Romeo pulled up next to the house, went right up to the front door, knocked. The big outside dogs were barking wildly, but he threw down a few bits of meat for them to argue over. The little inside dogs barked in the house entry. Nobody else answered and it was a cheap key lockset from Walmart. He pried the worn bolt gently from the frame with his flat-head screwdriver, entered, threw down a few more pieces of stew meat. The dogs wagged their tails and followed him straight to the bedroom. The TV tray table beside the bed held a few amber plastic bottles, which he examined. He took one. There was a bedside table with a half-open drawer. Bingo. Three more bottles, one entirely full. In the bathroom, he went carefully through the medicine cabinet, examining each medication with a frown. He smiled at one and shook it, pocketed three more. No need to be greedy. It was 10:30 now. He fixed the lock so it wouldn’t fall off and left. And there was still half a pound of meat in his pocket.
Back at the funeral by 10:55, he rolled the prescriptions in a plastic bag and stashed them under the backseat. The meat too. He took a small dose of Darvocet and entered the church silently. Everyone was focused up front, on the gathered pallbearers. As they carried out the body, he put his hand on his heart. To save gas, he hitched a ride to the cemetery.
After the sad burial, everybody cried in relief. Romeo rode back to the church and followed the mourners downstairs to the funeral lunch. There, he ate his fill. He drank weak coffee and talked to his relatives and their relatives. He stayed to the end of things, drank more coffee, ate sheet cake, took home leftovers stacked precariously on paper plates. He accepted with a sad little nod the program featuring the picture of a man who was smiling into the camera and holding an engraved plaque that must have honored him. Once back in his apartment, Romeo used the stiff paper to neaten and fix his first two lines.
Where to, my man? he said to the universe.
Romeo sniffed up the lines and fell back in the captain’s chair. Away he traveled safe in the backseat, comfy in the shaved gray plush. His companions, the photographs on his wall, smiled into the faces of lost photographers. Some were school photos, one was of Emmaline and her mother, his beloved teacher, Mrs. Peace. There was Landreaux and two other boys—both dead now. A smudged picture of Star hoisting a beer. Hollis, several photographs from grade school, one from high school, one of the two of them together. Romeo and Hollis. Much cherished. There was a long ago clipped yellowed newspaper wedding picture of Emmaline and someone with Landreaux’s body and a scratched-out face. Also, there were people whose names he’d forgotten. Romeo now lifted off. Floated up through the popcorn ceiling and the black mold. Up through the asphalt shingles flapping on the roof. On the other side of the reservation town his fellow traveler, Mrs. Peace, passed him in space. She laid her hand on his shoulder, the way she’d done to boys in school. He ducked, though she had never struck him. He always ducked when someone gestured too quickly. Reflex.
Hello, beauty
NOLA CAME TO weekday Mass and sat down in Father Travis’s office afterward, waiting for him. He was often detained in the hallway. Sure enough, Nola heard someone talking now. Father Travis was listening, dropping in an occasional question. The two voices were figuring out some repair detail on the basement wall. Or maybe the windows. Cold was threading in, then spring would bring seepage, mud, snakes. There had always been snakes around and sometimes inside the church. Several places in the area and on the Plains, into Manitoba, were like that. The snakes had ancient nests deep in the rocks where they massed every spring and could not be driven out.
Nola had never been afraid of snakes. She drew them to her. Here was one now—a gentle garter snake striped yellow with a red line at the mouth. Hello, beauty. The snake curved soundlessly under a shelf of books and pamphlets, then stopped, tasting the air. I might as well talk to you, thought Nola. He’s not coming and I don’t think he wants to see me. Thinks I’m weak. I’m alone with this, anyway. I don’t like where my thoughts go but I can’t argue them down all of the time, can I? Maggie will be all right, after, she’ll just flourish away. LaRose will be so relieved. Peter is becoming love-hate for me, you know? He’s getting on my last nerve. I know I shouldn’t sleep so much. Who would notice an old green chair? Snakes notice. You, or the one in my iris bed when I was putting them to sleep, the irises. When you’re thinking of not being here, everything becomes so fevered, fervent? And the sun comes in. Strikes in. To be alive for that, just to see it striking through a window in the afternoon. A warm light falling on my shoes. And the steam comes on, hissing in the pipes. That sound’s a comfort. Maybe I’m not seeing properly. No, there is not a snake underneath that shelf, it’s just a piece of dark nylon rope.
