The Round House

Chapter Ten. Skin of Evil

Linda Wishkob rolled out from her car and trudged to our door. I let my dad answer her knock and slipped out the back way. I’d finally worked out my thoughts in regard to Linda and her banana bread; although these thoughts did not make sense, I couldn’t argue myself out of them. Linda was responsible for the existence of Linden. She’d saved her brother, even though she knew by then he was a skin of evil. She now repelled me like she’d repelled him and her birth mother, though my parents didn’t feel the same way. As it turned out, while I was in the backyard running this way and that with Pearl, playing tag, though we never touched but whirled around each other in an unceasing trot, Linda Wishkob was giving my father information. What she told him would cause him to accompany my mother to her office and back home for the next two days. On the third day my father asked her to write him out a list for the grocery.

He insisted that we go instead of her and that she lock the door behind us and keep Pearl in the house. From all of this I gathered that Linden Lark was back in the area. My mind wouldn’t go any farther. I wasn’t thinking about it—I couldn’t stand thinking about it. It was out of my mind entirely when my father asked me to go to the grocery store with him. I had been on my way to meet up with Cappy and carve out a newer and faster series of jumps in the dirt. I resented going with my father to the grocery, but he said it would take two of us to decipher and find all of the exact things my mother wanted—which, when I saw her slanted script with even the brand names listed and tiny bits of advice in choosing properly, looked like the truth.

That we have a real grocery store on our reservation is no small thing. It used to be that, besides the commodity warehouse, food came from the tiny precursor store—Puffy’s Place. The old store sold mainly nonperishable items—tea, flour, salt, peanut butter—plus surplus garden vegetables or game meat. It sold beadwork, moccasins, tobacco, and gum. For real food our people had traveled off reservation twenty miles or more to put our money in the pockets of store clerks who watched us with suspicion and took our money with contempt. But with our own grocery now, run by our own tribal members and hiring our own people to bag and stock, we had something special. Even though the pop machine out front was banged in, the magic doors swished shut on slow grandmas, and children smudged the gumball machine until you couldn’t see the colors of the candy, it was our very own grocery. Trucks came to it, like a regular store, stocked it, and then drove away.

My father and I walked in past the wall of tattered powwow posters and ads for cars to sell. We got a grocery cart. Dad unfolded the list.

Dried pinto beans.

I pointed out that Mom had instructed us to shake and examine the plastic bag of beans and make sure it contained no small rocks. We located the beans in the pasta aisle.

A spotted pebble is going to look just like a bean, I said to my father, turning the rectangular package this way and that.

We should stock up, said my father, throwing six or seven bags into the cart. These are cheap. We can spread the beans in a pan and check for rocks when we get home.

Tomato paste, canned tomatoes—Rotel, the kind with chilies—4 cans each. Five pounds of hamburger meat. Lean if you can get it, the list said.

Lean? Why would she want lean?

Less grease, said my father.

I like grease.

Me too.

He threw some packages into the cart.

Cumin, I read. In the spice aisle we found cumin.

She was making extra food to bring to Clemence, to pay her back for all the dinners.

I read. Lettuce, carrots, then onions and we’re supposed to smell the onions first to make sure they aren’t rotten inside.

Fruit. Whatever fruit is good, said my father, peering over my shoulder at the list. I guess we are able to make that decision, anyway, regarding the fruit. What do you think?

We looked at a pile of muskmelons. Some had spots. There were grapes. All had spots. There was a bucket of local berries and some plums. Dad chose a melon and filled paper bags with plums and a plastic mesh bucket with the berries.

We bought chicken, an anemic-looking fryer, cut up, and we counted all the packaged pieces like she said. We bought another package that contained only thighs. We bought barbecue sauce and Old Dutch potato chips, for me. A couple of cans of mushroom soup went into the cart. At the bottom of the list was milk and butter, a 1-pound box of wrapped sticks, salted, and 1 pound wrapped whole, sweet. Cream.

What does she mean wrapped whole? My father stopped beside me, frowning at the paper. He held a carton of cream in one hand. Why sweet? Why salted?

I was pushing the cart in front of my dad, and so I saw Linden Lark first. He was leaning into the cold light of the open meat case. My father must have looked up just after I did. There was a moment where all we did was stare. Then motion. My father threw the cream, surged forward, and grabbed Lark by the shoulders. He spun Lark, jamming him backward, then gripped Lark around the throat with both hands. As I’ve said before, my dad was somewhat clumsy. But he attacked with such an instinct of sudden rage it looked slick as a movie stunt. Lark banged his head against the metal racks of the cooler. A carton of lard smashed down and Lark slipped in the burst cream, scraping the back of his head down the lower edge of the case, ringing the shelves. The glass doors flapped against my father’s arms as he fell with Lark, still pressing. Dad kept his chin down. His hair had fallen in strings about his ears and his face was dark with blood. Lark flailed, unable to put a similar grip on my father. I was on him too, now, with the cans of Rotel tomatoes.

The thing was, Lark seemed to be smiling. If you can smile while being choked and can-beaten, he was doing it. Like he was excited by our attack. I smashed the can on his forehead and opened a cut just over Lark’s eye. A pure black joy in seeing his blood filled me. Blood and cream. I smashed as hard as I could and something—maybe the shock of my happiness or Lark’s happiness—caused my father to let go of Lark’s throat. Lark kicked upward and pushed with all his might. My father went skidding backward. With a hard jolt my father landed in the aisle, and Lark fled in a scrambled crouch.

That was when my father had his first heart attack—it turned out to be a small one. Not even a medium one. Just a small one. But it was a heart attack. In the grocery store aisle in the spilt cream and rolling cans, next to the Prell shampoo, my father’s face went a dull yellow color. He strained for breath. He looked up at me, perplexed. And because he had his hand on his chest, I said, Do you want the ambulance?

When he nodded yes, everything went out of me. I went down on my knees, and Puffy made the call.

They tried to tell me I couldn’t ride with him to the hospital but I fought. I stayed with him. They couldn’t make me leave him. I knew what happened if you let a parent get too far away.

