Louise Erdrich - The Round House

We were petrified.

Got an eyeful, huh? You dumb monkeys. Whaddya think?

He kicked me in the shin, and although he was barefoot my leg went numb and I rocked backwards.

Say something.

But we couldn’t.

Okay, dogface, he said to Cappy. You tell me why you were spying on me. I know these two, but I don’t know you. What’s your name?

John Pulls Leg.

A jolt of admiration shot straight through me. That Cappy could give a fake name at this moment.

Pulls Leg. What kind of frickin’ name is that?

It’s an old traditional name, Sir!

Sir? Where’d you get that Sir!

My father was a Marine, Sir!

Then you’ve disgraced him, you puling ass-wipe shit. Son of a Marine spying on a priest. What’s your dad’s name?

Same name, Sir!

So you’re Pulls Leg Junior?

Yes, Sir!

Well, Pulls Leg Junior, how’s this?

Father Travis reached out and yanked Cappy off the couch with one streaming jerk of his leg. Cappy hit the floor hard but didn’t cry out.

Pulls Leg, huh? Is that how you got your dumb-shit name?

He loomed down and Cappy put his dukes up but the priest just reached down and threw Cappy back on the couch.

All right, Pulls Leg Junior, what’s your real traditional old-time name?

Cappy Lafournais.

Doe’s your father?

Yeah.

Good man. He pointed a thick finger at Angus. And I know who your aunt is.

He stuck his finger in my face next. I couldn’t breathe.

I know your dad, and I think I know why you pathetic scum-butts are here, spying on me. You. I started thinking about your question earlier this evening. Why you would ask me what I was doing on Sunday, May fifteenth, at such and such a time. Like you were asking for my alibi. I thought it was funny. Then I remembered what happened to your mom. And bingo.

Our knees, our feet, our shoes, had taken on a profound significance. We were studying them closely. We could feel his hammered silver eyes on us.

So you think I hurt your ma, he said softly. Well? Answer.

He kicked me again. The numbness turned to pain.

Yeah. No. I thought maybe.

Maybe. Then the answer came in a flash, so to speak, huh? Im-poss-ee-bley. So you know. And just for your information, you little rat-pukes, you cat farts, you jerk-off freaks, I wouldn’t use my dick that way even if I still could. You yellow-shit horndogs, I have a mother and I have a sister. I also had a girlfriend.

Father Travis leaned back. I glanced up at him. He was watching us from under his brow, his hands folded in his lap. His eyes had taken on that cyborg gleam. His cheekbones looked like they were going to break right through his skin. Not only did he own a copy of Alien , not only did he have an amazing and terrible wound, but he had called us humiliating names without actually resorting to the usual swear words. Besides that there was the deft speed with which he’d caught Angus, the free weights beside the television, the fancy Michelob. It was almost enough to make a boy want to be a Catholic.

You had a girlfriend?

Father Travis’s face tightened to bone-white. I could not believe Cappy’s nerve. For a moment I thought he was dead. But Cappy hadn’t asked it in a taunting or sarcastic way at all. That was the thing about Cappy. He really wanted to know. He’d asked the question the way I know now a good lawyer might interview a potential witness. To find out about the other person. To hear his story.

Father Travis didn’t speak for a time, but Cappy maintained a silent willingness to listen.

Yes, said Father Travis, at last. His voice was thicker now, and low. You skinny creamers don’t know about women yet. You may think you do, but you don’t. I was engaged to a real one. Extremely beautiful. Faithful. Never faltered. Not even when I got hit. She would have stayed. I was the one who ... Do you boys like girls?

I do, said Cappy, the only one who dared answer.

Don’t waste your time on sluts, said Father Travis. You in high school?

Going into high school, Cappy said.

All the better. There’s a beautiful girl nobody else has noticed. You be the one to notice her.

All right, said Cappy.

So, said Father Travis. So.

He spread his hands over the arms of the chair. He watched us in silence until finally we raised our eyes to meet his lock-in stare.

You want to know how it happened. You want to know how I deal with it. You want to know things that you have no right to know. But you’re not bad boys. I can see that now. You wanted to find out who hurt your mother, his mother. He stared at me.

I was at the U.S. Embassy in ’83 and got lucky. I’m here, right? The spigot works. I have to take extremely good care of it. Otherwise, infections. Some sex drive. All sublimated. I was in seminary school before becoming a Marine. Had a spell of anger. Came home like this, a sign. Finished up. Ordained. Shipped here. Any questions?

I told him no priest here had ever shot the gophers.

Sisters gas ’em. You like to be gassed in a tunnel? Better thing to die clean, outside. They die like that. He snapped his fingers. Turn over and look at the sky, huh? The clouds.

He wasn’t looking at us. He wasn’t looking at anything now. He waved his hand, dismissing us. We half rose. He was far away. He steepled his hands together and lowered his forehead to rest against his fingers. We edged past him to the door, quietly moved the chair, and undid the dead bolt. We shut the door carefully and then we walked over to our bikes. The wind was blowing harder now. Beating the hood of the yard light so it flickered. The pines groaned. But the air was warm. A south wind, brought by Shawanobinesi, the Southern Thunderbird. A rain-bearing wind.

The wind passed over us in a rolling mass of clouds that just kept moving until the sky went clear. Just like that, as if nothing had happened between us, my father and I began to talk. He told me he’d had an interesting conversation with Father Travis, and I froze up. But it was all about Texas and the military; Father Travis hadn’t ratted on us. Whatever suspicions my father had expressed that night to Edward were gone, or submerged. I asked my father if he’d talked to Soren Bjerke.

The gas can? I asked.

Pertinent.

Now that Father Travis was off the list, I’d been thinking about the cases and bench notes my father and I had pulled. I asked my father if Bjerke had questioned the Larks, brother and sister.

He’s talked to Linda.

My father tensely frowned. He had promised himself not to involve me, or confide in me, or collaborate with me. He knew where it went, what I might get into, but he didn’t know the half of it. And here was the thing I didn’t understand then but do now—the loneliness. I was right, in that there was just the three of us. Or the two of us. Nobody else, not Clemence, not even my mother herself, cared as much as we did about my mother. Nobody else thought night and day of her. Nobody else knew what was happening to her. Nobody else was as desperate as the two of us, my father and I, to get our life back. To return to the Before. So he had no choice, not really. Eventually, he had to talk to me.

I should visit Linda Wishkob, he said. She stonewalled Bjerke. But maybe ... you want to come?

Linda Wishkob was magnetically ugly. Her pasty wedge of a face just cleared the post office counter. She regarded us with mooncalf, bulging eyes; her wet red lips were curls of flesh. Her hair, a cap of straight brown floss, quivered as she pulled out commemoratives. She displayed them for my father. She reminded me of a pop-eyed porcupine, even down to her fat little long-nailed paws. My father chose a set of fifty states of the union and asked if he could buy her a cup of coffee.