The Round House

Chapter Nine

The Big Good-bye

Mooshum was born nine months after berry-picking camp, a happy time when families got together all through the bush. I went out to pick berries with my father, Mooshum always said, and I came back with my mother. He thought it was a great joke and always celebrated his conception, not his birth, as in fact he had become convinced that he was born at Batoche during the siege in 1885, which my father privately doubted. It was true, however, that Mooshum had still been a child when his family left behind their neat cabin, their lands, their barn and sweet water well, and fled Batoche after Louis Riel was caught and sentenced to be hanged. They came down over the border, where they were not exactly welcomed with open arms. Still, they were taken in by an unusually kindhearted chief who told the U.S. government that maybe it threw away its half-breed children and gave them no land, but that the Indians would take these children into their hearts. The generous full-bloods would have a hard time of it in the years to come, while the mixed-bloods who already knew how to farm and husband animals fared better and eventually began to take over and even looked down on those who had rescued them. Yet as Mooshum went on in life he cast off his Michif ways. First to go was Catholicism, then he started speaking pure Chippewa not mixed with French, and even made himself a fancy powwow outfit to dance in although he still jigged and drank. He went, as they said in those times, back to the blanket. Not that he wore a blanket. But sometimes he threw one over his shoulder and walked out to the round house and participated in the bush ceremonies. He was great friends with all the troublemakers who caroused about as well as those who fought desperately to keep their reservation, ground that kept shifting under their feet according to government whim and Indian agent head counts and something called allotment. Many an agent gained wealth on stolen rations in those years, and many a family turned their faces to the wall and died for lack of what they were promised.

And now, said Mooshum, on the day we gathered to celebrate his birthday, there is food aplenty. Food everywhere. Fat Indians! You would never see a fat Indian back in my time.

Grandma Ignatia sat with him under the old-timey arbor that Uncle Edward and Whitey had built for Mooshum’s birthday party. They had laid fresh popple saplings onto posts to make a shady roof, and the leaves were still sweet and bright. The old ones sat in woven plastic lawn chairs and drank hot tea though the day was warm. Clemence had instructed me to sit with Mooshum, to watch him and make sure that the heat did not prostrate him. Grandma Ignatia was shaking her head at the fat Indians.

I had a fat Indian for a husband at one time, she told Mooshum. His pecker was long and big but only the head reached past his gut. And of course I didn’t like to get underneath him anyway for fear of getting smashed.

Miigwayak! Of course. What did you do? Mooshum asked.

I bounced around on top naturally. But that belly, yai! It grew big as a hill and I couldn’t see over it. I’d call out, Are you still back there? Holler to me! Like most fat Indians he did have a skinny butt. Man, those muscles in his back cheeks were powerful, too. He swung me around like a circus act. So I enjoyed him real well, those times were good.

Awee, said Mooshum. His voice was wistful.

But sadly they were not to last, said Grandma Ignatia. One time we were going hell for leather when he quit. Sometimes he did get tired out of course, being so heavy like he was, so I just keep cranking away on top. His flagpole was still up and hard as steel. But I thought he might have gone to sleep, he was so quiet. Holler to me! I said. But he never did. My, it is strange he sleeps through all of this! He must be having a grand dream, I think. So I don’t quit until it’s all over—many times over with me, eyyyy. At last I get off him. My, he’s lasting! I think. I crawl around to the other end of him. Not long, and I realize that he is not breathing. I pat his face, but no good. He is dead and gone, my sweet fat husband. I mourned for that man a solid year.

Awee, said Mooshum. A happy death. And a noble lover for you, Ignatia, as he satisfied you even from the other side. I wish to die that way, but who will give me the chance?

Does it still stand up? asked Ignatia.

Not by itself, said Mooshum.

Eyyyy, said Ignatia. After a hundred years of hard use it would be a miracle. If you only prayed more, she cackled.

Mooshum’s frail shoulders were shaking. Pray for a hard-on! That’s a good one. Maybe I should pray to Saint Joseph. He was a carpenter and worked with wood.

Them nuns never mentioned the patron saint of manaa!

Mooshum said, I will say a prayer to Saint Jude, the one who handles lost cases.

And I will pray to Saint Anthony, the one in charge of lost objects. You’re so old you probably can’t even find your own pecker in those pants Clemence put on you today.

Yes, these pants. They are good material.

One of my other husbands, said Ignatia, the one with the tiny cock, had a pair of pants like yours once. Extremely high quality. He had sex like a rabbit. Quick in-out-in-out but for hours at a time. I would just lay there making things up in my head, thinking my own thoughts. It was restful. I felt nothing. Then one day, something. Howah! I cried. What happened to you? Did it grow?

Yes, I watered it, he said between in-out-in-out. And fertilized it.

Yai! I cried out, even louder. What did you use?

I’m joking, woman. I made it bigger with clay from the river. Oh, no!

All of a sudden I felt nothing again.

It fell off, he said.

The whole wiinag?

No, just the clay part. He was very downhearted. Oh my love, he said, I wanted to make you scream like a bobcat. I’d give my life to make you happy. I said to him, That’s all right, I’ll show you another way.

So I showed him a thing or two and he learned so good that I made sounds his ears had never heard. One time, anyway, we had this lantern swinging from a hook over the foot of the bed. He was going at me like the rabbit and that lantern fell off the hook and hit him in the ass. I heard him tell his friends about it. They were laughing pretty good, then he says, I was lucky though. If I had been doing the deed my old lady taught me, the one that makes her so happy, that lantern would have hit me in the head.

Yai! Mooshum’s tea spluttered from his lips. I gave him a napkin because Clemence had also charged me with keeping food out of his hair, which against her wishes he’d worn the way he liked it, hanging down around his face in greasy strands.

Too bad we never tried each other out when we were young, said Ignatia. You are much too shriveled up to suit me now but as I remember it, you were damn good-looking.

So I was, said Mooshum.

I blotted away the tea that was rolling down his neck, before it reached the starched white collar of his shirt. I drove a few girls out of their minds, Mooshum continued, but when my pretty wife was living, I did my Catholic duty.

No difficulty there, Ignatia snorted. Were you faithful or not? (They both pronounced the word fateful; in fact, every th in this whole conversation was a t.)

I was fateful, said Mooshum. To a point.

What point? said Ignatia sharply. She always supported women’s extramarital excitements, but was completely intolerant of men’s. Oh, wait, my old friend, how could I be forgetting? To a point! Eyyyyy, very funny.

Anishaaindinaa. Yes, of course, she lived out on the point, that Lulu. And you had your son with her.

I started in surprise, but neither one of them noticed. Was it known all over that I had an uncle I never knew about? Who was this son of Mooshum’s? I tried to shut my mouth but as I looked around I saw of course a large number of the guests were Lamartines and Morrisseys and then Ignatia said his name.

That Alvin did good for himself.

Alvin, a friend of Whitey’s! Alvin had always seemed like part of the family. Well. When I tell this story to white people they are surprised, and when I tell it to Indians they always have a story like it. And they usually found out about their relatives by dating the wrong ones, or at any rate, they usually began to figure out family somewhere in their teens. Maybe it was because no one thought to explain the obvious which was always there or maybe as a child I just had not listened before. Anyway, I now realized that Angus was some kind of cousin to me, as Star was a Morrissey and her sister, mother to Angus, was once married to Alvin’s younger brother, Vance, and yet as Vance had a different father from Alvin the connection was weakened. Had I heard the name for this type of cousin, I wondered, sitting there, or should I ask Mooshum and Ignatia?

Excuse me, I said.

Oh yes, my boy, how polite you are! Grandma Ignatia suddenly noticed me sitting there and stuck me with her crow-sharp eyes.

If Alvin is my half uncle and Star’s sister was married to Vance and they had Angus what does that make Angus to me?

Marriageable, croaked Grandma Ignatia. Anishaaindinaa. Kidding, my boy. You could marry Angus’s sister. But you ask a good question.

