Exhaustion, said Romeo.
Oh? Where you working now?
Same place. Here and there. Substitute sanitation engineering. Maintenance, you know.
Maintenance could mean anything. He could be maintaining a healthy supply of substance. Father Travis took the long view with Romeo. He was working on him, dropping tiny stones into the pond.
Romeo was wearing a lurid purple mock turtleneck and a black zip hoodie printed with tiny skulls that matched the tiny skulls tattooed around his neck.
Like the work?
There’s a glass bottom to it, said Romeo, shaking his head. I can see the fish down there eating the shit. They’re the bottom-feeders. You know me, right? Romeo smiled. His tiny brown teeth ached but he poured some sugar into the coffee and watched the oily stuff swirl around a red plastic stirring stick.
Yeah, I know you, said Father Travis.
Then you know I don’t travel with the top of the food chain. I don’t eat top shelf. Bottom-feeder, like I said. I can’t talk to the high-class Indians around here. Like Landreaux. He twirls the pipe and all, thinks he’s a medicine man like Randall. That’s how they get the women. With that old Indian medicine. Emmaline’s witched, you know. He gave his usual two-finger salute as he got up to leave, and asked.
Did you hear what Landreaux said about you?
Don’t try that alkie trick on me, said Father Travis, laughing.
If you don’t want to know . . . Romeo playacted hurt. Never mind.
Romeo lunged out the door, pocket sagging from the weight of the change. He crossed the street to Whitey’s Hot Bar, and emptied his pocket of the coffee change. He came out four dollars ahead.
Slice a sausage pizza, donut, Mountain Dew, he said to Snow behind the counter. How’s your dad?
THE ONE PSYCHOLOGIST for a hundred miles around was so besieged that she lived on Xanax and knocked herself out every night with vodka shots. Her calendar was full for a year. People who couldn’t get on it went to Mass instead, and afterward visited Father Travis in the parish office.
I’m scared, said Nola, picking at her pale rose nail polish.
Father Travis had a Pre-Cana class in half an hour. His desk was heavy oak, from the old parochial school. His legs were stretched out long underneath. Instead of a desk chair, he sat in a fold-out camping chair with a mesh cup holder—it held his insulated thermos coffee cup; it used to be just right for a beer. Sunlight filled the south windows. The papers on his desk were dazzling. The light reflected up; his pale eyes shimmered.
Mrs. Ravich, said Father Travis gently, don’t be afraid. The worst has happened. And now you’ve been given two children to cherish. LaRose and Maggie.
We are sharing him now. I mean LaRose. If they take him back I’m scared, scared of what I’ll do.
Do?
To myself, said Nola softly. She looked up in appeal, mistily. There was something disturbing in her doll-sweet prettiness.
Father Travis shifted slightly back in his chair. The snake of the livid purple scar slid up his neck.
He was careful with Nola. Kept her on the other side of his desk. Kept the door open. Pretended he didn’t quite understand that she gave off the wrong vibe.
Or if he noticed, as he noticed, a detail that might stab his sleep. Like the shadow of her black bra lurking underneath the thin cotton of her shirt.
Are you planning to harm yourself? Father Travis asked, blunt but kind, trying to stay neutral.
She backpedaled, pouted out her lips, manufactured a startled look. Her gaze flickered away as she realized the priest might call Peter.
That’s not what I meant?
Father Travis took a drink of coffee. He stared at her from under his brows. He couldn’t tell how much of what she said was bullshit. Suicide to him seemed an affront to his friends who had died in Beirut. They had wanted to live, made the most of their lives, died for nothing—except he hadn’t. So maybe he was still on this earth to honor 241 lost destinies. This thought hardened his emotions. His fist clenched and unclenched.
Let’s talk about Maggie.
What about her?
Father Travis frowned steadily and Nola dropped her eyes like a sullen girl.
She seems to be adjusting. They all are. I am the only one not adjusting. I came to talk about myself.
Okay, let’s talk about you as the mother of Maggie. If you in any way are self-destructive, you’ll take her down with you, Nola. Do you get that?
