The Round House - By Louise Erdrich Page 0,134

telling the doctor to let me die. All those years later. Call me and say, Hello, it’s your mother.

I was silent.

And he could not let go, she said at last. Because he came back and he came back like he wanted his monster killed, though another reason has occurred to me also.

What’s that?

He was nervous about Mayla. I just know she’s somewhere on the reservation. He had to keep checking on her, make sure she wasn’t found.

Do you think she’s alive?

No.

After a while, dread stole into me. I asked, Am I like him?

No, she said. This’ll get to you. Or whoever, I mean. This could wreck you. Don’t let it wreck you, Joe. What could you do? Or whoever do?

She shrugged. But me, that’s another story. It’s me who is not so different, Joe. It’s me who should have shot him with Albert’s old twelve-gauge. Though if Linden had his druthers, I think he’d rather have got shot with the deer rifle.

Yeah, it’s about that rifle, I said.

The rifle.

It’s under your porch. Can you hide it? Get it off the reservation?

She grinned at me in a way fit to burst and I thought crazy, but then she bit her lip modestly and blinked.

Buster found it already, Joe. He knows when anything new enters his territory. I thought he was interested in a skunk. Then I looked underneath and saw the edge of that black Hefty bag.

She saw my shock.

Don’t worry, Joe. Want to know where I’ve been on my sick leave? To Pierre, to my brother Cedric’s. He got his training down in Fort Benning, Georgia, and sure knew how to disassemble that rifle. We threw a couple of pieces in the Missouri. I drove back here in a zigzag I can’t even remember, down back roads, and ditched the rest of it in sloughs. She held up her empty palms and said, Tell whoever did it to rest easy. Her eyes clouded, her look gentled.

Your mom? How is she?

She was out in the garden, picking bush beans. She said she was fine, but I mean she said it over and over so I’d believe her.

I’ll come see her. I want you to give her this.

Linda took something from her pocket and held her fist over my hand. When she opened it a small black screw fell out.

Tell her she can keep this in her jewelry box. Or bury it. Whatever she likes.

I put the screw in my pocket.

Halfway home, blown along all the way back with the usual frozen foil-wrapped brick of banana bread numbing my armpit, I realized of course that the screw in my pocket was part of the rifle. Steadied by the wind, I didn’t have to pause or use my handlebars. I fished it out and winged it into the ditch.

This time it was Angus’s bottle of Captain Jack’s stolen from his mother’s boyfriend with a handful of Valium pills and a grocery bag halfway filled with cans of cold Blatz.

We were drinking at the edge of the construction site. After the lazy bulldozers and the Bobcats stopped moving the same dirt piles around, the place was ours. Some days they left our bike tracks alone, other days they obliterated our work. We had no idea what was going to be built. There was always the same amount of dirt.

A federal project, said Zack.

Cappy tipped the beer down with a pill, lay back, and stared up into the leaves. The light was turning gold.

This here is my favorite time of day, he said. He took a small wallet-size school photo of Zelia from his cowboy shirt pocket and held it to his forehead.

Ssshhh, they’re communicating, Angus said.

I miss you too, baby, said Cappy after a few moments. He put the photo back in his pocket, pressed down the pearl snaps, and patted his heart.

It’s a beautiful love, I said. I turned on my side and leaned into the earth and threw up a little. I buried the puke with dirt. Nobody noticed. I mumbled, I wouldn’t mind a beautiful love.

Cappy handed me a pamphlet. Her last letter, man. It was about the Rapture. This was in it. Cappy smiled upward.

I looked at the pamphlet steadily, reading the words several times to get their meaning

Rapture, yeah man, said Zack.

Not that kind of rapture, said Cappy. It’s a mass liftoff. There’s only a certain number of people who can go. They don’t apparently take Catholics so Zelia’s family is thinking of converting before the Tribulation. She wants

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