Louise Erdrich - The Round House

I suppose I should have sent you down with your car, he suddenly turned on Mayla. But, honey, I couldn’t. I just felt so sorry for you and my heart split wide open. That’s love, huh? Love. I couldn’t do it. But I have to, you know. All your fucking shit’s in your car. You don’t need anything where you’re going. I’m sorry! I’m sorry! He struck Mayla, and struck me, and struck her again and again and turned her over. You want to tell me where the money is? The money he gave you? Oh, you do? Oh, you do now? Where? He ripped the tape away. She couldn’t talk, then she gasped out, My car.

He would have killed her then, I think so, but the baby moved. The baby cried out and blinked, looked into his eyes without understanding. Ah, he said, well isn’t that. Isn’t that.

Don’t talk no more. I don’t want to hear it, he said to Mayla. You are still money in the bank, he said to the baby. I am taking you back with me ... unless you, dirt. He rose and kicked me and went over and kicked her so hard she wheezed. Then he bent over and looked into my face. He said to me, I’m sorry. I might be having an episode. I’m not really a bad person. I didn’t hurt you, did I? He picked up the baby and said to the baby in a baby voice, I don’t know what to do with the evidence. Silly me. Maybe I should burn the evidence. You know, they’re just evidence. He put her down gently. He uncapped the gas can. While he had his back turned and was pouring the gas on Mayla, I grabbed his pants and put them between my legs and I urinated on them, that’s what I did. I did! Because I’d seen him light his cigarette and put the matches back into his pocket. I was surprised that he didn’t notice that the pants were wet with urine, but he was absorbed in what he meant to do. Shaking too. He was saying, Oh no, oh no. He poured more gasoline over her and splashed gas on me, too, but not the baby. Then, then, when he couldn’t start the fire with the matches from his pants pocket he turned and gave the baby a heavy look. She began to cry and we—Mayla and I—lay perfectly still as he went to comfort the baby. He said, Sshhh, sshhh. I have another book of matches, a lighter even, down the hill. And you, he shook me and said into my face, you, if you move an inch I will kill this baby and if you move an inch I will kill Mayla . You are going to die but if you say one word even one word up in heaven after you are dead I will kill them both.

Ipoured myself a bowl of cornflakes and a glass of milk. I put half the milk on the cereal, sprinkled sugar on the cereal, and ate it. I filled the bowl with cereal a second time and drank the sweet milk from the bottom of the bowl and finished off the glass. I dipped a wide-mouth jar into the bag of dog food in the entry, filled Pearl’s bowl, and gave her fresh water. Pearl stood by me as I spray-soaked the garden and the flower beds. Then I got on my bike and went to work. I saw my father before I left. He had stayed in the bedroom with my mother. He’d sat up next to her all night. I asked him about the file, and he told me that my mother wouldn’t talk about it. She needed to know the baby was safe. Mayla was safe.

What do you think’s in that file? I asked.

Something to work with.

And Mayla Wolfskin? What about her?

She went to school down in South Dakota, said my father. And she’s related to your mother’s friend LaRose. Maybe that’s why your mother won’t see LaRose—she’s afraid of breaking down, of saying something.

That’s not what I meant. What about Mayla Wolfskin, Dad? Is she alive?

That’s the question.

What do you think?

I think not, he said softly, looking down at the floor.

I looked down at the floor, too, at the swirls of cream in the gray of the linoleum. And the darker gray and the small black spots a vertigo surprise once you noticed. I perused that floor, memorizing the randomness.

Why would he kill her? Dad?

He put his head to the side, shook his head, stepped forward, and put his arms around me. He held me there, not speaking. Then he let me go and walked away.

When I got to Whitey and Sonja’s station I parked my bike beside the door, where I could see it, then I started my chores. Whitey had a short-wave receiver that picked up signals all around the area. It was always crackling on and burping garbled messages in the vicinity of the garage. Sometimes, he turned it off and pumped out music. I picked up all of the candy wrappers, cigarette butts, loser pull tabs, and other trash that had accumulated in the gravel gas station yard and the weeds down to the road. I got the hose and watered yet another tractor-tire flower bed, this one painted yellow, ringed with silvery sage leaves and red-hot poker flowers, same as I had planted for my mother.

Whitey pumped gas when customers came, checked oil, and gossiped. I washed the car windows. Sonja had bought a Bunn coffeemaker and Whitey had built two wooden booths in the eastern corner of the store. Sonja’s first cup of coffee was a dime and the refills were free, so the booths were always filled with people. Clemence baked for the store every few days and there was banana bread, coffee cake, oatmeal cookies in a jar. Every day at lunchtime, Whitey asked if I wanted a rez steak sandwich and then he made us baloney-whitebread-mayo sandwiches. In the afternoon, Whitey took his break and when he came back Sonja left to go home and take a nap. They’d both work until seven p.m. They were saving payroll for the first couple of years, just to start with. Later on, they planned on hiring a full-timer and staying open until nine. I was paid a dollar an hour, ice cream, soda, milk, and cookies off the bottom of the jar.

When I got home, my father was waiting for me.

How was work?

It was good.

My father looked at his knuckles, flexed his hand, frowned. He started talking to his hand, which was a thing that he did when he didn’t want to be saying what he had to say.

I had to take your mother down to Minot this morning. To the hospital. They’ll keep her a couple of days. I’m going back down tomorrow.

I asked if I could go, but he said there was nothing I could do.

She just has to rest.

She sleeps all the time.

I know. He paused, then finally looked at me, a relief. She knows who it was, he said. Of course, but she still won’t tell me, Joe. She has to overcome his threats.

Do you have an idea?

I can’t say, you know that.

But I should know. Is he from around here, Dad?

It would fit ... but he won’t show up here. He knows he’ll get caught. There will be someone for your mother to identify, he said, pretty soon. Not soon enough. She’s going to be better once that begins. I feel certain she’ll remember where, too—where it happened. The shock of telling. But then some resolution.

What about Mayla Wolfskin? Did he keep her with him? And that baby? Was that the baby that the governor was trying to adopt?

My father’s face told me yes. But what he said was, I wish you hadn’t heard all that was said, Joe. But I couldn’t stop your mother. I was afraid she might stop talking.

I nodded. All day my mother’s words had seeped up through the surface of all I did, like a dark oil.

In her right mind, she never would have described all that happened in front of you.

I had to know. It’s good I know, I said.

But it was a poison in me. I was just beginning to feel that.

I’ve got to go back down there tomorrow, said my father. Do you want to stay with Aunt Clemence or Uncle Whitey?

I’ll stay with Whitey and Sonja. That way they can bring me to work.

Next day after work, I rode back to the old place with Sonja and Whitey. We had Pearl with us. Clemence was going to check in on the house and water the garden, so everything was locked up and I didn’t have to go there for a while. And that made me happy. Soon we’d have Mooshum’s birthday. Everyone would come for that. I’d see my cousins. But for now, staying with Sonja and Whitey seemed like a vacation to me. Things could be normal. At their house, I would sleep on the couch and watch television. There were different sorts of food that Whitey cooked because he’d been a professional cook; there was the wine or beer at every dinner and the drinks after dinner and music. Noise. I didn’t know how bad I’d needed noise.