We stayed down in Fargo for almost a week and spent the days at St. Luke’s Hospital. On the first day, my father had an operation that is now routine, but which at the time was new. It involved inserting stents into three arteries. He looked weak and diminished in the hospital bed. Although the doctors said that he was doing well, of course I was afraid. I could only look in at him, at first, from the hall. When he was moved into his own room, things were better. We all sat together and talked about nothing, everything. This seems odd, but it soon became a kind of a vacation to be there, safe, together, our conversation vague. We’d walk the halls, pretend shock at the mushy food, talk some more about nothing.

At night, my mother and I went back to the room we shared at the hotel. We had twin beds. On other trips, the three of us had always bunked together, Mom and Dad in a double. I would sleep on a rollaway in some corner. This was the first time I could remember staying alone anywhere with just my mother. There was an awkwardness; her physical presence bothered me. I was glad she’d brought Dad’s old blue bathrobe made of towel cloth, the one she’d kept pestering him to get rid of. The nap was worn down in places, the sleeve unraveling, the hem frayed. I’d thought that she brought it for him, but then she put it on the first night. I imagined she had forgotten her own robe, which was printed with golden flowers and green leaves. But the second morning I woke early and looked over at her, still sleeping. She was wearing my father’s robe. I checked that night to see if she was wearing his robe on purpose, and sure enough she got into bed wearing it. The room wasn’t cold. It occurred to me the next day, as I was wandering around the park outside the hospital, that it would feel good if I had something of Dad’s to wear, too. It would tie us together somehow.

I needed him so much. I couldn’t really go into it very far, this need, nor could my mother and I talk about it. But her wearing his robe was a sign to me of how she had to have the comfort of his presence in a basic way that I now understood. That night, I asked her if she’d packed Dad an extra shirt, and she nodded when I asked if I could wear it. She gave it to me.

I still have many of his shirts, and his ties as well. He purchased everything he wore at Silverman’s in Grand Forks. They carried the very best men’s clothing, and he didn’t buy much, but he was particular. I wore my father’s ties to get me through law school at the University of Minnesota, and the bar exam after. For the time I was a public prosecutor, I wore his ties for the last week of every jury trial. I used to carry around his fountain pen, too, but I became afraid of losing it. I still have it, but I don’t sign my tribal court opinions with it the way he did. The unfashionable ties are enough, the golden tassel in my drawer, and that I have always had a dog named Pearl.

I was wearing my father’s shirt on the day he stopped being vague, the second-to-last day we were there. He saw his shirt on me and looked quizzical. My mother left to get some coffee and I sat with him. This was the first time I was really alone with him. It did not surprise me that even while his incisions were healing he chose to revisit the situation, to ask if I knew anything of Lark’s whereabouts. I had been thinking the same way, but of course I didn’t. If Clemence had told my mother in their phone conversations from the hotel room, I didn’t know about it. But then that night I did get a call; it was while my mother was out buying a newspaper. It was Cappy.

Some members of our family paid a visit, he said.

I didn’t know what he was talking about.

Here?

No, there.

Where?

They brought him around.

What?

The Holodeck, dummy. It was a situation like when Picard was the detective. Remember? The persuasion?

Right. I was flooded, tingling with relief. Right. Is he dead?

No, just persuaded. They messed him up good, man. He won’t come around you. Tell your mom and dad.

After the call, I was thinking how to tell them. How to make it sound like I didn’t know it was Doe and Randall and Whitey, even Uncle Edward, who went to Lark’s, when another call came in. My mother had come back. I could tell the call was from Opichi when my mother asked if there was something wrong at the office. The cadence of the voice, tiny in the receiver, was shrill and intense. My mother sat down on the bed. Whatever she heard wasn’t good. Eventually, she put the receiver in its cradle, and then she curled up on the bed, her back to me.

Mom?

She didn’t answer. I remember the buzz of lights on in the bathroom. I walked around to the other side of the bed and knelt down beside it. She opened her eyes and looked at me. At first she seemed confused and her eyes searched my face almost as if she were looking at me for the first time, or at least after a long absence. Then she focused and her mouth creased in a frown. She whispered.

I guess people beat him up.

That’s good, I said. Yeah.

And then, Opichi says, he drove back all crazy and blasted up to the gas station. He said something to Whitey about his rich girlfriend. How Whitey’s rich girlfriend had herself a nice setup and he was thinking of joining her. He drove through, yelling, making fun of Whitey. He got away. Whitey chased him with a wrench. What was he talking about? Sonja isn’t rich.

I sat there with my mouth open.

Joe?

I put my head down in my hands, my elbows on my knees. After a while, I lay down and put a pillow over my head.

This room’s hot, said my mother. Let’s get the blower going.

We cooled off and went to a little restaurant called the 50s Cafe for hamburgers, french fries, chocolate shakes. We ate silently. Then all of a sudden, my mother put down the hamburger. She laid it on her plate and said, No.

Still chewing, I stared at her. The slight droop of her eyelid gave her a critical air.

Is there something wrong with that burger, Mom?

She gazed past me, transfixed by a thought. The knife crease shot up between her eyebrows.

It’s something Daddy told me. A story about a wiindigoo. Lark’s trying to eat us, Joe. I won’t let him, she said. I will be the one to stop him.

Her determination terrified me. She picked up her food and deliberately, slowly, began to eat. She didn’t stop until she’d finished all of it, which also frightened me. This was the first time since the attack she ate all the food on her plate. Then we went back to the room, got ready for bed. My mother took a pill and fell asleep at once. I stared at the feeble soundproofing insulation tiles on the ceiling. If I watched them closely enough, I could feel my own heart wind down. My chest opened and my stomach stopped grinding. I counted out, slowly and evenly, 78 random holes in the tile just over my head, and 81 in the next. If my mother went after Lark, he’d kill her. I knew this. I counted the holes again and again.