He is your quarter cousin, Mooshum said firmly. You don’t treat him like a whole cousin but he’s closer to you than a friend. You would defend him, but not to da dett.

That’s how he said it, da dett. Nowadays most of us will say our ths unless we grew up speaking Chippewa, but we still drop a lot of them from habit. My father felt that as a judge it was important to pronounce his every last th. My mother didn’t, however. As for me, I left my ds behind when I went to college and I took up the th. So did lots of other Indians. I wrote an awful poem once about all of the ds that got left behind and floated around on reservations and a friend read it. She thought there was something to that idea and as she was a linguistics major she wrote a paper on the subject. Several years after she wrote that paper, I married her, back on the reservation, and I noticed that as soon as we passed the line we dropped our ths and picked up our ds again. But even though she was a linguistics major, she didn’t have a word for what kind of cousin Angus was to me. I thought Mooshum defined it best with his statement that I was bound to defend Angus, but only so far. I didn’t have to die for him, which was a relief.

At this point, more people came and sat with us, a crowd in fact, all around Mooshum, and the whole party directed its attention to where he sat underneath the arbor. People with cameras carefully positioned themselves and my mother and Clemence posed for pictures with their heads on either side of Mooshum’s head. Then Clemence ran back into the house and there was a hush broken by the exclamations of small children pushed to the edge of the crowd, The cake! The cake!

As Clemence and Edward were now fiddling with their cameras, my cousins Joseph and Evey got to carry in the extraordinary cake. Clemence had constructed a great sheet cake frosted with whiskey-laced sugar, Mooshum’s favorite, and she had iced it onto a piece of masonite covered with tinfoil. The cake was the size of a desktop, elaborately lettered with Mooshum’s name and studded with at least a hundred candles, already lighted, brightly burning as my cousins walked gingerly forward. People parted around them. I slipped aside once they held the cake right in front of Mooshum’s face. The cake was dazzling. Ignatia looked jealous. The little flames reflected up into Mooshum’s dim old eyes as people sang the happy birthday song in Ojibwe and English and then started on a Michif tune. The candles flared more intensely as they burned down, dripping wax onto the frosting until they were mere stubs.

Blow them out! Make a wish! people cried, but Mooshum seemed mesmerized by their light. Grandma Ignatia leaned over and spoke right into his ear. He nodded, finally, and stooped over the cake and at that moment a stray breeze came through the arbor, a little gust. You think it would have extinguished the candles, but on the contrary. It gave them enough oxygen for one last flare and when this happened the little flames fused into a single fire that ignited the mixture of wax and whiskey icing. The cake caught fire with a gentle whoosh and the flames leapt high enough to ravel into Mooshum’s locks of greasy hair as he bent over with his lips pursed. I still have the picture in my mind of Mooshum’s head surrounded by the blaze. Only his delighted eyes and happy grin showed, as, it seemed, he was consumed. My grandfather and the cake might have been destroyed right there, if Uncle Edward hadn’t had the presence of mind to empty a pitcher of lemonade over Mooshum’s head. Just as providentially, Joseph and Evelina were still holding on to the masonite and ran the burning cake out onto the driveway, where the flames went out once they had consumed the liquorous frosting. Uncle Edward was again the hero of the day as he simply slicked off the scorched frosting with a long bread knife. He declared the rest of the cake edible, indeed, improved by the scorching. Someone brought gallons of ice cream and the party recommenced. I was told to take Mooshum inside to rest from the thrill. Once there, Clemence tried to cut away his singed locks.

The fire itself hadn’t touched his skin or his scalp, but to be on fire had excited him enormously. He was concerned that Clemence cut away only what parts of his hair were hopelessly black and shriveled.

Okay, I’m trying, Daddy. But the pieces stink, you know.

She gave up.

Oh here, Joe. You sit with him!

He was lying on the couch, pillowed, covered with an afghan, just a pile of sticks and a big grin. His white choppers had come loose in the excitement, so I fetched a cup of water and he plunged them in. Unfortunately, I chose an opaque plastic cup of the kind that children were using to drink Kool-Aid. While my back was turned, some four-year-old snatched the cup and ran outside happily drinking the denture water, imitating his older cousins, until apparently this child asked his mother for more Kool-Aid and she saw what was in the bottom. I sat by Mooshum, though, oblivious of these dramas. My cousins were home but much older than me and absorbed in carrying out constant orders from their mother. My friends, who had promised to come, weren’t here yet. This party would go on and on. There would be dancing later, fiddles, an electric guitar and keyboard, more food. My friends were probably waiting for Alvin’s pit-barbecued venison or the food coming from their own households. Once a party like this started on the reservation it always gained its own life. There was a tradition of the uninvited showing up and every party had provisions for that—as well as for those who would show up drunk and get too rowdy. But from all of this, lying in state on the living room couch, Mooshum was protected. Part of things but able to snooze. I sat with him as he dropped off and slept. But when Sonja entered he snapped to like a soldier. Her outfit must have penetrated his unconscious. She wore a shirt of softly fringed suede that clung to her breasts like an unforgiven sin. And those jeans, making her legs so long and lean. My eyes popped. New lizard-skin-trimmed cowboy boots! And she wore those studs in her ears. They trembled in the soft light.

I ducked when she tried to kiss the top of my head, moved off so she could sit in my chair, but stayed in the room with my arms folded, glaring at her. I knew that shirt was bought with my doll money and it looked expensive. She’d used a lot of my money again. And those boots! Everybody had to notice.

Sonja bent close to Mooshum. They were speaking in annoying low voices, and she was shaking her head, laughing. He was giving her a toothless pleading look that dripped with besotted admiration. She leaned over and kissed his cheek, then she held his hand and talked some more and both of them laughed and laughed themselves silly until I got disgusted and went away.

My parents were sitting in the grown-up seating area beneath the arbor and my mother, though talking little, was at least nodding as my father spoke to her. The band was setting up out by the storage shed. Behind the shed, Whitey and the other drinkers were sitting on the ground passing a bottle. Whitey was on a morose jag now. He sat in the corner of the yard staring at the party, trying to track things with his double vision, muttering dark thoughts that fortunately were completely incoherent. I saw Doe Lafournais and Cappy’s aunt Josey. There was Star and Zack’s mom, too, and Zack’s baby brother and sister. But no Zack, Angus, or Cappy. I didn’t want to ask where they were in case they were up to something, so I got my bike from beside the garage and left. I was pretty sure that Zelia had something to do with Cappy’s absence and sure enough, as I went toward the church I met Zack and Angus zigzagging down the hill, slow as they could, no Cappy.

He stayed behind. They’re gonna meet in the graveyard at dark, said Zack.

All three of us were crushed by the thought, even though we’d given up on Zelia day one. We rode back to the party, which was ramping up with jiggers stepping out onto the grass and Grandma Ignatia in the middle showing off her fancy steps. We ate as much as we could, then sneaked beers and poured the beer into empty soda cans. We drank and hung out listening to the band, watching Whitey hang on Sonja as they two-stepped until it grew late. My father said I should ride my bike home, and I did, wobbling into the yard. I took Pearl up to my room and was just falling asleep when I heard my parents coming home. I heard them walk up the stairs talking together in low voices and then I heard them enter their bedroom the way they always had before. I heard them shut their door with that final small click that meant everything was safe and good.



If things could stay that way, safe and good, if the attacker would die in jail. If he would kill himself. I couldn’t live with the if.

I need to know, I said to my father the next morning. You’ve got to tell me what the carcass looks like.

I’ll tell you when I can, Joe.

Does Mom know he could get out?

My father waved his finger across his lips. Not exactly, no. Well, yes. But we haven’t spoken. It would set her back, he said quickly. His face contorted. He put his hand over his features as if to erase them.

I have to look out for her, watch for him.

