Louise Erdrich - The Master Butcher's Singing Club

THE WALLS OF THE bedroom Fidelis had shared with Eva were a pale maple-colored plaster. After Eva died, Tante had taken her clothes to distribute among the needy. She had claimed Eva’s porcelain figurines, her jewelry, and packed away what was worthless, too personal, or even sinister: Eva’s tortoiseshell combs, letters from her family, a few books interleaved with personal notes, holy cards of angels, virgins, saints, and Catholic martyrs. After it was cleared out, Fidelis had slept in the bedroom. But it was clear that he had just endured the space, used it only because there was nowhere else to sleep. He’d gone unconscious there and then awakened with little interest in his surroundings. The one deep, long window’s sill was piled with motor parts, beer bottles, broken cups, full ashtrays, and dead plants.

One day when things at the shop were slow, Delphine cleaned out the room. She divided the junk into piles that she would deposit in proper places or discard. There were still a few things of Eva’s — a jacket, a forgotten shoe, some powder and a drawer of underslips that she packed carefully away into a cardboard carton. Fidelis had put the old bed he’d shared with Eva in the boys’ room and bought a new one, in a plainer style, and a dresser to match it, both stained a deep cherry red-brown. Delphine had bought a bedcover for the bed, and now she spread it across. It was woven with intense red and purple threads, deep and beautiful colors. She stood back, looked at the bed glowing in the room. She rubbed almond oil into the wood of the new dresser and polished the mirror. When she met her own eyes in the mirror, though, she had to stop and sit down on the side of the bed. She was breathing quickly, in a panic, not at all from exertion. Her heart surged and her chest tightened. Did she love Fidelis too much or did she love him at all? Her eyes looked hollow with greed. No good would come of it. She had no control over what he could do to her and where it would end. And what if he should die someday — that would be the limit! Her throat burned. Tears ached behind her eyes. She put her face into her hands and breathed the blackness behind her palms. When she lifted her face, she thought she might tell him that they should not have married. She could still go away. The thought loosened the tightness in her chest and she breathed more easily. Yes, she could walk straight out of his life! But all she did was walk out of the bedroom into a slightly longer hallway, and then down that hall toward the shop.

As she walked the brown and white tiles, toward the door of stained pine that divided the shop from the rest of the house, she had the odd sense that the walls had squeezed slightly in and the passageway was longer than she remembered. All along the walls the stuff of running a business was hung on iron hooks or stuffed in cupboards. Stained aprons, towels, wooden bins of screws and bolts and extra nails. Tools for fixing the coolers and building new shelves. Catalogues and flyers and price lists. Samples and trial labels. Invoice forms and rolls of waxed paper. Halfway down the corridor, in the dimmest part of the hall, she stopped and took a deep breath of air scented with dried blood and old paper. Spices, hair oil, fresh milk, clean floor. It was all there. She breathed the peace of the order she’d achieved. A powerful wave of pleasure filled her. And then the customer bell rang out front, and she walked swiftly forward to take her place behind the counter.

THE SCHMIDTS had already changed their name to Smith and the Buchers were now Mr. and Mrs. Book. The Germans hung American flags by their doorways or in their windows, and they spoke as much English as they knew. Into the joking fellowship of the singers there entered an uneasiness. The men were out back of Fidelis’s kitchen, sitting around a rough wood table on the pounded grass underneath the clothesline. A galvanized tin washtub held ice and cold beer. A shallow barrel held warm. Fidelis thought cold beer was bad for the stomach, and he drank his only after the sun had thoroughly caressed the bottle. He opened one bottle now as he listened. Chester Zumbrugge was concerned that the singing in German might be construed as treasonous activity.

“Not that it could be considered a real crime. Not that we’d be prosecuted! However, I think we’ve got town sentiment to consider.”

“Those Krauts beat the beans out of the damn Polacks,” said Newhall. “I don’t care what you say, they’re a war machine.”

“They’re a bunch of damn butchers,” said Fidelis, and the others laughed. Fidelis tried to crack a walnut between his fingers, but his fingers slipped. He tried three times before he shelled the nut and tossed the meat into his mouth. He cracked another walnut, this time with a swift crunch of his fingers. But he said nothing else. Pete Kozka walked into the yard.

“Look who’s here!” said Pouty. He handed Kozka a beer with one hand and shook Kozka’s hand with the other. Sal Birdy slapped him on the back. Newhall nodded happily, and pulled a chair out. They’d lost Chavers, and then Sheriff Hock. Not that long ago Roy Watzka. Their number was dwindling and it was good when one of their old company appeared. The men cleared their throats, found their pitch, smoothed their way into the songs with beer. They leaned toward one another in concentration and let the music carry them.

I was standing by my window in the early morning

Feeling no worry and feeling no care

I greeted the postman who smiled with no warning

And told me the day would be fair.

The air glowing warm on the grass of the lawn

He handed me the mail in a stack

Little did he know as he turned and was gone

He had brought me a letter edged in black.

Oh mother, mother, I am coming…

“Do we have to sing that one? I call it morbid, and I think that we should be singing more uplifting tunes,” said Newhall.

“For instance?” said Zumbrugge. “Name me one uplifting song that isn’t a dirty drinking song.”

“America songs,” said Fidelis, uncapping another bottle of beer. They sang every patriotic song they knew, but these were getting boring now that they sang them over and over at every meeting. Roy’s legacy of songs he’d learned in the hobo jungle usually saved them, and now they started on the one that began “When I was single my pockets did jingle,” and moved on to a series of murdered-girl ballads that they accomplished in a moving and lugubrious harmony, which gave them enormous satisfaction, and always made Delphine laugh. IWW songs that Roy had taught them ran out well before the beer and they moved on to what Kozka called the Polish national anthem, but had become an American song, the favorite song of troops on the move: “Roll Out the Barrel.” Then to a song that they had learned from Cyprian, a métis waltzing tune called “The Bottle Song” that they always sang with huge gusts of imitation French eye rolling and fake savoir faire.

Je suis le garcon moins heureux moins dans ce monde.

J’ai ma brune. Je ne peux pas lui parler.

Je m’en irai dans un bois solitaire finir mes jours à l’abris d’un rocher.

Dans ce rocher avec une haie, claire fontaine…

J’avais bon dieu, j’avais bon.

Ah! mon enfant, j’aimerais ton coeur si je savais être aimé.

Ah! amis, buvons. Caressons la bouteille.

Non. Personne ne peut prédire l’amour.

I am the unhappiest fellow in this world.

I have a girlfriend to whom I cannot speak.

I am going to go away to a hidden woods to finish my days in the shelter of a rock

with a hedge and a quiet spring.