Louise Erdrich - The Master Butcher's Singing Club

DELPHINE NEARLY FELL over when she saw Tante, later that week, wearing not the black dress she had inhabited like a second skin, but a skirted suit welded from some fabric of an unusual metallic sheen and stiffness. The thing looked to have been cut and soldered together much like an armor. Tante looked invincible, which was her intention. As she walked to the bank owned and run by the only man in town she knew could afford steaks every night of the week, she felt that things were going to change for her. The suit would do it, she was positive. As she sat outside his office, waiting, and even as she looked at all the bank tellers and clerks, younger, all young men, she still had faith in the material of the suit she wore. The suit’s glazed weave sustained her. And even when she was refused a position of any type at the bank, the suit helped her not to lose her belief. She decided to walk down the street, up the street, all over town, and not to quit until she had a position that would bring her money — whatever it might be. Whoever might hire her. The suit would find the place. The suit would bring her there.

So maybe, said Delphine to Cyprian later, the thing was magnetic. It looked it. How else should it happen that Tante should be struck by a car that looked to have been made of the same substance as what she wore? Dragging her feet, worrying the one dime in her purse, Tante crossed the street without looking and was hit by the car of Gus Newhall, the former bootlegger who now sold patent medicines, just coming from the bank, where he’d made a substantial deposit. The car upended Tante in the dust and rolled her sideways into a tree trunk, but didn’t do actual, serious damage to her person that could be seen from the outside anyway. The suit wasn’t even dusty, but when smoothed gave off the same luster as before. Tante righted herself, pushed away the arms of alarmed witnesses, and would have told Gus Newhall that he was a reckless fool, a swine, a dog’s blood cur, only he was a good customer to Fidelis. So she shut her mouth and staggered off, already aching. She made her way to her house. In her front room, on a thick oval of braided rag rug, she lay down. Steadily and with a German effectiveness and efficiency that surprised even herself, she cursed everyone she’d met that day starting with the jeweler who had bought her beloved cameo and who would not, she was certain, trade it back for the suit that had betrayed her.

FRANZ WAS RIDING Mazarine Shimek’s bicycle and Mazarine was balancing. Her rear end fit into the U of the curved handlebars, and Franz held tight to the rubber grips on either end. He tried to peer over her shoulder, under her lightly sweatered arm, onto the road before them. He tried not to look at the way the lilac-flowered material of her dress stretched over what rested on the handlebars. Her feet, knees together, white anklets and heavy boy’s tie shoes, were carefully placed on the front fender. Her light brown hair was long and curled out of the dull, frayed ribbon she used to hold it back. Strands of it brushed the end of Franz’s nose, or touched the top of his lip, or grazed his cheek, as they rode into a light breezy wind on their way to the airfield.

Mazarine liked airplanes, too, or said she did, and collected pictures of pilots and race flights for Franz’s scrapbook. She also came along with him to watch the airplanes and sat in the shade of the barn when one of the pilots who kept their machines either in the barn, or who had landed there for the day, allowed Franz to work on his engine. While Franz worked with the men, she got a book from the strap on the rear of her bicycle and did her sums or geography lessons. Sometimes, when she got bored, she did Franz’s homework, too. When it was done, she got up and walked around and around the barn peering critically at the airplanes until finally Franz was ready to go home. But they didn’t go home right away. They had been going together as sweethearts for months now. They stopped just before the turnoff to the shop. Franz slipped Mazarine’s bicycle behind some weeds. Holding hands, they walked to a little spot underneath a pine tree where the branches came down all around them.

“It’s gonna get cold here pretty soon,” Mazarine said, settling herself on the soft, rust brown needles, “then what?” She pushed Franz’s hand away from her knee. He sat back a little and waited. Once, she had taken hold of his hand very carefully, and set it on her breast, the left one, and then said, “Go in circles.” He tried that, but soon she frowned and flung his hand off, and said, “That doesn’t even feel half good.” He kept his hand still, just in case she should want him to try again. Her upper lip was thin, but curved provocatively. He liked the way one curve, the left again, was a little higher than the other and rode up a fraction over her teeth. And her lower lip was full, a deep berry color. Franz knew her lips very well, and her ears, too. She always let him kiss her ears and then go down her throat to just below the delicate ridge of her collarbone. Her eyelashes were so long they made shadows, and she said the other girls envied her. They were lush brown, like her eyes, and much darker than her heavy sun-streaked hair, springing out over her shoulders.

He touched her hair, even dared tug it gently, and moved closer. She moved right next to him and sat in the curve of his arm. They were resting against the base of the pine, and had to be careful always to leave before it got dark, so that they could pick sap and pine needles off each other’s back. He turned his face to hers. She closed her eyes like an obedient child, opened them when he finally drew his mouth away from hers. She licked her lips, looked at him mockingly, then thrust her hand right between the buttons of his shirt and up the side of his chest, scratching her nails lightly along each rib. Mazarine had simple rules. Franz was allowed only to do the precise things she permitted. She, on the other hand, could do anything she wanted to him, provided he stayed still and didn’t grab for her. And that, Franz found, was very difficult when what she did became unbearable.

SHERIFF HOCK WORKED late into the evening, by the intense light of a green-shaded banker’s lamp, putting his files in order. Most all of the crimes he dealt with were petty, small thefts or disorderly conduct, saloon troubles or domestic fights, or so large as to fall beyond his influence. Of the latter category, which included acts of God and automobile accidents, he dreaded most presiding at farm auctions and foreclosures. Even though Governor Langer had ordered the banks to cease, Zumbrugge managed one or two every year, and it was the sheriff’s job to keep the peace at the event. Sheriff Hock had been approached several times in regard to auctions that would have stripped Roy Watzka of his farmstead. Yet each time the bank came near to foreclosing, Roy would at the last minute come up with the money on his loan — no one had any idea where the money came from. But he would pay the money and then drink until the next payment was due, at which time the entire process would repeat itself.

For the first time in many years, Roy had paid the bank on time. Sheriff Hock stared at the brown cardboard file in the pool of light. Surely, he thought, Roy’s prompt fiscal responsibility had to do with Delphine’s return. He wanted very much to close the case, to name the incident a terrible mistake — after all, the wake had been disorganized and people did get locked in cellars. But then there was the strangeness of it, the horror of the death. The weird glue of peach juice and ornamental beads and dog crap. The damn beads. Clarisse! He passed his hands across his face, recalling the old humiliation and Delphine’s contempt for his pain. Helpless before the memory, he cringed in his chair and diverted his thoughts. But they all led back to Clarisse. He thought of her all the time, even when he wasn’t thinking of her. She was the background to his every minute, everything he did. His best method of evading her was to imagine himself locking her in a closet. Stuffing her in. Tenderly kissing her. Turning the key. It always took her hours to get out and while she was struggling he could focus on other concerns.