Louise Erdrich - The Master Butcher's Singing Club

Delphine nearly shook her hand away.

“You do think he did it! He’s a souse, but he wouldn’t deliberately do anything that cruel. You know he’s been strictly on the wagon—”

“But when has he ever not fallen off and disappointed you?” asked Clarisse gently.

“Never,” Delphine said.

Clarisse looked at her solemnly, put her fingers up, and pinched her lips shut.

“I know what you’re trying not to say,” said Delphine.

Clarisse nodded. Then she unpinched her lips.

“I will say this, Delphine, you should get out of here. Just leave him be and go to secretary school. Be an actress. Anything. Take a train to the Cities.”

Delphine laughed. “With what money? And by the way,” she lowered her voice, “I buried your dress in the iris patch.”

Clarisse now looked very grave and thanked her for hiding it. “You’re on my side,” she said. “You’ve always been on my side.”

“Of course I am,” Delphine said. “I just wish I knew.”

“What?”

“Who locked them down there.”

“You just have to believe it wasn’t Roy, don’t you?” said Clarisse.

Delphine nodded.

“Then it wasn’t him,” Clarisse said. Reaching over, she put her arms around Delphine and held her head to her shoulder. Delphine’s breath ballooned up in her until she sighed. She let herself sag against her friend. Clarisse smelled of formalin and bath powder. There was coffee on her breath and blood on her shoe. From time to time, Delphine thought, life fooled her into thinking there was someone on earth she would be as close to as Clarisse. Then the person was hauled away, or died, or retreated, and it was just the two of them again. Odd women out. Unique girls. Strange.

HIDING A MAN of his bulk was extremely difficult, but Sheriff Hock was used to assuming the disguises of the stage. His automobile would have been too conspicuous in the empty town streets, so he had borrowed a shabby buggy from a deputy’s barn and commandeered a tired old horse to draw it. Shortly after leaving the shop, he put on a farm hat and a torn canvas coat. He then drove the buggy to a safe distance for surveillance, pulled to the side of the road to let the horse crop grass, and put his head down on his chest. From there, it was an easy matter. Following Delphine was simple — in the strictly platted town he could easily project her destination, and with no trouble keep her in sight down the wide dusty avenues and streets. The funeral home was no surprise to him. He thought of Clarisse in the tight, red, fabulously shiny stage dress. Was there some way to bring her back into the picture? Closer, so she would see what kind of man he really was? He put his hand to his cheek as if he could still feel the lump she had raised when she slugged him at her father’s rowdy wake. She was much too fierce for anyone else in this town, he thought. He was the only man who wasn’t afraid of her. He deserved her. And he was getting tired of the way she evaded him and put him off. Her excuses and protestations. If she would only, only, surrender her hard little nut of a heart! Let the shell crack! Reveal the love! He was positive it was there. It made him so angry with her. She was stubborn, wasting precious time. Youth was fleeting. They should be walking along the weedy riverbank and planning their future. Sheriff Hock set his teeth and felt his face harden. When this wave of frustration engulfed him, he wanted to shake her until she woke up, to yell into her face until he broke her composure, to crush her until she cried out his name in a pain that sounded like passion.

DELPHINE WAS ALLOWED to sit upon a small rickety caned chair just outside the bars of her father’s cell. He was morose, “but at least it’s clean, now,” he said, nicking his frowzy head at the newly scrubbed floors, walls, and the bed, which was now outfitted in sheets that Delphine brought. Apple Newhall fixed the prisoners’ meals, and the contents varied according to her feeling for the prisoner. Roy was a favorite of hers, and for dinner he was given a plate of beans baked in tomato sauce, a large beer sausage, and half a sweet onion. Delphine watched him eat. Roy’s rough claw dipped the dark syrup from the beans. He chewed tentatively because of his frail old teeth. From time to time he stopped and sighed in the drama of his entrapment. He missed the picture of Minnie, his small personal shrine, and he dearly wished for the afghan he said that she had knitted, which Delphine had rescued from the grand stink and soaked clean in the river. It had become something of a security blanket to him ever since he’d sobered up. Why now, thought Delphine. Why now that he’s sober and thoughtful, and living as a good man, does he get in the worst trouble of his life? Perhaps she forgave too easily, or perhaps she wasn’t really able to recall, out of self-protection, what a failure of a father he really had been all along. She hated this pity that overwhelmed her and covered him. His failing physical state twisted her heart — she didn’t want to see how his hands shook, how he shuffled instead of stepped, how thoroughly the booze had unstrung him over the years.

She held one of his beat-up paws, “Dad, you didn’t do it, I know. You’ll soon be out. I’ll get a lawyer.”

“What lawyer?” Roy peered at her with an incredulous frown. “Of course I did it… everybody knows, they saw me. I had to.”

For a panicked moment Delphine hushed him. Sheriff Hock was standing near and now, having heard every word, he had stepped up behind her with a lightness surprising in a man so large. He was listening, Delphine suddenly knew it, to see if his trap would spring, listening to hear her next words, which she drew cautiously from a neutral store. “So Fidelis has offered to pay your bail, if there is—”

“Fidelis told Albert here what happened right off! Eva had to have the stuff and you can bet I was going to get it for her. I cared for that woman, she was a good and a kind person,” said Roy with great emotion. “Made a thick sandwich for a man and understood my thirst.”

At the mention of Eva’s name, Delphine’s picture radically shifted, and with some difficulty she responded to the changed scenario. She stumbled a bit, though, her brain connecting with the stolen morphine, before she turned to Sheriff Hock. “How come now?” she said, masking her relief with indignation. “If you were going to charge him, why didn’t you pick him up right after?”

Sheriff Hock, subtly disappointed, rocked back on his heels and lied that before he could get word to Sal Birdy, the drugstore owner had reported the theft to the state commission. Mr. Birdy very much regretted having done so, but now, to everyone’s annoyance, the commission had demanded a full investigation of the occurrence. Roy’s arrest was carried out to satisfy the record, and he’d be free as soon as all of the paperwork was finished.

“This is only a formality,” Sheriff Hock concluded, and walked off in an air of slight embarrassment.

“A formality!” Delphine’s voice let go — she tried not to sound too relieved, attempted the appropriate indignation. But she wanted to sink her face in her hands and breathe very deeply. Wanted to shed the low hysteria she’d felt at the prospects and plans that had whirled in her head — the lawyer, the trial, the jury, the judge… all of the implications of a murder charge. Now, she had only to sit still. So Delphine stayed with Roy for a while longer, listened to instructions regarding the various personalities and proclivities of his chickens. “I’ve got a Romeo and Juliet in the bunch,” he said. “Star-crossed banties. Don’t disturb the two black rosecombs that perch together. As for that loud dominicker, you can stew him for all I care. Let the little guy take over with the big reds. He can do the job.” Roy kept talking, clearly did not want to quit, didn’t want to face the moment when Delphine had to get up and leave him alone in the place where so often he’d slept unconscious but that he now, fully aware, occupied in a virgin state of shame.