On the day we left Fargo, I woke early. My mother was up, in the bathroom making brushing and washing sounds. I listened to the shower water rattle down. The hotel curtains were so heavy I didn’t know that it was pouring outside too. One of those rare August rains that tamp down the dust flares on the roads had just begun. A rain that washes the whitened dust-coated leaves. A rain that fills the cracks in the earth and revives the brown grasses. That grows the corn by a foot and makes a second cutting of hay possible. A gentle rain that lasts for days. There was a chill in the air that persisted all the way home. My mother drove with the windshield wipers going. The coziest of sounds to a boy drowsing in the backseat. My father stayed alert beside my mother, covered with a quilt. From time to time I’d open my eyes, just to see them. He had his hand across the seat, resting on her leg above the knee. Occasionally she took one hand off the wheel, reached down, and rested her hand on top of his.

During this ride of peace, so like my earliest memories of going places with my parents, it came to me what I must do. A thought descended into me as I lay beneath my own soft old quilt. I pushed it out. The thought fell back. Three times I pushed it out, each time harder. I hummed to myself. I tried to talk, but my mother put her finger to her lips and pointed at my father, who was asleep. The thought came again, more insistent, and this time I let it in and reviewed it. I thought this idea through to its conclusion. I stood back from my thought. I watched myself think.

The end of thinking occurred.

When we got home, Clemence had fixed the chili. Puffy had delivered all of the groceries that we had picked out. Everything we needed was stowed in the cupboards and the refrigerator. I saw my box of potato chips right away, sitting on the counter. I thought of the cans of tomatoes I had used as weapons. Clemence had probably opened them and added them to the chili. Every day since the grocer, I wished I had brained Lark. I imagined myself killing him over and over. But since I hadn’t, I was going to visit Father Travis first thing in the morning. I decided I would join his Saturday morning catechism class. I thought he would let me do that. I also hoped that if I made myself useful afterward up at the church, he might notice how the gophers had been driven from the tunnels by the rain and now were fattening on the new grass. They needed to be dealt with. I hoped that Father Travis might teach me how to shoot gophers, so that I could get some practice.

I wasn’t exactly starting from scratch when it came to being a Catholic. Priests and nuns have been here since the beginning of the reservation. Even the most traditional Indians, the people who’d kept the old ceremonies alive in secret, either had Catholicism beaten into them in boarding school, or had made friends with some of the more interesting priests, as Mooshum had for a time, or they had decided to hedge their bets by adding the saints to their love of the sacred pipe. Everybody had extremely devout or at least observant family members; I had been lobbied over and over, for instance, by Clemence. She had persuaded my mother (she hadn’t bothered with my father) to have me baptized and had campaigned for my first communion and confirmation. I knew what I was in for. The God Squad had not been doctrinal, but my classes would be filled with lists. Confession: i. Sacramental. ii. Annual. iii. Sacrilegious. iv. Legal. Grace: i. Actual. ii. Baptismal. iii. Efficacious. iv. Elevating. v. Habitual. vi. Illuminating. vii. Imputed. viii. Interior. ix. Irresistible. x. Natural. xi. Prevenient. xii. Sacramental. xiii. Sanctifying. xiv. Sufficient. xv. Substantial. xvi. At meals. xvii. There were also Actual, Formal, Habitual, Material, Moral, Original, and Venial Sin. There were special types of sins: those against the Holy Ghost, Sins of Omission, Sins of Others, Sin by Silence, and the Sin of Sodom. There were Sins Crying Out to Heaven for Vengeance.

There were, of course, definitions of each of these categories on the lists. Father Travis taught like Vatican II had never happened. Nobody looked over his shoulder way up here. He said Latin mass if he felt like it and for several months the previous winter had turned the altar away from the congregation and conducted the Mysteries with a sort of wizardy flourish, Angus said. When it came to teaching catechism, he added subject matter or dismissed it. Saturday morning, he let me into the church basement and told me to take a seat in the cafeteria. I did, trying not to look down at the rug and think of Cappy. Bugger Pourier, reforming again after years of a stumblebum life in the Cities, was the only other student in the dim room. He was a skinny sorrowful man, with the fat purple clown nose of a longtime drinker. His sisters had dressed him in clean clothes, but he still smelled musty, like he’d been sleeping in a moldy corner. I looked over the handouts and listened to Father Travis talk about each member of the Holy Trinity. After class was done and Bugger wandered off, I asked Father Travis if I could take personal instruction all next week.

Do you have some goal in mind?

I want to be confirmed by the end of summer.

We get one visit from the bishop in the spring and everybody gets confirmed at that time. Father Travis looked me over. What’s your rush?

It would help things.

What things?

Things at home, maybe, if I could pray.

You can pray without being confirmed. He handed me a pamphlet.

Plus, he said, you can pray by just talking to God. You can use your own words, Joe. You don’t have to be confirmed in order to pray.

Father, I have a question.

He waited.

I had heard a phrase mentioned long ago and had stored it in my mind. I asked, What are Sins Crying Out to Heaven for Vengeance?

He cocked his head to the side as though he was listening to a sound I couldn’t hear. Then he flipped through his catechism book and pointed out the definition. The sins that cried out for vengeance were murder, sodomy, defrauding a laborer, oppressing the poor.

I thought I knew what sodomy was and believed it included rape. So my thoughts were covered by church doctrine, a fact I had found out the very first day.

Thanks, I said to Father Travis. I’ll see you Monday.

He nodded, his eyes thoughtful.

Yes, I’m sure you will.

On Sunday, I sat through mass with Angus and on Monday morning I was at church right after breakfast. It was raining again, and I had eaten a huge bowl of my mother’s oatmeal. It had weighed me down on my bike and sat warm and heavy in my stomach now. I wanted to go back to sleep, and so, probably, did Father Travis. He looked pallid and maybe hadn’t slept so well. He hadn’t shaved yet. The skin beneath his eyes was blue and the coffee was harsh on his breath. The cafeteria counter was stacked with neatly boxed-up food and the trash cans were stuffed.

Was there a wake down here? I asked.

Mr. Pourier’s mother died. Which means we have probably seen the last of him. He was hoping to reconcile with the church while she was still conscious. By the way, I have a book for you. He handed me a soft old splayed paperback of Dune. So. Shall we start with the Eucharist? I saw you at mass with Angus. Did you understand what was happening?

