Louise Erdrich - The Master Butcher's Singing Club

“Don’t use it up,” said her mother.

Mazarine ignored her and spoke to Franz. “Come stand over here.” She beckoned him to the stove, and he understood that he was cold, now, deep down and not just surface, because he began to shake so hard his bones knocked inside as his body warmed. The whiskey had provided a false warmth and energy during the long walk across the fields. He’d tramped the iron clods, even run across the wavelets of windblown snow so fine and hard it resembled a fine plaster on the ground. Now his blood was cold and thin; his bravado sank away and he felt lost, foolish. The fire blazed up in the iron stove and the heat finally began to penetrate his clothing, then his skin. It radiated into him so that he almost controlled the shakes. From time to time, his body still shuddered. He stood there, silently waiting for what came next. Mazarine stood next to him. And her mother sat watching them from her chair.

Mazarine didn’t move once she found a still place inside of herself. What should she feel, she wondered, knowing it was odd that Franz’s presence in this house should leave her so indifferent. She couldn’t muster the correct gratitude for his return, if that’s what it was. He hadn’t said so. She couldn’t feel gladness, nor could she feel the proper anger. Her friends had said, “Don’t you just hate him now?” But she hadn’t. She’d felt patient, even when her first grief turned to the lassitude of despair, and she had shrugged off their avid sympathy. After she’d lain with her cheek against him on that November afternoon, and turned once, twice, and kissed him there long and smooth and slow, she had to erase him from her mind. She had bricked up all thoughts of Franz in a cold little room. He was nothing. Because the next thing she knew, he was with Betty. If she thought of those afternoons underneath the pine, she’d die of the shame of his abandoning her. So even though he stood right here, right now, she couldn’t really see him. Things were utterly changed, weren’t they? Shouldn’t they be? She poked up the fire and stood there, watching him for signs that would tell her what she should do.

There was no word spoken. Nothing but the fire’s simple crackle. As he warmed, Franz became increasingly unnerved by the dead silence, and once he felt capable of leaving he said, “Thanks,” in a subdued voice. Mazarine walked with him, the few steps to the door. As he reached out to open it, he asked in a low voice, “Do you want me to come back?”

The no came out automatically, her voice a white scratch on the tiny syllable.

* * *

JUST IN TIME, everyone agreed, the snow began to fall. It came in picture-postcard flakes that sifted down straight through a windless day. Everyone came out of doors, exclaiming with pleasure. The children caught flakes on their tongues and planned great doings, dug tunnels in the drifts, fought snowball wars. At last the sleds could be used. The Christmas trees had a backdrop. The carols and the church nativity scenes made sense. The wind so rarely stills on the plains that the singular piling of light flakes was a marvel. Fence posts grew caps. Tree branches were outlined and pine trees were dressed in puffy shawls. The people of Argus went out walking just to marvel at the odd shapes that the new snow gave everyday objects as it landed gently and stuck atop automobiles, doghouses, trash bins, bleak grape arbors, the statue in front of the courthouse, steps, and ornate railings. Argus suddenly looked sweet and amusing, like a village in an old fairy tale.

Clarisse, emerging from the back of the funeral parlor, had this very thought as she buried her hands in a knitted fleece muff and walked home. She thought of the house made of gingerbread, deep in the forest, the roof made of iced ladyfingers trimmed with sugar gum drops. She thought of the quaint Swiss hut pictured on the tin of chocolate she’d bought for herself. When she got home, she decided, she would treat herself to a great pot of cocoa. She would scald the milk and drizzle sugar into it, then shave the chocolate into the pan and stir until it melted. There might even be enough cream left in the bottle she’d bought at Waldvogel’s, from Delphine, to whip for a fancy topping. The question she now confronted was whether she should ask Delphine to join her, and maybe bring along some extra cream. She reached her house. Suddenly, there was more to think of. In the new snow leading up to her front door, there were tracks, great and solid tracks, a man’s tracks. And there he was, waiting on her porch.

AT LAST, on the strength of his associations, and after dogged application and reapplication to Judge Zumbrugge, Sheriff Hock had obtained a warrant permitting him to search the home of Clarisse Strub. He was a very neat man, meticulous and fussy about his surroundings. His house was immaculate; everything he owned was stored and filed, his clothing was neatly folded in his dresser or hung in his dusted closet. He kept his badge, well polished, in a small wooden bowl just beside his bed. He could have told anyone whether such a thing as a red tubular gleaming glass bead was wedged into the crack of the floor of his closet. He would have noticed. In contrast, Clarisse saved her precision for her calling and let her house go, kept her rooms in a state of feminine disarray. After Delphine had removed the dress from her closet, some time ago, she had swept the floor. But she hadn’t examined the cracks between the boards with a powerful lamp and a shrewd, scanning eye, the way Sheriff Hock did now.

“This won’t take long,” he said to Clarisse with a firm and even kind formality. “I apologize for discommoding you and impinging on your privacy.”

“With all due respect to your office,” said Clarisse, in despair, “go to hell.”

“I’ve been there,” Sheriff Hock said, looking up at her with deadening simplicity. “You put me there, Clarisse.”

“I didn’t mean to.” Tears started into her eyes. She held them back, then let go. Maybe, if he felt sorry for her, he’d leave. “I don’t want you to feel badly—”

“Then,” said Hock, setting down his lamp with a surge of unruly hope, turning toward her, “you must feel something.”

Clarisse stared at him, paralyzed, hearing fuzzy noises as though wires in her brain had just crossed.

“For me,” he pursued.

“I’ve always felt that we could be friends.” Clarisse felt her voice rising, higher, higher, toward a shriek. She tried to take a deep breath. She got some air, but a red tide was choking her. Sheriff Hock shook his head with sorrowing gravity and aimed his beam back at the floor. Clarisse watched him, thoughts swirling. Of course, he’d find a bead, a thread, a bit of cloth, something to implicate her. Then he’d have her cornered and she’d have to decide between him and a murder charge, wouldn’t she?

“Leave,” said Clarisse. “This is my room. Get out of here.”

Hock rose and though he didn’t move toward her she felt his energy, a menacing and self-righteous energy, surge at her in a wave. She stepped back. With a small, pursed smile and a low, disarming whistle, Hock turned away. Arms folded, lips set, Clarisse leaned in the doorway of her bedroom and watched the awful, strained, cheap, twill material that stretched across the buttocks of the kneeling sheriff. His belt cut into his belly. Above that, his torso filled his shirt in a way that made it look like it was wadded with heavy quilting, not flesh. But there was flesh beneath, a body, make no mistake about that! A body that had decided it owned her. Clarisse let her thoughts go. Why not just murther ‘m …. It would be so simple to slip a knife beneath those padded ribs. Her fingers shook slightly on the door frame.

“Please go away,” she whispered, and when he didn’t respond she said something that her mother used to say. “Don’t make me lose my temper.”