Nola cocked her head. She looked ready to stick out her tongue. This was going horribly, horribly, the priest treating her like an appendage to her family. Like a nothing. Not listening.
I don’t really want to talk about her, Father Travis!
Why?
She’s oppositional. Nola’s face worked. Suddenly she began to cry, groping for a tissue. Father Travis pushed the roll of towels at her. She choked on her tears; they became too real. It could be that Maggie was the key to her unhappiness, her inability to process the grief. She’s a little bitch, Nola whispered into the paper towel.
Father Travis heard.
Nola shook the tears from her eyes and cleared her face. I’m sorry, Father. Maybe things should feel normal. Maybe I should be doing normal things. I should get used to the way things are. Accept and accept. Stop thinking about Dusty.
Father Travis got up and walked around the desk.
It’s normal to think about Dusty, he said.
He stood behind her and spoke at the fluffy top of her head. It was perhaps here that he should have held back, waited. But Nola’s fake flirtatiousness felt like mockery.
It’s not normal to do what you did at Mass, he said. You struck Maggie.
She turned hotly. I did not!
Father Travis stared her down, but it was difficult. Her prettiness was a deflecting foil. She was tougher than his AA crowd.
If Peter comes to me about your treatment of Maggie, if Maggie comes herself, if anybody from the Iron family, or a teacher, anyone, comes to me about it? I’ll go to Social Services.
You really would do that?
Nola spoke sobbingly, but her face tightened in rage. She bolted up with such a slick, sudden movement that her breast bobbed into Father Travis’s fingers. He flinched as if scorched.
Nola stepped backward, her wide eyes marveling.
I don’t think you meant what you just said, about Social Services, Father Travis. I’m going to pretend you didn’t touch my bosom. Nola dimpled, eyes hard.
He looked at her and did something he was later ashamed of. He laughed. Bosom? He shooed her out, breaking into guffaws.
Hey Stan! he yelled into the hallway. The church janitor turned, broom in hand. Listen! Mrs. Ravich is going to pretend I tried to cop a feel.
Yeah, okay, Stan said, and kept sweeping.
You’re not the first who tried that, said Father Travis when she turned to him, furious, injured. You should know I don’t touch anybody like that. I am not one of those kinds of priests.
She began to weep for real, then tottered away from him bowlegged in her high heels.
LANDREAUX AND EMMALINE’S house contained the original cabin from 1846, built in desperation as snow fell on their ancestors. It satisfied them both to know that if the layers of drywall and plaster were torn away from the walls, they would find the interior pole and mud walls. The entire first family—babies, mothers, uncles, children, aunts, grandparents—had passed around tuberculosis, diphtheria, sorrow, endless tea, hilarious and sacred, dirty, magical stories. They had lived and died in what was now the living room, and there had always been a LaRose.
After a time, an extension had been built onto the original cabin. Those log huts had become one house during the 1920s, when Emmaline’s grandfather had bought board lumber, sided the house, then shingled it under one roof. During the fifties a lean-to built alongside the house was insulated and became a set of bedrooms. Up until the 1970s, they had used an outhouse, hauled water, washed with a wringer washer, tubs, a
washboard. The bathroom and a tiny laundry room completed the house.
During the next ten years, Emmaline had lived there with her mother. When there were too many children and Emmaline had her degree, Mrs. Peace had moved into the Elders Lodge. From her small bedroom, where Emmaline and Landreaux now slept, a door led into the bathroom. Josette and Snow took long baths there and did their complex beauty routines, sending their brothers to the old outhouse when they banged on the door.
The kitchen and living room, the oldest parts of the house, still bore the fifties wallpaper. It rippled under layers of paint—first dark green, then light green, then a blue-gray color chosen by Snow. It was never approved of by Josette, so she got her way with the bargain wallpaper in their shared bedroom—bouquets of lavender flowers tied up with floating white ribbons. Nobody had ever thought about the paint in the boys’ room—it was ancient red papered over with ripped posters of Ninja Turtles, Sitting Bull, Batman, Tupac, Chief Little Shell, Destiny’s Child, and The Sixth Sense.