I had memorized the pamphlet, so I said yes.

Can you tell me?

There was a sharing of the grace-producing food of our souls.

Very good. Anything else?

The body and blood of Christ were present in the wine and crackers?

Communion wafers, yes. Anything else?

As I wracked my mind the rain quit. A sudden flare of sunshine hit the dusty glass of the basement windows and spun motes of dust in the air. The basement was aslant with shimmering veils of light.

Uh, spiritual nutrition?

Right. Father Travis smiled at the dancing slashes of air around us and up at the windows. Since it’s just us two, whaddya say we take our class outside?

I followed Father Travis up the steps, out the side door, and along the path that led through dripping pines. The grass path made a loop behind the gym and school, down through the rows of trees and over again to the road where Cappy and Father Travis had made the most dramatic part of their run. As we walked he told me that in order to prepare for the Eucharist when I would become part of the Mystical Body of Christ, I would have to purify myself via the sacrament of confession.

In order to purify yourself, you have to understand yourself, Father Travis went on. Everything out in the world is also in you. Good, bad, evil, perfection, death, everything. So we study our souls.

All right, I said faintly. Look, Father! There’s a gopher.

Yes. He stopped and looked at me. How’s your soul doing?

I glanced around as if my soul would appear so I could check on it. But there was only Father Travis’s carefully planed, too handsome face, his grave, pale eyes shining uncannily, his sculpted lips.

I don’t know, I said. I’d like to shoot some gophers.

He started walking again and from time to time I glanced at him, but he didn’t speak. Finally, when we turned into the trees, he said, Evil.

What?

We’ve got to address the problem of evil in order to understand your soul or any other human soul.

Okay.

There are types of evil, did you know that? There is material evil, that which causes suffering without reference to humans but gravely affecting humans. Disease and poverty, calamities of any natural sort. Material evils. These we can’t do anything about. We have to accept that their existence is a mystery to us. Moral evil is different. It is caused by human beings. A person does something deliberately to another person to cause pain and torment. That is a moral evil. Now you came up here, Joe, to investigate your soul hoping to get closer to God because God is all good, all powerful, all healing, all merciful, and so on. He paused.

Right, I said.

So you have to wonder why a being of this immensity and power would allow this outrage—that one human being should be allowed by God to directly harm another human being.

Something hurt in me, shot straight through me. I kept walking, my head down.

The only answer to this, and it isn’t an entire answer, said Father Travis, is that God made human beings free agents. We are able to choose good over evil, but the opposite too. And in order to protect our human freedom, God doesn’t often, very often at least, intervene. God can’t do that without taking away our moral freedom. Do you see?

No. But yeah.

The only thing that God can do, and does all of the time, is to draw good from any evil situation.

I went cold.

He does, said Father Travis, his voice rising a little. In every instance, Joe. In every heart-soaking instance. As the priest here you know well I have buried infants and whole families killed in car accidents and young people who made terrible choices, and even people who got lucky enough to die old. Yes, I’ve seen it. Every time there is an evil, much good comes of it—people in these circumstances choose to do an extra amount of good, show unusual love, become stronger in their devotion to Jesus, or to their own favorite saint, or attain an unusual communion of some sort in their families. I have seen it in people who go their own ways, your traditionals, and never come to mass except for funerals. I admire them. They come to the wakes. Even if they are so poor they have nothing, they give the last of their nothing to another human. We are never so poor that we cannot bless another human, are we? So it is that every evil, whether moral or material, results in good. You’ll see.

I stopped walking. I looked at the field, not at Father Travis. I shifted the book he’d given me from hand to hand. I felt like throwing it. Gophers were popping up and down, uttering their cheerful tweets.

I’d sure like to shoot some gophers, I said through my teeth.

We won’t be doing that, Joe, said Father Travis.

Our dusty old midsummer reservation town sparkled all washed clean as I rode down the hill, past the BIA houses, up the road past the water tower place toward the Lafournais spread. There were three Lafournais allotments bordering on one another and although they were divided many times they never did go out of the family. The houses were connected by threads of roads and trails, but Doe’s was the main house, the ranch style closest to the road, and Cappy was there leaning on the deck rail with his shirt open and a set of free weights on the decking by his feet.

I stopped, sat back on my bike seat.

Any girls come by to watch you pump iron?

Nobody came by, said Cappy. Nobody worth this vision.

He pretended to rip his shirt open and pounded his smooth chest. He was better since last week—he had got two letters from Zelia.

Here. He made me come up on the deck and lift his weights for a while.

You should get your dad to buy you some weights. You can lift in your bedroom until you’re presentable.

Presentable like you think you are. Is there any beer?

Better than that, said Cappy.

He reached into his jeans pocket and took out a sandwich bag rolled carefully around a lone joint.

Hey, blood brother!

Me sparkum up, kemo sabe, said Cappy.

We decided to smoke it on the overlook. If we walked along the spine of a small wooded ridge down Cappy’s road we could climb to a higher spot from which we could see the golf course from close up, though we were hidden. We had watched the earnest players before—Indians and whites—as they wiggled their hips, gave shrewd looks, swung well or disastrously. Everything they did was funny: puffing out their chests or smashing down their golf clubs. We always watched the arc of the ball in case they couldn’t find it. We still had our bucket full of golf balls. Cappy put some bannock, two soft apples, pop, plus a lone beer in a plastic bag and tied it to his handlebars. We rode off, dragged our bikes into the brush at the turnoff, and walked up the hill and along the ridge to our lookout spot.

The ground was almost dry. The rain had been sucked into the porous leaves and thirsty earth. The ticks were mostly gone. We leaned our backs against an oak tree that gave perfect shade. I held the joint too long. Quit chiefin’ it, said Cappy. I’d got lost in my thinking. The weed was harsh and stale. We drank the beer. A little party of big-bellied men in white hats and yellow shirts, a team of some sort, came into view and we laughed at every move they made. But they were good golfers and didn’t lose any golf balls. There was a lull after they passed. We smoked the roach and ate the tar bits with our food. Cappy turned to me. His hair was so long now, he flung it back with a certain head shake. Angus and Zack were already trying to fling the hair from their eyes, but couldn’t bring off the imitation. It was a gesture sure to drive girls crazy.