He nodded, and after a while he rose and with a heavy tread walked to his desk. As he fumbled in his pocket for his keys, I saw the vulnerable brown eggshell of his head, the wisps of white. He had begun to lock this particular drawer, but now he opened it and withdrew a file. He opened the file, walked over to me, and drew out a photograph. A mug shot. He put the photograph in my hands.

You mother hasn’t decided whether to tell anybody else, he said. It’s her call. So don’t talk about this.

A handsome but not good-looking powerful man with a pallid complexion and black shining eyes that showed no white, just the speck of livid life. His half-open mouth was filled with perfect white teeth and his lips were thin and red. It was the customer. The man who’d bought gas the day before I quit.

I’ve seen him before, I said. Linden Lark. He bought gas at Whitey’s.

My father didn’t look at me, but his jaw flattened, his lips went hard.

When?

Must have been just before he was picked up.

My father pinched the picture back and slid it into the file. I could see that it hurt his fingers to touch the photograph, that the mute image emitted a jagged force. He slammed the file back in the drawer, then stood staring at the papers scattered over his desk. He unclenched the hand over his heart, opened it, fingered a shirt button.

Bought gas at Whitey’s.

We heard my mother outside. She was pounding slim poles she’d cut down into the ground, setting them alongside her tomato plants. Next she would rip old sheets into strips to bind their acrid, musky stems, so that they could safely climb. Already the plants bore star-shaped flowers colored a soft, bitter yellow.

He’s studied us, said my father softly. Knows we can’t hold him. Thinks he can get away. Like his uncle.

What do you mean?

The lynching. You know that.

Old history, Dad.

Lark’s great-uncle was in the lynching party. Thus, I think, the contempt.

I wonder if he even knows how people here keep track of that, I said.

We know the families of the men who were hanged. We know the families of the men who hanged them. We even know our people were innocent of the crime they were hung for. A local historian had dredged that up and proved it.

Outside, my mother was putting away the tools. They jangled in her bucket. She cranked on the hose and began to spray her garden, the water splattering softly back and forth.

We’ll get him anyway, I said. Won’t we, Dad.

But he was staring at his desk as if he saw through the oak top into the file beneath it and through the manila cover to the photograph and from the photograph perhaps to some other photograph or record of old brutality that hadn’t yet bled itself out.



After his mother died, Linden Lark had kept her farmhouse at the edge of Hoopdance. He had been staying in the house, a rickety, peeling two-story that once had flower beds and big vegetable gardens. Now, of course, the whole place had gone to weeds and was cut off by crime tape. Dogs had searched and double-searched the premises, the fields and woods surrounding the house and found nothing.

No Mayla, I said.

Dad was talking with me later on that day—the house was quiet. I’d been playing my game. He’d walked in. This time he told me things. The governor of South Dakota had stated that the child he wished to adopt came from a Rapid City social service agency and that claim was confirmed. The people there said that about a month ago someone, a man it was believed, had left the baby asleep in her car seat, in the furniture section at Goodwill. There had been a note pinned on the baby’s jacket informing the finder that her parents were dead.

Is it Mayla’s baby?

My father nodded.

Your mother was shown a picture. She identified the baby.

Where is Mom now? I asked.

My father raised his brows, still surprised.

I just dropped her off at work.

A few days after my mother identified the baby, she began regular hours at her office. There was a backlog, blood quantum to parse, genealogy hopefuls curious about their possible romantic Indian Princess grandmothers. There were children returning as adults, adopted-out people cut off from their tribe, basically stolen by the state welfare agencies, and there were also those who had given up on being an Indian but whose children longed for the connection and designed a meaningful family vacation to the reservation to explore their heritage. She had a lot to do, and this was even before casino money roped wannabes in droves. She could apparently work as long as Lark was in custody. As long as the baby was safe. There were a few days when things were normal—but it was holding-your-breath normal. We heard the baby was with her grandparents, George and Aurora Wolfskin. She was placed there permanently or at least until Mayla returned. If she did return. Then on about the fourth day, my mother told my father that she had to talk to Gabir Olson and Special Agent Bjerke because, now that the baby’s safety was no longer an issue, she’d suddenly remembered the whereabouts of that missing file.

All right, my father said. Where?

Where I left it, underneath the front seat of the car.

My father went outside and came back with the manila folder in his hands.

They went to Bismarck again, and I stayed with Clemence and Edward. The birthday banners were all down. The beer cans crushed. The leaves were dried out in the arbor. Things again were quiet at Clemence and Edward’s house, but a sort of cheerful quiet as there were always people coming around to visit. Not only relations and friends, but people who came just for Mooshum, students or professors. They would set up a tape recorder and tape him talking about the old days or speaking Michif, or Ojibwe or Cree, or all three languages together. But he really didn’t tell them much. All his real stories came at night. I slept in Evey’s room with him. About an hour or two into the night I woke to hear him talking.


The Round House

When he was told to kill his mother, said Nanapush, a great rift opened in his heart. There was a crack so deep it went down forever. On the before side his love for his father, and belief in all that his father did, lay crumpled and discarded. And not only that one belief, but others as well. It was true that there could be wiindigoog—people who lost all human compunctions in hungry times and craved the flesh of others. But people could also be falsely accused. The cure for a wiindigoo was often simple: large quantities of hot soup. No one had tried the soup on Akii. No one had consulted the old and wise. The people he’d loved, including his uncles, had simply turned against his mother, so Nanapush could not believe in them or in what they said or did anymore. On the side of the crack where Nanapush was, however, his younger brothers and sisters, who had cried for their mother, existed. And his mother, too. Also the spirit of the old female buffalo who had been his shelter.

That old buffalo woman gave Nanapush her views. She told him that he had survived by doing the opposite of all the others. Where they abandoned, he saved. Where they were cruel, he was kind. Where they betrayed, he was faithful. Nanapush then decided that in all things he would be unpredictable. As he had completely lost trust in authority, he decided to stay away from others and to think for himself, even to do the most ridiculous things that occurred to him.

You can go that way, said the old buffalo woman, but even though you become a fool, people will in time consider you a wise man. They will come to you.

Nanapush did not want anyone to come to him.

That will not be possible, said the buffalo woman. But I can give you something that will help you—look into your mind and see what I am thinking about.

Nanapush looked into his mind and saw a building. He even saw how to make the building. It was the round house. The old female buffalo kept talking.

Your people were brought together by us buffalo once. You knew how to hunt and use us. Your clans gave you laws. You had many rules by which you operated. Rules that respected us and forced you to work together. Now we are gone, but as you have once sheltered in my body, so now you understand. The round house will be my body, the poles my ribs, the fire my heart. It will be the body of your mother and it must be respected the same way. As the mother is intent on her baby’s life, so your people should think of their children.

That is how it came about, said Mooshum. I was a young man when the people built it—they followed Nanapush’s instructions.



I sat up to look at Mooshum, but he had turned over and begun his snore. I lay awake thinking of the place on the hill, the holy wind in the grass, and how the structure had cried out to me. I could see a part of something larger, an idea, a truth, but just a fragment. I could not see the whole, but just a shadow of that way of life.

I had been there three or four days when Clemence and Uncle Edward went over to Minot to purchase a new freezer. They started out early in the morning, before I was up. Mooshum had risen at six as usual. He’d drunk the coffee, eaten all the eggs, toast, and buttered hash brown potatoes that Clemence made, even my share. When I went down to the kitchen, I took a slice of cold meat loaf she’d left for lunch, slapped it between two pieces of soft white bread, with ketchup. I asked my Mooshum what he wanted to do that day and he looked vague.

You go off with your own. He waved his hand. I’m all set here.

Clemence said I have to stay with you.

Saaah, she treats me like a puking baby. You go! You go off and have a good time!

Then Mooshum tottered over to Evey’s old dresser and rummaged among the things in his top drawer until he came up with an old gray sock. Dangling the sock at me with a significant look, he plunged his hand in. He was wearing his dentures, which usually meant company. With a sly air of triumph he drew a soft ten-dollar bill from the toe of the sock and waved it at me.

