Louise Erdrich - The Round House

Cappy had those good shoes, but so, I noticed, did Father Travis. He wasn’t running in sober clerical blacks but had perhaps been playing basketball or jogging before he dropped in to hear confessions. The two sprinted hotly down the dusty gravel road that led from the church into town. Cappy boldly crossed the highway and Father Travis followed. Cappy cut through yards he knew well and disappeared. But even in his cassock, which he’d hoisted and tucked into his belt, Father Travis was right behind him heading toward the Dead Custer Bar and Whitey’s gas station. We marveled at Father’s pale thick-muscled calves blurring in the sun.

What should we do?

Stay ready, I said.

Angus and I took our bikes from the rack and held Cappy’s between us. We hoped he’d gain enough on Father Travis so he could jump on and we could pedal away. We watched the bit of road we could see far over the trees because it was there Cappy would appear if Father Travis didn’t catch him. Soon, Cappy popped across. A moment later, Father Travis. Then they vanished and Angus said, He’s trying to lose him by zigzagging through the BIA housing. He knows those yards too. We turned to watch the next patch of road where they would appear and again it was Cappy first, Father Travis not far behind. Cappy knew the front and back entrances of every building, and fled in and out of the hospital, the grocery, the senior citizens, the tiny casino we had back then. He doubled back through the Dead Custer and in and out of Whitey’s. He took the road we’d taken past old lady Bineshi’s, hoping he’d surprise the dogs and they’d fix their teeth in Father Travis’s robe, but they made it through. Cappy hopscotched downhill through the graveyard and then the two of them made a loop that took them through the playground—it was mesmerizing to watch. Cappy set the swings going and sprang through the monkey bars, lightly touching down. Father Travis landed like an ape with knuckles on the ground, but kept going. They sprinted uphill, two tiny ciphers who now enlarged as Cappy ran toward us ready to jump on the bike we held and speed off. We would have made it. He would have made it. He came so close. Father Travis put on a burst of speed that brought him within a handsbreadth of Cappy’s shirt collar. Cappy floated out from under that hand. But it came down and grabbed his back wheel.

Cappy jumped off the bike but Father Travis, purple in the face, wheezing, had him by the shoulders and bodily lifted him. Angus and I had dropped our bikes to plead his case. Although we couldn’t have known for sure what Cappy planned to confess, it was now obvious. He had confessed what we feared he would confess.

Father, this does not look good, said Angus.

Let him down, please, Father Travis. I tried to imagine my father’s voice in this situation. Cappy is a minor, I said. Perhaps that was absurd, but Father Travis had hold of Cappy’s shirt now and had raised his fist and his fist stopped in the air.

A minor, I said, who came to you for help, Father Travis.

A Worf-like roar seized Father Travis and he threw Cappy on the ground. His foot went back but Cappy rolled out of range. We picked up our bikes because Father Travis wasn’t moving now. He was standing there, breathing in deep gasps, head lowered, glaring from under his brow. We’d somehow gotten the upper moral ground in that moment and we knew it. We got on our bikes.

Good day, Father, said Angus.

Father Travis stared past us as we rode away.

Shit and hell, I said to Cappy later. What were you thinking?

Cappy shrugged.

You told him about the church basement, where you did it?

Everything, said Cappy.

Shit and hell.

Clemence frowned at my language.

Sorry, Auntie, I said. We had gone to Clemence and Edward’s in hopes they were eating, which they weren’t, but that didn’t matter because Clemence knew why we came around and she immediately warmed up her usual hamburger macaroni, poured her usual swamp tea, only mixed, for us specially, with a can of lemonade. She fed Mooshum because he ate whenever anybody else ate, but his tremor had become so pronounced that he couldn’t eat soup.

Why’d you tell him? I asked.

I dunno, said Cappy, maybe what he said about his woman. Or what he said to me about You be the one to notice her , remember?

