The Round House (34 page)

You learn something new, she said, and we started eating, piling the little plastic-looking pink tails at the sides of our baskets.

What she'd said about her brother was so full of adult complexity that it threw me off. This was not the way I'd meant to bring up Linden Lark. I didn't know if I could take any more information. So I said the safest thing to deflect her honesty.

Wow, it's hot.

But she wouldn't go to the weather with me. She nodded, closed her eyes, and said, Mmmm, as she ate her birthday shrimp.

Slow down, Linda, she told herself. She laughed and dabbed her lips.

I've got to do this, I thought.

Okay, I said. I get it about your brother. Sure. Now he thinks he'll be a rich piece of scum. I'm just wondering, though, could you tell me when he plays golf? If he does play golf? Anymore?

She kept her napkin at her lips and blinked at me over the white paper.

I mean, I said, I need to know because—

I crammed a fistful of fries into my mouth and chewed and thought furiously.

—because what if my dad wants to golf or something? I was thinking it would be good for him to golf. We can't run the risk of Lark being out there, too.

Oh, gosh, said Linda. She looked panicked. I never thought about that, Joe. I don't know how often, but yes, Linden does golf and he likes to get out there very early, right after the course opens at seven a.m. Because he doesn't sleep, hardly. Not that I know his habits anymore. I should talk to your . . .

No!

How come?

We were frozen, staring across the food. This time I picked up two shrimp and ate each one, frowning, and picked apart their tails, and ate that little bit too.

This is something I want to do on my own. A father-and-son thing. A surprise. Uncle Edward has golf clubs. I'm sure he'll let us use them. We'll go out there. Just me and Dad. It's something I want to do. Okay?

Oh, certainly. That's nice, Joe.

I ate so quickly, in relief, that I finished the whole plate and even ate some of Linda's fries and the remains of her salad before I understood I had all I needed—the information and an agreement to keep it secret. Which gave me both a sense of relief and the return of that whirling dread.

B
ugger floated by the window. He was riding my bicycle.

I have to go, I said to Linda. Thank you, but Bugger's stealing my bike.

I ran outside and caught up to Bugger, who was only halfway across the parking lot. He meandered along slowly and didn't get off the bike, just glanced at me with his wobbly eye. I walked beside him. I actually didn't mind walking because I didn't feel so well. I'd eaten so much, so fast, maybe on a nervous stomach like my father sometimes said he did. Plus, after all, those frozen shrimp had traveled a couple of thousand miles from where they had started to land on my plate. I'd had to cover the piled tails with a napkin while Linda waited for the check. Now the walk seemed better than the jolting of a bicycle. I wanted to get away from other people, too, in case I had to puke.

As I walked beside Bugger in the hot sun, I started feeling better and within a mile I was okay. Bugger didn't seem to have a destination that made any sense to me.

Can I have my bike now?

I've gotta get somewhere first, he said.

Where?

I needa see if it was just a dream.

What was just a dream?

What I saw was just a dream. I needa see.

Whatever it was, it was, I said. You snaked out. Can I have my bike?

Bugger was getting too far out of town, going the opposite of the way to Cappy's house. I was worried that he might swerve into a passing car. So I persuaded him to turn around by talking up Grandma Ignatia and her generous handouts.

True. A man gets hungry from all this bicycling, said Bugger.

We got to the senior citizens and he dropped the bike in front of me. He staggered away like a man in the grip of a magnetic force. I turned around and rode back to Cappy's. We had planned to practice shooting, but Randall was there, off work early, fixing his bustle at the kitchen table. The long, elegant eagle feathers were carefully spread out from the circle where they joined, and he was working on a loose one. Randall had a handsome traditional powwow outfit, which he had mostly inherited from his father, though his aunties had beaded flower patterns on the velvet armbands and aprons. When he was all fitted out, he was a magnificent picture. All kinds of ordinary and extraordinary things had gone into his regalia. Two giant golden eagle tail feathers topped his roach, his headpiece. Stabilized by lengths of a car antenna, the feathers bobbed on the springs of ballpoint pens. The elastic garters of one aunt's old girdle were covered with deerskin and sewn with ankle bells. He had a dance stick that was supposedly taken from a Dakota warrior, though it was actually made in boarding-school shop class. Wherever the components of Randall's outfit had originated, they were all adapted to him now, each feather fixed and strengthened with carved splinters of wood and Elmer's glue, the soles of his moccasins soled and resoled with rawhide. Randall won prize money sometimes, but he danced because Doe had danced, and also because those moving pieces caught girls' eyes pretty good. He was getting ready for our annual summer powwow this coming weekend. Doe as usual would be up behind the MC's microphone making jokes and making sure that things ran along, as he always said, in a good way.

C'mon, let's go pick grandfathers for Randall's sweat lodge, said Cappy. We always put down tobacco for those ancient rocks. That's why they were grandfathers. We didn't always get the rocks. We liked being fire keepers better, but Randall had promised if Cappy could start his old red rez car, he could drive it.

There was a collapsed gravelly place on their land that filled with water in the spring and had the right kind of stones if you kicked around for them. Randall always needed a specific number dictated by the type of sweat he would give. We dragged an old plastic toboggan out to collect the rocks. They took a while to find. They had to be a certain kind of rock that would not crack too easily or explode when red hot and splashed with water in the sweat-lodge pit. They had to be a certain size that Randall could pick off our shovel with his deer antlers. Finding twenty-eight grandfathers was a good afternoon's work and more often, especially if Randall was in a hurry, we'd go out to the rock piles in the fields off reservation and load up Doe's pickup. But this time we needed to be alone.