Nola!
I’m just waiting here. I thought you’d maybe have time.
Father Travis stood in the doorway. It was disturbing that she’d showed up after she’d tried to blackmail him, he thought. You’d think she’d have better sense. Meaning she might be serious about suicide. He should stop comparing normal people to lost Marines. And he should never have laughed.
I’m leaving the door open, see? Don’t pop your breast at me again, okay?
I won’t, Nola said.
How are you?
Better, not better.
Father Travis sighed and tore off a piece of paper toweling, slid it across the top of his desk. Nola reached out, caught it up, and put it to her face.
I don’t like where my thoughts go, she sorrowed.
I’ve heard everything, said Father Travis.
I thought that piece of rope underneath your shelf was a snake.
They both looked; there was nothing.
Probably there was a snake, said Father Travis. They like the steam pipes.
Of course they do. She smiled. I don’t know why I thought it was a rope.
Father Travis waited for her to say more. The steam pipes clanged and hissed.
A rope, he said. Why?
I have no idea.
Because you have a plan?
She nodded, mutely.
A plan to hang yourself?
She froze, then babbled. Don’t tell, please. They’ll take him away. Maggie already hates me. I don’t blame her but I hate myself worse. I am a very, very bad mother. I let Dusty go outside, didn’t watch him. I sent him up to bed because he was naughty, fingerprints on everything. He climbed up, got a candy bar. He loves, loved, chocolate. Maggie put him up to it. She was sick that day, or anyway she was pretending. And she put him up to being naughty and I sent him up to bed. But he sneaked out.
Do you blame Maggie?
No.
You sure?
Maybe I did at first, when I was crazier. But no. I am a bad mother, yes, but if I permanently blamed her that would be, I don’t know, that would be a disaster, right?
Yes.
Nola studied the palms of her hands, open on her lap.
To blame yourself, that would also be disaster.
Her head swirled and yellow spots blazed in space. She lay her forehead carefully on the desk.
I yelled, Father Travis. I yelled at him so loud he cried.
After Nola left, Father Travis stared at the desk phone. She had a plan, but telling about Dusty’s last day had seemed to lift a burden. She seemed reasonable, denying the possibility that she might hurt herself now. Begged him not to tell Peter, not to add this to his burden. He’d crack, she said. Father Travis didn’t doubt that. But there would be no piecing him together if his wife killed herself. He lifted the receiver out of the cradle. But then he put it back. Such an air of relief surrounded her as she walked away—she was wearing white runners. Her step was springy. She had promised to talk to him if these thoughts came over her again.
WOLFRED HACKED OFF a piece of weasel-gnawed moose. He carried it into the cabin, put it in a pot heaped with snow. He built up the fire just right and hung the pot to boil. He had learned from the girl to harvest red-gold berries, withered a bit in winter, which gave meat a slightly skunky but pleasant fla
vor. She had taught him how to make tea from leathery swamp leaves. She had shown him rock lichen, edible but bland. The day was half gone.
Mashkiig, the girl’s father, walked in, lean and fearsome, with two slinking minions. He glanced at the girl, then looked away. He traded his furs for rum and guns. Mackinnon told him to get drunk far from the trading post. The day he’d killed the girl’s uncles, Mashkiig had stabbed everyone else in his vicinity. He’d slit Mink’s nose and ears. Now he tried to claim the girl, then to buy her, but Mackinnon wouldn’t take back any of the guns.
After Mashkiig left, Mackinnon and Wolfred each took a piss, hauled some wood in, then locked the inside shutters, and loaded their weapons. About a week later, they heard that he’d killed Mink. The girl put her head down and wept.