He said notice her, not, you know. I was delicate around Cappy, even though Clemence wasn’t listening right then. Although Cappy had had sex, it was on a higher plane, so I didn’t use any sex words. He got upset when they were associated with anything that had happened between himself and Zelia.

You could have gone to your dad, gone to your older brother, talked with them, I said.

I’m glad I went to Father Travis though, said Cappy, grinning.

Cappy’s run was already becoming history and his reputation would soar. Father Travis was not damaged by it either, as we’d never had a priest in such fine athletic shape.

The size of his calf muscles! said Clemence.

The last priest could not have run ten yards, said Mooshum. I saw him laid out in our yard once, dead drunk. That old priest weighed more than you and your skinny friends all put together. He cackled. But this new one has his pride. It will take him many prayers to get over Cappy’s run.

God help the gophers this week, said Uncle Edward as he passed through the room.

Clemence brought a dish towel and tied it around Mooshum’s neck. Between bites, he said, I ever tell you boys about the time I outrun Liver-Eating Johnson? How that old rascal used to track down Indians and kill us and take and eat our livers? That was a white wiindigoo, but when I was young and fleet, I run him down and whittled him away bite by bite and paid him back. I snapped off his ear with my teeth, and then his nose. Want to see his thumb?

You told them, said Clemence, who was intent on getting nourishment into his old gullet. But Mooshum wanted to talk.

Listen here, you boys. People say Liver-Eating Johnson was supposed to have escaped some Indians by chewing through a rawhide that bound his hands. The story had it he killed the young Indian who was guarding him and cut off that poor boy’s leg. Supposedly that scoundrel run off with that leg into the wilderness and survived by eating it until he made his way into friendlier territory.

Open up, said Clemence, and filled his mouth.

But that was not how it happened, said Mooshum. For I was there. I was hunting with some Blackfeet warriors when they caught Liver Eater. They planned on delivering him to the Crow Indians because he had killed so many of their people. I was sitting with that young Blackfeet who was supposed to guard him, but he wanted to kill Johnson so bad his hands twitched.

I talked to Liver Eater in the Blackfeet language, which he sort of understood. Liver Eater, I said, half the Blackfeet hate you so much they’re gonna stake you down buck-naked and skin you alive. But they’ll cut off your balls first and feed them to their old ladies right in front of your eyes.

Say there! said Clemence.

The Blackfeet’s eyes just glowed, said Mooshum. I said to Liver Eater that the other half of the Blackfeet wanted to tie him securely between their two best war ponies and then charge the opposite directions. The Blackfeet boy’s eyes sparked like candles at that. I told Liver-Eating Johnson that he was supposed to decide which of these fates he would prefer, so that the tribe could make preparations. Then we turned our backs on Liver Eater and warmed our hands over the fire. We left him to work on the rawhide thongs that bound his wrists. His ankles, too, were bound with strong ropes. Another rawhide at his waist fixed him to a tree. He had plenty to work on with his teeth, which were none too sturdy and that’s the point. You never saw a white trapper’s teeth, but they hadn’t the habits we Indians had of scrubbing our teeth clean with a birch twig. They let their teeth rot. You could smell his breath a mile before a trapper came into view. His breath generally smelled worse than the rest of him and that is saying a lot, eh? Liver Eater’s teeth were no different from any trapper’s. And now he was trying to chew off his cords. Every so often, we would hear him curse and spit—there went one tooth, then another broke off. We panicked him into chawing until he was all gum. Never again could he bite into an Indian. But we planned to make him helpless altogether. This young Blackfeet and me. He had a potion from his grandma that would make your eyes cross. As soon as Liver Eater fell asleep and snored, we dabbed that medicine onto his eyes. Now he couldn’t shoot straight. He would have to become a sheriff. That is, if the Crows did not kill him. Still, you don’t leave a rattlesnake alive to bite you next time you walk the path, I said to the Blackfeet, even if he don’t have fangs.