Take this! Go on, live it up. Majaan!

I didn’t take the bill.

You’re up to something, Mooshum.

Up to something, he said as he sat down, up to something. Then he said in low outrage, How can a man be a man!

Maybe I can help you, I said.

Eh, so be it. Clemence keeps my bottle high in the kitchen cabinet. You could fetch me that!

It wasn’t even noon, but then I figured what could it hurt? He’d lived long enough to deserve a drink of whiskey when he wanted it. Clemence had given him but one pour on his birthday, then lots of swamp tea to counteract the effect. I was standing on the countertop, trying to find the place where Clemence hid the bottle, when Sonja came in the back door. She was carrying a plastic shopping bag with sturdy handles, and at first I thought she’d shopped again with my money and was coming to show Clemence her purchases. I clambered down with the bottle in my hand and said, in a belligerent tone, So, you went on another spending spree! I stood before her. We’re going to dig up those passbooks, I said. We’re gonna go around and get all that money back, Sonja.

All right, she said, her blue eyes soft with hurt. That’s fine.

Stop this talk of money. Mooshum stumbled close to Sonja. Took her arm. He spoke silkily.

This old man has money and a bottle too, ma chère niinimoshenh.

Mooshum steered Sonja and her heavy shopping bag toward the bedroom.

Get out of here now, he said to me. Get! He held his hand out for the bottle.

But I stood my ground.

I’m not going anywhere, I said. Clemence told me to stay.

I followed them into the bedroom. They stared at me in a helpless way. I sat down on the bed.

I’m not leaving, at least, until I see what’s in that bag.

Mooshum gave me an outraged snort. He snatched the bottle from my hand and took a quick pull. Sonja sat down sullenly and puffed out her lips. She was wearing one of her tracksuits, plush and pink, and a T-shirt with a plunging neckline; a silver heart at the end of a silver chain pointed to the shadowy swelling line where her breasts were pushed together. Her hair glowed in light from the window behind her.

Joe, she said, this is Mooshum’s birthday present.

What is?

What’s in the bag.

Well, give it to him, then.

It’s . . . ah . . . a grown-up gift.

A grown-up gift?

Sonja made a face that meant duh.

My throat shut. I looked from Mooshum to Sonja, back and forth. They wouldn’t look at each other.

I’m gonna ask you to leave in a nice way, Joe.

But as she spoke she started taking things from the bag—not exactly clothes—tatters of cloth and sequiny things and glittering tassels and some long strands of hair and fur. Heeled sandals with long leather laces. I’d seen this stuff before, on her, in my folder labeled HOMEWORK.

I’m not leaving. I sat down next to Mooshum, on his low cot.

You are too! Sonja stared at me. Joe! Her face hardened in a way I had not seen before. Get outta here, she ordered.

I won’t, I said.

No? She stood, hands on her hips, and puffed air into her cheeks, mad.

I was mad, too, but what I said surprised me.

You’re gonna let me stay. Because if you don’t, I’ll tell Whitey about the money.

Sonja froze and sat back down. She was holding some shiny cloth. She stared at me. A remote, mystified look crept onto her face. A shiny film flooded her eyes, making her look so young.

Really, she said. Her voice was sad, a whisper. Really?

I should have left, right then. In one half hour I’d wish I had, but also be glad I stayed. I’ve never felt all one way about what happened next.

Money again, saaah, cried Mooshum in disgust. Which made me think about the money and about Sonja’s diamond earrings.

I grabbed Mooshum’s bottle and drank. The whiskey hit me and my eyes watered too.

He’s a good boy, said Mooshum.

Sonja wouldn’t take her eyes off me. You think so? You really think he’s a good boy? She sat down and slapped the shiny bra she held against her knee.

He takes good care of me. Mooshum drank and offered me the bottle again. I passed it to Sonja.

You’ll tell Whitey, huh?

She gave me an ugly smile, a smile that jolted me. Then she knocked back a long swallow. Mooshum took a sip and handed the bottle back to me. Sonja narrowed her eyes until the blueness turned black. So it’s you and Whitey. Okay then. I’m onna dress in the bathroom. You boys stay right here. And if you ever say a word about anything to anybody, Joe, I will cut off your puny dick.

My jaw dropped, and she laughed mean. Can’t have it both ways, you lying little phony. I’m not momming you anymore.

She took a tape player out of the bottom of her bag, plugged it into the wall, and popped in a cassette.

When I come back in, turn the music on, she ordered. Then she went across the hall to the bathroom with her bag.

Mooshum and I sat silently on the cot. I now remembered the two of them talking low at the party, and how they had annoyed me. My head started buzzing. I took another swig from Mooshum’s bottle. After a while, Sonja came back in, shut the door behind her and locked it, then turned around.

I suppose the two of us gaped at her.

Hit Play, Joe, she growled.

The music began, a low faraway series of wails and chants. Sonja’s hair was held straight up in a metallic cone that acted as a fountain, spilling tons of hair, more than she really had, down her shoulders and back. She wore heavy makeup—her eyebrows were black wings, her lips a cruel red. A formal gray sheath of silk hung from her neck to her legs and covered her arms. She drew a long wavy dagger from her sleeve. Then she lifted her arms like an ancient goddess about to sacrifice a goat, or a live man tied on a slab of rock. She held the dagger in both hands, then switched to one hand, staring at the dagger. She pushed an invisible switch. The dagger lit up and glowed. The music changed to guttural, grinding moans, then a sudden series of yips. Along with each yip she cut apart a piece of Velcro that held her robe together. She teased us for a while. The robe had slits in the sides. One armor-plated breast would appear. A leg in the sandal laced to her thigh. Finally, after a chorus of chants and howls, there was a sudden shriek. Then silence. She dropped her robes. I grabbed Mooshum’s arm. I didn’t want to waste a second looking at him but didn’t want him to fall over backward, either, and hit his head. I have never, ever, forgotten her in the dim glory of Evey’s bedroom. She was tall in those heeled sandals. With her hair in that cone she nearly touched the ceiling. Her legs went up forever and she wore a bikini bottom that looked like it was forged of iron, padlocked shut. Her stomach was pure and lithe, toned I don’t know how. I’d never seen her exercise. And my loves, her breasts, also cased in bits of plastic armor, pushed at the seams of the breastplate, which had been made with fake erect nipples. Skins and scarves flowed off her. She held the dagger in her teeth and then she began to rub and work the fur and fabric all over her body. She wore thin vinyl gauntlets. She took one off, lightly whipped herself and scoured her chastity belt with it, and then cracked me across the face. I almost fainted. I grabbed Mooshum again. He was panting with happiness. Sonja smacked me right in the eye with the other gauntlet. The drums began. Sonja’s belly and hips began to gyrate in a different tempo—so fast her movements blurred. Mooshum gave me the bottle. I choked. Sonja whirled. Kicked me in the knee. I bent over in pain but my eyes never left her. The drum fell silent. She played with the leather strips that held her armor bra together and then suddenly she let it drop. And there they were. Wearing only gold tassels that she twirled first one way, then the other, mesmerizing us. I was dizzy by the time the drum quit. Mooshum’s breath came ragged. I could hear the tape scratch. She pulled the ties on her sandals and stepped out of them, threw them at my head. She unsnapped the cone from her hair and it fell around her face in a wild waterfall. She threw the cone at me too. Barefoot, she stepped close and began to grind her hips to the howls of wolves, but when she reached down into her iron bikini and slowly pulled out a key on a silken string, Mooshum was ready. He snatched the key from her fingers and without a tremble in his ancient fist he opened the padlock, unhooked and threw it to the side, and there was a G-string made of soft, black, dense fur. Well, it was a rabbit pelt. But so what. She straddled Mooshum’s lap but carefully did not let down her weight. Cupped her tasseled breasts in her hands.

Happy birthday, old man, she said.