Wolfred was a clerk of greater value than he knew. He cooked well and could make bread from practically nothing. He’d kept his father’s yeast going halfway across North America, and he was always seeking new sources of provender. He was using up the milled flour that Mackinnon had brought to trade. The Indians hadn’t got a taste for it yet. Wolfred had ground wild rice to powder and added it to the stuff they had. Last summer he had mounded up clay and hollowed it out into an earthen oven. That’s where he baked his weekly loaves. As the loaves were browning, Mackinnon came outside. The scent of the bread so moved him, there in the dark of winter, that he opened a keg of wine. They’d had six kegs and were down to five. Mackinnon had packed the good wine in himself, over innumerable portages. Ordinarily, he partook of the undiluted stuff the bois de brule humped in to supply and resupply the Indians. Now he and Wolfred drank together, sitting on two stumps by the heated oven and a leaping fire.
Outside the circle of warmth, the snow squeaked and the stars pulsed in the impenetrable heavens. The girl sat between them, not drinking. She thought her own burdensome thoughts. From time to time, both of the men looked at her profile in the firelight. Her dirty face was brushed with raw gold. As the wine was drunk, the bread was baked. Reverently, they removed the loaves and put them, hot, inside their coats. The girl opened her blanket to accept a loaf from Wolfred. As he gave it to her, he realized that her dress was torn down the middle. He looked into her eyes and her eyes slid to Mackinnon. Then she ducked her head and held the dress together with her elbow while she accepted the loaf.
Inside, they sat on small stumps, around a bigger stump, to eat. The cabin had been built many years ago, around the large stump so that it could serve as a table.
Wolfred looked so searchingly at Mackinnon that the trader finally said, What?
Mackinnon had a flaccid bladder belly, crab legs, a snoose-stained beard, pig-mad red eyes, red sprouts of dandered hair, wormish lips, pitchy teeth, breath that knocked you sideways, and nose hairs that dripped snot on and spoiled Wolfred’s perfectly inked numbers. Mackinnon was also a dead shot, and hell with his claw hammer. Wolfred had seen him use it on one of the very minions who’d shadowed Mashkiig that day. He was dangerous. Yet. Wolfred chewed and stared. He was seized with sharp emotion. For the first time in his life, Wolfred began to see the things of which he was capable.
The Crossbeams
JUNE. BETWEEN THE two houses, maybe six billion wood ticks hatched and began their sticky, hopeful, doomed search. In that patch of woods, there was perhaps a wood tick for every human being on earth. Josette said this to Snow because she knew her sister was deeply repulsed by wood ticks. No matter how meticulously Snow checked, washed, shook out her clothing, and avoided the woods, she would get wood ticks. She drew them worse than anyone. Because of the ticks, she said she couldn’t wait to live in some big tickless city.
You’d miss your little friends, said Josette. Her jeans were too tight and it was hot. She snapped open the waist and flapped her arms.
They were going over to fetch LaRose. The first heat brought ticks swarming out of their hatch nests. They filled the grass and flung themselves off leaves and twigs toward the supersensory scent of mammals. Walking the path, Snow felt one in her hair and snatched it out.
I’m going back, she said. I’ll take the road even if Mom sees me.
That’s just a baby tick, Josette scoffed. Hey, I’m not taking that dust-ball road. It’s twice as long. If you leave me to get LaRose by myself, dude, you can’t have my turn with the walkman.
The Sony Walkman was their joy, their baby—a sleek metallic CD player for the few CDs they owned: the soundtrack to Romeo + Juliet, Ricky Martin, Dr. Dre, Black Lodge Singers. They had to share it and were strict about scheduling their days and hours. Josette had been sent to bring LaRose back to their house. She didn’t want to go alone and had bribed Snow with all of tomorrow’s hours.
Okay. Snow bent like a dark birch, took off her long-sleeved shirt, and draped it over her head, huddled underneath.
I should have worn my hoodie.
It’s so weird to see you not wearing your hoodie. I mean, Shane’s hoodie.
It was his wrestling team hoodie, which he’d given to Snow in order to show how serious he was about her. But then.
I’m just off him today, Snow said.
