Louise Erdrich - The Round House

Okay, said Sonja. Here’s the thing. Wherever that money came from? They are gonna want it back. They will kill to get it back, you know what I’m saying?

I shouldn’t tell anybody. Duh.

But can you do that? I’ve never known a guy who could keep a secret.

I can.

Even from your dad?

Sure.

Even from Cappy?

She heard me hesitate before I answered.

They’d whale on him too, she said. Maybe kill him. So you zip it and keep it zipped. On your mother’s life.

She knew what she was saying. She knew without looking that tears started in my eyes. I blinked.

Okay, I swear.

We have to bury the passbooks.

We turned down a dirt road and drove until we came to the tree that people call the hanging tree, a huge oak. The sun was in its branches. There were prayer flags, strips of cloth. Red, blue, green, white, the old-time Anishinaabe colors of the directions, according to Randall. Some cloths were faded, some new. This was the tree where those ancestors were hanged. None of the killers ever went on trial. I could see the land of their descendants, already full of row crops. Sonja took the ice scraper out of her glove compartment and we put the passbooks in the cash box. She pushed the key into her front jeans pocket.

Remember the day.

It was June 17.

We traced down the sun to a point on the horizon and then walked in a straight line from where the sun would set, fifty paces back into the woods. It took us what seemed like forever to scrape out a deep hole for the box, using just that ice scraper. But we got the box in and covered it up and fit the divots back on top and scattered them with leaves.

Invisible, I said.

We need to wash our hands, said Sonja.

There was some water in the ditch. We used that.

I get it about not telling anybody, I said as we drove home. But I want shoes like Cappy’s.

Sonja glanced over at me and almost caught me looking at the side of her breast.

Yeah, she said. And how would you explain where you’d got the money to buy them?

I’d say I had a job at the gas station.

She grinned. You want one?

Pleasure flooded into me so that I couldn’t speak. I hadn’t realized until then how much I wanted out of my house and how much I wanted to be working somewhere I could see and talk to other people, just random people coming through, people who weren’t dying right before your eyes. It frightened me to suddenly think that way.

Hell, yes! I said.

You don’t swear on the job, said Sonja. You’re representing something.

Okay. We drove for a few miles. I asked what I was representing.

Reservation-based free market enterprise. People are watching us.

Who’s watching us?

White people. I mean, resentful ones. You know? Like those Larks who owned Vinland. He’s been here, but he’s nice to me. Like, he’s not so bad.

Linden?

Yeah, that one.

You should watch out for him, I said.

She laughed. Whitey hates his guts. When I’m nice to him, he gets so jealous.

How come you wanna make Whitey jealous?

All of a sudden, I was jealous too. She laughed again and said that Whitey needed to get put in his place.

He thinks he owns me.

Oh.

I was awkward, but she suddenly glanced at me, sharp, with a naughty smirk like the one on that doll’s face. Then she looked away, still smiling with manic glee.

Yeah. Thinks he owns me. But he’ll find out he don’t, huh? Am I right?

Soren Bjerke, special agent for the FBI, was an impassive lanky Swede with wheat-colored skin and hair, a raw skinny nose, and big ears. You couldn’t really see his eyes behind his glasses—they were always smudged, I think on purpose. He had a droopy houndlike face and a modest little smile. He made few movements. There was a way he had of keeping perfectly still and watchful that reminded me of the ajijaak. His knobby hands were quiet on the kitchen table when I walked in. I stood in the doorway. My father was carrying two mugs of coffee to the table. I could tell I’d interrupted some cloud of concentration between them. My legs went weak with relief because I understood Bjerke’s visit was not about me.

That Bjerke was here anyway went back to Ex Parte Crow Dog and then the Major Crimes Act of 1885. That was when the federal government first intervened in the decisions Indians made among themselves regarding restitution and punishment. The reasons for Bjerke’s presence continued on through that rotten year for Indians, 1953, when Congress not only decided to try Termination out on us but passed Public Law 280, which gave certain states criminal and civil jurisdiction over Indian lands within their borders. If there was one law that could be repealed or amended for Indians to this day, that would be Public Law 280. But on our particular reservation Bjerke’s presence was a statement of our toothless sovereignty. You have read this far and you know that I’m writing this story at a removal of time, from that summer in 1988, when my mother refused to come down the stairs and refused to talk to Soren Bjerke. She had lashed out at me and terrified my father. She had floated off, so that we didn’t know how to retrieve her. I’ve read that certain memories put down in agitation at a vulnerable age do not extinguish with time, but engrave ever deeper as they return and return. And yet, quite honestly, at that moment in 1988, as I looked at my father and Bjerke at our kitchen table, my brain was still stuffed with money like the head of that trashed doll with manufactured mischief in her eyes.

Iwalked past Bjerke into the living room but then I didn’t want to walk upstairs. I didn’t want to walk past my mother’s shut door. I didn’t want to know that she was lying in there, breathing in there, and with her constant suffering sucking all the juice out of the excitement of the money. But because I did not want to walk past my mother’s door, I turned and went back to the kitchen. I was hungry. I stood in the doorway fidgeting until the men again stopped talking.

Maybe you want a glass of milk, said my father. Get yourself a glass of milk and sit down. Your aunt made a cake for us. A small round chocolate cake, neatly iced, was set on the counter. My father waved me to it. I carefully cut four pieces and put them on saucers with a fork beside. I brought three of the pieces to the table. I poured myself a glass of milk.

I’ll take that up to your mother later on, said my father, nodding at the last piece of cake.

So I sat down with the men. And I realized I had made a mistake. Now that I was sitting in their proximity, the truth would pull at me. Not the gas can truth. But when they seemed to wait for me to speak, I threw that out, nervously, asking if it could be evidence.

Yes, said Bjerke. His no-flinch gaze pierced the scum on his eyeglasses. We’ll do an affidavit. All in time. If we have a case.

Yes, sir. Well, I gathered my courage, maybe we should do it now. Before I forget.

Is he the forgetful type? asked Bjerke.

No, said my father.

Still, I ended up talking into a little tape recorder and signing a paper. After that, there were some politely well-meant questions about what I was up to that summer and how tall I was growing and which sports I’d go out for in junior high school. Wrestling, I said. They struggled to not look skeptical. Or maybe cross-country? That seemed more believable. I could tell that both men were glad to have me there but also fending off some large morose silence of confusion between them that probably stemmed, now that I think back to that day and that hour, to their impasse. They were out of ideas and had no suspects and no sure leads and no help at all from my mother, who now insisted that the event itself had passed from her mind. The money was still pushing at me to talk, to reveal.