Louise Erdrich - The Master Butcher's Singing Club

“I always hated milk,” said Mazarine.

Delphine just nodded, watching her drink it, stirred by satisfaction at providing nourishment, and desolation that she herself had never needed to take such pains.

FRANZ WAS ASSIGNED to the 439th Troop Carrier Group. The fighters wore insignia patches embroidered with eagles, wolves, lions, lightning bolts and broken chains. Franz’s carrier group rallied behind the sign of an angry beaver. He wrote:

You have to wonder who the hell makes up the insignia — maybe someone like Markus. I like my beaver, though, he’s mean looking and has transport wings growing out of his shoulder blades. We fly under the sign of the Beaver Volant Proper, Incensed (holding a missile in his right paw). Mazarine, I go over that long ago time in my mind you know which time. I do not understand myself. She meant nothing to me, but you knew that. It was my weakness you could not endure. I suppose you could say of this man that he’s toughened up some but the beauty of it is that he looks upon the world from far above and it is a calm world, not a tortured one. He acknowledges a surrender in his heart. It is like the innocent love of a small boy. He was a youth when first he knew you. Flying is forever mixed with those mysterious hours.

Now we’ll have a boy or girl to tell that we loved each other ever since school days.

The war here is over and we are doing cleanup so don’t worry, the major peril we face is sunburn.

DELPHINE HEARD IT first from a customer who got it from the radio that morning. By that night they had the evening edition out of Fargo with the headline ATOM BOMB HITS NIPS. They spread the paper out on the kitchen table and pored over all the front-page stories. Terror Missile Has 2,000 Times More Blast Than Blockbuster. Sun Power Holds Key to Explosive. Churchill Says Germans Had Some Secrets. Kitchen Dream a Reality — Combined Clothes, Dishwasher, Potato Peeler Due in 1946. Quadruple Amputee PFC James Wilson Uses Artificial Limbs. Husband Shoots Wife, Kills Self While They Are Dancing. Delphine read: “’Truman revealed this great scientific achievement today and warned the Japanese that they now face “a rain of ruin from the air the like of which has never been seen on this earth.”’”

Fidelis leaned forward in his chair. “Read everything,” he said. “Everything on the page.” So Delphine continued: “’Mr. Truman said that despite the vast multiplied potency of the bomb, “the physical size of the explosive charge is exceedingly small. It is an atomic bomb,” he said. “It is harnessing the basic power of the universe.”’

“And over here,” said Delphine, “right beside that story, listen to this. ‘Realization of a housewife’s dream — a combination clothes washer, potato peeler and dishwasher, with the addition of a butter churn and ice cream freezer — was near today.’”

“Just near?” said Mazarine. Dazed, she was dancing her baby back and forth in the bouncing sway new mothers automatically acquire. “You mean we’ve harnessed the power of the universe and not perfected the potato peeler?”

“Apparently,” Delphine said. “And listen to this. ‘Friends told police the tragedy occurred in the dimly lit basement of Mr. and Mrs. Michael Wojcik, who were giving a homecoming party for their son, Edwin, an army sergeant back from England. Other guests said three couples were dancing when two shots echoed through the apartment. “Are you shot, honey,” Rzeazutko was heard to ask. “Yes,” his wife replied. “Then, I might as well finish the job,” he said, and fired a third bullet into his head.’”

“Oh Christ, read back to that stuff about the bomb,” said Fidelis.

“One bomb equals 1,228 pounds of TNT for every man, woman, and child living in Fargo,” Delphine reported.

“Stop reading,” said Mazarine.

“The war’s over,” said Fidelis, very softly and with a surge of emotion in his voice that was startling to the others.

Delphine put down the paper and the three sat absorbed in their own thoughts and listening intensely. The refrigerator hummed on, and a fly threw itself against the outside door screen. The water ticked, dripping into the sink strainer. Sparrows argued in the grape arbor, twittering, busy. These ordinary sounds provoked great feeling in Delphine. It was as though they held a meaning, representing a cipher of daily pursuits. A script emblematic of a greater whole. If she could only read the pattern, if she could discover more, if she could force her mind to thread the connections. But her thoughts swung disturbingly between horror and relief. She thought she should weep. She wanted to shout. She left the others, walked outside, and worked for a long while in the hot and ordered chaos of the garden, pulling and piling great handfuls of rag- and pigweed until her brain was filled with the fresh acid fragrance of broken stems and crushed leaves. Screwing her fingers deep to tug the taproot of a vigorous dandelion, she touched the knob end of what she knew was a bone. They were all down there, still, the ones the dog hid, the bones that Eva buried, the mice, snails, birds that died there on their own, the tiny deaths and the huge deaths, all the swirl and complexity of life, one feeding on the other. Forever and ever amen, she thought, dragging out the root with the bone. Both were thick, stained, vigorous, brown. She tossed them into her weed pile and continued until her hands hurt and her thoughts were no more than a weary hum. They will be safe now. Coming home.

AS A BOY, Franz always pictured himself dying heroically, if he had to die at all, in a Spitfire, after a thrilling battle to the death, shot down by a German Focke-Wulf 190, his favorite enemy craft — dark blue as a lightning storm and pale as sunrise, with virgin yellow cowling, deadly and sunny and fair. He would, of course, shoot the Focke-Wulf down, too, as he chose to face vengeful immolation in a final burst of fire. They’d salute each other as they spiraled straight down, together. In some corner of his mind he’d held on to some childish vision of triumph through the boredom, terror, the tedium of daily survival in the real war. He would have been surprised that it came down to a stupid mistake of timing. A hungover mechanic. A snapped cable.

Franz was walking into a supply locker, a kind of big metal closet, when the plane took off behind him. One of the ground crew had forgotten to unhook a heavy steel cable and it played out behind the plane as it lifted. The other men ducked and scattered. If Franz had walked just a little faster, or even slower, he would have been out of reach when the cable flicked out like a bullwhip. With its last touch before it was dragged into the air, it caught Franz neatly across the side of the head. It tapped like a finger, neatly brushing his temple. His hand kept opening the door, but the rest of him couldn’t step through it. He had no thought. No moment of surprise. He hadn’t the faintest notion. He was still looking at the scarred steel frame of the door.

MAZARINE HAD ALWAYS hated the smell of hospitals. They were no different in New York state. When she walked into the lobby, there was the staleness of cigarette smoke, and then the grim, overpowering scent of rubbing alcohol. The nurse came, and she stood up too quickly, juggling her baby’s diaper bag as he shifted in her embrace. Her purse spilled, but there was only a tube of lipstick, the train ticket, a neat little wallet, and a booklet of ration coupons stuck in the teeth of a comb. Mazarine wished there were more to pick up. She was trying to hold herself together, but parts of her took turns shaking, her hands, her knees, her heart. Delphine had accompanied her across the country on the train to help her with the baby but when they stood before the double doors of Franz’s ward, she had stepped to one side and remained in the hall.