Louise Erdrich - The Round House

Wow, it’s hot.

But she wouldn’t go to the weather with me. She nodded, closed her eyes, and said, Mmmm, as she ate her birthday shrimp.

Slow down, Linda, she told herself. She laughed and dabbed her lips.

I’ve got to do this, I thought.

Okay, I said. I get it about your brother. Sure. Now he thinks he’ll be a rich piece of scum. I’m just wondering, though, could you tell me when he plays golf? If he does play golf? Anymore?

She kept her napkin at her lips and blinked at me over the white paper.

I mean, I said, I need to know because—

I crammed a fistful of fries into my mouth and chewed and thought furiously.

—because what if my dad wants to golf or something? I was thinking it would be good for him to golf. We can’t run the risk of Lark being out there, too.

Oh, gosh, said Linda. She looked panicked. I never thought about that, Joe. I don’t know how often, but yes, Linden does golf and he likes to get out there very early, right after the course opens at seven a.m. Because he doesn’t sleep, hardly. Not that I know his habits anymore. I should talk to your ...

No!

How come?

We were frozen, staring across the food. This time I picked up two shrimp and ate each one, frowning, and picked apart their tails, and ate that little bit too.

This is something I want to do on my own. A father-and-son thing. A surprise. Uncle Edward has golf clubs. I’m sure he’ll let us use them. We’ll go out there. Just me and Dad. It’s something I want to do. Okay?

Oh, certainly. That’s nice, Joe.

I ate so quickly, in relief, that I finished the whole plate and even ate some of Linda’s fries and the remains of her salad before I understood I had all I needed—the information and an agreement to keep it secret. Which gave me both a sense of relief and the return of that whirling dread.

Bugger floated by the window. He was riding my bicycle.

I have to go, I said to Linda. Thank you, but Bugger’s stealing my bike.

I ran outside and caught up to Bugger, who was only halfway across the parking lot. He meandered along slowly and didn’t get off the bike, just glanced at me with his wobbly eye. I walked beside him. I actually didn’t mind walking because I didn’t feel so well. I’d eaten so much, so fast, maybe on a nervous stomach like my father sometimes said he did. Plus, after all, those frozen shrimp had traveled a couple of thousand miles from where they had started to land on my plate. I’d had to cover the piled tails with a napkin while Linda waited for the check. Now the walk seemed better than the jolting of a bicycle. I wanted to get away from other people, too, in case I had to puke.

As I walked beside Bugger in the hot sun, I started feeling better and within a mile I was okay. Bugger didn’t seem to have a destination that made any sense to me.

Can I have my bike now?

I’ve gotta get somewhere first, he said.

Where?

I needa see if it was just a dream.

What was just a dream?

What I saw was just a dream. I needa see.

Whatever it was, it was, I said. You snaked out. Can I have my bike?

Bugger was getting too far out of town, going the opposite of the way to Cappy’s house. I was worried that he might swerve into a passing car. So I persuaded him to turn around by talking up Grandma Ignatia and her generous handouts.

True. A man gets hungry from all this bicycling, said Bugger.

We got to the senior citizens and he dropped the bike in front of me. He staggered away like a man in the grip of a magnetic force. I turned around and rode back to Cappy’s. We had planned to practice shooting, but Randall was there, off work early, fixing his bustle at the kitchen table. The long, elegant eagle feathers were carefully spread out from the circle where they joined, and he was working on a loose one. Randall had a handsome traditional powwow outfit, which he had mostly inherited from his father, though his aunties had beaded flower patterns on the velvet armbands and aprons. When he was all fitted out, he was a magnificent picture. All kinds of ordinary and extraordinary things had gone into his regalia. Two giant golden eagle tail feathers topped his roach, his headpiece. Stabilized by lengths of a car antenna, the feathers bobbed on the springs of ballpoint pens. The elastic garters of one aunt’s old girdle were covered with deerskin and sewn with ankle bells. He had a dance stick that was supposedly taken from a Dakota warrior, though it was actually made in boarding-school shop class. Wherever the components of Randall’s outfit had originated, they were all adapted to him now, each feather fixed and strengthened with carved splinters of wood and Elmer’s glue, the soles of his moccasins soled and resoled with rawhide. Randall won prize money sometimes, but he danced because Doe had danced, and also because those moving pieces caught girls’ eyes pretty good. He was getting ready for our annual summer powwow this coming weekend. Doe as usual would be up behind the MC’s microphone making jokes and making sure that things ran along, as he always said, in a good way.

C’mon, let’s go pick grandfathers for Randall’s sweat lodge, said Cappy. We always put down tobacco for those ancient rocks. That’s why they were grandfathers. We didn’t always get the rocks. We liked being fire keepers better, but Randall had promised if Cappy could start his old red rez car, he could drive it.

There was a collapsed gravelly place on their land that filled with water in the spring and had the right kind of stones if you kicked around for them. Randall always needed a specific number dictated by the type of sweat he would give. We dragged an old plastic toboggan out to collect the rocks. They took a while to find. They had to be a certain kind of rock that would not crack too easily or explode when red hot and splashed with water in the sweat-lodge pit. They had to be a certain size that Randall could pick off our shovel with his deer antlers. Finding twenty-eight grandfathers was a good afternoon’s work and more often, especially if Randall was in a hurry, we’d go out to the rock piles in the fields off reservation and load up Doe’s pickup. But this time we needed to be alone.

I told Cappy what I’d learned from Linda about the morning golf.

Cappy kicked his feet around in the grass and bent to dislodge a rounded gray rock.

You gotta move then, Cappy said, before Lark changes his habits. You should take Doe’s rifle while we’re at the powwow.

Just to think about stealing from Doe gave me a black, sinking feeling and those shrimp began to perk around in my gut. But Cappy was right.

You have to break in between eight and ten on Saturday night, said Cappy. There’s the off chance that Doe or Randall will need to come back for something after they retire the flags. But for sure Randall will be out there pounding his hooves until then. Or snagging. And for sure Dad can’t leave that microphone. So you go in, Joe. And I really mean break in. Leave a mess. You’ve got to take a crowbar to the closet where the guns are. I’ve thought about this. And steal a couple of other things or pretend to. Like the TV.

I can’t carry that!

Just unplug it, knock the junk off it. Take Randall’s boom box—no, he’ll have that—take the good toolbox. But leave it scattered on the porch like a passing car scared you off.

Yeah.

And then the gun. Make sure you get the right one from the closet. I’ll show you.

Okay.

And you bring a couple black plastic bags to wrap it in because you’re gonna hide it.

I can’t bring it home, I said. I’ll have to hide it someplace else.

Like the overlook, in the brush behind the oak tree, said Cappy.

After we piled the grandfathers by the fire pit, we spent the rest of the afternoon marking out the trail I’d use and deciding on a hiding place that I could find in the dark. The moon was going to be three quarters, but of course there might be cloud cover. We wanted to make sure I could do it all without using a flashlight. And also, after that, I would have to make it to the powwow grounds—three miles away—walking fields and trails without using my bike so nobody would see me. I’d camped out for the last two years with Cappy’s family—an RV for the aunts and a tent for the men. A fire. Randall tipi-creeping. Sneaking off. We’d wake up in the morning next to him passed out, scented low with some girl’s perfume. My parents would expect that I’d go again this year. And even if they said no this time, I’d slip out anyway. I had to.