Louise Erdrich - The Round House

Of course, once the storm had passed, Nanapush found that he was frozen against the buffalo’s ribs. He was held fast by solid blood. Nanapush had dragged in his rifle and kept it where he could shoot, so he managed to blast himself an air hole, though he was deafened for days by the explosion. He could not get his gun to work again. He poked the barrel out the air hole to keep it from freezing over, and waited. To keep up his spirits, he began to sing.

After the storm passed, his mother came out to find him. She had saved herself by knocking a porcupine out of a tree. She’d killed it with great tenderness, and singed the quills into its flesh so she got the benefit of every part. She’d started looking for her son when the snow stopped. She even made a toboggan and dragged it along in case he’d been hurt or, in the best case, shot an animal. Soon she spotted the dark, shaggy shape swept half bare of snow. She ran, the toboggan bumping along behind, but when she reached the buffalo, her knees gave in fright, she was so surprised to hear it singing the song she’d learned from the fish. Then her mind cleared and she laughed. She knew immediately how her foolish son had trapped himself. So it was, Akii hacked Nanapush out of the buffalo, laced him onto the toboggan, and hauled him to the woods. There she built a brush shelter and a fire to thaw him out. Then with the toboggan they went back many times and transported every bit of the buffalo back to their family and relatives.

When the men were given meat by the woman they had tried to kill, and the son who had protected her, they were ashamed. She was generous, but took her children and did not go back to her husband.

Many people were saved by that old woman buffalo, who gave herself to Nanapush and his unkillable mother. Nanapush himself said that whenever he was sad over the losses that came over and over through his life, his old grandmother buffalo would speak to him and comfort him. This buffalo knew what had happened to Nanapush’s mother. She said wiindigoo justice must be pursued with great care. A place should be built so that people could do things in a good way. She said many things, taught Nanapush, so that, as he lived on, Nanapush was to become wise in his idiocy.

Mooshum fell straight back, gave a great sigh, and began his soft rattling snore. I dropped off too, as suddenly as Nanapush inside the buffalo, and when I woke I had forgotten Mooshum’s story—although I remembered it later on in the day, when my father came to get me, because he said the word carcass. He was very pale and elated, and he was speaking to Uncle Edward, saying, They’ve got his damned carcass in custody . At that moment, I remembered Mooshum’s story entirely, vivid as a dream, and simultaneously knew they’d caught my mother’s rapist.

Who is he? Who? I asked my father as we walked up our road.

Soon enough, he said.

At home, my mother was up and about, cleaning, darting around the house with a spidery quickness. Then gasping in a chair, collapsed, leaving jobs started or half done. She got up again, no more than a stick figure. She rushed back and forth, refrigerator to stove to freezer. After her long retreat, this flashing energy was upsetting. She’d gone from zero to a hundred miles an hour and that seemed wrong, although my father seemed pleased and busied himself finishing her projects. They didn’t notice me at all, so I left.

Now that they had the carcass in custody, now that something was being done, I felt a lightness. I felt like I could go back just to being thirteen and live my summer. I was glad I’d quit the station. I skimmed along the road.

Cappy’s house, surrounded too by unfinished projects, stood about three miles east of the Hoopdance golf course. The golf course cut into the reservation, which was an issue between the town and the tribal council yet to be resolved. Did the tribal council have the right to lease tribal land to a golf course that extended off the reservation and gave most of its profits to non-Indians? And who was responsible if a golfer was struck by lightning? If this issue had come before my father, I was not aware of it, but everybody thought that Indians should get to golf there for free—which of course they couldn’t. Sometimes Cappy and I biked over there to look for lost golf balls, which we planned to sell back to the golfers. When I got to Cappy’s and suggested this, though, he said he wanted to do something else but he didn’t know what. I didn’t know what either. So we biked to Zack’s and Angus was there and the four of us were together.

The lake beach closest to town had a church on it—or to be more accurate, the church blocked access. The church owned the road to the beach and kept up a cattle gate that could be locked. After the gates, there were signs—no alcohol, no trespassing, no anything. At the Catholic beach there was a faded-out statue of the Virgin Mary surrounded by rocks. She was draped with rosaries, one of which belonged to Angus’s aunt. Because of that rosary, I believe we felt we had the right to be there. Of course, as the Catholic church was given the land in a time of our desperation, the very time when Nanapush shot the buffalo, it was true that we not only had a right but owned the land, the church, the statue, the lake, even Father Travis Wozniak’s little house. We owned the graveyard that stretched up the hill behind it and the lovely old oak woods pressing in on those graves. But own or not own the whole outfit, once we got there by brazenly riding up the hill, jumping the cattle guard, and racing for the beach, we encountered Youth Encounter Christ—YEC.

As we rode past, they were sitting cross-legged in a circle on the far side of the mowed grass. I could see at a glance they were a mixture of reservation kids, many I knew, and strangers who were probably summer volunteers from Catholic high schools or colleges. I’d seen these volunteers traveling in packs, in their bright orange T-shirts with black sacred heart images printed on the chest. Most people who would talk to them were converted already, which must have been a disappointment. Anyway, we slid past and left our bikes down by the dock. We bushwhacked around a corner to another slice of beach that was more private.

Let’s hide our pants, said Angus, in case one of them shows up to steal our clothes. Clothes stealers did not exactly show up, but after we’d been in the water skinny-dipping, horsing around for half an hour, we did get two visitors. One was a tall, stoop-chested dirty blond guy, older, probably in college, with the worst zits you ever saw. The other, well, she was the opposite of him. She was I guess you’d say a dream. Which was what we called her afterward. Dream Girl. Caramel skin. Soft wide eyes of velvet brown. Straight brown fall of hair held back by cute headband. Shorts. Shapey. Breasts that delicately pushed at her ugly orange sacred heart T-shirt. I was relaxing on my back looking at the sky when all of this happened. I turned over and saw my friends were gone. They’d moved closer in to shore and were standing in waist-high water, chopping at the wavelets with their hands. Cappy was slicking back his hair as he talked and suddenly I noticed that he looked much older and stronger than Zack or Angus or me. I swam in, stood up beside my friends.

So I’m gonna ask you again to leave, said pimple guy.

And I’m gonna ask you again how come, said Cappy.

Once again, just to be clear—the YEC guy paused and lifted his first finger and pointed at heaven, a gesture which Angus copied ever after that day. This beach is reserved for church-authorized activities, said YEC. I’m asking you politely to leave.