Louise Erdrich - The Master Butcher's Singing Club

While he was watching the pale streaks of clouds, it seemed to him that something moved beneath him, as though the earth shrugged a little. Perhaps it was the dirt pile rearranging itself, perhaps nothing, but the sensation of the earth’s living quality was very pleasant and he waited to feel it again. Nothing happened except, as often occurred during that first year, he found that he was crying without reason and without even being aware that it was starting. This weeping plagued him, it was very annoying, and he had to watch himself closely when at school, for fear that some of the other boys might see the tears. Several times he’d been forced to run to the outhouse as though he had the shits, just to gather himself. So it was a relief to be alone, with no witnesses, and just let the tears run down naturally, out of his eyes and down the sides of his temples, until they stopped, which they eventually did. When they quit flowing out, he sat up, grabbed his ax head and slingshot, and tried to slide down the hill over the slick weeds. That didn’t work so well, though he ripped up a lot of plants and made a crude tear in the earth.

At the bottom, sitting against the side of the hill, he again had the feeling that it moved, twisted against his back as though within it a giant had turned in its sleep. He wondered suddenly if it was hollow, like the hills he’d heard of in wonder tales. He turned, pressed his ear to the ground where it rose up behind him, and heard his own heartbeat bouncing off the solid, packed hillside. But it seemed there was something more the hill required of him. So he sat there a good while longer before, almost out of boredom, with no real outcome in mind, he began to dig against the side of it with the head of the ax.

The deeper he dug, the more earth he pulled away, the more exquisite the vision that developed in his mind. At first, he didn’t know what he was even imagining, or what he was starting, but as the hole got large enough to admit a shoulder, then his head, and as he chopped downward and finally effected a shallow, bowl-shaped groove, he understood that he was digging something into which he might fit. The ground was heavy, a crumbling black containing tiny white fragile snail shells and clamshells the size of fingernails; it was packed to a tight wall but sometimes he hit a space where it was softer, easier to dig. Sometimes clods of it fell from the upper side of the hole, and he pushed them out impatiently with his feet. When he had dug farther and scooped out a deep pocket in the earth, he backed himself underneath the overhang of ground and sat there. The dirt under him was soft, and he was very comfortable — he found he didn’t want to move although his stomach hurt, he knew that he was hungry. Which made him think that next time he came out, he’d bring some food, which made him realize there’d be a next time. He had only started on this thing.

That day, he sat there for a very long time. Surrounded by the smell of earth, those uncontrollable tears that plagued him with no warning came again. And when they came, he let them drip down indifferently, in fact he welcomed them. Into his mind there came the picture of his hand. In his hand was the clump of dirt he’d taken, just like his father, to throw down onto the lid of his mother’s coffin. He’d looked at his hand and the dirt in his hand, and then he had frozen over the lip of the grave. He regarded the white sprays of flowers as in a trance. Instead of opening, his fist shut tight. Franz had turned back to him. Franz had held his fist over the hole, pried his fingers apart, and shook out the dirt. Franz had dusted his palm. Grabbed his arm so he came away, stumbling, from that mysterious sight. And when he was well away, Franz had dropped his arm, and said nothing.

Nobody had said a thing all the way back from the graveyard and after that, it seemed to Markus, the silence had grown deeper, surrounding everything that had to do with his mother. His father never spoke of her, referred to things she did, or even mentioned objects that might remind anyone of her. All she owned seemed to vanish — her flowered wash dresses, her shoes, her fur-trimmed cloth coat. Only Delphine said her name. It was not as though his mother vanished, for then her things would be left to hold. It was more as though she’d never existed at all.

Not for Markus. In his thoughts, she was more powerful than ever, and stubbornly, he nursed words and pictures and spoke of her to himself. Others might let her go, but he didn’t have to, that was his choice.

The dirt sighed a little, sifted down his back. The hill was still shifting and rearranging itself, still settling mote by mote into its most compact shape. Markus closed his eyes and drifted. He actually fell asleep. When he woke in the shallow den, and came to consciousness without opening his eyes, he realized, before he knew where he was, that he felt wonderful, that he had the good feeling that he’d used to have in summers or looking forward to Christmas or his birthday, before his mother got ill. He had no idea what it was, this good thing that he anticipated, but as he gradually swam toward the surface of his thoughts, he knew that he would find it if he dug.

ONCE HE GOT HOME he couldn’t help telling Emil and Erich, the excitement of the find was too much. He thought as he talked, invented as he waxed eloquent — this fort, this tunnel, this stronghold, this cave they would dig could be reinforced just like a real miner’s mine with boards from the abandoned shack, and branches cut from the woods. It was Markus who thought of swearing people in, too, not allowing just anyone to tag along and join the construction. Having taken an oath of secrecy, made solemn by hot wax dripped on the inside of their wrists, the boys stole shovels, snatched sheets off clotheslines to haul the dirt out of the tunnels, cached away loaves of bread and hard apples, nuts, potatoes to roast, the ends of sausages for the ravenous gang to eat. After school, they gathered at the unfinished house site, worked at their task until dark and beyond dark, by the light of lanterns sneaked out of barns, the flames of candles snitched off their mothers’ bureaus and even, thanks to Roman Shimek, the worst boy in town, candles from the altar of the Catholic church, a disappearance that sent Father Clarence Marek into a fit of outraged sermonizing.

The Waldvogel boys, because they didn’t go to church anymore — not the Catholic church since their mother died and not the Lutheran church, even though Tante waged a campaign with Fidelis — never heard the sermons on the missing candles. They did hear about the sermons from the other boys. In the past they might have been worried, even felt the need for confession. Now they puffed with pride. Felt badness swell in them. Swaggered. For without their mother they felt entirely forsaken and therefore godless. Why should they believe in a God who could so easily and with total indifference to their prayers take her away? They scoffed at God, then, made wax signs on their wrists, took oaths of blood, and licked the rusty ax head. Fidelis knew none of this, and Delphine had only a suspicion.

ONE SATURDAY, Franz brought Mazarine home on her bike. She sprang off the handlebars as the bicycle slowed and then walked beside him, waited as he leaned it against the side of the house. She gazed up at him with a steady smile, trying to hide her nervousness. Franz’s father was a forbidding person and she was sure that he didn’t like her. When she’d visited before, Fidelis hadn’t said a word, hadn’t teased her, hadn’t even given her the kind of neutral but appreciative glance that grown men gave her now. Sometimes their looks were much more obvious, and she wasn’t asking for that. The fact that Mr. Waldvogel didn’t acknowledge her at all was unnerving. She hesitated a little, then followed Franz into the shop and watched him put on his apron. She heard Fidelis out in the farthest corner of the slaughtering room but his voice was muffled and she was glad he didn’t come into the shop to greet them.