Do you love me? asked Waylon.
No, said Maggie.
You’re lying, huh. You love me.
I said no. Maggie laughed.
He put his hand around her face and adored her chin. She was thinking about her volleyball kill score—she had got up to 200 last season. It would take at least another couple years to hit 1,000.
Okay then?
All right then, said Maggie. Let’s try it. I mean, if it hurts too much you have to quit.
She leaned toward him and he tried not to grapple with her, not treat her like he couldn’t wait, not lunge or buck, tried to be all manly and collected, but it was all too unbelievable. She was just so small but just so quick. She got on top of him and moved aside her panties, unzipped him and got him out and started to try.
Put it in, she said.
They couldn’t get it in. She got off, lay down, opened her legs. He got on top and tried that way. It worked better, but she screamed.
Get it out!
He moved backward.
Okay, she panted. Try again.
Waylon sweat and worried, trying to slow down but stay hard all at once. Then it was suddenly better and she relaxed under him and said it was okay and she could handle it.
So move, she said.
His uncles had teased him, Hold back, you got to hold back. They had eased their arms in slow cranks like pulling a boat back to an idle. So he tried to hold back, yet to keep moving. This was only the third time for him, and he had promised himself he would hold back by counting, thinking of numbers, as he was bad at math.
That’s good, said Maggie.
He thought of the wrong number and lunged too hard. She cried out, dug her nails into the small of his back, so deep he could feel the blood. He stopped. His eyelids drooped, but he wasn’t at all mean, he was just trying to hold it.
Okay, said Maggie. Now go.
He moved and moved in a trance of happiness. She moved with him underneath that tree and suddenly she lifted out of the pain. She was right at home with herself. She was Maggie. The owl had entered her body and she was staring out of its golden eyes.
FATHER TRAVIS FORCED himself to back the van from the Ravich driveway without laying rubber, to shift calmly from reverse into drive. Then he gunned it to Landreaux’s house, jumped out, and knocked on the door. Emmaline appeared, shadowed by the screen. He tried not to rest in the cool shade of her gaze, her presence behind the mesh door. She said come in. He stepped inside. She stood too close to him. No, it was a normal distance. Any distance was too close.
What’s happening? Is everyone okay?
Father Travis could not think of how to put words to the buzzing in his head.
They’re okay, except I need to find Landreaux. He . . . Romeo . . . he had this idea or notion he’s been putting together that Landreaux was, well, he was high when he killed . . .
No, said Emmaline, standing taller. He was not. Romeo makes things up.
She stood taller, stepped back from him. She made more distance between them. He wanted to cross that, step toward her, but wrenched back to stay focused on Landreaux. Emmaline read him. She folded her arms and drew into herself. Wisps of her being had dispersed and she gathered them abruptly in. In that moment she went back to existing as one with the father of her children. She was expressionless, waiting.
Romeo makes things up, she said again.
I know, said Father Travis. But he sounds convincing. He told Peter.
Emmaline’s arms dropped away, to her sides.
Where are they?
I need to know where they’d go if they went out hunting.
Her eyes went a pale green and she knew what was happening.
Federal land, west.
Emmaline told him how to get there but she didn’t ask to come along. She just stood there holding herself together.
LANDREAUX APPEARS FIRST to Peter’s naked eye as movement, a faraway shift of greeny blur as he parts leaves. Then he gets Landreaux in his gun sights and watches. Peter’s hands are cool and steady because they belong to the other man, the one who pictured doing this and did not, the man who split Landreaux’s skull a thousand times chopping wood. The other man who dreamed what Peter is doing now.
Landreaux is still far away, stepping carefully along. He stops from time to time and pulls aside a branch, giving Peter a clear shot. When he sees that Landreaux isn’t going to obstruct him, Peter feels the reason they were friends. He sees Landreaux’s lips move and is glad that Landreaux is praying. The way it has to end feels right. An agreement signed by both parties. Witnessed by two sons. He lets Landreaux come close enough for him to take the infallible shot. Closer and closer yet. There it is. Peter squeezes the trigger gently with his heart exploding. Nothing. He knows his rifle’s loaded because he always keeps it loaded. He never did unload it and nobody knows where he hides the key—so he puts the crosshairs on Landreaux’s third eye. Shoots. Nothing. Peter wills himself to pull the trigger again. But now his hand won’t do it. Won’t do it. Landreaux’s face fills the sights.