Back during the eighties the entire house had levitated. Jacked up, set on top of a cinder-block foundation, it was freed of creeping rot and damp. It became a real house then, with a narrow crawl space under. When Emmaline married Landreaux, he built a small deck to formalize the front entrance—a landing big enough for two lawn chairs and a flowerpot that sprouted grass. Once this was accomplished, the house looked suddenly like many houses and Landreaux imagined the two of them getting old there, sitting on that deck, watching the occasional car pass through a rift in the trees beside the road, waiting for their children, then their grandchildren, to exit the school bus and climb toward the house through the grassy wildflowered ditch, across the strip of beat-down weeds, or now, in winter, up the plowed frozen gravel.
It will be all right. We will get old here together after all.
This was Landreaux’s thought the first time Peter dropped off LaRose. They would be together through spring and summer into the dog days, when the house heated through, and the old logs deep inside gave off the earthen scent of loam.
Landreaux opened the door and LaRose ran straight past him, clutching his stuffed creature, shouting for his mom. Landreaux turned back to wave good-bye, but Peter had quickly swung back out onto the road. Landreaux closed the aluminum storm door and then pushed the wooden door shut behind it. To see LaRose and Emmaline fly together would hurt, so he bent over by the mud rug and took a long time pairing up the scattered shoes and setting them in lines. When he finally came to them, his long arms dangling, they were talking about how to use the potato peeler.
LaRose sat down at the table by the window, in feeble winter sunlight. The edges of the storm window were thick with frost. Steam had frozen in gray fuzz upon the sides and sills. He peeled the potato skin away from himself, bit by skimpy bit, onto a plastic plate. Emmaline shook chunks of meat in a bag with flour, then pinched up each chunk and dropped it carefully into hot grease. The cast-iron skillet was smooth and light from fifty years of hard use. Her mother had left it.
Landreaux sat across the table and opened out the rest of the newspaper. The rustling it made caused him to notice his hands were lightly trembling.
Snow and Josette pushed through the door first. Willard and Hollis were hauling all of the gym bags. Everything scattered into piles at the door. The girls ran to LaRose and grabbed him, knelt by the kitchen chair dramatically weeping. The older boys slapped LaRose’s palm.
We saved your bunk for you, man, said Hollis.
Yeah, I tried to sleep there and he slammed me off onto the floor, said Coochy. It’s all yours now.
He’s sleeping here! Here in his own house! Josette moaned.
You knew that, said Snow.
LaRose smoothed their hair as they competition-wept.
Mii’iw, said Landreaux.
The sisters sniffed and looked redeemed, like a light had been restored inside of them. They were so happy they didn’t know how to show it without seeming fake. The girls sat down to do the carrots.
You’re cutting too fat.
No, I’m not. Look at the potatoes.
Proportion, Josette.
Don’t be oblique.
They had acquired a list of SAT words from a teacher who liked them both. Most teachers liked them because they studied. They were relieved to finish out their volleyball season. The games were an hour, two hours away. They took all night. So did Hollis’s and Willard’s basketball games. Landreaux and Emmaline took turns driving them because the bus added on the hours. Besides, they made their children study in the car in the backseat with a flashlight. How did they know to do this? They had learned from Emmaline’s mother. This sort of devotion was not from Landreaux’s side. His parents had been alcoholics with short lives.
ROMEO PUYAT REALLY did have a job—in fact, several jobs. His intermittent sub-assistant maintenance position at the tribal college kept his bottom-feeder jobs viable. He did a lot of reading at the tribal college between carpet shampoos and window polishes. He was hoping to move to another venue, like the tribal hospital, but people kept those jobs forever. Anyway, his official job fed his second jobs the way a big fish feeds a school of little fish—with waste and wasted food.
