Landreaux’s parents had left him at the bus with his things and driven away in his grandfather’s car. He was nine years old. The school people took his sack of clothes and belongings as he got on and that was the last he saw of it. He was going to a school run by the Bureau of Indian Affairs of the U.S. government, said his parents. They’d both been to mission schools and didn’t like them. They thought the government school would be much better. Plus they could visit him. They could take a different kind of bus if they moved to Minneapolis.
The seats of Landreaux’s bus were green and tough, hot because it was still August and the bus had been sitting in the parking lot. Halfway to the school there was supposed to be a lunch, and it was true. They got off at a park. The older kids ran around laughing. Waxed-paper parcels were handed out. The sandwich was soft white bread. There was butter and the cheese was orange. There was an apple. His stomach glowed. He asked for and got another sandwich, the same. He ate it all, drank iron-tasting water from a pump.
After he climbed back on the bus and was counted, he sank onto the floor. He crawled under the seat. The bus rumbled back onto the highway and Landreaux made himself comfortable there beneath the seat. He could make out a name emphatically formed many times on the metal inside of the bus there.
LaRose. LaRose. LaRose.
Girls behind him murmured, happy. Other children started crying, soft, in low hiccups. A four-year-old softly vomited. Some were staring out the window, mesmerized. Some kids laughed and chatted, expectant. Other children were going numb. Curled underneath the bus seat, Landreaux stared at that name. The letters were drawn in heavy pencil, traced over and over. LaRose. He dozed off and soon he was sleeping heavily on a full stomach. He did not wake when the bus stopped, when all of them got off. He did not wake when they shaved his head for lice and left him in the shower while they found him new clothes without bugs. Not even in bed that night, the next morning either, did he wake. He never woke up. He was still sleeping on that bus.
TAKE IT ALL
1967–1970
Romeo & Landreaux
THE DORMITORY BUILDING was made of tightly mortised red bricks. It was a simple boxy building, the main entrance opening in the center. When Landreaux pushed the dull steel of the main doors, the inside pressure changed and a hoarse vibration of sound escaped. A low sigh, the ghost of Milbert Good Road. The floors were pale linoleum tiles polished to a gloss. In late afternoon, the heatless sun blazed down the central corridor. Little boys were on one side, big boys on the other. There were large divided barrackslike sleeping quarters to either side of the hallway. There were two bunk beds to a room, four boys. The bathrooms and showers were halfway down the hall and the matrons’ glass-fronted offices were set watchfully at either end. Down in the basement there was a laundry room with banks of washers and dryers chugging day and night.
One of the matrons in the little boys’ wing, plump and freckled with blazing thick white hair in a short bowl cut, explained to Landreaux the system of demerits. His name was added to a chart in a bound book, at her office desk. If he didn’t wash or if he wet the bed, if he overslept, if he was noisy after lights-out or backtalked or went out of school boundaries, or most especially, if he ever ran away, demerits would be marked by his name. Mrs. Vrilchyk explained that if he had too many demerits he could lose recess, trips to town. If he ran away it would be much worse, she said. He might not get his privileges back. Landreaux had heard they made boys wear long green shame dresses, shaved their heads, made them scrub the sidewalks. But no, another boy had told him on the bus, they had done this in a different school and now they’d stopped. Mrs. Vrilchyk was still talking. Running away was dangerous. A girl had died two years ago. Mrs. Vrilchyk, whom everyone called Bowl Head, said that the girl was tossed in a ditch. There are bad people out there. So don’t run away, she said. Her voice wasn’t mean, or kind, just neutral. She patted his shoulder and said that she could tell he was a good boy. He wouldn’t run away.
Every time she said the words run away, Landreaux had a feeling about the word: runaway. The word bounced him up inside.