Peter lowers the rifle but holds it close to him. He watches Landreaux still stepping wearily toward his death. From a human distance, now, Peter sees LaRose in Landreaux’s solid, hip-slung walk. Funny, he never noticed. Then he sees more. Sees all he has kept himself from seeing. Sees the sickness rising out of things. The phosphorus of grief consuming those he loves. A flow of pictures touches swiftly, lightly, through his thinking—all lost things; then all the actual lost things: the aspirin, the knives, the rope, all deadly in Nola’s hands. And the bullets deadly in his own hands.
LaRose.
The picture of those small capable boy hands now fills Peter. Those hands curving to accept the bullets. Loading and unloading his gun. And the ropes, the poisons. Those hands taking them from their places and getting rid of them. The missing rat poison, strychnine, the missing bleach. LaRose saving him now, saving both his fathers.
Well, Landreaux. Peter turns from the murderer. Landreaux doesn’t need any help to die. Let him hoof out his dread alone. Let him walk. Peter will be the only one who knows he pulled the trigger. The knowledge engulfs him. There is a slough glittering in the new air. Peter walks to the edge, runs, hops, and tosses the rifle like a spear toward the sun-sequined water.
As it crashes in, he feels one moment of lightness. He lifts his arms. He holds his arms up waiting for the energy of absolution. Nothing comes. Nothing falls from the warm, sunny, ordinary sky except the same knowledge. He pulled the trigger. Nothing happened. He killed Landreaux. Nothing happened.
FAR OFF, DOWN the broad county gravel road, Father Travis spots a small figure moving along the ditch. When he recognizes Landreaux, he feels the cold tension leave his arms. Weakness, so foreign he doesn’t know what he is feeling, washes down his body, from his heart, draining his nerves. He pulls over and switches off the engine. His heart is still vibrating, his nerves on alert. Whatever happened, Landreaux is right there in front of him.
A dissonance in his thinking surfaces.
Along with his relief, there is a bizarre disappointment related to the fleeting thoughts that passed through his mind, rejected, but popping up again. Basically, what if. What if Landreaux was just gone. What if, well, it meant he was dead. Okay. What if Landreaux was dead. Forget what would happen to everybody else.
What if Landreaux was dead and Emmaline needed me now.
What if there was no Landreaux, just Emmaline, what if.
All along the road these thoughts had come and gone, but Father Travis had not reacted to them. It was seeing Landreaux, kicking along the road, shambling toward him, that made the thoughts real.
Not that he’d asked for the thoughts. Sure, he’d rejected and rejected, but the thoughts had come into his mind again and again. He clenched his hands on the steering wheel and lowered his head, shut his eyes. Everything was all right because Landreaux was alive, but he’d had those thoughts.
Who are you?
F
ather Travis addressed himself in a small voice, in a whispery voice. He looked up. Landreaux still walking toward him. Larger. Larger.
I could still run him over, said Father Travis to the windshield.
After a hopeless moment, watching the big man trudge toward him, Father Travis felt the wildness burst from a space below his heart. The sound came out weird. Like a jackal. Something in a zoo. He didn’t recognize this sound he was making until it looped into a kind of laughter.
I could hit the gas!
He was still laughing when Landreaux got to him. When Landreaux opened the passenger door. Father Travis took a look at Landreaux’s big ol’ sad-sack face, exactly the face Romeo had described, and gave a sobbing guffaw. Slammed his hand on the steering wheel. Laughed and laughed.
Landreaux shut the door and kept walking.
