Louise Erdrich - LaRose

Are you crazy! That’s called intergenerational trauma, my boy. It isn’t our fault they keep us down; they savaged our culture, family structure, and most of all we need our land back.

Hollis took his first legal drink of beer.

Oh yeah, true. But I keep thinking how I could save people in a flood. Motor them out on a pontoon, their little children in life jackets. Their dogs jumping in the boat last moment. I keep seeing that. I mean, National Guard. I probably won’t leave the state.

Hope not, said Romeo, weakly. This acceptance thing was part of being a father, he guessed, and it was more difficult than he’d imagined. He had a jealous thought.

What about Landreaux? He tell you to join up? Because of Desert Storm and all?

Not really, said Hollis. He was on the supply side of it. Medical. Never went out on the Road of Death, just got things ready for the guys, serviced lifesaving equipment and such. But there’s more, anyway, to this decision I’m making. I’ll learn welding, bridge construction, maybe truck driving. Heavy equipment. I want to get some money together, and those benefits. Go to UND later on. Maybe travel to the Grand Canyon or Florida, even. Out of state, anyway.

Romeo nodded and sweat.

I’ve not been the greatest, he mumbled. Who am I to say?

It’s okay, Dad. I know you went to boarding school. People say that fucked you up so. .

Romeo reared his head back.

Say? People say? They don’t know. Leaving boarding school was the thing that fucked me. I loved my teachers and they all said I was college material.

Right, thought Hollis. He didn’t hate his father — he knew some worse fathers. Mostly he grew exasperated and just had to get away from Romeo. He had no quarrel with his mother, either, only wanted to know who and where she might be. He fit in with the Irons, maybe too well, because he found himself thinking constantly of how great it would be if Josette liked him and maybe someday married him.

You got a sweetheart?

Romeo asked this in a shy doggy voice, afraid that his son would say something sarcastic. When Hollis didn’t answer, he thought he’d offended him.

I know I ain’ been a great dad to you, Romeo went on, but you can count on me now.

Hollis looked at his dad, so scrawny, so anxious to be loved, and dropped his gaze, embarrassed.

You can count on me too, Dad, he said.

Romeo frowned into the dregs of his beer and blinked back tears.

That’s one for the books, he said. He put his hand out for the soul shake and Hollis could break his grip only by ordering them both another beer. Hollis asked Puffy to change the channel on the TV over the bar to CNN, because he knew his dad liked it. Someone complained about the news channel, but Puffy hushed him. Sure enough, Romeo sat up and peered intently at the screen.

After a few minutes he slumped back and leaned confidentially toward Hollis.

So that hijacker Atta was maybe meeting some Iraqi in Prague, maybe? A year ago April.

What’s that about? Hollis asked without interest.

It seems to me like Rummy’s scattering crumbs, said Romeo. Rummy’s hoping reporters peck the crumbs up. But come on, Czech intelligence?

Romeo pressed his kung fu ’stache down his chin like a sage pondering.

Hollis shrugged.

They wanna clobber Saddam, said Romeo. Saddam’s a greedy crazy dude, but not like Doe Eyes. That’s definitive!

Doe Eyes was Romeo’s nickname for Bin Laden.

Hollis let his mind drift while his father enlarged his speculations on the motives of this or that public figure or politician. He didn’t hear the nervous fear for himself in his father’s voice. Hollis drank his beer sip by sip, not wanting to leave because once he got home, he’d have to find the summer-read book, Brave New World. Couldn’t even remember if he had a copy. Josette and Snow had stacks of paperbacks, probably including that one. He’d get the book off their shelf. He’d speed-read. Maybe Josette would help him write his paper. Hollis saw himself staring at the PC screen, Josette leaning over his shoulder. A critical frown. Her breath in his ear. Happy birthday. That sweet voice she used with LaRose.

Shut up, brain! Hollis tugged his own hair to jolt himself back. Here he was with his actual father, on his own actual birthday. It occurred to Hollis he might ask about his mother, again, although it was always the same — a song of memory lapse, a dance of drunken veils. These days he asked the question mostly to hear his father’s inventive swoops and swerves.

Hey, it’s my eighteenth birthday. So, Dad. My mother. What was she like? What was her name?

Her name? Mrs. Santa Claus Lady. She brought you, right? Seriously, my son, I don’t remember. Those were insane times, my boy. But seriously, once again, she was holy shit beautiful. She would walk into an establishment. The heads would swivel off their necks. The eyes would beg like a pack of starving mutts. The shit-ass fuckhounds. I was shocked when she allowed herself to be approached. By me.

Romeo shook his head, wagged his finger in the air. Ah, but you see. . it was the drugs. Clouded her judgment. I hope she is alive today, my son, but the evidence of her addictions casts doubt on that. Don’t do drugs or nothing because. .

Wait, Dad. Hollis ordered again, then another beer for his father. Wait, but according to what you’re telling me I would not exist if my mother’s judgment had not been clouded by drugs.

Ergo, laughed Romeo; his clattery heheheh went on until he wagged his finger again. Ergo sum.

That’s what for what?

Therefore I exist.

She took drugs, therefore I exist.

Ain’t life odd? But still, please refrain from getting mixed up with substances.

Okay, Dad, said Hollis, not even sarcastic. So you’re not going to tell me her name even on my birthday?

Hollis felt the cheer leak away and decided to sacrifice his beer, slide out the door before he got mad. Not getting mad was a life policy with Hollis.

He paid Puffy, pushed his beer over to Romeo.

Live it up.

Hollis walked out the door and Romeo watched him go, wounded. Here he was, a loving father in the reject chair again. The beer was nice, anyway, a consolation, and free. But as the door closed, Romeo suddenly pictured his blood-kin son making his way over to the Irons’. And giving Landreaux his filial loyalty. Landreaux, who was responsible for his whack arm and his leg that ached and sometimes trembled. To consider this caused Romeo to gulp down both beers. A mini-relapse! He could tell about it at the next meeting. He abandoned the barstool, tried to keep his balance, and set out for home in the throes of a mellow buzz. By the time he reached his room and removed a low-level painkiller from his stash, he was almost weeping with the contradictory joy of having celebrated his son’s eighteenth birthday and the knowledge that Hollis preferred Landreaux’s family and house to his own dad’s apartment. With a year-round Christmas tree.

So much betrayal. So many lies. Although Romeo could not remember if he’d actually asked Hollis to live with him.

Resentment is suicide! This group slogan often helped interrupt a chain of tigerish thoughts.

Romeo rocked back in his minivan captain’s chair, appreciating what he’d wrought. There it was, a glittering sight. The year-round fake tree cheered a father’s lonesome heart. Still, he could not get positive. Snap out of it! Romeo glared at the walls hung with special things on nails. Such attractive sacred yarn and chicken-fluff dream catchers! He spoke to the faltering TV picture where old Mailbox Head was trying to jolly an interviewer. Such finesse! And the arrogant aplomb.

No one to trifle with, Slot Mouth. Nor am I. Nor am I, ol’ buddy ol’ pal Landreaux Iron. According to my exceedingly detailed memories of our so-called runaway escape, said Romeo to a sky blue dream catcher with iridescent threads, the reason which I am rubbing Icy Hot into my sad ol’ leg, you Landreaux Iron have much to answer for, things you never have addressed!