How come you went to mass and took catechism from that asshole?

News flies fast, I said.

Yeah, said Cappy, it sure does. He wouldn’t let up. Why? he asked again.

Wouldn’t you think, I said, a guy whose mom suffered what she did and the skin of evil shows up.

The skin of evil, oh yeah, the tar guy who killed Yar. So, Lark.

For no reason. The skin of evil shows up in the fucking grocery and his dad has a fucking heart attack trying to kill him. Wouldn’t you think that a kid who witnessed all this would need spiritual help?

Cappy looked me over. Nah.

Right. I brooded down at the clipped green for a while.

Nah, he said again. There’s something else.

Okay, I said. I needed practice shooting. Like I thought he’d let me help shoot the gophers. But he just gave me a book.

Cappy laughed. You dumb-ass!

Yeah. I imitated Father Travis talking: We won’t be doing that, Joe. Good will always come out of evil. You’ll see.

You’ll see? He said that?

Yeah.

Butt-fucker. If that was true, all good things would start in bad things. If you wanna shoot, said Cappy, you coulda gone to your uncle.

I’m off Whitey.

Better me. You shoulda come to me. Anytime. Anytime, my brother. I been hunting since I was two. I got my first buck when I was nine.

I know it. But it wasn’t just shooting gophers. You know that.

I might. I might know that.

You know what it is. What I’m talking about.

I do. I guess I do. Cappy nodded, looking down at a new set of golfers, Indian ones this time, who didn’t match.

So if you know, you also know I won’t implicate anybody else.

Implicate. Big lawyer word.

Should I define it?

Fuck you. I’m your best friend. I’m your number one.

I’m your number one, too. I do it alone or I don’t do it.

Cappy laughed. He reached around to his back pocket suddenly and took out a squashed pack of his brother’s cigarettes. Shit, I forgot about these.

They were crumpled but not torn apart. This time I noticed the matches had Whitey’s station on them.

Now he’s got matches, I said.

My brother got ’em. I never went there. But Randall said he’s moving on, he’s gonna rent out movies. Anyway, back to the subject.

What subject.

I don’t need to know. We’ll take my dad’s deer rifle out and practice, because, Joe, you can’t hit the side of a truck.

Maybe not.

And then where would you be when the side of the truck gets pissed off and runs you down? Shit outta luck. I can’t let that happen to you.

Except his rifle. I can’t use his rifle.

Just to practice. Then Doe’s gun gets stolen while we’re gone. While the house is empty. We hide the gun, the ammunition. And we’re not here anyway to laugh at geezers, are we.

No.

We’re scouting.

In case he comes along. I know he golfs, used to anyway. Linda told me.

Everybody knows Lark golfs, which is good. Anyone can miss a deer and hit a golfer.

We rode back to Cappy’s and went out back where Cappy had started practicing when he was five years old.

My dad taught me on a .22, said Cappy, just gophers or squirrels, hardly no kick to speak of. Then the first time we went deer hunting he hands me his 30.06. I tell him I’m worried it’ll kick, but he says no more than the .22, I promise you, my boy, just go easy. So I get my first deer on one shot. Know why?

’Cause you’re an Emperor?

No, my son, because I didn’t feel the kick. I wasn’t worried about the kick. I shot smooth. Sometimes you learn on a 30.06 and you flinch while you jerk the trigger, ’cause you can’t help anticipate the kick. I wish I could teach you on a .22 like my dad did, but you’re ruined already.

I did feel ruined. I knew I’d jerk the trigger, knew I’d flinch, knew how awkwardly I’d work the bolt action, how I’d probably jam it up, knew how I might as well cross my eyes as sight a target.

There was a rail fence where we set out cans and shot them down, and set up cans and shot them down. Cappy shot the first off neatly, showing me exactly how, but I couldn’t hit a single one of the rest. I was probably the only boy on the whole reservation who couldn’t shoot. My father hadn’t cared, but Whitey had tried to teach me. I was just no good at it. I couldn’t aim straight.

Lucky you’re not an old-time Indian. You woulda starved, said Cappy.

Maybe I need glasses. I was discouraged.

Maybe you should close one eye.

I’m doing that.

The other eye.

Both eyes?

Yeah, you might do better.

I hit three out of ten. I shot until we used most of the expensive ammunition, a problem as Cappy pointed out. We couldn’t let anybody know I was practicing. He couldn’t ask Doe for ammunition without explaining why. We also decided I should only practice when there was nobody home. In fact, Cappy said we had to find a more remote place for me to practice—we could go two pastures over and be out of sight, although people would hear us.

We have to get money though, hitch over to Hoopdance or get a ride. We’ll go into the hardware and I’ll buy the ammo.

No, I said, I should go myself.

So we argued back and forth until I had to leave. I had strict hours—my mother had told me she would send the police out after me if I was not home at six.

The police?

Just a figure of speech, she’d said. Maybe Uncle Edward. You wouldn’t want him out looking for you, would you?

No, I didn’t want Uncle Edward out looking for me in his big car, riding slow and rolling down his window, questioning everyone who happened to be out. So I went home. I had the money that Sonja left me. One hundred dollars hidden in my closet in that folder labeled HOMEWORK. Thinking of Sonja was like punching a bruise. As I rode back I decided on a plan to get my mother to drive me to Hoopdance. She still thought I was taking catechism classes. I’d need candles, maybe. Or dress shoes to be an altar boy.

The shoes were a good touch. After work the next day she drove me to the shoe store and bought the dress shoes, which I regretted for the waste of money. But I got into the hardware and sporting goods store on a casual excuse, and she waited outside while I bought forty dollars’ worth of ammunition for Doe’s rifle. The clerk did not know me and examined the large bill closely. I looked over at the paints, the basketballs and baseballs, the golf corner, the nail bins and spools of wire, at the home canning section, the shovels, rakes, chain saws, and I noticed gas cans for sale. Exactly like the one I’d found in the lake.