I told Cappy what I'd learned from Linda about the morning golf.

Cappy kicked his feet around in the grass and bent to dislodge a rounded gray rock.

You gotta move then, Cappy said, before Lark changes his habits. You should take Doe's rifle while we're at the powwow.

Just to think about stealing from Doe gave me a black, sinking feeling and those shrimp began to perk around in my gut. But Cappy was right.

You have to break in between eight and ten on Saturday night, said Cappy. There's the off chance that Doe or Randall will need to come back for something after they retire the flags. But for sure Randall will be out there pounding his hooves until then. Or snagging. And for sure Dad can't leave that microphone. So you go in, Joe. And I really mean break in. Leave a mess. You've got to take a crowbar to the closet where the guns are. I've thought about this. And steal a couple of other things or pretend to. Like the TV.

I can't carry that!

Just unplug it, knock the junk off it. Take Randall's boom box—no, he'll have that—take the good toolbox. But leave it scattered on the porch like a passing car scared you off.

Yeah.

And then the gun. Make sure you get the right one from the closet. I'll show you.

Okay.

And you bring a couple black plastic bags to wrap it in because you're gonna hide it.

I can't bring it home, I said. I'll have to hide it someplace else.

Like the overlook, in the brush behind the oak tree, said Cappy.

After we piled the grandfathers by the fire pit, we spent the rest of the afternoon marking out the trail I'd use and deciding on a hiding place that I could find in the dark. The moon was going to be three quarters, but of course there might be cloud cover. We wanted to make sure I could do it all without using a flashlight. And also, after that, I would have to make it to the powwow grounds—three miles away—walking fields and trails without using my bike so nobody would see me. I'd camped out for the last two years with Cappy's family—an RV for the aunts and a tent for the men. A fire. Randall tipi-creeping. Sneaking off. We'd wake up in the morning next to him passed out, scented low with some girl's perfume. My parents would expect that I'd go again this year. And even if they said no this time, I'd slip out anyway. I had to.

T
hose shrimp or something else I'd eaten stayed with me all that week. I felt sick when I looked at food and dizzy when I looked at my mother or my father, so I didn't look at anyone and hardly ate. Mostly, I slept. I fell asleep like I was knocked out and couldn't get out of bed in the morning. Once, on waking, I picked up the book Father Travis had given me.
Dune
was a fat paperback with three black figures walking a desert beneath a massive rock. I opened it at random and read something about a boy filled with a terrible sense of purpose. I flung the book across the room and left it there. Many months after that morning I would read that book, once, then again, and again. It was the only book I read for a solid year. My mother said I must be getting my growth. I overheard her. Or listened in on her. Eavesdropping was a habit now. My sneaking came of needing to know that there was no other way, that I had to do this. If Lark moved or skipped out or was poisoned like a dog or caught for some reason, I would be free. But I didn't trust my parents to tell me any of these things, so I had to slip behind doors and sit underneath open windows and listen, never hearing what I wanted. Of course, powwow weekend came.

Mom and Dad had agreed to let me camp out with Doe's boys, as they said, and I hitched a ride out with them in back of Randall's pickup, sitting on my sleeping bag. Five dollars in my pocket for food. Randall drove us so fast on the gravel road that our teeth clacked and we nearly bounced out of the back, but we got there in time to set up in our usual place. Cappy's family always parked their RV to the south at the edge of the powwow camp circle, right up against the unmowed fields. At that time of the year the hay was usually ready to cut again. Standing at the edge of the grass, I watched it ripple gently up a soft rise, parting and reparting like a woman's hair. The family liked camping at the edge so they could get away from what Suzette and Josey called “the goings-on.” Doe's sisters were stout and jolly. They danced women's traditional, and when they were getting ready in their small RV camper it shook with their heavy movements and bursts of laughter. Their husbands did not dance but helped out with organization and security.

The first thing we did on arriving was lift the webbed lawn chairs out of the back of the pickup. We decided where to dig a fire pit and put the lawn chairs up around the hole. It was important to have a little place where visitors could come and get brewed tea, or drink Kool-Aid from one of the giant plastic thermos jugs Suzette and Josey filled before they came. They also had coolers—one stuffed with sandwiches, pickles, tubs of baked beans and potato salad, bannock, jelly, crab apples, blocks of commodity cheese. The other cooler was full of hot dogs and cold fried rabbit. Soon, around the camp, Suzette and Josey's married children started pulling up in their low-slung old cars. When the car doors opened, the grandchildren bounced out like Super Balls. They gathered other children from the neighboring camps and moved through the powwow grounds in a tornado of whirling hair and chasing legs and pumping arms. Occasionally an announcement came over the loudspeaker—these were just test announcements. Doe did not come on for real until noon. He did the welcome several times and reminded dancers that Grand Entry was at one.

Put on your dancin' shoes! His announcer voice was smooth as warm maple syrup. He loved to say Oh mercy, as well as Gee willikers, I'll be doggone, and Howah! He loved to joke. His jokes were friendly and awful.

Just yesterday a white guy asked me if I was a real Indian. No, I said, Columbus goofed up. The real Indians are in India. I'm a genuine Chippewa.

Chip a what? How come you got no braids?

They got chipped off, I told him. The old word for us is Anishinaabe, you know. Eyyyy. Sometimes you can't tell a real Anishinaabe woman something. She gives you that look and you got to tell her
everything
. Eyyyy.

Doe announced lost children. Papoose on the loose! Here's a little boy looking for his family. Don't be scared when you come claim him, Mama, he's not covered with war paint. It's just ketchup and mustard. He's been fixing himself to face the Fifth Cavalry over at the hot dog stand.