Louise Erdrich - LaRose

Sometimes he didn’t feel the shift occur; he was just back there sliding from his sleeping bag, then flying. The sentries guarding the former office building where the Marines were barracked had been expecting a water truck. Instead a yellow Mercedes stake-bed truck sped straight past and the bomb it carried detonated in the lobby. The building went up into the air in pieces and then the pieces, with Marines in them, rearranged as they came down. Father Travis felt the dream flying, the down slamming, but not the slashing and tearing of his body. The black whirling energy became black crushing silence. Then the screaming started. It wasn’t until he tried to get to the others that he realized he couldn’t move. That’s when he started screaming too, not for help, but Get off me , because he understood that he was the meat in a steel and concrete sandwich and could feel the rubble shifting. Dust in. Dust out. Scream the dust out. Take a breath of dust. Scream again. Then voices. We got one. Get off that slab. He’s in there. We need a crane.

A skinny, shirtless, tattooed Marine slipped in next to Travis and then somehow he lifted things — the beam — and pushed — the slab — and bore him out to other arms. Father Travis knew exactly who that man was. He’d spoken to him on the phone. Vast strength had entered the slim man as he was rescuing his friends, the way it did with mothers rescuing their babies. They’d talked about that. They kept in touch, but he didn’t get together with the other guys and the families of the dead. He didn’t go to Camp Lejeune or the memorial reunions. He feared the black energy and how he could not control his breathing once the shift occurred.

Father Travis switched the jump rope along his thighs, then started it whirling. He was living out Newton’s Third Law — for every action there is an equal and opposite reaction. Time was the variable. Getting blown up happened in an instant; getting put together took the rest of your life. Or was it the other way around? He thought of Emmaline.

THE GREEN CHAIR had rested in the barn for two months and nobody noticed that it was gone from the kitchen. Nola was ready to say that she was going to restore it, if Peter asked. But it was just a green wooden chair, and who cared? Yet this painted chair was key. It would be the last solid thing her feet touched. She’d push off and kick the backrest down. But the part where she strangled, not good, she was not ready, she was afraid of that when she put her hands around her neck and squeezed. The feeling made her gag and she went wooden and cold until she thought maybe she would get the release she needed if she killed Landreaux instead of herself. Sure, she might go to jail. Maybe for a long time even. She’d plead guilty, but who would not understand? Even Maggie would understand, perhaps even approve. Peter would understand — part of him would envy her, in fact. Only LaRose wouldn’t get it. He’d lose out. She saw his face, devastated, crumpling, pasted over Dusty’s face, devastated, crumpling.

Boxed in, she thought.

Then she had another thought — their tradition worked. Dazzling act. How could she or Peter harm the father of the son they’d been given? She closed her eyes and felt the heavy warmth of LaRose as she rocked him to sleep, legs dangling over her legs, breath steaming a passage to the crater of her heart.

ROMEO HELD ON to his first love, but generally did not like women, especially when they got older and turned into scabby vultures. They could tear a man to pieces with their biting talk. Always, he tried to placate them. Always, he tried to bring them gifts. In his work, Romeo often came across pockets of reservation conference swag — extra T-shirts, mouse pads, soft-foam-grip hand exercisers, mini-flashlights, pens and pencils, water bottles, even pristine fleece throws embossed with acronyms and symbols. His special stash of these objects was contained in his giant wheelchair-accessible bathroom.

He had been sunk in dire depression since Super Tuesday. George Bush had nailed the door shut on his man. McCain was out. Romeo had bad feelings about the race now. At the last AA meeting he’d confided to the group that Bush reminded him of all the things he hated worst about himself: weasel eyes, greed, self-pity, fake machismo. In this nation of self-haters, Bush could win. Everyone looked blank except Father Travis, who’d hung his arm for half a second around Romeo’s shoulders, bro-like, afterward. Romeo was moved. The priest was not a hugger. Still, he walked away and decided to put into action a plan for getting regularly wasted until the election was over.

Today he picked out several gift ideas from a large black garbage bag he’d cleaned up with after a tribal college conference. There were the flexy-turtle hand exercisers — but those ladies’ claws were strong enough already, he decided. He threw back some bookmarks, gimme hats, cheap eco bags already fraying apart. The leftover T-shirts were always small and he had XL ladies to appease. Except for dear old Mrs. Peace. She was better than the others, tiny, not so mean. He took one small 5K Diabetes Walk T-shirt, yellow, for her. He found a couple of fleece throws. He examined, but rejected, frog-shaped zipper pulls. Nobody wanted them because they looked too real. He rolled up a fleece throw and left for the lodge.

Not that he always got into their rooms. Not everyone let him in their door. Some people were suspicious of him at the Elders Lodge, like Mrs. Peace. She’d even had a chain put on her door because he’d once foolishly insisted on entry when she wasn’t in favor of it. Romeo drove up to the lodge. As he walked into the main hallway, he saw Mrs. Peace. As soon as she saw him, she slippered along in her quick and mouselike way, large eyes peeping at him as she made a swift turn into her apartment and clicked the door emphatically shut.

And she used to be my favorite teacher, thought Romeo, sad. She was everybody’s favorite teacher. She took me home. She fed me from her table.

No longer. And she rarely accepted his gifts. But there was always his aunt, or mother, or foster mother, Star. He was bringing Star the prize — the purple fleece throw that said Sobriety Powwow 1999 in one corner. Nice throws had been left over at the giveaway because of relapse behavior. Romeo knocked on Star’s door, remembering the prescriptions she had for severe arthritis. She opened the door, her little smile glinting.

It’s peckerhead! she yelled to her other visitors.

Oh, him, said Malvern Sangrait to Mrs. Webid. Let’s have a look at him. Skinny, but you never know.

For me? Star took the purple fleece. Very cozy.

The women sat at the kitchen table, looking avidly at Romeo. Their eyes were bright and roved over him, but stopped so pointedly that he glanced down, a reflex. Sure enough.

Twenty cows got out the barn door, Mrs. Webid shrieked.

Romeo tugged. His zipper stuck.

The old ladies began to count out loud. They reached thirty before he managed to violently wrest it all the way shut. Watch out! Weweni! Be careful!

Way-weeny, cackled Malvern.

Be careful so its head don’t get stuck! Ow! It’s trying to peek at us!

The women pretended to shield their eyes.

There was a little tap and his schoolteacher entered. Mrs. Peace’s feet slapped gently to another chair and she joined the three other women and Romeo at the table. Her coffee cup was still sitting where she’d left it.

Aren’t you asking Romeo to sit himself down?

Sit down, sit down!

Why do you look confused?

His brains are down there, in his ass. Maybe he doesn’t want to crush his thoughts.