I guess it’s okay, the clerk said, giving me change.

When I came back out, I told my mother that I’d bought a surprise for Dad, who was supposed to take it easy. Besides the ammo, I had bought spinners for bass, our favorite fish to catch. I was building lie upon lie and it all came naturally to me as honesty once had. As we were driving home, I realized that my deceits were of no consequence as I was dedicated to a purpose which I’d named in my mind not vengeance but justice.

Sins Crying Out to Heaven for Justice.

I might have murmured this aloud. I was in a kind of trance, looking at the road, imagining the amount of practice it would take.

What did you say?

My mother had kept that edge. She was protective of my father and it gave her an intent authority, but more than that, there was what she had told me in Fargo when she put down the hamburger. I will be the one. No you won’t, I thought. But she was keen as a blade, as if during that time she lay dull in her closed room she had actually been sharpening herself. And then in Fargo, we’d talked about Dad, about things the doctors said. We’d weighed facts and questions together. She had treated me like someone older than I was, and this, too, had continued. She saw too much, didn’t have the same mild patience with me. She had quit indulging me. Never laughed at things I did. It was as if she had expected me to grow up in those weeks and now to not need her. If she expected me to act alone on my instincts, I was doing just that. But I still needed her. I had needed her to drive me to Hoopdance. No, I needed her in ways that now were lost to me. On the drive back from Hoopdance that day, after I had muttered that phrase about Sins Crying Out to Heaven, I asked her directly the thing my father would not ask. It was a childish thing, but also grown-up.

Mom, I said, why couldn’t you have lied? Why couldn’t you have said that sack slipped? You stumbled over something and you put your hand up, pulled it out, saw the ground? That you knew where it happened? It wouldn’t matter where, if you had just said where.

She was quiet for so long that I thought she wouldn’t answer. I felt no anger from her, no surprise, no embarrassment, merely a period of concentration.

I wish I knew, she said at last, why I could not lie. Last week, in the hospital, I sat there looking at your father and I suddenly wished that I had lied from the beginning. I wish I had lied, Joe! But I didn’t know where it happened. And your father knew I didn’t know. And you knew, too. I told you both. How could I change my story later on? Commit perjury? And remember, I knew that I didn’t know, too. What would happen to my sense of who I am? But if I had understood all that would come of my not knowing, exactly what happened, him going free, him with the sick gall to show himself, I would have.

I’m glad you would have.

She looked straight ahead.

Clearly, she was done talking. I looked at the road coming at us, thinking: If you had lied, if you had changed your story, so what. You’re my mom. I’d love you. Dad would love you. You lied to save Mayla and her baby. You did that easy. If they could prosecute Linden Lark, I would not have to lie about the ammunition or practice to do what someone had to do. And quickly, before my mother figured out her version of stopping him. There was no one else who could do it. I saw that. I was only thirteen and if I got caught I would only be subject to juvenile justice laws, not to mention there were clearly extenuating circumstances. My lawyer could point out my good grades and use that good-kid reputation I had apparently developed. Yet, it was not that I wanted to do it, or even thought I could do it. I was a bad shot and I knew that. I might not get much better. Plus, the reality of the thing. So I didn’t let the whole of it enter my mind at any one time. I only let one piece and then another piece fall into place. We fell silent again. After a while, I realized the next piece: I was going to have to go to Linda Wishkob. I was going to have to find out if her brother played golf anymore, for sure, and if he had some kind of schedule. I was going to have to get some soft and spotted bananas, or buy some firm bananas and allow them strategically to rot.

Three days of shooting practice later, I showed up at the post office with a bag of bananas I’d watched carefully in my room. They were soft and spotted, but not black.

Linda peered over the scale at her window, her round eyes glistening. And that unbearable, doggy grin. I bought six stamps for Cappy, and gave her the bag of bananas. She took the bag with her chubby little paws, and when she opened it her whole face glowed as though I’d given her something precious.

Are they from your mother?

No, I said, from me.

She flushed with pleasure and wonder.

They are perfect, she said. I’ll bake when I get home and drop them by tomorrow after work.

I left. I’d learned from my mistake with Father Travis that unusual politeness from a boy my age is an instant suspicion-raiser. I would have to maintain my course until the moment was right. I would have to have more than one conversation, maybe several conversations, before I would dare fit in a question or two about Linda’s brother. So I made sure I was hanging around the house the next day at five o’clock when Linda pulled her car into the driveway. I looked out the window and said to Dad, There’s Linda. I’ll bet you a buck she has banana bread.

You win, he said without looking up.

He was sipping water. Reading yesterday’s Fargo Forum. Mom walked downstairs. She was wearing black pants and a pink T-shirt. Her hair was fluffy and tinted to a shiny darkness. She wore black-and-pink-beaded earrings and her feet were bare. I saw she’d painted her toenails pink. There was the subtle coloring of makeup—her features more dramatic. And that light lemon lotion as she passed by. I got close to her. Stood behind her as she opened the door and accepted the familiar foil brick. She was dressing up for Dad. I wasn’t too dumb to figure that out. She was looking nice to keep his spirits up. Linda entered, sat down in the living room, and Dad put down his newspaper.

Joe, here’s another loaf for you. She pulled another brick from the bag. She didn’t thank me for the bananas in front of my parents, which surprised me. Most grown-ups think everything a young person does should be common knowledge. They brag about the slightest gesture from a boy. I’d been prepared to play down my banana giving, but Linda didn’t put me in that position. She did, however, start in on the weather chatter with my father. Just the way they had before, they pulled out their favorite all-eternal commonplace-choked subject. Sure enough, my mother folded and went into the kitchen to make tea and slice up the banana bread. I decided to try a whole other ploy and sat down across from them on the couch. Sooner or later, they would slog through the atmosphere and say something important. Or Dad would leave and I could bring up golf. They were on rain: inches fallen in which county, and whether we might see hail. They got to hail they’d seen and various forms of hail damage, when I yawned, lay back, and closed my eyes. I pretended to fall into a deep, impermeable slumber, twitching once and then breathing with such deep regularity I was sure they would be convinced. I let myself go limp and heavy. They were talking hail big as golf balls, perfectly round as peas, hail that penetrated roof shingles like BB shot. The couch was wide, the pillows giving. I woke an hour later. Mom was calling my name softly, sitting on the edge of the couch, patting my shin. As happens sometimes drifting out of an unexpected sleep, I did not know exactly where I was. I kept my eyes closed. My mother’s voice and the childhood sensation of her hand stroking my ankle, which was always how she woke me, flooded me with peace. I allowed my consciousness to sink to an even younger hiding place where nothing could touch me.

