Louise Erdrich - LaRose

From these scraps of conversation Romeo learned: There was a kind of disease where you acted drunk, but it was just your own body making alcohol. Eating food off the edge of a sharp knife had resulted in an ambulance call for Puffy Shields. A baby was born with hair all over its body. Another baby was born holding a penny that the mother had swallowed. Old Man Payoose had a son on methamphetamine. That son had stolen the old man’s money and while that boy was high had shoved a carrot up his own ass, which was what brought him to the ER. A lady whose name he tried to catch used small round lake stones to exercise her vagina. A tribal member, a roofer, had breathed several nails into his lungs and wouldn’t let the doctors take them out. There was too much salt in everything, including the air. A little girl froze to death because she couldn’t get back into the house where her mother was passed out. Although she was pronounced dead at the scene, a doctor CPR’d and warmed her blood and brought her back from the spirit world. Now the girl knew things, like that other kid, LaRose. A teenager froze to death sleeping under the porch of his father’s house. They tried, in hope, but couldn’t get that boy back. An old woman got lost taking out the garbage but she didn’t quite freeze because she buried herself underneath the snow.

But wait. Romeo mopped his way up to the door of the dispatcher’s office, where the ambulance crew sometimes did paperwork or just talked. He heard Landreaux’s name. He strained, leaned closer, held his breath and tried to make out the words.

Not the femoral, said someone.

For sure?

Not that one either.

What day was it?

A Wednesday? A Tuesday?

You coulda fooled me.

Then they started talking about the carrot again.

Romeo strained his work-weakened mind. Tried to memorize. When he had to move on, he swiftly wrote down what he’d heard on pages torn from a waiting-room magazine. Into a file folder rescued from the trash, he slipped all that he found. Possibilities. Creative possibilities. He took pride in how he organized his own reality.

MAGGIE SNEAKS INTO LaRose’s room and curls up at the end of his bed.

I think it’s going good. I think she’s happier, says Maggie.

Me too. She’s not making the cakes.

And she might take a job with Dad at Cenex. I heard them.

You gotta stay nice to her.

Are you saying. . Maggie’s voice is low. . are you saying she wanted to hang herself because of how mean I was?

Course not. But you were.

I was a bitch. I am a bitch. That’s what they call girls like me. Not so far, I mean, at this school. There’s bitchier bitches here. But it will happen.

LaRose sits up. No, you’re just tough. You gotta be.

Lemme show you tough!

She jumps up, bounces the bed, and smacks him with his pillow. He lunges for her and they wrestle off the bed, onto the floor. They stop laughing when their bodies thump down hard. Nola calls out. Maggie is out the door into her own room quick as a shadow.

The parents’ door creaks. Nola’s voice floats from down the hall.

Some books fell, says LaRose from his bed. It’s all right, Mom. You can sleep now. I’ll be quiet.

Maggie?

Whaaaa? Mom? She answers from her own room, pretending she’s groggy and crabby. All is quiet. Falling asleep, Maggie thinks about LaRose. She thinks about him every night. He calms her down. He is her special, her treasure, she doesn’t really know what he is — hers to love.

Suddenly he is there, at her bedside, finger at her lips. He’s never done this before.

She turns toward him.

I wanna ask you something, he says.

Okay.

Who were those boys, you know, in the other school. Whenever. Those ones who held you down. Who did that stuff?

She looks over at LaRose’s skinny boy arms and hair so thick it won’t stay down. His question makes her sick. She thought she was over it, but turns out she’s been holding a pool of slime in her body. Now it seeps from her pores, a light film. Are there tears? She wipes her face. Damn. It still gets to her. And they remember, those guys. Last year Buggy said to her, fake innocent, Hey, Ravich, you still want it? You still want it like you did before? Another time, coming down the hall toward her, Buggy had grabbed his crotch. At least he flinched when she went in for the kick.

She tells: Tyler Veddar, Curtains Peace, Brad Morrissey, Jason “Buggy” Wildstrand.

I think I’ve seen those guys, says LaRose.

Plus there is this Wildstrand sister, Braelyn, just a year above me. She’s mean, pretends she’s hot, wears a ton of makeup. Plucks her eyebrows into half hoops. I hate her. I’m so glad we changed schools. She used to give me the stink eye. The finger. For nothing! I know Buggy said something to her, told Braelyn it was my fault.

I never forgot what you said that night, says LaRose.

You didn’t? The oozy snot dries off her. Their prying fucky fingers fly off her skin. You remember? What’d I say?

Can a saint kill?

A saint?

You meant me. Even though I’m not a saint.

LaRose, oh shit. I didn’t mean you should kill them.

Don’t worry. I’m not gonna kill them exactly, but yeah, now I’m stronger.

No, you’re not, she says. Please!

Tyler is now a high school wrestler. Curtains is ungainly and slow but a hulk. Brad Morrissey plays football. Buggy is nerveless, cruel, and very smart.

It’s over. Over! It does not affect me. Besides, they’re kind of brutal. They’re mean assholes. Promise you’re going to leave them alone.

Don’t worry. LaRose holds his voice down, modest. You know I work out with Father Travis. I have my green belt now.

Oh my god, don’t you try anything!

Ssshhhhhh.

He disappears.

Material of Time

PETER BROUGHT NOLA to his Cenex job and she began to work beside him a few days a week. She ran the registers, stocked the shelves and refrigerator cases, kept the bathrooms fiercely spotless. Not an item was out of place, all labels visible. The coffee station glowed like an altar. As she worked, Nola’s daily ration of sorrow dissipated into thousands of small items — the creamer cups, wrapped straws, adjustable candy hooks, the slushie machine and donut display case. Sometimes she stared long at the hot dog broiler turning endlessly until gold beads of sweating fat glistened on the skins of the lethal wieners. Sometimes she read and pondered the ingredients on the flimsy snack packages. When she counted the ice scrapers or replaced a shoplifted tire pressure gauge or studied the placement of magazines, it seemed that in righting the tiny things of life she was gaining control of herself, perhaps at a molecular level, for she was made up of all this junk, wasn’t she? The beef sticks, which she chewed in the car ride home, the fluffy chemical cups of French vanilla latte from the automatic dispenser. She drew an extra-large cup for herself every morning and sipped all day — the taste growing harsher, the dry acid eating at her.

Then Peter started drinking gas station lattes too. They laughed together at their latte addiction. The laugh flew out of Nola’s throat, harsh and rusty. It dissolved when it hit Peter’s chest. Nola saw it. That night, she rested her head there and closed her eyes.

A COLD RAIN was blowing, not sleet yet, or snow. Fat drops smacked Nola’s face as she came back to the house one afternoon. LaRose was upstairs, the door to his room halfway shut. Walking by the door Nola heard him talking, or rather, having a conversation. He often spoke while he was playing in his action world. He used Legos, blocks, magnets, an old erector set, Tinkertoys, cast-off bolts and odd bits of metal, even butter tubs and cracker boxes, to create a complex citadel. This magic edifice was attacked and defended by members of alliances that shifted and formed in his hands when he played with the many plastic creatures he had found in Dusty’s toy bucket or been given. Tetrahellemon, Vontro, Green Menace, Lightning, Mudder, Seker, Maxmillions, Warthog, Simitron, Xor, Tor, Hiki, and the Master.