Louise Erdrich - LaRose

Man, were you nuts back there? Romeo said to Landreaux as they ate. If the cops ever caught us with that farmer lady’s stuff they would lock us in prison.

Landreaux shrugged. We should count the money.

The top bills on the rolls were tens and the inside bills were twenties and a couple of hundred-dollar bills, at which they marveled.

Oh no, no, no, said Romeo. I bet that Ceel knows about this. He will sic the cops.

Landreaux was dazzled. He kept counting. Over a thousand dollars.

The boys carefully divided the money. They pried up the insoles of their shoes and put the hundred-dollar bills and the twenties there. They each kept seventy dollars out, in their pockets, and walked on and on, treading down the cushiony money in their shoes, until they came to a town. It was a fairly large town and had a Ben Franklin dime store. They went in. The store lady followed them around; they were used to that. It didn’t faze Landreaux, but Romeo insolently waved a ten-dollar bill at her. Landreaux bought black licorice pipes. Romeo bought red wheels. They paid and went down the sidewalk to the edge of town and back, Landreaux pretending to smoke. At the eastern end they passed a small café with a sign, BUS. Landreaux was afraid to buy a ticket. Plus they argued about where to go. Home? Not home.

We should go to Minneapolis and get a job, Landreaux said, because he’d heard people say this.

Romeo stared at Landreaux.

Nobody’s going to hire us, he said. We’re supposed to be in school. If they see us, the police might even arrest us.

How did Landreaux get this far, he wondered, without understanding how things work? But Landreaux kept talking about Minneapolis and jobs until he gave in and they bought the tickets, which were so expensive that Romeo knew for sure this was all stupid. When they boarded the bus, he said, What are we doing? We risked our life not to get on a bus.

But the bus rumbled off and they were trapped on it. At least the seats were cushy and could recline back. Their stomachs were full. They drowsed, then fell into a dead sleep. They woke for the lunch break, bought soup, and gulped it down fast. Watching Romeo suck his soup down, Landreaux thought, as he had many times, how much Romeo looked like a weasel with his wedge-shaped face, close-set eyes, and avid jaws.

There was flat North Dakota and then rolling Minnesota farms. They fell silent, mesmerized by the pretty land, the neat little towns of brick and stone. Then, down an empty highway, Landreaux saw her. He grabbed Romeo and pulled him over to the bus window. A woman walked along the breakdown lane, toward them. Landreaux had seen her as just a pinpoint far away, but there was something familiar. When she was close enough he realized it was Bowl Head. Her hair was white, short, and stuck out exactly the same. They ducked as the bus whizzed past her. Landreaux scrambled to the back of the bus to see if she had recognized them. He bumped two grown-ups necking underneath a blanket on the flat backseat. Bowl Head was in the distance but she was running, he thought, definitely running after them. He knew that she was a slow runner. He had seen her chase a boy named Artan. Although Bowl Head was slow, she was steady; she never stopped. Artan ran circles around her, but she still caught him because she outlasted him, never quit, never faltered in her pursuit.

He was shaking when he sat back down with Romeo. When Landreaux told him what he’d seen, Romeo put his hand on Landreaux’s arm and said it wasn’t Bowl Head.

Lots of white ladies look like her, don’t you notice?

Landreaux calmed down, but he couldn’t stop thinking the strange thought that Bowl Head was a spirit, a force, an element set loose by the boarding school to pursue them to the end of time.

The bus brought them to the city.

When they had boarded, the driver had asked who was meeting them in Minneapolis. They were struck silent. Mom and Dad? Relatives? He’d asked. They nodded in relief. They were about to step past the driver now, but he held them back.

Wait here. I’ll escort you to your parents, he said. Okay, boys?

Again they nodded. When the driver went down the steps to open the luggage compartment they slipped off the bus and entered the station. They mingled with a group of people scanning the little crowd held to one side of the walkway by a rope. The boys ducked under the rope, darted through the glass doors, and then they were out in the street.

Noise pressed down from every side, pushing them along. Romeo tried to watch the metal signs and stay on First Avenue. They had seen stoplights only a few times in their lives. Now stoplights everywhere. They copied what other people did, drank at a public drinking fountain, looked in windows or at framed menus outside of restaurants. Walked as if they knew where they were going. At a tiny corner store they bought bottles of pop and boxes of buttered popcorn. All of a sudden they came to the end of their downtown city street. There was a building made of rose-red bricks and a sign, BERMAN BUCKSKIN. A gravel parking lot, chain link, scarred walls. Beyond that a tangle of weeds, scrub, spindly trees.

They went into the weeds. A path sloped down to a broad river. They made their way down the bank to the concrete abutment that anchored the bridge. There in the brush, they saw evidence of a camp — some driftwood logs placed around the smear of a dead fire, blackened rocks, blankets stuffed underneath some boards, two large sagging cardboard boxes and bags containing empty cans and bottles. Stained pieces of carpeting were laid out where the ground was level. They drank their orange sodas and ate the popcorn. They added the bottles to the others, tore the boxes into tiny bits and threw them in the river. They watched the curls of paper float east. It was getting dark.

Let’s go up there, said Landreaux.

They tilted their heads back and looked into the iron trusses. Rusted ends of rebar in the eroded concrete pilings stuck out enough for hand- and footholds. Landreaux pulled a raggy blanket from the boards, draped it around his neck, and climbed. The blanket reeked of rot and urine. Romeo shook out a blanket, but the stench nearly choked him and he left it. The top of the concrete piling was big enough for the two of them, but dropped straight down to the river on one side. There was four feet of space between their heads and the iron girders that held the wooden trestle and rails. The train would pass over to one side of them. It would be loud, but then they’d already been inside the workings of a school bus.

They woke and squirmed together when the train passed over. After that, they couldn’t get back to sleep right away and lay awake, listening. Everything died down — the traffic, the throb and bleat of the city. It was so quiet they could hear the river muscling its way past to a rushing place, a dam or waterfall. They slept hard again. Sometime close to dawn, the light just lifting, Romeo heard people talking below. He prodded at Landreaux carefully, as Landreaux was liable to thrash around when coming to. They craned over the edge of their nest and tried to hear what the people below were saying.

Slam, said a man.

Fuckin A.

Eight dollars, man. Nine dollars.

Good looks, good looks.

Well, it wasn’t your breath, said a woman.

It’s that Red Lake whammy.

Chippewa skunk oil, said the woman.

And you love it.

I don’t love it, but I might roll around in it.

Oooo, down girl.

The voices started laughing and laughing, whooping until they gasped. Something the woman must have done. Over the course of the next week, they learned that this special predawn hour was the only time they could hear the voices of the people in the camp. The city was still sleeping, the air hollow. The water gave off a fog that carried sound up to their ears. At all other times the voices could be heard only as a rising and falling mutter punctuated by blunt pops of laughter and, once, a flurry of screaming and shouting, a fight that seemed to have come to nothing as the members of the camp, always five and sometimes six, ate or slept on their carpet beds or in boxes, hidden in the weeds. Most of the people were Indians.