Louise Erdrich - The Round House

We got into Whitey’s Silverado and he immediately punched the button on the tape deck. The Rolling Stones boiled up from his subwoofers and we drove with the windows rolled down and the wind rushing in until we took the turnoff onto gravel. Then we drove the rest of the way with the windows up against the dust. We were in a pod of noise—us three shouting over the air fan and throbbing bass. Everything was funny with Whitey—well, as I knew, funny for about four hours, funny for six beers or three shots—but for that time we laughed over the day’s doings and transactions. Cappy’s aunts were so savey that they’d only put a dollar’s worth of gas in the car at a time. It cost that much gas anyway to come and go. They each took free coffee every time. A young student from the university had come to study Grandma Thunder. She was taking her for rides every day—first Grandma would do her errands and visit her friends and family. Then sometimes she’d let the girl take out her notebook and write down a teaching. She was having a great old time.

I asked Whitey about Curtis Yeltow and he said, you wouldn’t believe the things that old boy has done and got away with. Smashed into a freight train, drunk, and lived. Used the prairie nigger word for Indians. Thought it was funny. Had a mistress in Dead Eye. Bought gold and stored it in the basement of the governor’s mansion. And guns? He is a gun lover slash freak. Collects war shields. Indian beadwork. Pays homage to the noble savage but tried to store nuclear waste on sacred Lakota earth. Said the Sun Dance was a form of devil worship. That’s Yeltow. Oh, and he’s all tanned up. Vain about his looks.

We got to the house and Whitey went inside to get dinner going while Sonja and I did the horse chores. As we shoveled out the barn, music blasted from the open windows of the house and we could hear the TV babbling, too. So there was noise while we put the hay out and lightly grained the horses, and noise if we took out the mower, and noise from the dogs anyway as they greeted us joyously and barked to remind us to fill their dishes with food.

Sonja kept the horses in the barn at night and she checked the dogs for ticks and looked at their gums, eyes, and foot pads critically.

What you been up to today? she asked each dog. She’d scold. Not the burr patch again. You smell like you ate shit. Who the hell you let bite at your pretty tail, Chain? I’m gonna whip you if you leave this yard, you know that.

Sonja spoke the same way to the horses as she put them in their stalls, and then Whitey came out and gave her a cold beer. There was a place right outside where the pasture sloped west and the grass turned golden at sunset. Two lawn chairs were set up there, and they added one for me. I drank an orange soda and they had a beer or two more and now the music came from Whitey’s boom box, set out on the steps. Then the mosquitoes whined out in attack formation and we went inside.

Whitey had traded gas for fresh walleye that day, and he’d cleaned the fish already. The fillets were in the refrigerator, soaking in a pie plate of milk. He’d whipped up a foamy beer batter. There was coleslaw made with horseradish. They always had dessert. Sonja insisted on dessert, said Whitey.

She’s got a sweet tooth. Have you ever heard of raspberry fool? I made it for her from a recipe once. Or mayonnaise cake? You can’t taste the mayonnaise. But she likes chocolate. She’s crazy for chocolate. If I dipped my dick in chocolate she’d never let me alone.

He got looser, of course, as the night went on, said things, and eventually Sonja put him to bed.

After he was tucked in, Sonja came out and fixed up the couch for me. The couch was old and smelled of cigarettes. It was upholstered in scratchy brown stuff scattered through with tired orange nubs. Sonja tucked a sheet across the cushions and gave me a plaid sleeping bag with a broken zipper. She turned the television on, the lights out, and then she curled up on the other end of the couch. We watched TV together for an hour or even two. We talked about the money, whispered about it because of Whitey. Sonja made me swear again and again that I had not—would not—tell anybody.

I’m scared as shit. You should be too. Keep your eyes open. Don’t slip up, Joe.

Then we’d talk about what I should do with the money. Sonja made me promise I would go to college. She said she’d wanted her daughter, Murphy, to go. She’d named her baby Murphy because it could never be a stripper name. But her daughter had changed her name to London. If I could go back in time, said Sonja, I never would have left my daughter with my own mother when I was working. My mother had a bad influence on her granddaughter, if you can believe that.

Sonja liked the talk shows, the old movies. Sometimes I fell asleep while we were watching, but before I did I tried to suspend myself for as long as possible between sleep and wakefulness. A door might open momentarily into a dream, but instantly I’d shift back to the couch. Her soft weight on the far cushion. The warmth of her that I could feel if I edged the bare soles of my feet from under the sleeping bag, which became my favorite thing to sleep under because it disguised my hard-on.

Every night, Sonja gave me a pillow off her bed. The pillow smelled of apricot shampoo and also a dusky undertone—some private erotic decay like the inside of a wilted flower. I buried my face to breathe it in. I dozed, dreamed, returning to the flickering TV light. The laugh track, turned low. Sonja tranced in a blue haze, drinking cold water now. Outside, the seething of summer insects. The dogs occasionally rousing to bark once or twice at a deer far across the pasture. And Whitey, thankfully, snoring it off behind the bedroom door. The third or fourth night, when I was passing in and out of heaven, Sonja cupped my heel in her palm and squeezed it. She began absently to rub my instep and a bolt of blind pleasure shot through me too sudden to contain. I came with a gurgle of surprise and she dropped my foot. A moment later, I heard a snap and sneaked a look at her. She was eating a pretzel.

Whitey loved kamikaze pulps. He had a wall of shelves built just the right height for grocery-store samurai romances, ninja attack plots, spy thrillers, Louis L’Amours, sci-fi, Conan. He began his morning at six a.m. with a cup of coffee and a paperback. As I ate beside him, he read selections aloud, murmuring, her lithe haunches quivered with a predatory anticipation as she fixed on his position in the moonless light bereft of soul and decided exactly how to snap his spine ... Ragna’s dagger-sharp eyeteeth glinted in the reflected beams of the headlights ... knowing his life would end as soon as his eyes met that implacable obsidian gaze ... If he was deeply engaged in a plot, he kept reading as Sonja set down a platter of bacon and a pan of her one breakfast specialty—a mixture of grated potatoes, eggs, diced peppers, and ham, laid out in a baking pan and broiled until the cheddar cheese topping bubbled up and toasted. She called it breakfast casserole. Right after we ate, Whitey marked his page and put the book down. Sonja quickly scrubbed up the dishes, we jumped in the pickup, drove to the gas station, and unlocked the pumps. We opened at seven a.m. There was always someone waiting for gas.

That day, a couple of things happened that were not good. The first thing was Sonja’s stud earrings, which Whitey said he’d never seen before.

You have too seen them. She flashed a flirty smile.

The earrings sparkled in the dim kitchen. She had on yellow rubber gloves and she was vigorously scouring the broiler pan before we took off for work.

They’re rhinestones, she said.

Nice rhinestones, said Whitey. He gave an underhanded glance. Then he looked at her boldly, meanly, while she was not looking at him. Her blue jeans also looked brand-new and clung to her in a way that made me think of Whitey’s book, haunches quivering in deadly etc . We got in the truck. Whitey didn’t turn on the music. Halfway to town, Sonja reached over to switch on the tape player and Whitey smacked her hand off the controls. I was sitting in the jump seat behind them. It happened right in front of me.