Mooshum’s smile glowed. Tears flowed down the grooves in his cheeks. He put his arms around her waist, rested his forehead between her breasts, and took one deep groaning breath. He did not take another.

Oh no. Sonja lifted her arms away and lowered him cautiously onto his cot. She put her ear to his chest and listened.

I can’t hear his heart, she said.

I held on to Mooshum too. Should we do mouth-to-mouth resuscitation? CPR? What? Sonja?

I don’t know.

We looked down at him. His eyes were closed. He was smiling. He looked the happiest I’d seen him.

He’s in a dream now, Sonja said tenderly. Her words burst through a sob. He’s going away. Let’s not disturb him. She leaned over Mooshum, smoothing his hair back and murmuring.

He opened his eyes once, smiled at her, closed his eyes again.

Maybe his heart is beating after all! Sonja knelt down and put her ear to his chest again, biting on her lip.

I hear a thump or two, she said, relieved.

Dazed, I watched Mooshum for signs of life. But he did not stir.

Pick my stuff up, said Sonja, her head still on Mooshum’s chest. Yes, she said. There’s a beat. They’re just coming really slow. And I think he took a breath.

I went around the room picking up her things, took them into the bathroom, and put them in the shopping bag. I brought the tracksuit and tennis shoes into the bedroom and turned my back as she put them on. I wouldn’t look at her.

When she was all dressed, she picked up the shopping bag holding her stripper outfit and dropped it at my feet.

Keep it, jerk off in it, I don’t care, she said. She plucked a fallen tassel I’d missed off the floor and threw it in my face.

I’m really sorry, I said.

Sorry doesn’t cut it. But I couldn’t care less. You know where I’m from?

No.

Outside Duluth. That’s a nice town, right?

Yeah, I guess.

I went to a Catholic school. I finished eighth grade. Know how I made it through?

No.

My mom. My mom was a Catholic. Yeah. She went to church. She went—she worked the boats. Know what she did?

No.

She went with men, Joe. Know what that means?

I mumbled something.

That’s how I came along in the first place. She tried to keep her own money too. Know what that means, Joe?

No.

She got beat up a lot. She took drugs, too. And guess what? I never met my dad. I never saw him, but my mom was good to me sometimes, sometimes not, whatever. I quit school, had my baby. I did not learn nothing. Anything. My mom said if you got nothing, you can strip. Just dance around, right? Don’t do nothing more, just dance around. I had a friend, she was doing it, making money. I said yes, I wouldn’t do any other stuff. Think I did something else?

No.

I got stuck in that life. Then I met Whitey, see. They open up more bars for dancing during the hunting season. Whitey courted me. Followed me around the circuit. Whitey started protecting me. He asked me to quit. Come live with me, he says. I didn’t ask if he would marry me. You know why, Joe?

No.

I’ll tell you. I didn’t think I was worth marrying, that’s why. Not worth marrying. Why should even an over-the-hill Elvis with a bridge for teeth, an old guy no more educated than me, a drunk who hits me, why should even a guy like that marry me, huh?

I don’t know. I thought . . .

You thought we were married. Well, no. Whitey did not do me that honor, though I got a cheap ring. I don’t give a rat’s ass now. And you. I treated you good, didn’t I?

Yes.

But all along you just were itching. Sneaking a good look at my tits when you thought I didn’t know. You think I didn’t notice?

My face was so red and hot that my skin burned.

Yeah, I noticed, said Sonja. Take a good look now. Close up. See this?

I couldn’t look.

Open your frickin’ eyes.

I looked. A thin white scar ran up the side and around the nipple of her left breast.

My manager did that with a razor, Joe. I wouldn’t take a hunting party. Think your threats scare me?

No.

Yeah, no. You’re crying, aren’t you? Cry all you want, Joe. Lots of men cry after they do something nasty to a woman. I don’t have a daughter anymore. I thought of you like my son. But you just turned into another piece a shit guy. Another gimme-gimme a*shole, Joe. That’s all you are.

Sonja left. I sat with Mooshum. Time collapsed. My head rang like I’d been clocked. Sometimes with the ancient, their breath comes so shallow it cannot be discerned. The afternoon went on and the air went blue before he finally stirred. His eyes opened and then closed. I ran for water, and gave him a little sip.

I’m still here, he said. His voice was faint with disappointment.

I continued to sit with Mooshum, at the edge of his cot, thinking about his wish for a happy death. I’d had a chance to see about the difference between Sonja’s right and left breasts, but I wished I never had. Yet I was glad I did. The conflict in me skewed my brain. About fifteen minutes before Clemence and Edward returned with the freezer, I looked down at my feet and noticed the golden tassel by the leg of the cot. I picked it up and put it in my jeans pocket.

I don’t keep the tassel in a special box or anything—anymore. It’s in the top drawer of my dresser, where things just end up, like Mooshum’s limp stray sock where he kept money. If my wife has ever noticed that I have it, she’s said nothing. I never told her about Sonja, not really. I didn’t tell her how I stuffed the rest of Sonja’s costume in a garbage can by the tribal offices where the BIA was contracted to pick it up. She wouldn’t know that I put that souvenir tassel where I’ll come across it by chance, on purpose. Because every time I look at it, I am reminded of the way I treated Sonja and about the way she treated me, or about how I threatened her and all that came of it, how I was just another guy. How that killed me once I really thought about it. A gimme-gimme a*shole. Maybe I was. Still, after I thought about it for a long time—in fact, all my life—I wanted to be something better.



Doe had built a little deck onto the front of the house and it was filled, as all of our decks tend to be, with useful refuse. There were snow tires stored in black garbage bags, rusted jacks, a bent hibachi grill, banged-up tools, and plastic toys. Cappy slumped amid all that jetsam in a sagging lawn chair. He was running both hands over his hair as he stared at the dog-scratched boards. He didn’t even look up when I stepped next to him and sat down on an old picnic bench.

Hey.

Cappy didn’t react.

So, aaniin . . .

Still, nothing.

After a lot more nothing it came out that Zelia had gone back to Helena with the church group, which I already knew, and after still more nothing Cappy blurted out, Me and Zelia, we did something.

Something?

We did everything.

Everything?

Everything we could think of . . . well, there might be more, but we tried . . .

Where?

In the graveyard. It was the night of your Mooshum’s birthday. And once we did a few things there—

On a grave?

I dunno. We were kind of on the outskirts of the graves, off to the sides. Not right on a grave.

That’s good; it could be bad luck.

For sure. Then after, we got into the church basement. We did it a couple of more times there.

What!

In the catechism room. There’s a rug.

I was silent. My head swam. Bold move, I said at last.

Yeah, then she left. I can’t do nothing. I hurt. Cappy looked at me like a dying dog. He tapped his chest and whispered. It hurts right here.

Women, I said.

He looked at me.

They’ll kill you.

How do you know?

I didn’t answer. His love for Zelia was not like my love for Sonja, which had become a thing contaminated by humiliation, treachery, and even bigger waves of feeling that tore me up and threw me down. By contrast, Cappy’s love was pure. His love was just starting to manifest. Elwin had a tattoo gun and traded for his work. Cappy said he wanted to go to his place and get Elwin to etch Zelia’s name in bold letters across his chest.

No, I said. C’mon. Don’t do that.

He stood. I’m gonna!

I only convinced him to wait by telling him that when his pecs swelled from his workouts, the letters could be bigger. We sat a long time, me trying to distract Cappy, that not working. I finally left when Doe came home and told Cappy to get to work on the woodpile. Cappy walked over to the axe, grabbed it and began splitting wood with such crazed thwacks that I feared he would take off his leg. I told him to take it easy, but he just gave me a dead look and hit a piece of wood so hard it shot up ten feet.

