Louise Erdrich - The Master Butcher's Singing Club

FIDELIS WAS SILENT as Markus backed the car into the road, then turned around and steered down the way they had come. They drove south through the pine and then the mixed birch, maple, and popple groves of second- and third-growth trees. They passed through the small towns, each with its orderly main street layout of church, post office, grocery, hardware store, and café. Once or twice, Markus opened his mouth to say something to his father, but then lost the impulse and continued on and on in a meditative state of sadness, until they were low on gas.

He pulled into a rowdy-looking little station attached to a tavern. The attendant came out to pump the gas, and Markus and his father looked at the doorway of the bar. It was a battered red door surrounded by a bristling trim of deer antlers. There were no windows in the place.

“Let’s get ourselves a drink,” said Fidelis.

Markus parked the car and then the two walked through the odd, fanged door, into a dark little bar of wooden booths. Amber light glowed in the early evening calm from small candle-shaped wall lamps. Each ordered an expensive whiskey. Fidelis tossed his back and put out his shot glass for another. Markus asked for a ham sandwich and gestured for the bartender to bring one to his father, who was frowning at the tabletop and taking his second whiskey and then his third drink, a cheaper beer, more slowly. They still hadn’t said a word about the visit. Maybe they wouldn’t, thought Markus. The comforting darkness of the bar enveloped them. There were no other customers, and no sounds except for the soothing, muted clink of dishes and glasses being washed out in back. Markus looked steadily at his father, then looked away. Fidelis’s hands, cupping the glass between them, were startlingly pale in the barlight, and Markus had noticed that under all the nicks and roped scars and red callus those hands were rebelling from Fidelis’s control. He was careful not to show any sign of clumsiness, and firmly steadied his fingers on the table. Still, at one point he nearly knocked the glass over. Another time, he absently grasped at his drink and missed — the sight filled Markus with a stricken awe and he was glad when the sandwiches came to occupy their hands and mouths.

It was a beautiful, prewar sandwich. The bread was fresh and heavy, just baked. Country bread thickly spread with real sweet butter. The ham was perfectly smoked, cured, and cut fresh in a generous slab. There was a plate of crisp dill pickles alongside, sliced into thin green spears. They ate with slow gratitude. Fidelis said, “He must have thought he lost his mind when he saw the two of us.”

“I bet,” said Markus.

“We should write him, get him used to the idea,” Fidelis went on, growing optimistic as the beer and whiskey smoothed his thoughts. “Let him know we’re coming back.”

“We’re coming back?”

“He’s stubborn, but we’ll break his stubborn.”

Now that Markus knew how to play it, he laughed a little. “He thinks he can play stubborn. Well, fine. We’ll play stubborn, too.”

Fidelis asked for another beer now and drank it with a pleasantly congenial air now, addressing his son like a conspirator.

“We’ll kidnap the little son of a bitch.”

“Damn right,” said Markus.

His father drank the rest of the beer in a long, smooth gulp, and then he rose to find the men’s room and take a piss. He had to steady himself on the booth’s table as he cleared the space. Markus noticed that his father’s hand groped for the backs of the chairs as he passed among the tables, and that, as he reached the end of the bar, he staggered and righted himself, then proceeded with a slow formality that nearly hid the fact that he was drunk.

“FRANZ WROTE MORE than a page — that proves he’s crazy for you,” said Delphine to Mazarine, who came by to sit with her in the store. “In fact, six whole pages.”

“Well, actually, it’s seven,” said Mazarine, only a bit self-conscious. Her baby curved seven months over her thighs now, underneath a flowered and foolish maternity dress top with a spanking white bow. She had taught school up until the previous week, and there were some who said that she should not be seen in that condition, not be influencing children. At least they couldn’t say all they would have liked to include in the gossip. Early on, when Mazarine had told her about the baby, Delphine had taken care of things. She’d gone to a jeweler up in Fargo, bought a wedding ring in Mazarine’s size, and gave it to her, saying, “This will shut them up.” And then Franz had an engagement diamond delivered to her, so she had one for either hand. She wore them both and let people speculate, though who cared, thought Mazarine, when there was the war. Wasn’t it enough that there be one new life?

Delphine raised her eyebrows. “And you kept the last page in your pocket.”

Mazarine had brought the long letter from Franz — all except the last page, in which he concentrated all that was private between them. He knew that Mazarine and his parents shared all of the letters they received from Franz because he couldn’t write often. They existed in a state of suspense that wore into months and showed mostly in Mazarine’s eyes.

“It’s going to be over soon,” said Mazarine. “I can feel it. Just read between the lines.”

As Delphine sat with her now, poring over the latest letter, the younger woman rested her hand on the swell of her baby. The capacity of her thin body to expand so shockingly was alternately thrilling and tedious. Women told her horror stories of their pregnancies and she was grateful that she suffered only the normal discomforts — a boring nausea, stinging nipples, sleeplessness, backache. Harder for her than the physical changes were the unexpected sweeps of emotion. When she was caught up in those great nets of feeling, tears poured from her eyes. Ashamed of her uncontrollable weeping, she rushed to be alone and found relief in walking to the edge of town, where she stood in the presence of a raw sweep of sky. She checked on its changing incarnations. Great thunderclouds had piled darkly over the horizon that very morning, but although she could see the sheets of rain sweeping in a smokelike blur to the west, not a drop had yet fallen upon the town.

Mazarine touched the page in her pocket. Franz existed around the corner of each thought or occurrence. She tried to discipline herself to give in to her extremes of feeling only twice a day. At morning and in the evening, she gave herself leave to exist in the sharp reality of memory. Then, she would put away her wild imaginings about his safety. She would make imaginary love with him or reexchange their first words of truth or reargue the foolish arguments or resay their anguished, sexual, good-bye. At all other times, when he entered her mind, she tried to concentrate on anything else — on the housework or her mother or the classroom before her, or now, on sitting here in the sunlight with Delphine. Slowly, as Delphine read, Mazarine smoothed both hands over the flowers of her wide blouse. The baby rippled and rolled underneath her fingers and knocked its fist against her heart.

At last, Delphine folded the letter back into its envelope, and then rose and went to the refrigerated case, withdrew a half quart of milk and came back to sit with Mazarine. She put the bottle of milk on the table between them and pointed at it. Mazarine removed the cap and grinned at Delphine before she raised the bottle in a mocking toast.

“Where’s yours?” she asked, meaning of course the milk, but then she saw a thread of shadow pass behind the honey gold of Delphine’s eyes, and with a shock understood that Delphine was hurt, recovered, went on, all in an instant. Mazarine might easily have missed this, were she not acutely tuned to that moment and to Delphine’s emotions. She saw a tiny flash of darkness, an intimate admission.