Louise Erdrich - The Round House

My father frowned at the files, passed his hand over his face.

I saw him in the courtroom. People say he’s quite a talker, a real charmer. But he didn’t say a word during the trial.

Could he be the ... ? I asked.

Attacker, I don’t know. He’s troubling for sure. After his mother died, he got into politics for a while. During the trial, he probably became unpleasantly aware of the jurisdiction issues on and surrounding the reservation. He wrote a crank letter to the Fargo Forum . Opichi clipped it. I remember it was full of the usual—let’s dissolve reservations; he used that old redneck line, “We beat them fair and square.” They never get that reservations exist because our ancestors signed legal transactions. But something must have sunk in because, next I heard, Linden was raising money for Curtis Yeltow, who was running for governor of South Dakota and shared his views. I’ve also heard—through Opichi, of course—that Linden is involved in a local chapter of Posse Comitatus. That group believes the powers of the highest elected official of government should reside with the local sheriff. Lark lives in his mother’s house, last I heard. He lives very quietly and goes away a lot. Down to South Dakota, it’s supposed. He’s become secretive. Opichi says a woman is involved, but she’s only been seen a few times. He comes and goes at odd hours, but so far, no sign he’s dealing drugs or in any way breaking the law. I do know that the mother had a way of inciting emotional violence. Other people absorbed her anger. She was a frail-looking little old white lady. But her sense of entitlement was compelling. She was venomous. Maybe Lark moved on, or maybe he absorbed her poison.

My father went out to the kitchen to fill his mug. I stared at the files. Perhaps it was then that I noticed that every one of my father’s actual published opinions was signed with a fountain pen, the ink a lyric shade of indigo. His handwriting was meticulous, almost Victorian, that spidery style of another age. I’ve learned since that there are two things about judges. They all have dogs, and they all have some special quirk to make them memorable. Thus, I think, the fountain pen, even though at home my father used a ballpoint. I opened the last file on the desk and began reading it.

September 1, 1974

Francis Whiteboy, Plaintiff

v.

Asiginak, Tribal Police, and Vince Madwesin, Defendants

William Sterne, Attorney for the appellant, and Johanna Coeur de Bois, Attorney for the respondents.

On August 13, 1973, a Shaking Tent ceremony was conducted at the old round house just north of Reservation Lake. The Shaking Tent is one of the most sacred of Ojibwe ceremonies, and will not be described here except to say that the ceremony served to heal petitioners and to answer spiritual questions.

That night there were over a hundred people in attendance, several of whom, at the edge of the crowd, were drinking. One of those who were drinking was Horace Whiteboy, brother of Francis, the appellant in this case. The leader of the ceremony, Asiginak, had asked Vince Madwesin of the local tribal police to act as security for the ceremony. Vince Madwesin asked Horace Whiteboy and the others who were drinking to leave the premises.

It is culturally unacceptable, even offensive, to drink at a Shaking Tent ceremony, and Madwesin behaved appropriately in asking the drinkers to leave. Several of the drinkers, realizing they were in gross breach of sacred etiquette, did leave the grounds. Horace Whiteboy was seen to stumble away from the ceremony with those drinkers, down the road. However, as affirmed by several witnesses, the spirit in the tent inhabited by Asiginak warned those listening that Horace Whiteboy was in danger.

Horace Whiteboy was found dead on the afternoon following the ceremony. Having apparently left the group of drinkers on the road, he had turned around and attempted to return to the round house. At the bottom of the hill, he apparently decided to lie down. He was found beneath some low bushes, lying on his back, and had choked to death on his own vomit.

Francis Whiteboy, brother of Horace, charges negligence in the actions of Asiginak (who was in the tent and had knowledge from the spirits that his brother was in trouble) and Vince Madwesin (who was off-duty in his capacity as security and not paid).

The court found that Asiginak’s only responsibility was to allow the spirits to voice, through his presence, what they knew. This responsibility was carried out.

Vince Madwesin’s actions to guarantee the security of the Shaking Tent ceremony were appropriate and as he was off-duty and unpaid this case cannot be brought against the tribal police. Madwesin’s responsibility was to make certain that inebriates were warned away. He was not responsible for the actions of the drinkers.

An individual who drinks himself into a state of stuporous sickness runs the risk of succumbing to accidental death. The death Horace Whiteboy suffered, though tragic, was the outcome of his own actions. While compassion for alcoholics should be the rule, caring for them as one must care for children is not the law. Horace Whiteboy’s behavior resulted in his death and his own decisions guided his fate.

The court ruled in favor of the defendants.

Why this one? I asked, when my father returned.

It was late. My father sat down, took a sip of coffee, removed his reading glasses. He rubbed his eyes, and perhaps in his exhaustion spoke without thinking.

Because of the round house, he said.

The old round house? Did it happen there?

He did not answer.

What happened to Mom, did it happen there?

Again, no answer.

He shuffled away the papers, stood up. The light caught the lines in his face and they deepened to cracks. He looked a thousand years old.

Cappy was a skinny guy with big hands and scarred-up, knobby feet, but he had bold cheekbones, a straight nose, big white teeth, and lank, shiny hair hanging down over one brown eye. Melting brown eye. The girls loved Cappy, even though his cheeks and chin were always scraped and he had a gap in one eyebrow where his forehead had been opened by a rock. His bike was a rusted blue ten-speed Doe had picked up at the mission. Because their house rattled with tools on every surface, Cappy kept it halfway fixed. Still, only first gear worked. And the hand brakes gave out unexpectedly. So when Cappy rode you’d see a spidery kid pedaling so fast his legs blurred and from time to time dragging his feet to stop or, if that didn’t work, throwing himself suicidally over the crossbar. Angus had a beat-up pink BMX that he meant to paint before he realized the color kept it from getting stolen. Zack’s bike was new, and a cool black, because his dad brought it after he had not shown up for two years. Since we couldn’t drive legally (although of course we drove whenever we could), the bikes gave us freedom. We didn’t have to rely on Elwin or on Whitey’s horses, though we did ride the horses, too, when we could. We didn’t have to ask Doe or Zack’s mom for a ride, which was good on the morning after school let out because they wouldn’t have taken us where we wanted to go.

Zack had confirmed, from listening in on his stepfather’s burping police radio (he did this constantly), where the crime against my mother had taken place. It was the round house. A two-track bush road led to the old log round house on the far side of Reservation Lake. Early that morning, I got up and stepped quietly into my clothes. I slipped downstairs and let Pearl out. Together, we peed outside, in the back bushes. I didn’t want to flush the noisy inside toilet. I sneaked back in, barely opening the screen door so it wouldn’t whine, easing it slow so it wouldn’t whap shut. Pearl entered with me and watched silently as I filled a bag with peanut butter sandwiches. I put them in my pack together with a jar of my mother’s canned dill pickles and a water jug. I had agreed to write a note to tell my dad where I was—all summer, he made me swear. I wrote the word LAKE on the legal pad he’d left for me on the counter. I tore off half a sheet and wrote another note that I stuck in my pocket. I put my hand on Pearl’s head and looked into her pale eyes.