Meandering back toward our house, where my mother and father were supposed to have returned that afternoon, I had that feeling again of not wanting to go home. But I didn’t want to go back to anywhere Sonja was, either. Thinking of her made me think of everything. Into my mind there came the picture of that scrap of blue-and-white checked cloth, and the knowledge I kept pushing away about the doll being in that car. By throwing out the doll I’d obviously destroyed evidence, maybe even something that would tell Mayla’s whereabouts. Where she lay, in a place so obscure that even the dogs could not find her. I put the thought of Mayla from my mind. And Sonja. I tried also not to think of my mother. Of what had maybe happened in Bismarck. All of these thoughts were reasons I did not want to go home, or to be alone. They came up over me, shrouding my mind, covering my heart. Even as I rode, I tried to get rid of the thoughts by taking my bicycle over the dirt hills behind the hospital. I began to course violently up and down, jumping so high that when I landed my bones jarred. Whirling. Skidding. Raising clouds of grit that filled my mouth until I was sick and thirsty and dripping with sweat so I could finally go home.

Pearl heard my bike approach, and she stood at the end of the drive, waiting. I got off the bike and put my forehead on her forehead. I wished I could change places with her. I was holding Pearl when I heard my mother scream. And scream again. And then I heard my father’s low voice grinding between her shrieks. Her voice veered and fell, just the way I’d just been riding, crashing hard, until finally it dropped to an astonished mutter.

I stood outside, holding my bike up, leaning on it. Pearl was next to me. Eventually, my father walked out the back screen door and lit a cigarette, which I had never seen him do. His face was yellow with exhaustion. His eyes were so red they seemed rimmed with blood. He turned and saw me.

They let him go, didn’t they, I said.

He didn’t answer.

Didn’t they, Dad.

After a moment he dragged on the cigarette, looked down.

All of the electric poison that had drained out of me on my bike flooded back and I began to harangue my father, with words. Stupid words.

All you catch are drunks and hot dog thieves.

He looked at me in surprise, then shrugged and tapped the ash off his cigarette.

Don’t forget the scofflaws and custody cases.

Scofflaws? Oh sure. Is there anywhere you can’t park on the rez?

Try the tribal chairman’s spot.

And custody. Nothing but pain. You said yourself. You’ve got zero authority, Dad, one big zero, nothing you can do. Why do it anyway?

You know why.

No, I don’t. I yelled it at him and went in to be with my mother, but there was nothing to be with when I got there. She was staring blankly at the blank of the refrigerator and when I stepped in front of her she spoke in a weird, calm voice.

Hi, Joe.

After my father entered, she went upstairs in a slow devotional walk with him holding on to her arm.

Don’t leave her, Dad, please. I said this in dread as he came back down alone. But he did not even glance at me to answer. I stood awkwardly across from him, dangling my hands.

Why do you do it? I said to him, bursting out. Why bother?

You want to know?

He got up and went to the refrigerator and rummaged around and pulled something from deep on the back shelf. He brought it over to the table. It was one of Clemence’s uneaten casseroles, there so long the noodles had turned black, but stashed near enough to the cold refrigeration coils that it had frozen and so didn’t stink, yet.

Why I keep on. You want to know?

With a savage thump he turned the casserole over onto the table. He lifted off the pan. The thing was shot through with white fuzz but held its oblong shape. My father rose again and pulled the box of cutlery from the cabinet counter. I thought he’d gone crazy at last and watching him I could hardly speak.

Dad?

I’m going to illustrate this for you, son.

He sat down and waved a couple of forks at me. Then with cool absorption he laid a large carving knife carefully on top of the frozen casserole and all around it proceeded to stack one fork, another fork, one on the next, adding a spoon here, a butter knife, a ladle, a spatula, until he had a jumble somehow organized into a weird sculpture. He carried over the other four butcher knives my mother always kept keen. They were good knives, steel all the way through the wooden shank. These he balanced precariously on top of the other silverware. Then sat back, stroking his chin.

That’s it, he said.

I must have looked scared. I was scared. His behavior was that of a madman.

That’s what, Dad? I carefully said. The way you’d address a person in delirium.

He rubbed his sparse gray whiskers.

That’s Indian Law.

I nodded and looked at the edifice of knives and silverware on top of the sagging casserole.

Okay, Dad.

He pointed to the bottom of the composition and lifted his eyebrows at me.

Uh, rotten decisions?

You’ve been into my dad’s old Cohen Handbook. You’ll be a lawyer if you don’t go to jail first. He poked at the fuzzy black noodles. Take Johnson v. McIntosh. It’s 1823. The United States is forty-seven years old and the entire country is based on grabbing Indian land as quickly as possible in as many ways as can be humanly devised. Land speculation is the stock market of the times. Everybody’s in on it. George Washington. Thomas Jefferson. As well as Chief Justice John Marshall, who wrote the decision for this case and made his family’s fortune. The land madness is unmanageable by the nascent government. Speculators are acquiring rights on treaty-held Indian land and on land still owned and occupied by Indians—white people are literally betting on smallpox. Considering how much outright grease is used to bring this unsavory case to court, a case pled by no less than Daniel Webster, the decision was startling. It wasn’t the decision itself that still stinks, though, it was the obiter dicta, the extra incidental wording of the opinion. Justice Marshall went out of his way to strip away all Indian title to all lands viewed—i.e., “discovered”—by Europeans. He basically upheld the medieval doctrine of discovery for a government that was supposedly based on the rights and freedoms of the individual. Marshall vested absolute title to the land in the government and gave Indians nothing more than the right of occupancy, a right that could be taken away at any time. Even to this day, his words are used to continue the dispossession of our lands. But what particularly galls the intelligent person now is that the language he used survives in the law, that we were savages living off the forest, and to leave our land to us was to leave it useless wilderness, that our character and religion is of so inferior a stamp that the superior genius of Europe must certainly claim ascendancy and on and on.

I got it then. I pointed at the bottom of the mess.

I suppose that’s Lone Wolf v. Hitchcock.

And Tee-Hit-Ton.

I asked Dad about the first knife he laid on the casserole, stabilizing it.

Worcester v. Georgia. Now, that would be a better foundation. But this one—my father teased a particularly disgusting bit of sludge from the pile with the edge of his fork—this one is the one I’d abolish right this minute if I had the power of a movie shaman. Oliphant v. Suquamish. He shook the fork and the stink wafted at me. Took from us the right to prosecute non-Indians who commit crimes on our land. So even if . . .

He could not go on. I hoped we’d clean the mess up soon, but no.

So even if I could prosecute Lark . . .

Okay, Dad, I said, quieted. How come you do it? How come you stay here?

The casserole was starting to ooze and thaw. My father arranged the odd bits of cutlery and knives so they made an edifice that stood by itself. He had suspended Mom’s good knives carefully. He nodded at the knives.

These are the decisions that I and many other tribal judges try to make. Solid decisions with no scattershot opinions attached. Everything we do, no matter how trivial, must be crafted keenly. We are trying to build a solid base here for our sovereignty. We try to press against the boundaries of what we are allowed, walk a step past the edge. Our records will be scrutinized by Congress one day and decisions on whether to enlarge our jurisdiction will be made. Some day. We want the right to prosecute criminals of all races on all lands within our original boundaries. Which is why I try to run a tight courtroom, Joe. What I am doing now is for the future, though it may seem small, or trivial, or boring, to you.



Now it was Cappy and me, the two of us trying to break ourselves on the bike course. I’d ridden over to our construction site with him because he’d chopped up every piece of wood in his yard and reduced length after length to kindling. Still this was not enough and he wanted to go out and ride Sonja’s ponies. In his state of mind I thought he’d ride them to death. Besides, I didn’t want to see Sonja, or Whitey either, but I was desperate to distract Cappy so I told him that after we had cruised around and found Angus, we’d catch a ride to the horses though I didn’t mean it. From time to time, when we paused or wiped out, Cappy folded his hand on his heart and something crackled. I finally asked him what it was.

It’s a letter from her. And I wrote one back, he said.

We were breathing hard. We’d raced. He pulled out her letter, waved it at me, and then carefully folded it back into its ripped envelope. Zelia had that cute round writing that all high-school girls had, with little os to dot the is. Cappy waved another envelope, sealed, with her name and address on it.

