Louise Erdrich - The Round House

Holeee, he yelled.

Then he marched out of the woods with two full six-packs of Hamm’s beer. One in each hand. Cappy and Zack whooped with joy. I ran toward him. Every other can we’d crushed or bottle we’d found had been Old Mill or Blatz, the reservation beer of the time. In spite of the dancing, drumming, feather-wearing Indian bear in the Hamm’s commercial, we were a Blatz people.

Drop that, I yelled. Angus froze. He laid the six-packs carefully on the ground.

I think he left those, I said. I think it’s evidence. There will be fingerprints.

Uh ... I could see that Angus was thinking as fast as he could. He talked fast, too. Does water erase fingerprints? I found these in an open cooler. The beer was covered with water.

You found his stash, I said.

Can I pick up the beer? asked Angus.

I guess, I said.

Can I crack one open?

I looked at my friends. Yeah, I said.

Their hands shot out and pulled cans from the plastic ring.

If there’s no fingerprints then the main evidence is that he is a Hamm’s drinker, I said. Make of that what you will. I took a beer. The can was wet and icy. I held it as I followed Angus back to where he’d found the stash. I said we shouldn’t get too close yet and destroy the evidence, that we should probably crawl up to this thing and collect what we could find all around it.

Crawl? Again? said Angus.

The cooler, cheap Styrofoam, sat against a tree. There was a heap of clothes to one side.

Cappy said that he’d prefer to drink the beer first and get a buzz, then crawl over to gather evidence before he jumped back in the lake and drowned his ticks off again. We drank our beers.

Went down good, said Angus. He attempted to crush his can against his thigh. Ow, he said.

We fanned out and crawled in a circle, closing in on the cooler. It was on the edge of that cow pasture and there were dried cow pies here and there. We’d drunk the beers fast, to get buzzed, knowing that we each had two more waiting, cold, and we’d drink our next beers slower by the fire. The crawling around was definitely easier on us this time, though Angus lifted his leg and flared a boogid at me.

No boogid wars, said Zack.

Aw, said Angus, cracking another fart.

All of a sudden, Cappy tossed a cow pie into the open pasture like a Frisbee and started laughing.

Why did the Indian ignore the cow pie?

Nobody said anything.

He didn’t know shit!

Ha-ha, said Zack. You’re gonna turn into a powwow MC like your dad.

How much is four bucks and four bucks?

An Indian bar fight, groan, said Angus. He lifted his leg but he had no gas left.

It was true that at home Doe, Randall, and Cappy sometimes just sat around inventing bad Indian jokes.

As we crawled along, I noticed us. My skin was very light brown. Cappy’s was more brown. Zack’s a deeper brown. Angus’s was white but already tanned. Cappy was getting his growth, I was next, Zack and Angus were both shorter than me. Between us, we had so many scars that it was hard to count.

How come the four naked Indians in the woods were laughing, said Cappy.

Don’t encourage him, I said.

They got tick-led.

Sore. I laughed. For a handsome guy that girls loved, Cappy was not cool.

Angus was crawling away from me. I kept my distance. His butt was packed with purple marks where his brother had shot him with a BB gun. We were bumbling around at random now, not following any grid. There was hardly any trash on this side of the fence. I’d guessed that the attacker had gone in the lake, too, around the end of the fence, and put his stash away from the beach area. We got close to the cooler and I used a stick to prod at the pile of blankets and clothes.

The blankets were made of crummy polyester. There was a rotted-looking shirt, a pair of jeans. It all stank like behind the Dead Custer Bar.

Maybe we should leave this to the police, I said.

If we tell them, then we have to say we were here, said Zack. They will figure out that I listen to Vince’s radio and phone calls. I’ll be in deep shit.

Also, said Angus, there’s the beer.

Drinking half the evidence doesn’t look good, said Cappy.

Let’s get rid of it all, said Zack.

Okay, I said.

We went back, around the fence, and built up the fire. Then we ran down to the lake and jumped back in and got rid of the new ticks. Zack showed the place where he’d got speared in the armpit. He could have died, they said. The stitches had healed like a tiny white railroad track running mysteriously up his rib, under and along his arm. We put our clothes on and felt normal again. We sat by the fire and popped open the rest of the evidence.

Was his third ball the same size as the other two? Angus asked Zack.

Don’t start that again, said Cappy.

I wonder, I said, if we should even talk to the cops. I mean, they missed the gas can. They missed the cooler. They missed the pile of clothes.

That pile stinks. It smells like piss.

He pissed himself, said Angus.

We should torch that stuff, I said.

My throat burned and I was invaded by a stab of feeling so acute that I wanted to cry—again. Suddenly, we froze. We heard what sounded like a high-pitched eagle-bone whistle up the hill through the riffle of woods. The wind had changed direction, and a series of notes sounded as the air poured through the gaps in the mud chinking of the round house.

Cappy stood up and stared at the round house.

Angus made the sign of the cross.

Let’s bug out, said Zack.

We crushed the Hamm’s cans along with the others, piled them in a piece of plastic, and tied them together to bring back for Angus to sell. Then we put the fire out and buried the rest of the trash. I tied the gas can to my bike with a shoestring and we took off. The shadows were long, the air was cooling off, and we were hungry the way boys get hungry. Irrationally hungry so that everything we saw looked tasty and all we could talk of on the way home was food. Where we could get food, and eat food, a lot of food, and quick. That was our concern. Zack’s mom would be at bingo. Aunt Star was either flush or broke, never in between, and it was a Saturday. By now, she’d have spent what she had and probably not on food. Things were lean that week at Cappy’s house, though his dad possibly had stew. Doe’s bachelor stews were a crapshoot, though. Once he added commodity prunes to his chili. Another time he left some bread dough overnight and a mouse burrowed into it. Randall got a slice with the head and Cappy got the tail. Nobody could find the middle. My friends didn’t mention my house, though before what happened we would definitely have showed up there on a raid mission. Whitey and Sonja’s place was on the way, but I hated it when my friends talked about her. Sonja was mine. So I said they would be working at the gas station. Our other prospect was Grandma Thunder. She lived at the retirement home in a one-bedroom apartment with a full kitchen. She liked to cook for us; her closet was bursting with commodities that others traded to her.

She’ll make frybread and meat, said Zack.

She always has canned peaches, said Angus. His voice was reverent.

She has her price, said Cappy.

Just don’t anybody bring up balls or say the word twat.

Who would say that word around their grandma?

It could come out by mistake.

Come? Don’t say come.

Don’t even mention cats. She’ll say pussy.

Okay, I said. The list of topics not to mention while we stuff ourselves at Grandma’s is balls, cats, pussies, dicks.

Don’t say head, ever.

Don’t say wiinag, don’t say anything that rhymes with the f-word or the word cock.

Don’t say crotch, prick, snatch, you know, like snatch at something. She will take it wrong, believe me.