Louise Erdrich - LaRose

After Mashkiig left, Mackinnon and Wolfred each took a piss, hauled some wood in, then locked the inside shutters, and loaded their weapons. About a week later, they heard that he’d killed Mink. The girl put her head down and wept.

Wolfred was a clerk of greater value than he knew. He cooked well and could make bread from practically nothing. He’d kept his father’s yeast going halfway across North America, and he was always seeking new sources of provender. He was using up the milled flour that Mackinnon had brought to trade. The Indians hadn’t got a taste for it yet. Wolfred had ground wild rice to powder and added it to the stuff they had. Last summer he had mounded up clay and hollowed it out into an earthen oven. That’s where he baked his weekly loaves. As the loaves were browning, Mackinnon came outside. The scent of the bread so moved him, there in the dark of winter, that he opened a keg of wine. They’d had six kegs and were down to five. Mackinnon had packed the good wine in himself, over innumerable portages. Ordinarily, he partook of the undiluted stuff the bois de brule humped in to supply and resupply the Indians. Now he and Wolfred drank together, sitting on two stumps by the heated oven and a leaping fire.

Outside the circle of warmth, the snow squeaked and the stars pulsed in the impenetrable heavens. The girl sat between them, not drinking. She thought her own burdensome thoughts. From time to time, both of the men looked at her profile in the firelight. Her dirty face was brushed with raw gold. As the wine was drunk, the bread was baked. Reverently, they removed the loaves and put them, hot, inside their coats. The girl opened her blanket to accept a loaf from Wolfred. As he gave it to her, he realized that her dress was torn down the middle. He looked into her eyes and her eyes slid to Mackinnon. Then she ducked her head and held the dress together with her elbow while she accepted the loaf.

Inside, they sat on small stumps, around a bigger stump, to eat. The cabin had been built many years ago, around the large stump so that it could serve as a table.

Wolfred looked so searchingly at Mackinnon that the trader finally said, What?

Mackinnon had a flaccid bladder belly, crab legs, a snoose-stained beard, pig-mad red eyes, red sprouts of dandered hair, wormish lips, pitchy teeth, breath that knocked you sideways, and nose hairs that dripped snot on and spoiled Wolfred’s perfectly inked numbers. Mackinnon was also a dead shot, and hell with his claw hammer. Wolfred had seen him use it on one of the very minions who’d shadowed Mashkiig that day. He was dangerous. Yet. Wolfred chewed and stared. He was seized with sharp emotion. For the first time in his life, Wolfred began to see the things of which he was capable.

JUNE. BETWEEN THE two houses, maybe six billion wood ticks hatched and began their sticky, hopeful, doomed search. In that patch of woods, there was perhaps a wood tick for every human being on earth. Josette said this to Snow because she knew her sister was deeply repulsed by wood ticks. No matter how meticulously Snow checked, washed, shook out her clothing, and avoided the woods, she would get wood ticks. She drew them worse than anyone. Because of the ticks, she said she couldn’t wait to live in some big tickless city.

You’d miss your little friends, said Josette. Her jeans were too tight and it was hot. She snapped open the waist and flapped her arms.

They were going over to fetch LaRose. The first heat brought ticks swarming out of their hatch nests. They filled the grass and flung themselves off leaves and twigs toward the supersensory scent of mammals. Walking the path, Snow felt one in her hair and snatched it out.

I’m going back, she said. I’ll take the road even if Mom sees me.

That’s just a baby tick, Josette scoffed. Hey, I’m not taking that dust-ball road. It’s twice as long. If you leave me to get LaRose by myself, dude, you can’t have my turn with the walkman.

The Sony Walkman was their joy, their baby — a sleek metallic CD player for the few CDs they owned: the soundtrack to Romeo + Juliet , Ricky Martin, Dr. Dre, Black Lodge Singers. They had to share it and were strict about scheduling their days and hours. Josette had been sent to bring LaRose back to their house. She didn’t want to go alone and had bribed Snow with all of tomorrow’s hours.

Okay. Snow bent like a dark birch, took off her long-sleeved shirt, and draped it over her head, huddled underneath.

I should have worn my hoodie.

It’s so weird to see you not wearing your hoodie. I mean, Shane’s hoodie.

It was his wrestling team hoodie, which he’d given to Snow in order to show how serious he was about her. But then.

I’m just off him today, Snow said.

Josette knew that Snow’s boyfriend had found a different girlfriend, but she didn’t say so. It made her furious. She wanted to punch Shane in the liver. But when she said things like that to Snow it upset her. Snow said violence gagged her.

I just hate having to work there now, said Snow.

They both worked more regularly now at Whitey’s. They were the youngest, but Old Whitey and his stepdaughter, London, ran it and they liked how the girls gave their all to the job. Every time Snow worked, handsome Shane came in and bought Gatorade and microwave burritos.

See why we like robot guys? Always so much better than real guys. If Shane was only a mech. He’d do my bidding.

Haha, what would you command him?

Just be nice, you know?

I know. Don’t worry. I’ll bust his ass.

Snow must have been deeply upset because she said thanks in Ojibwe, miigwech, which sort of meant this is a real thank-you. Josette was moved.

There was the house. They paused in the brush and regarded the angry neatness of its yard. There were planted flowers, bunched and glowing. A small hedge fiercely trimmed.

La vida loca, said Josette.

I know, it’s so sad.

She tries so hard to be okay, said Josette. I kind of get it. And I like her flowers.

Me too. But she scares me.

You go first.

No, you.

Okay, but you talk to her.

No, I can’t. I’ll bust out.

Nola had developed an unnerving force field. The vibrational aura flowed with her to the door and pulsed toward the girls when she opened it — not wide, just a crack — and said, Oh, it’s you. Vibrations flowed out when she spoke, and sealed the door like plastic wrap when Nola closed it softly in the girls’ faces. When she opened the door again, she did it so slowly that the ions were only slightly disarranged. With his backpack on, LaRose popped through. The aura was sucked back in and the three of them ran across the lawn.

After the first time, Nola had stopped herself from watching out the window. She grabbed her headphones and walked straight through the house, out the sliding double glass doors, out onto the deck and down its four steps, across the yard to the shed with its crossbeams that worried Peter. She opened the doors, topped up the tank of the riding lawn mower, then got on and adjusted the walkman clipped to her belt. Peter had given her some very strange music for Christmas. It was soothing and yet disturbing, pipes and echoey voices chanting, ethereal soprano solos, wordless and mysterious voices, melodies that swirled, collapsed, revived in some ruthless disorienting key. She could listen to this music indefinitely as she cut the grass over and over on the riding lawn mower.

Eventually she parked, got off, and went into the house. She went up to her room, leaned on the closet door, stared into the clothing. Except for her one purple dress, she had four of everything, in neutral colors, and she wore only these things. Four jackets, four pants, four skirts, four jeans, four shirts, four panty hose. Four of everything for dress-up, and four for everyday. But she had lots of pretty underwear that she bought from a catalog.