I need to get a stamp, he said.

So we biked down to the post office. I was hoping Linda would not be working that day, but she was. Cappy put his money out and bought a stamp. I didn’t look at Linda, but I felt her sad pop eyes on me.

Joe, she said. I made that banana bread you like.

But I turned my back on her and went out the door and waited for Cappy.

That lady gave me this for you, said Cappy. He handed me a foil-wrapped brick. I hefted it. We got on our bikes and rode over to find Angus. I thought of throwing the banana bread at the side of a wall or in a ditch, but I didn’t. I held on to it.

We got to Angus’s and he came out, but said his aunt was making him go to confession, which made us laugh.

What is that? He nodded at the brick in my hand.

Banana bread.

I’m hungry, he said. So I tossed it to him and he ate it while we made our way toward the church. He ate the whole thing, which was a relief. He balled up the foil and put it in his pocket. He’d redeem it with his cans. I had assumed that while Angus went inside the church and made his confession, Cappy and I would wait outside under the pine tree, where there was a bench, or down at the playground, though we didn’t have a cigarette to smoke. But Cappy put his bike into the bike rack right alongside Angus’s and so I parked mine too.

Hey, I said. Are you going inside?

Cappy was already halfway up the steps. Angus said, No, you guys can wait outside, it doesn’t matter.

I’m going to confession, said Cappy.

What? Were you even baptized? Angus stopped.

Yeah. Cappy kept on going. Of course I was.

Oh, said Angus. Were you confirmed then?

Yeah, said Cappy.

When was your last confession? Angus asked.

What’s it to you?

I mean, Father will ask.

I’ll tell him.

Angus glanced at me. Cappy seemed dead serious. His face was set in an expression I’d never seen before, or to be more accurate, his expression and the look in his eyes kept shifting—between despair and anger and some gentle moony rapture. I was so disturbed that I grabbed him by the shoulders and spoke into his face.

You can’t do this.

Cappy terrified me then. He hugged me. When he stood back, I could tell that Angus was even more dismayed.

Look, I think I got the time wrong, he said. Please, Cappy, let’s go swim.

No, no, you’ve got the time right, said Cappy. He touched our shoulders. Let’s go in.

The church was nearly empty inside. There were a few people waiting for the confessional and a few up front praying at the feet of the Blessed Virgin, where there was a rack of votive candles flickering in red glass cups. Cappy and Angus slid into the back pew, where they knelt hunched over. Angus was closest to the confessional. He looked sideways at me over Cappy’s bent head, made a rolling-eyed grimace, and jerked his head at the church door as if to say, Get him outta here! After Angus went into the confessional and closed the velvet drape after him, he poked his head out and made that face again. I squeezed close to Cappy and said, Cousin, please, I beg you, let’s get the hell out of here. But Cappy had his eyes closed and if he heard me he made no sign. When Angus emerged, Cappy rose like a sleepwalker, stepped into the confessional, and shut the curtain behind him.

There were arcane sounds—the slide of the priest’s window, the whispering back and forth—then the explosion. Father Travis burst from the wooden door of the confessional and would have caught Cappy if he hadn’t rolled out from under the curtain and half crawled, half scrambled along the pew. Father ran back, blocking the exit, but already Cappy had sprung past us, hurdling the pews toward the front of the church, landing on the seats with each bound in a breathtaking series of vaulting leaps that took him nearly to the altar.

Father Travis’s face had gone so white that red-brown freckles usually invisible stood out as if drawn on with a sharp pencil. He didn’t lock the doors behind him before he advanced on Cappy—a mistake. He didn’t count on Cappy’s speed either, or on Cappy’s practice at evading his older brother in a confined space. So for all Father Travis’s military training he made several tactical errors going after Cappy. It looked like Father Travis could just walk down the center of the church and easily trap Cappy behind the altar, and Cappy played into that. He acted confused and let Father Travis stride toward the front before he bolted to the side aisle and pretended to trip, which caused Father Travis to make a right-hand turn toward him down one of the pews. Once the priest was halfway along the pew, Cappy flipped down the kneeler and sped toward the open door, where we were standing alongside two awestruck old men. Father Travis could have cut him off if he’d run straight back, but he tried to get past the kneeler and ended up lunging along the stations of the cross. Cappy exited. Father Travis had the longer stride and gained but, instead of running down the steps, Cappy, well practiced as we all were at sliding down the iron pole banister, used that and gained impetus, a graceful push-off that sent him pell-mell down the dirt road with Father Travis too close behind for him to even grab his bike.

Cappy had those good shoes, but so, I noticed, did Father Travis. He wasn’t running in sober clerical blacks but had perhaps been playing basketball or jogging before he dropped in to hear confessions. The two sprinted hotly down the dusty gravel road that led from the church into town. Cappy boldly crossed the highway and Father Travis followed. Cappy cut through yards he knew well and disappeared. But even in his cassock, which he’d hoisted and tucked into his belt, Father Travis was right behind him heading toward the Dead Custer Bar and Whitey’s gas station. We marveled at Father’s pale thick-muscled calves blurring in the sun.

What should we do?

Stay ready, I said.

Angus and I took our bikes from the rack and held Cappy’s between us. We hoped he’d gain enough on Father Travis so he could jump on and we could pedal away. We watched the bit of road we could see far over the trees because it was there Cappy would appear if Father Travis didn’t catch him. Soon, Cappy popped across. A moment later, Father Travis. Then they vanished and Angus said, He’s trying to lose him by zigzagging through the BIA housing. He knows those yards too. We turned to watch the next patch of road where they would appear and again it was Cappy first, Father Travis not far behind. Cappy knew the front and back entrances of every building, and fled in and out of the hospital, the grocery, the senior citizens, the tiny casino we had back then. He doubled back through the Dead Custer and in and out of Whitey’s. He took the road we’d taken past old lady Bineshi’s, hoping he’d surprise the dogs and they’d fix their teeth in Father Travis’s robe, but they made it through. Cappy hopscotched downhill through the graveyard and then the two of them made a loop that took them through the playground—it was mesmerizing to watch. Cappy set the swings going and sprang through the monkey bars, lightly touching down. Father Travis landed like an ape with knuckles on the ground, but kept going. They sprinted uphill, two tiny ciphers who now enlarged as Cappy ran toward us ready to jump on the bike we held and speed off. We would have made it. He would have made it. He came so close. Father Travis put on a burst of speed that brought him within a handsbreadth of Cappy’s shirt collar. Cappy floated out from under that hand. But it came down and grabbed his back wheel.

Cappy jumped off the bike but Father Travis, purple in the face, wheezing, had him by the shoulders and bodily lifted him. Angus and I had dropped our bikes to plead his case. Although we couldn’t have known for sure what Cappy planned to confess, it was now obvious. He had confessed what we feared he would confess.

Father, this does not look good, said Angus.

Let him down, please, Father Travis. I tried to imagine my father’s voice in this situation. Cappy is a minor, I said. Perhaps that was absurd, but Father Travis had hold of Cappy’s shirt now and had raised his fist and his fist stopped in the air.

A minor, I said, who came to you for help, Father Travis.

A Worf-like roar seized Father Travis and he threw Cappy on the ground. His foot went back but Cappy rolled out of range. We picked up our bikes because Father Travis wasn’t moving now. He was standing there, breathing in deep gasps, head lowered, glaring from under his brow. We’d somehow gotten the upper moral ground in that moment and we knew it. We got on our bikes.

Good day, Father, said Angus.

Father Travis stared past us as we rode away.



Shit and hell, I said to Cappy later. What were you thinking?

Cappy shrugged.

You told him about the church basement, where you did it?

Everything, said Cappy.

Shit and hell.

Clemence frowned at my language.