Romeo’s second jobs, though unofficial, maybe even volunteer, were lucrative and multi-aspected. For one thing, he picked up and disposed of the hazardous waste usually contained in medication bottles and prescribed by the Indian Health Service doctors. Nobody had hired or invited him to do this—but it had become a part of his way of life. When cleaning at his venue, he went to great lengths to hang around each classroom as long as possible in order to check for medications that might have mistakenly been left in handbags. On a volunteer basis, he even removed the hazardous waste that accumulated outside the other buildings, especially when he visited the hospital. To the casual eye it might look as if he was trawling for cigarette butts. But although it was a fact that he could rely on finding a lightly smoked cigarette outside certain doorways (tossed out in haste from the smoke-free environment), his mission was more far-reaching. Part of his job was, in fact, more in the line of clandestine work. Someone at the bar, maybe it was the priest, had even referred to Romeo once as the reservation’s information specialist. He thought that true. He was a spy, but a freelancer. Nobody ran him, he ran his one-man operation for his own benefit.
He had his methods. He came by lots of important information by busying himself around the tribal college coffeepot, or by standing outside the doors of teacher coffee rooms, or just sitting in the social areas acting invisible. On a rare occasion or two, he had been ignored as he weeded the grassy scarp in the shadow of the on-call ambulance crew. They knew everything about every catastrophe that happened, things that never made it out into the public. Romeo had heard about deaths where a suicide was covered up so the corpse could be blessed and buried by the church. He’d found out about botched abortions and suspicious deaths of newborns that looked almost like SIDS. He knew how people overdosed, on what, and how hard the crew fought to bring them back. When it was time to let them go. All this information kicked around in his head. It was good to know these things. In fact, Romeo had decided that information, long of reach, devastating, and, as a side benefit, a substance with no serious legal repercussions, was superior to any other form of power. So there was that.
Also, Romeo went through trash. Pharmacy trash was his specialty. The trash was usually shredded and the Dumpsters locked, but Romeo had a certain pharmacy employee who “belonged” to him as the result of information. Every few days he could spirit away a couple of bags and stuff them into the trunk of his car.
Romeo occupied a condemned disability apartment in the condemned tribal housing complex nicknamed Green Acres—built unfortunately over toxic landfill that leaked green gas. Romeo was immune to the noxious air that seeped up between the cracks in the linoleum. Mold, also, black or red, never bothered him. If smells got strong, he would lift new car fresheners from Whitey’s—mango was his f
avorite. His apartment decor was centered around a fake year-round Christmas tree. The foil tree was decorated with the mango car fresheners. His walls displayed photographs tacked into the softened drywall. There was a television, a mini-fridge, a boom box, a mattress, two grubby polyester sleeping bags, and a beautiful handmade diamond willow lamp with a broken shade like a tipped hat.
In the light from his lamp, on a captain’s chair torn from a wrecked van, Romeo went through the contents of the bags. All he could wish for was there on paper—discarded printouts, labels, prescription script, pharmacist’s notes—that his information-bought informant had failed to shred. Within these piles, he found what drugs everybody in the entire community was on and which, for their mighty highs, could be pilfered by close relatives. It was there that Romeo found out who was going to die and who would live, who was crazier than he was, or by omission, sane and blessed with health. He kept track of his calculations on a scratch pad—drug, dosage, refill dates, how the patient should take the medicine. Though never in any case in Romeo’s file did the doctor recommend that a patient crush to powder and inhale a single medication, that was often his preferred method of delivery.
Tonight, the words palliative care appeared again. He kept anything with those words in a special paper-clipped pile. Also discarded in the bag was a bonus feature. His favorite section—the tribal newspaper’s obituary page. He matched several enticing prescriptions to one of the names, then noted the funeral would be tomorrow.
At 9:45 the next morning, Romeo stopped at the grocery, invested in a pound of stew meat, and then drove to church. He parked at the edge of the lot next to a pickup with a gas cap that could be easily pried up with a screwdriver. He sat in his car until everyone had entered the church, then quickly siphoned into his own car more than enough gas to carry him to the home of the deceased and back again. It was six miles out, and he got there within fifteen minutes.