Louise Erdrich - The Round House

We kept all papers next door in a larger room walled with tan metal filing cabinets. A few files were always left on top of the cabinets because my father had expressed an interest in reading them over, or was adding notes. That day I noticed large stacks were left out—chestnut brown cardboard files with the labels neatly typed and fixed on by Opichi. Most were notes on cases, summaries and thoughts, drafts that preceded a final published judgment. I asked if we were going to file them, thinking there were too many to finish before suppertime.

We’re taking them home, said my father.

This was a thing he did not do. His study at home was his retreat from all that went on in tribal court. He was proud of leaving the week’s turmoil where it belonged. But today, we loaded the files into the backseat. We put my bike in the trunk and drove home.

I’ll take those files in myself after dinner, he said on the way. So I knew he did not want my mother to see him bring those files into the house. After the car was parked we took my bike out and I wheeled it around back. My father entered before me. Walking through the kitchen door, I heard a splintering crash. And then a keen, low, anguished cry. My mother was backed up to the sink, trembling, breathing heavily. My father was standing a few feet before her with his hands out, vainly groping in air the shape of her, as if to hold her without holding her. Between them on the floor lay a smashed and oozing casserole.

I looked at my parents and understood exactly what had happened. My father had come in—surely Mom had heard the car, and hadn’t Pearl barked? His footsteps, too, were heavy. He always made noise and was as I have mentioned a somewhat clumsy man. I’d noticed that in the last week he’d also shouted something silly when returning, like, I’m home! But maybe he’d forgotten. Maybe he’d been too quiet this time. Maybe he’d gone into the kitchen, just as he always used to, and then he’d put his arms around my mother as she stood with her back turned. In our old life, she would have kept working at the stove or sink while he peered over her shoulder and talked to her. They’d stand there together in a little tableau of homecoming. Eventually, he’d call me in to help him set the table. He’d change his clothes quickly while she and I put the finishing touches on the meal, and then we would sit down together. We were not churchgoers. This was our ritual. Our breaking bread, our communion. And it all began with that trusting moment where my father walked up behind my mother and she smiled at his approach without turning. But now they stood staring at each other helplessly over the broken dish.

It was the kind of moment, I see now, that could have gone several ways. She could have laughed, she could have cried, she could have reached for him. Or he could have got down on his knees and pretended to have the heart attack that later killed him. She would have been jolted from her shock. Helped him. We would have cleared up the mess, made sandwiches for ourselves, and things would have gone on. If we’d sat down together that night, I do believe things would have gone on. But now my mother flushed darkly and an almost imperceptible shudder coursed over her. She took a gasping breath, and put her hand to her wounded face. Then she stepped over the mess on the floor and walked carefully away. I wanted her to shout, cry out, throw something. Anything would have been better than the frozen suspension of feeling in which she mounted the stairs. She was wearing a plain blue dress that night. No stockings. A pair of black Minnetonka moccasins. As she walked up each riser she looked straight ahead and her hand was firm on the banister. Her steps were soundless. She seemed to float. My father and I had followed her to the doorway, and I think as we watched her we both had the sense that she was ascending to a place of utter loneliness from which she might never be retrieved.

We stood together even after the bedroom door clicked shut. At last we turned and without a word we went back into the kitchen and scraped up the casserole and broken dish. Together we brought the mess outside to the garbage. My father paused after he closed the bin. He bowed his head and at that moment I was first aware that he exuded a desolation that would grip him with increasing force. When he remained there motionless, I truly became frightened. I put my hand urgently on his arm. I couldn’t say what I was feeling, but that time, at least, my father looked up.

Help me get those files in. His voice was hard and urgent. We’ll start tonight.

And so I did. We unloaded the car. Then we slapped together a few rough sandwiches. (He prepared one of the sandwiches with more care and put it on a plate. I cut up an apple, arranged the slices around the bread, meat, and lettuce. When my mother didn’t answer my tap on the bedroom door, I left it just outside.) Holding our food in our hands, we went into my father’s study and crammed our mouths as we frowned at the files. We brushed our crumbs to the floor. My father turned on the lamps. He settled himself at his desk and then nodded at me to do the same in the reading chair.

He’s there, he said, nodding at the heavy stacks.

I understood that I was going to help. My father was treating me as his assistant. He knew, of course, about my surreptitious reading. I glanced instinctively at the Cohen shelf. He nodded again, raised his eyebrows a fraction, and lip-pointed at the stack near my elbow. We began to read. And it was then that I began to understand who my father was, what he did every day, and what had been his life.

Over the course of the next week, we culled several cases from the corpus of his work. During this time, which was the last week of school, my mother was unable to leave her room. My father brought her food. I sat with her in the evenings and read to her from The Family Album of Favorite Poems until she slept. It was an old maroon book with a ripped cover picturing happy white people reading poems in church, to their children at bedtime, whispering into a sweetheart’s ear. She would not let me read anything inspirational. I had to read the endless story poems with their ornate words and clunking rhythms. “Ben Bolt,” “The Highwayman,” “The Leak in the Dike,” and so on. As soon as her breathing evened out, I slunk away, relieved. She slept and slept, like she was sleeping for a sleeping marathon. She ate little. Wept often, a grinding and monotonous weeping that she tried to muffle with pillows but which vibrated through the bedroom door. I’d go downstairs, into the study, with my father, and continue reading through the files.

We read with a concentrated intensity. My father had become convinced that somewhere within his bench briefs, memos, summaries, and decisions lay the identity of the man whose act had nearly severed my mother’s spirit from her body.

August 16, 1987

Durlin Peace, Plaintiff

v.

The Bingo Palace, Lyman Lamartine, Defendants

Durlin Peace is a janitor at the Bingo Palace and Casino, and reports directly to Lyman Lamartine. He was fired on July 5, 1987, two days after an argument with his boss. A witness testified that the argument was overheard by several other employees and involved a woman dated by both men.

On July 4, the employee cookout was held in the back courtyard patio of the Bingo Palace. During this cookout, Durlin Peace, who had been repairing some equipment earlier that day, walked off the premises. He was stopped by Lyman Lamartine and asked to empty his pockets. In one pocket, six washers were found, worth about 15 cents apiece. Lyman Lamartine then accused Durlin Peace of attempting to steal company property, and fired him.