He made it home around dark with questions still rattling in his head. Did Peter really try to kill me? Or was he just putting fear into me? Father Travis? Was it all a joke and what was true? Josette had put a wobbly tin fence up along the side of the house, and he caught his foot. Nearly fell up the steps. So maybe Emmaline, sitting at the kitchen table, thought for a moment he was drunk, but when he walked in she knew he was just clumsy.
Whatever the answers to the heavy questions were, he was weightless now. He’d got lighter and lighter all the way home until suddenly, at the doorway, he’d lifted off the ground, kicking off his shoes at the door. He went straight to her, bent over and put his arms around his wife sitting in the chair. She put her hand up and held his arm. The kitchen light was harsh. She closed her eyes and leaned back. He pushed his chin lightly along the crown of her head.
You smell like outside, she said.
She kept her hand on his arm, frail gesture. Hardly the way a woman treats her husband when she’s become aware that it might be her cousin Zack who comes to the door. Hardly. Something, though. The hand on his arm hardly represented what had been their passionate marriage, their once-upon-a-reservation storybook time. She just held his arm. He leaned over her, his elbows on the back of the chair. Leaning wasn’t much, when compared to how they used to push a chair under the doorknob in a cheap motel where the lock was broken. They used to think they were something special. Lucky. They used to say they were sure nobody else had ever been this happy, ever been this much in love. They used to say, We will get old together. Will you still love me when I’m shriveled up? I will love you even better. You’ll be sweeter. Like a raisin. Or a prune. We’ll be eating prunes together. That’s the way they used to talk. But now they were tasting the goddamn green plums, weren’t they. Bitter. What about me? Will you love me? I don’t know, it depends on where you shrivel up. That’s the way they used to talk.
Landreaux straightened up and got two glasses of water. He sat down in another chair. Emmaline felt a surge of fear that suddenly contained what might be, could be, identified as possibility. She took a drink of water and closed her eyes. She saw a slough thick with reeds, muck bottom, tangled, both deep and shallow. She saw the ducks batter their way across and up. She saw herself, Landreaux beside her. She saw them both wade in together.
WHEN FATHER TRAVIS returned to the church grounds, having spoken to Peter Ravich, having made Peter read the coroner’s report, the new priest was there. He was wearing an elaborate medieval priest outfit with chain for a belt and shoes that looked like carpet slippers. He was from a newly formed order. He was young, with a creamy complexion, apple-blossom cheeks, bright cornflower eyes, and corn-silk hair cropped to the skull. His voice was startling, high-pitched, but commanding of attention all the same.
I suppose you’re Father Travis, said the new priest. A frowning flush mottled his cheeks.
I suppose I am, said Father Travis.
I am Father Dick Bohner.
Oh no, thought Father Travis.
I am your replacement, said Father Bohner.
You should go by Richard here, said Father Travis.
Dick is my name, said the new priest fiercely.
Of course it is, said Father Travis.
Things will be changing around here, said Father Bohner, flushing still more violently. Saturday mass should have started ten minutes ago.
You’re late then, said Father Travis.
Father Travis walked away to pack his suitcases. He had come with two hard-sided Samsonite cases. Somehow, in the packing, he found that he had downsized. He had only enough to fill one suitcase. His cash, what there was of it, was in a bag behind a loose ceiling tile. He called Randall Lafournais, who drove down to Fargo every week, and arranged a ride with him. Father Travis decided to get off in one of the train stop towns, buy a ticket on the Empire Builder to Fargo, Minneapolis, Chicago, and then continue on east by train and south by bus to Jacksonville, North Carolina, and Camp Lejeune. He would walk down the boulevard among the memorial trees. He would visit the broken wall and touch the names engraved there.
As he was folding clothes, he realized that after all he had very little money. The phone rang. He let it ring and then pounced suddenly, brimming over, laughing.
Shit-broke soldier of God here! What can I do for you?
The person on the other end of the line was an Indian who laughed with him and hung up.
You love a woman you can never have, he thought, dropping the phone. Suck it up and deal. But his blood expanded and his heart seemed ready to explode. He sat on the bed, put his head in his hands. He thought again about the money. After a while he got up, stood heavily over his last few belongings laid out on the bed. He picked up the slippery blouse he’d asked Emmaline to give him, put it to his face, then added it to the suitcase. He snapped the suitcase shut. It was a heavy, dull red thing.
