the way they smelled and the way they sounded. And so much else in the deep-red world he had just summoned. Now he couldn’t help think of those things once more, and guilty at his hardness and his excitement, he turned Delphine over and began with a blind abandon to make her shudder, to make her swear in a whisper next to his ear, to make her feel the damage in his heart, to shut her up, to kill some little man inside himself angry that she was a woman, and then, when she battled him back, biting his lips and in a silent struggle pinned him, Cyprian lay back in careless luxury.

The dogs came close to the house. They seemed to howl right underneath the window. He forgot just what she was, man or woman, and felt the simple dark of lust for a moment, the ease and pleasure of being drawn out to his length in her mouth. He stroked her hair and touched her lips, tight around him, and then he lost himself, and when she was finished he put his hands on her face, smoothing her cheekbones, wiping her mouth, for some reason murmuring, “You poor thing, you poor thing,” until she began to laugh at him.

SO THERE THEY WERE, in the middle of the night, frying up a single pork cutlet, arguing how to split it, when Markus stumbled out in his little-boy shorts.

“Now we have to split the damn thing three ways,” laughed Cyprian. What had happened in the bedroom made him light-headed, he felt drunk and a stranger to himself. How had she done that, made him forget, for a second, what she was? She could have been a wolf. Now the little boy looked embarrassed at himself until Cyprian said, “Just sit down and let the table cover it.” Markus sat down grinning.

Delphine was wearing a Chinese robe, a floating brilliant red with apple blossoms on a long stem embroidered on the back, and her feet were bare. First, she held it shut, then she pinned it so she could use both hands chopping potatoes.

“We might as well just eat,” she said, and fried an onion. Put some water on to boil for chamomile tea. “After this, I’m drinking this sleep tea. It’s an herb. I’m looking for work tomorrow and I’m getting my beauty rest.”

The dogs were gone, their howling had stopped as soon as the lights went on. Roy had made a bed for himself in a small summer shack right beside the chicken coop. He’d fixed it up for himself with a little pallet set in the wall, even stuffed a mattress and dragged out an old bedspread and a pillow that Eva had given to Delphine when she told her, long ago, how they’d had to burn every single thing in the house. He had slept out there since so as not to disturb the two of them, he said. They had let him.

“Listen,” said Markus, now, his eyes very wide. “There’s something out there.”

Over the sizzle in the pan they heard it — the rhythmical growls and the sudden snorts and the high-pitched whimpers.

“That’s Roy snoring.”

The old man was perfectly clear, even from across the yard and locked up in his tiny house. Delphine shook the skillet. What would they do when it got cold out, come winter? Having grown up with it, she was used to the sound the way people get used to living next to train yards. But poor Cyprian would be kept awake tossing all night. The thought, coming to her as she turned over the brown, crusted potatoes, was the first for a long time she’d had in which she imagined a future with Cyprian. And all because they’d had this one night. Well, that was stupid! She knew what was going on, him with his eyes closed tight. What was he seeing in his head? She turned the potatoes back and then used the spatula to set a heap on each plate. She set the plate before him, touched the side of his face with the back of her hand, wishing to know the answers, but already protecting herself. It might not happen, after all, for another eight months or a year, and what the hell did she really think, anyway, was going on during his trips up north?

* * *

DELPHINE WAS OUT BACK setting new straw down on her potato beds when Fidelis drove up in the meat-market truck. She straightened, brushed her sweaty brown curls back from her forehead, narrowed her eyes although she didn’t think they’d have a run-in. She’d expected that he would come out looking for Markus when he returned. School was starting soon. He walked toward her, his arms motionless as hooks at his sides, his face quiet. He wore a rumpled plaid shirt — she’d never seen such a thing on him. And his pants were stained on the thighs where he’d wiped blood off his hands. Fidelis was usually immaculate, but of course that had been Eva’s doing and then her own. As she walked toward him, she added another secret piece of gloating to her store. Tante couldn’t keep up with the laundry. They stopped with about three feet of space between them and stood without speaking. Delphine cocked her head to the side. The sun was behind her and full in his face, a ravaging white sun that blotted out his features.

“Where’ve you been?” she asked.

“Running around like a fart on a lantern,” he said, “I come for Markus. Where is he?”

“Like a fart on a lantern, huh,” said Delphine. “That’s no excuse!” Her temper flared, her heart caught. She suddenly missed Eva and that lonely pang turned to anger. “Of course he’s here. Do you think I’d let that bitch of a sister of yours beat him black and blue?”

Fidelis grew very serious, though he didn’t look surprised. He looked down at his feet in the tough steel-toed slaughterhouse boots, and he frowned so hard at them that Delphine looked down, too. There was nothing to see but that cracked leather planted in the soil.

“I come to get him,” said Fidelis in a low voice. Delphine waited for him to say something more. Thank you wouldn’t be out of the question, she thought. But he held his silence, which annoyed her enough so that she asked an abrupt question.

“Are you going to give him a whipping?”

“Why should I?” said Fidelis, then raised his eyes and looked full on at Delphine. Even through the blast of sun she could feel the power of his pale gaze. As on the first day she met him, she felt a jolt of strangeness. Not fear, just an instinct that there was more, much more, happening in that moment than she could grasp. He was withholding an energy composed of menace and promise. Tons of power were behind his slightest gesture and she thought of a great smooth-faced dam.

“Come in, take a load off, and I’ll pour you some iced tea. Roy and Markus are down at the river, but I think it’s too hot for the fish to bite. They’ll be back any minute.”

She was stalling, trying to find a diplomatic way not to send Markus back. Fidelis came into the house, still darkly cool as she’d kept the windows shut against the growing heat. She now opened the windows, sensing that undertone of cellar rot that crept in elusively and smelled to her of despair. There were six green ash trees outside that changed the air around in the late afternoon. The rooms would cool. The place was clean, scrubbed to a finish. Earlier, she’d cut a lemon into a jug of clear brown tea and stirred in the sugar, then set it right next to the ice block. Now she poured the tea into the glass beer mugs. The sides of the glasses filmed over and sweat. Fidelis looked at the tea a little sadly.