Louise Erdrich - LaRose

He was shy about his games. He never played around people, usually closed the door entirely, sometimes spoke in whispers. But today LaRose was so absorbed in the invented drama before him that he didn’t hear Nola approach, or sense her listening.

Let’s connect our fists and rocket over the dinosaurs.

You can’t push me!

I repeat.

The plasma boat got our back. We’re safe.

Get Xor out! Quick! He’s getting weak!

Triceratops forced him in his jaws!

Good one, Hiki. The Master likes.

Don’t use that one, Dusty.

He lost his powers yesterday. He’s recuperating in the chamber.

Green Menace will stop the infest!

The cycle has begun and we must complete the universe.

Maxmillions. Take Maxmillions.

Yeah, you’re Seker. Hold the exam button down.

Then mouth explosions. Bchchchchch! Pfwoooozhzhz! And the quiet clashing of molded plastic.

Nola sank silently down against the wall beside the open door. Her face was peaceful, her eyes downcast; her lips moved slightly as if she was repeating a name or prayer.

She heard everything. An epic battle between light and darkness. Forms passing through the material of time. Character subverting space. The gathering and regathering. Shapes of beings unknown merging deeply with the known. Worlds fusing. Dimensions collapsing. Two boys playing.

The next day, Nola splashed gasoline on the rotted lumber and ten-year-old tax records and bank statements she had gathered in the burn pit. It was a sparkling, mild, windless day. She threw in a burning twist of paper. There was a dull whump. When the fire was burning hot, she pushed in the green chair.

That’s all over, she said out loud.

Whenever she was alone, tears had filled her eyes. No drug had helped, and even LaRose had not helped at first. But after listening to him play with Dusty yesterday, she woke this morning and got out of bed before she knew she’d done it. There had not been that agonized mudlike hold the bed usually had on her. Then later this morning her old self stirred. Something unknown, internal, righted itself. She felt unalone. Like the inner and the outer worlds were aligned, as with the actions of the action figures. Because the fabric between realities, living and dead, was porous not only to herself. This pass-between existed. LaRose went there too. She was not crazy after all. Just maybe more aware, like LaRose was, like everybody said he was. Special. Something good he was doing for her by playing with her son from the other kingdom.

Plans sprang up. She would get fancier chickens, not just her old reliables. She would get barred rocks, wyandottes, Orpingtons, some of those wild-looking featherhead Polish chickens. She would make the garden bigger, better. They already had that ugly dog who wouldn’t leave her alone. So an old sweet horse. Flowers, shrubs, bats now that bats are good, bees now that bees are good. Bird feeders. Trap the feral cats, but then what to do with them. No. Let them hunt rats, keep the barn safe. A cow, two maybe, for milk only. She hated sheep. No sheep, no goats. Rabbits, though, in a stack of rabbit hutches and from time to time she supposed Peter would remove one and kill it for supper. She’d make him skin it, too, cut it up in pieces. She would fry it, sure, but wait, their eyes! Big soft eyes! Too much. Too much, too soon. If you could eat a rabbit, you could eat a cat. If you could eat a cat, you could eat a dog. So it went, on up. No, she’d just have chickens, she thought, staring into the flames. That was all the death she would be able to bear. Slow down, she counseled herself. You have time to live now. She looked around, behind her, toward the woods.

See? She whispered. I burned the chair.

Wishing Well

WISHINGWELLWISHING WELLWISHING WELLWEHYAHHEYWHENYAHHEY. Ojibwes have a song for everything. This was Romeo’s lock-picking song. He sang beneath his breath as he unlocked a hospital file cabinet with an unbent paper clip.

It is truly wonderful, he thinks, that such precious information is considered secure when protected by a lock so jiggly, and cheap-john enough to break. Or merely find a key to this generic lock if he so wishes. Or saw it off. But he has the time and inclination to pick this lock, which will make his entry invisible.

For ten quiet minutes Romeo toys with the innards of the lock, humming and whispering his lock-picking song until the tumblers line up and the mechanism yields.

Within the cabinet his secretarial finger-flipping produces the copy of a file it would be hard to obtain otherwise, the original probably residing in tribal police headquarters. From which zone he is barred except as an arrestee. Funny the trust that resides in him as a recovering alcoholic. Everybody loves that recovery shit, he thinks, as he slides out the paper he needs and replaces the file just in case anybody thinks to look for it although nobody ever will, as this was considered an open-and-shut sort of thing, a tragic accident.

He puts the document into a flimsy black cloth bag, another freebie he’s cleaned up from the tribal security conference, where he witnessed tribal police officers using their Homeland Security grants to practice double-cuffing each other on the floor. The pack also holds ten sealed squares of expired noodles, the kind with pungent little foil skibs of flavoring. He’s also scored three blueberry yogurts from the staff fridge at the hospital. Romeo heads up to the Catholic day school to see about lunch leftovers — he has been lucky there. If he could find some protein source to complement the noodles, and perhaps a wilted carrot or two, he’d have a hearty soup. An onion would be a plus!

Romeo scores a flabby cucumber and some chicken cooked so dry it almost flakes, but the soup will soften it. And there is nothing wrong with boiled cucumber. Back home, he switches on his television and the hot plate. Feeling domestic, he rinses out his enameled tin saucepan in the bathroom sink. He opens three packets of noodles, douses them with water and flavoring, pares the cucumber into bits, cutting against his thumb. Behind him, CNN seems stuck on yellowcake.

Yellowcake, he sings.

Weyoheyoh weyoheyhoh

Yellowcake

Yellowcake

Make my sweet tooth ache.

Then, remembering all of the yellow cakes he’s devoured at funeral dinners and always with that chocolate frosting in tiny elevated swirls, he becomes nostalgic. Settling in before the television he meanders back to the times he went to visit Mrs. Peace so long ago and accepted squares of cake from the hands of little Emmaline. If he had ever declared his love to her once they were grown, would it have mattered? Would she have gone out with him, not Landreaux? Every year she moved farther above him, ever more out of his league. Not that he cared to be in any league, anymore, where women were concerned. My junk is monk, he thought. LOL. He’d learned LOL at work. In the olden days, there had been a chance. When he was considered smart. When there was cake passed on a little flowered plate from her hands to his hands. He can taste it, the melting scoop of vanilla soaking into the sweet loam of the slice. Like her dearness soaking into his porous heart. He’s not high, just living with that memory.

Not just to bring down Landreaux, he suddenly thinks, staring at his detective wall. But more. Maybe something true. I am not just a scabbed-over pariah. People should know.

The ramen hisses up, boiling over. Romeo busies himself rescuing his dinner. He gets his spoon ready, an old heavy metal cooking spoon from the government school. With a rag for a pot holder, he brings the pot of soup over and sets it upon a folded towel on the floor next to his chair. Waiting for his soup to cool, Romeo fixes his attention on the news. More yellowcake uranium powders. Italian what? Military Intelligence. What? Apparently Saddam has purchased Niger uranium powders, yellowcake uranium powders, which look like what they sound like, yellowcakey powders used for nuclear weapons. Then McCain comes on and Romeo puts the spoon back. McCain says that Saddam is a clear and present danger and that his pursuit to acquire weapons of mass destruction leads McCain to have very little doubt that Saddam would use them.