THE GATHERING
You Go
JOSETTE AND SNOW wanted to give Hollis a big three-cake graduation party. For that, they decided that they needed a yard and a flower garden. Josette’s English teacher said that she could have the classroom geraniums. Carmine geraniums. Today, Josette transplanted the classroom flowers and scattered the seeds of the marigolds, which Hollis had plucked last fall and saved for her. She also threw grass seed onto the pounded-dirt volleyball court. Snow had bought a hose for the outdoor spigot and she tried to water, but the seeds just swirled around in clumps.
I think you have to open up the dirt, said Coochy, looking at the whole thing critically.
We’re hunter-gatherers by nature, said Josette. Farming’s not our tradition.
Wrong, said Snow. Historically, we grew potatoes, beans, pumpkins. We had our own seeds and stuff. Invented corn.
We called it maize, said Josette, significantly. She paused. So we lost our traditions, then.
Just our family did, said Coochy. Lots of Indians have gardens. Grandma even had a garden. It was over there.
A verdant patch of weeds blew in the wind. Maybe there were flowers, but the girls didn’t know what leaves to look for. They eyed the bare dirt mournfully.
Maybe we can bring out rugs.
No, said Josette. I want a lawn. God damn it. I’m going over and talk to Maggie. Her mom’s got lawn magic. The least we could get is a lawn, right?
Dad and Mom know how to make a lawn, said Coochy.
They don’t have time. Or the inclination, said Josette, a little pompously. She was always like that with Coochy, showing off her words, her understanding. He was her little brother, so she went on lecturing him.
It just isn’t a priority for them. However, if we’re giving an out-and-out celebratory barbecue for Hollis, we can’t be mingling on a bare dirt volleyball court.
I getcha, said Coochy, watching her stride off on her strong, short legs.
Good-bye, Professor Headupyourass, he called.
Josette went the long way, the mile down the highway, and turned down the Raviches’ drive. The dog barked three times, then recognized Josette, and came to meet her, head down, butt wagging. Maggie was there with LaRose. They were out on the grass, crouching over with tools.
When they saw Josette, they threw down the tools. LaRose ran to her.
Hey, said Josette.
She had never really visited, just picked up LaRose.
Come on, said Maggie, trying to cram down a smile. Let’s go inside, get ice cream.
Actually, I wanted to ask your mom how to make a lawn.
They’re gone to town. C’mon, we’re hungry.
Josette followed them into the house. She’d never been past the front door. She looked all around, at the tan carpet, tan couch, at the brown and golden throw pillows, plumped and lined up.
This is where LaRose lives his other life, she thought.
There were old, polished, antiquey things. Heavy milk white pitchers. Carved wooden clocks and picture frames. In one of the pictures, LaRose and Maggie sat in front of Peter and Nola. They were dressed up and smiling—not stiffly but naturally, as though they had always been together. Josette passed her hand over a shining end table. Every piece of furniture was bare on top, or maybe had one decorative item on its surface. A glass horse. A series of dull green ceramic boxes, various sizes. The bookshelf had a few books arranged by what, color? All were stacked and aligned with exacting precision. The dining room table was bare. Not even a doily. The kitchen counters didn’t have random bottles of medicine or bread bags or tools spread across them. Everything was contained in cabinets. Maggie opened a cabinet door, to get cones. Josette saw clear storage jars containing various shapes of pasta. At first the house was like a movie set. An ad in a magazine. Then it began to weigh on her. Maggie took a box of ice cream out of the freezer drawer of the refrigerator. Josette peered over her shoulder and saw that freezer bags of vegetables were stacked and labeled. Maggie made cones of blackberry swirl ice cream, gave one to LaRose. She refolded the tabs on the box, replaced it. Then she rinsed the scoop and put it into the dishwasher. Josette was holding two ice cream cones, standing in the kitchen, when she began feeling weird.