Sorry, Auntie, I said. We had gone to Clemence and Edward’s in hopes they were eating, which they weren’t, but that didn’t matter because Clemence knew why we came around and she immediately warmed up her usual hamburger macaroni, poured her usual swamp tea, only mixed, for us specially, with a can of lemonade. She fed Mooshum because he ate whenever anybody else ate, but his tremor had become so pronounced that he couldn’t eat soup.

Why’d you tell him? I asked.

I dunno, said Cappy, maybe what he said about his woman. Or what he said to me about You be the one to notice her, remember?

He said notice her, not, you know. I was delicate around Cappy, even though Clemence wasn’t listening right then. Although Cappy had had sex, it was on a higher plane, so I didn’t use any sex words. He got upset when they were associated with anything that had happened between himself and Zelia.

You could have gone to your dad, gone to your older brother, talked with them, I said.

I’m glad I went to Father Travis though, said Cappy, grinning.

Cappy’s run was already becoming history and his reputation would soar. Father Travis was not damaged by it either, as we’d never had a priest in such fine athletic shape.

The size of his calf muscles! said Clemence.

The last priest could not have run ten yards, said Mooshum. I saw him laid out in our yard once, dead drunk. That old priest weighed more than you and your skinny friends all put together. He cackled. But this new one has his pride. It will take him many prayers to get over Cappy’s run.

God help the gophers this week, said Uncle Edward as he passed through the room.

Clemence brought a dish towel and tied it around Mooshum’s neck. Between bites, he said, I ever tell you boys about the time I outrun Liver-Eating Johnson? How that old rascal used to track down Indians and kill us and take and eat our livers? That was a white wiindigoo, but when I was young and fleet, I run him down and whittled him away bite by bite and paid him back. I snapped off his ear with my teeth, and then his nose. Want to see his thumb?

You told them, said Clemence, who was intent on getting nourishment into his old gullet. But Mooshum wanted to talk.

Listen here, you boys. People say Liver-Eating Johnson was supposed to have escaped some Indians by chewing through a rawhide that bound his hands. The story had it he killed the young Indian who was guarding him and cut off that poor boy’s leg. Supposedly that scoundrel run off with that leg into the wilderness and survived by eating it until he made his way into friendlier territory.

Open up, said Clemence, and filled his mouth.

But that was not how it happened, said Mooshum. For I was there. I was hunting with some Blackfeet warriors when they caught Liver Eater. They planned on delivering him to the Crow Indians because he had killed so many of their people. I was sitting with that young Blackfeet who was supposed to guard him, but he wanted to kill Johnson so bad his hands twitched.

I talked to Liver Eater in the Blackfeet language, which he sort of understood. Liver Eater, I said, half the Blackfeet hate you so much they’re gonna stake you down buck-naked and skin you alive. But they’ll cut off your balls first and feed them to their old ladies right in front of your eyes.

Say there! said Clemence.

The Blackfeet’s eyes just glowed, said Mooshum. I said to Liver Eater that the other half of the Blackfeet wanted to tie him securely between their two best war ponies and then charge the opposite directions. The Blackfeet boy’s eyes sparked like candles at that. I told Liver-Eating Johnson that he was supposed to decide which of these fates he would prefer, so that the tribe could make preparations. Then we turned our backs on Liver Eater and warmed our hands over the fire. We left him to work on the rawhide thongs that bound his wrists. His ankles, too, were bound with strong ropes. Another rawhide at his waist fixed him to a tree. He had plenty to work on with his teeth, which were none too sturdy and that’s the point. You never saw a white trapper’s teeth, but they hadn’t the habits we Indians had of scrubbing our teeth clean with a birch twig. They let their teeth rot. You could smell his breath a mile before a trapper came into view. His breath generally smelled worse than the rest of him and that is saying a lot, eh? Liver Eater’s teeth were no different from any trapper’s. And now he was trying to chew off his cords. Every so often, we would hear him curse and spit—there went one tooth, then another broke off. We panicked him into chawing until he was all gum. Never again could he bite into an Indian. But we planned to make him helpless altogether. This young Blackfeet and me. He had a potion from his grandma that would make your eyes cross. As soon as Liver Eater fell asleep and snored, we dabbed that medicine onto his eyes. Now he couldn’t shoot straight. He would have to become a sheriff. That is, if the Crows did not kill him. Still, you don’t leave a rattlesnake alive to bite you next time you walk the path, I said to the Blackfeet, even if he don’t have fangs.

I wish we didn’t have to give him to the Crows, said the young man.

They need their fun, I said. But just in case he gets loose we should make sure he cannot pull the trigger on a gun. We could chop off his fingers, but then the Crow would say we’d stolen some of him.

There is a centipede if it bites a man his hands will swell up like mittens for the rest of his life, the Blackfeet told me. So we made little torches for ourselves and went around hunting for this bug, but while we were away Liver Eater did manage to escape. When we returned all we saw was the chewed straps on the ground surrounded by broken brown teeth. He got away. Then he made up the story about eating the Indian’s leg because unless he had a good story who’d believe a toothless cross-eyed old bugger?

Exactly, said Clemence.

Awee, I’m going to miss that Sonja, said Mooshum, winking at me.

What?

Oh, said Clemence. Whitey says she cleared out. She played sick yesterday and he came home to find her closet empty and one of the dogs gone with her. She took off in her old rattletrap car he’d just fixed to run smooth.

Is she coming back? I said.

Whitey told me her note said never. He said he slept with the other dog, he was so broke up. She said he’d best clean up his act. Amen to that.

The news made me dizzy and I told Cappy we needed to go somewhere. He said his usual polite and traditional thank-you to Clemence and then we biked away together, slow. Finally we got to the road that led, though it was a long ride off, to the hanging tree where Sonja and I had buried the passbook savings books. We stopped our bikes and I told Cappy the entire story—finding the doll, showing it to Sonja, her helping me stash the money in those bank accounts, and then where we put the passbooks in the tin box. I told him about how Sonja insisted I keep quiet so as to not put him in danger. Then I told him about Sonja’s diamond stud earrings and the lizard-skin boots and about the night Whitey beat on her and how it looked like she was planning to get away from him and I told him how much money I had found.

She could get real far on that, he said. He looked away, offended.

Yeah, I should have told you.

We didn’t talk for a while.

We should go dig up the little box anyway, he said. Just to make sure. Maybe she left you some money, said Cappy. His voice was neutral.

Enough for shoes like yours, I said as we rode along.

I offered to trade, said Cappy.

It’s okay. I like mine now. I bet she left me a goddamned note. That’s what I bet.

We both turned out to be right.

There was two hundred dollars, one passbook, and a piece of paper.

Dear Joe,

Cash is for your shoes. Also I am leaving you saving acct. to spend on an IV education out east.

I looked inside the passbook. It was ten thousand.

Treat your mom good. Some day you might deserve how good you grew up. I can have a new life with the $. No more of what you saw.

Love anyways,

Sonja

What the hell, I said to Cappy.

What’s she mean, what you saw?

I struggled. I wanted to tell the whole dance, every howl, every gliding move, and show him the tassel. But my tongue was stopped by obscure shame.

Nothing, I said.

I split the cash with Cappy and put the passbook and letter in my pocket. At first, he wouldn’t take the money and then I said it was so he could get a bus ticket to visit Zelia in Helena. Travel money, then. He folded the bills in his hand.

We started back home and halfway there we scared up a pair of ducks from a watery ditch.

After a couple miles, Cappy laughed. I got a good one. How come ducks don’t fly upside down? He didn’t wait for me to answer. They’re afraid of quacking up! Still happy with his wit, he left me at the door to have dinner with my mother and father. I went in and although we were quiet and distracted and still in a form of shock, we were together. We had candied yams, which I never liked but I ate them anyway. There was farmer ham and a bowl of fresh peas from the garden. My mother said a little prayer to bless the food and we all talked about Cappy’s run. I even told them Cappy’s joke. We stayed away from the fact of Lark’s existence, or anything to do with our actual thoughts.