When I finally did wake, all was dark, the house silent. Pearl panted in her sleep, curled on the braided oval rug across the room. A knitted afghan had been thrown over me. I’d kicked it off and I was cold. I had missed supper and was hungry, so I wrapped myself in the afghan and padded into the kitchen. Pearl rose and followed me. A tinfoil-covered plate of food glinted on the table. The moon was full again and the kitchen was alive with pale energy. Now that I have lived some, I understand what happened to me in the kitchen that night, and why it happened when it happened. During my sleep I’d dropped my guard. The thoughts that protected my thoughts had fallen away. I was left with my real thoughts. My knowledge of what I planned. With those thoughts came fear. I had never really been afraid before, not for myself. For my mother and father, yes, but that fear had been shared and immediate, not secret. And my worst terrors of loss had not materialized. Though damaged, my parents were sleeping upstairs, in the same room, the same bed. But I understood their peace was temporary. Lark would appear again. Unless they found Mayla dead, or she showed up alive and filed a kidnapping charge, he was free to walk this earth.

I had to do what I had to do. This act was before me. In the uncanny light a sense of dread so overwhelmed me that tears started in my eyes and a single choking sound, a sob maybe, a wrench of hurt, burst from my chest. I crossed my fists in the knitting and squeezed them against my heart. I didn’t want to blurt out the sound. I didn’t want to give a voice to this roil of sensation. But I was naked and tiny before its power. I had no choice. I muffled the sounds I made so that I alone could hear them come out of me, gross and foreign. I lay on the floor, let fear cover me, and I tried to keep breathing while it shook me like a dog shakes a rat.

I lay under this spell for maybe half an hour, and then it went away. I hadn’t known whether it would or not. I had clenched my whole body so tightly that it hurt to let go. I was sore when I got up off the floor, like an old man with joint pains. I shuffled slowly up the stairs to my bed. Pearl had stayed by me all along. She’d huddled next to me. I kept her with me now. As I fell into a darker sleep, I understood that I had learned something. Now that I knew fear, I also knew it was not permanent. As powerful as it was, its grip on me would loosen. It would pass.

I could not use the bananas a second time, so I decided to run into Linda around noon. I knew that she brought her own lunch most days, but treated herself once a week to what women always got at Mighty’s—the soup and salad bar. I checked the window every day, or went inside and had a grape pop. On the third day, I saw Linda approach the café with her cheerful Tonka Truck walk. She waved at Bugger, who was sitting on the narrow strip of stained grass between the two buildings. She stopped and gave him a cigarette. It was a surprise to me that she smoked, but I found out later she carried around a pack just to give a mooch to people when they asked. I parked my bike where I could see it from inside and followed her in. Of course, she knew everyone and talked to everyone. She didn’t notice me until she sat down. I pretended to suddenly see her. Her eyes popped with the thrill of it.

Joe!

I came over and stood looking around, as if for my friends, until she asked if I was hungry.

Kinda.

Then sit down.

She ordered a shrimp basket. Then without asking me, another shrimp basket. The most expensive thing on the menu. And a coffee for herself and a glass of milk for me because I was growing right before her eyes. I shrugged. I tried to look trapped as I sat there.

Don’t worry, said Linda. When your buddies show up you can go sit with them. I won’t mind.

Geez, I said. I didn’t mean to ... anyway, thanks. I only had enough for a pop. Do you always get the shrimp basket?

I never do! Linda twinkled at me. It’s a kind of treat. It’s a special day, Joe. It is my birthday.

I told her happy birthday. Then it occurred to me this was her twin brother’s birthday, too. Could I bring him up? Then I remembered something about the story of her birth.

Wasn’t it winter, though, when the two of you were born?

Why yes, you’ve got a good memory. But I was only physically born that day, you see. The way my life has gone, I was born several other times. I picked a date out of those important turning points to be my birthday.

I nodded. Snow Goodchild brought our drinks. I could hear the sizzle of our shrimps and fries. All of a sudden I was very hungry. I was happy that Linda was buying me lunch. I forgot I hated her and remembered that I’d liked talking to her and that she had always loved my parents and was trying to help even now. The tense prickling left my throat. The right moment would come for questions. I took a drink of cold milk and then a drink of cold water from the ripply plastic glasses.

What day did you pick? The day that Betty brought you home from the hospital?

No, said Linda, I picked the day the social worker brought me home the second time. It was marked on Betty’s calendar. She only put the most special things on her calendar. So I knew she loved me, Joe.

That’s good, I said. Then I didn’t know what to say. We were in a grown-up conversation and I could only go so far. I was stuck. I expected Linda would ask me either how my summer was going or if I was looking forward to getting back to school, the way grown-ups were doing if they did not ask after my dad. Nobody ever asked after my mother, exactly. Instead, they made some comment—I saw your mother going in to work, or I saw your mother at the gas station. The tribal council had given Lark notice that he was barred from the reservation, but there was really no way that could be enforced. It wouldn’t work any better than the persuasion. When people said they saw my mother, it meant they were keeping an eye out for her. I thought that Linda might make such a comment. But she startled me.

Listen, Joe, I’ve got to tell you this. I am sorry that I saved my brother’s life. I wish that he was dead. There, I said it.

I paused a moment, and then said, Me too.

