Louise Erdrich - The Round House

I found out by going over to my aunt and uncle’s house to pick up a pie on Saturday afternoon. My mother had told my father that she thought she had better get up, bathe, get dressed. She was still on pain pills, but Dr. Egge had told her that bed rest wouldn’t help. She needed mild activity. Dad had announced that he was cooking dinner from a recipe. But he could not manage dessert. Thus, the pie. Uncle Whitey was sitting at the table with a glass of iced tea. Mooshum sat across from him, hunched and frail, wearing ivory-colored long underwear, and a plaid robe over the long johns. He refused to dress in street clothes on Saturday because he needed a day of comfort, he claimed, to get ready for Sunday, when Clemence made him wear suit pants, a pressed white shirt, and sometimes a tie. He too had a glass of iced tea, but he was glaring at it.

Bunny piss, he griped.

That’s right, Daddy, said Clemence. It’s an old man’s drink. It’s good for you.

Ah, swamp tea, said Uncle Whitey, swirling the glass appreciatively. Good for everything that ails you, Daddy.

Cures old age? said Mooshum. Takes the years off?

All but, said Whitey, who knew he could have a beer as soon as he got home and quit pretend-drinking with Mooshum, who was lonely for the old days when Clemence poured smooth whiskey. She’d become convinced that it was harming him and was always trying to cut him off.

This goes down hard, my daughter, he said to Clemence.

Cleans out your liver good, though, said Whitey.

Here, Clemence, pour a little swamp tea for Joe.

Clemence poured me a glass of iced tea and went to answer the phone. People were calling her constantly for news, gossip really, about her sister.

Maybe the pervert really is an Indian, said Uncle Whitey. He was carrying an Indian suitcase.

What Indian suitcase? I said.

The plastic garbage bags.

I leaned forward. So he left? But from where? Who is he? What’s his name?

Clemence came back in and flared her eyes at him.

Awee, said Uncle Whitey. Guess I’m not supposed to talk.

Or have even a little glass of whiskey. Or piss in the sink, as I will do until she no longer pours swamp tea. A man’s kidneys overflow, said Mooshum.

You piss in the sink? I asked.

When given tea, always.

Clemence went into the kitchen, came out with a bottle of whiskey and three stacked shot glasses. She arranged them on the table and poured two a quarter full. She poured the third half full and tossed it back. I was astounded. I’d never seen my aunt toss back a whiskey like a man. She held her drained glass delicately for a moment, regarding us, then put the glass down with a short smack and walked outside.

What was that? Uncle Whitey asked.

That was my daughter pushed too far, said Mooshum. I pity Edward when he returns. The whiskey will have set by then.

Sometimes whiskey sets Sonja too, Uncle Whitey said, but I have tricks.

What kind of tricks, said Mooshum.

Old Indian tricks.

Teach them to Edward, eh? He is losing ground.

The pie began to scent the air with a sweet amber fragrance. I hoped my aunt hadn’t got so angry she’d forget the pie.

The golf course. Is that where it happened? I looked straight at Whitey, but he dropped his eyes and drank.

No, it didn’t happen there.

Where did it?

Whitey raised his sad and permanently bloodshot eyes. He wasn’t going to tell me. I couldn’t hold his gaze.

Mooshum’s grip, so unsteady on the tea glass that he’d slopped it on the table, tightened now. He lifted the shot and took a neat sip. His eyes shone. He had not taken in our exchange. His brain was still fixed on women.

Ah, my son, tell Oops and me of your beautiful wife. Red Sonja. Paint the picture. What does she do at present?

Whitey shifted his eyes off me. When he grinned, the devil’s gap between his front teeth showed. Red Sonja was my aunt’s exotic dance persona not so long ago. She’d worn revealing barbarian armor, which was bits of studded plastic. Tattered scarves flowed from her hips. The transparent material looked to have been chewed and clawed by desperate men or pet wolves. Zack had found the picture in a Minneapolis publication and made me a gift of it. I kept it deep in my closet, in a special folder I had made that said HOMEWORK.

These days Sonja works behind the cash register, my uncle said now, the whiskey adding its soft glow. She is always adding numbers. Today she is figuring out exactly what we must reorder for the next week.

Mooshum closed his eyes, held the whiskey at the back of his tongue, and nodded, conjuring her up, bent over the accounts. I could see her suddenly, too, breasts riding like clouds over the long columns of neat little figures.

And what will she do, asked Mooshum dreamily, when she has the sums and figures for the day, when she is finished?

She will leave the desk and go outside with a bucket of water and the long-handled squeegee. She cleans the glass every week.

Mooshum wasn’t wearing his flashy dentures and his collapsed smile spread. I closed my eyes and saw the pink sponge side of the squeegee drip its window-solution suds down the plate glass. Sonja stretched up on her tiptoes. Cappy’s big brother, Randall, said girls looked so good stretching up on their tiptoes that he liked to sit watching down the rows in the school library. Randall used to put all the good books on the top shelves. Mooshum sighed. I saw Sonja pressing the rubber blade hard against the glass, drawing the dust and the smudges down with the liquid and leaving a sparkling clarity.

Clemence came back in, breaking my thoughts, and I heard the creak of the oven door. Then the slide of the rack as she removed two pies from the oven. I heard her set the pies out to cool. The oven door clanged and the screen door whined open and clapped shut. In a moment, the faint crispness of a burning cigarette wafted through the screen. I’d never known my aunt to smoke before, but she had started since the hospital.

The scent of Clemence’s newly taken up smoking sobered both of the men.

They turned to me and Uncle Whitey’s face was grave as he asked how my mother was.

She’s coming out of her room tonight, I told Whitey. I’m supposed to take a pie home. My dad is cooking.

Mooshum stared at me, an edge of harsh brilliance in his gaze, and I knew he had been told something, at least, of what had occurred.

That’s good, he said. Hear me now, Oops. She gotta come out. Don’t leave her to sit. Don’t let her alone too much.

Clear spring shadows spread like water across the road. Down past the quiet slough, engines rumbled up to and away from the liquor store’s drive-up window. From yards invisible behind stands of willow and chokecherry, the short, vibrant cries of women rang, calling their children home. A car slowed next to me and Doe Lafournais nodded at the empty passenger seat. Doe had a quiet face, a crooked nose, kind eyes. He had powerful arms and stayed strong through constant hard labor—besides being the chairman and janitoring, he had built their house from scratch. He and his sons had messed it up from scratch, too. The place was layers of junk on interesting junk now. He drove on when I shook my head and called out that I’d see him later—I was helping out that evening at Randall’s sweat lodge. Clemence had put the pie in the bottom of a shallow cardboard box. The steam from the warm apples threaded from the slit crust. The evening wasn’t cooling off, but I didn’t care. I’d sweat to eat that pie. I turned down the driveway and Pearl popped out of the lilacs. She gave one deep-chested bark of recognition and, after sniffing the air about me, she accompanied me, at a space of about three feet, up to the back door of the house. There she left me and went back to lie underneath her bush.