Josette knew that Snow’s boyfriend had found a different girlfriend, but she didn’t say so. It made her furious. She wanted to punch Shane in the liver. But when she said things like that to Snow it upset her. Snow said violence gagged her.
I just hate having to work there now, said Snow.
They both worked more regularly now at Whitey’s. They were the youngest, but Old Whitey and his stepdaughter, London, ran it and they liked how the girls gave their all to the job. Every time Snow worked, handsome Shane came in and bought Gatorade and microwave burritos.
See why we like robot guys? Always so much better than real guys. If Shane was only a mech. He’d do my bidding.
Haha, what would you command him?
Just be nice, you know?
I know. Don’t worry. I’ll bust his ass.
Snow must have been deeply upset because she said thanks in Ojibwe, miigwech, which sort of meant this is a real thank-you. Josette was moved.
There was the house. They paused in the brush and regarded the angry neatness of its yard. There were planted flowers, bunched and glowing. A small hedge fiercely trimmed.
La vida loca, said Josette.
I know, it’s so sad.
She tries so hard to be okay, said Josette. I kind of get it. And I like her flowers.
Me too. But she scares me.
You go first.
No, you.
Okay, but you talk to her.
No, I can’t. I’ll bust out.
Nola had developed an unnerving force field. The vibrational aura flowed with her to the door and pulsed toward the girls when she opened it—not wide, just a crack—and said, Oh, it’s you. Vibrations flowed out when she spoke, and sealed the door like plastic wrap when Nola closed it softly in the girls’ faces. When she opened the door again, she did it so slowly that the ions were only slightly disarranged. With his backpack on, LaRose popped through. The aura was sucked back in and the three of them ran across the lawn.
After the first time, Nola had stopped herself from watching out the window. She grabbed her headphones and walked straight through the house, out the sliding double glass doors, out onto the deck and down its four steps, across the yard to the shed with its crossbeams that worried Peter. She opened the doors, topped up the tank of the riding lawn mower, then got on and adjusted the walkman clipped to her belt. Peter had given her some very strange music for Christmas. It was soothing and yet disturbing, pipes and echoey voices chanting, ethereal soprano solos, wordless and mysterious voices, melodies that swirled, collapsed, revived in some ruthless disorienting key. She could listen to this music indefinitely as she cut the grass over and over on the riding lawn mower.
Eventually she parked, got off, and went into the house. She went up to her room, leaned on the closet door, stared into the clothing. Except for her one purple dress, she had four of everything, in neutr
al colors, and she wore only these things. Four jackets, four pants, four skirts, four jeans, four shirts, four panty hose. Four of everything for dress-up, and four for everyday. But she had lots of pretty underwear that she bought from a catalog.
At first, she was only going to change her underwear. Her belly was tight. A push-up bra of scratchy maroon lace. A tiny white bikini. Then she stood there and laid out the eggshell white shirt, the whiter pants, upon the bed. She took the brown heels out of their box. Laid the gray jacket, tailored, with no collar, around the eggshell shirt. The whole outfit was assembled there as though by an undertaker. Too businessy to be dead in, she thought, and took away the white pants and replaced them with a short, flaring skirt. I’ll have to think again, she decided. She tapped her lips and opened the closet.
Wild Things
THE TWO GIRLS and LaRose between them walked back through the woods. Snow did not forget about the ticks but just gave up, she was so happy. They had their little brother back for a few days now and the light was pure green, cool, the sun hot only outside the trees, on the road. Halfway there, LaRose stopped and said to them, Can we go? They knew he meant to the tree. Nobody knew how he knew about the tree, but he did know and often he insisted on going there when the girls came to get him. They didn’t mind so much. They never told their parents. It was easy to get to and in a moment they stood before Dusty’s climbing tree, the branch, and the space of ground beneath, where dead flowers, tobacco ties, loose sage, and two small rain-beaten stuffed animals—a monkey and a lion—were arranged. LaRose put his backpack down and took out Where the Wild Things Are. He gave it to Josette and said, Read it. She read it out loud. After her voice stopped, they stood in the resounding sweetness of birdcall.
What was that about? said Josette.
LaRose took back the book. He turned it to his pack with a little frown.