Linda nodded and looked at her hands. Her eyes popped again. Joe, he says he’s gonna get rich. He says he’ll never have to work again. He’s sure he’ll have money in the bank now, he says, and he’s going to fix up the house and live here forever.

Oh? I was dizzy at the thought of Sonja.

That was all in a phone message on my machine. He said a woman would give it to him in exchange for something, and he laughed.

No, she won’t, I said. My brain cleared and I saw the broken bottle on Sonja’s side table. I saw the look on her face when she threw her Red Sonja bag down. Lark would not get to her.

These are grown-up things, said Linda. They probably make no sense to you. That don’t make sense to me, either.

Our shrimp baskets came and she tried to put ketchup on the side. She shook the bottle with both hands like a little kid. I took the bottle from her and hit the bottom carefully with the heel of my hand, the way my father did, setting a precise glop of ketchup down.

Oh, I can never do that, said Linda.

This is the way. I put some ketchup on my plate. Linda nodded and tried the technique.

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.

Bugger 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.

Those 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.

When he introduced the drums, he rolled one to the next with a good word for each: Beartail, Enemy Wind, Green River. The bleachers started filling with people and Suzette and Josey sent their husbands to set up lawn chairs at the edge of the arena on the south side to avoid the long and blinding brilliance of the sun as it would set, it seemed, forever into the night. Cappy and I set up our tent with its square canopy where Randall could dress and preen. Suzette and Josey loved having a male dancer to fuss over and kept asking Cappy and me when we were going to start. Cappy had danced until he was ten years old.

I’m making you a new grass dance outfit. Josey shook her finger at him.

Cappy just smiled at her. He never said no to anyone. He and Randall had cut young popple saplings on their land and we set up a cooling arbor where the aunties could take the breeze. The day was heating up and their beaded yokes and the tanned hides, the bone breastplates and the woolen shawls, the heavy silver concho belts and figured ornaments and all that long leather fringe must have weighed sixty pounds or more. Suzette and Josey were round but phenomenally strong, so they could move with dignity under the weight of all this tradition, and not collapse. Randall was hardly weighed down at all by contrast, but he was covered with so many feathers Cappy said it looked like he’d rolled in a flock of eagles. He had a pair of red long johns with aprons or breechcloths that hung fore and aft.

Be sure you get your modesty panel set just right, said Cappy. You don’t want anyone to know what you ain’t got.

Shut up, bobtail, he said to Cappy. And don’t you even start, shrimpy, he said to me.

He held up a mirror and painted two black stripes down his forehead to his eyebrows, then continued underneath his eyes and down his cheeks. Randall’s eyes suddenly became impenetrable warrior eyes. He glowered at us from under his guard hair roach and swaying feathers.

Give us your smolder, said Cappy.

That was it, said Randall. Observe its effect.

He went out into the sunlight and stretched beside the cotton candy vendor’s trailer. Randall said his red long johns were traditional, but Cappy and I thought they ruined his look.

A girl in a leather halter top leaned away from her friends. Sipping soda through a straw, she watched all kissy face as Randall practiced his moves. He put his foot up on the trailer hitch, and strained to touch his toes like he was stretching his hamstrings. He did this twice and on the third time cracked a boogid. He tried to saunter off as though it hadn’t happened. The girl laughed so hard she choked and spurted her pop.

Learn from the master, said Cappy. Whatever Randall does, do the opposite.

Angus’s family was there, spilling out of and around a car, so we went to get him and find Zack. When we were all four together, we needed frybread, went and got some, and were eating in the shade of the stands when some girls from school came up to us. They always talked to Angus first, then Zack, then me, then focused on their real target, Cappy. The girls from our year were mainly named some version of Shawn. There was Shawna, Dawna, Shawnee, Dawnali, Shalana, and just plain Dawn and Shawn. There was also a girl named Margaret, named after her grandmother, who worked at the post office. I ended up talking to Margaret. Dawn, Shawn, and the others had their hair curled back from their faces and sprayed stiff, eye shadow, lip gloss, two pairs of earrings in each ear, tight jeans, little striped T-shirts, and shiny silver necklaces. I tease Margaret to this day about what she wore to that powwow—that’s because I remember every detail, down to the silver locket that contained not a photo of her boyfriend, but a picture of her baby brother.

What Cappy did to attract girls was just be Cappy. He didn’t smolder like Randall, he didn’t wear a single feather. He was dressed as usual in a faded T-shirt and jeans. His hair naturally fell down over one eye and he didn’t bother tucking it behind his ear, but used that head toss. Otherwise, he just talked, and drew us all in. The thing I noticed was, he asked the girls about themselves almost like a teacher would. How their summer was going, what their families were doing. The conversation put us on an easy footing and we walked, circling the arena behind the stands, the girls being noticed, us noticing them being noticed. We went around a few times. The girls bought cotton candy. They peeled off strips of fluff for us. We drank pop and tried to crush the cans in our fists. Things started up. Veterans brought in the American flag, the MIA-POW flag, the flag of our Tribal Nation, our traditional Eagle Staff. The head dancers followed and then the Grand Entry dancers lined up and moved into the arena by category, all the way down to the tiny tots. We stood on the top tier to watch it all: the drums, the rousing synchrony of bells, rattles, deer clackers, and the flashing music of the jingle dancers. Grand Entry always caught my breath and made me step along with the dancers. It was big, contagious, defiant, joyous. But tonight all I could think of was how to grab my pack and slip away.

I went as the crow flies, took the woods paths, crossed a couple of pastures, cut down the back roads. When I got to the house there was still light. The outdoor dog barked at me and recognized me. Hey, Fleck, I said, and he licked my hand. We waited half an hour, behind the shed, until dusk. I waited for a while after that, until it was really dark, and then I put on a pair of my mother’s leather gloves, tight ones, and walked up to the back door carrying the crowbar Cappy had left out.

When I jimmied the door the indoor dog barked, but she wagged her tail when I entered and followed me to the gun cabinet. The shatter of glass startled her, but she whined with excitement when I took out the gun. She thought we were going hunting. Instead, I put ammunition in my backpack, messed up the TV, scattered the toolbox, then said good-bye to the dogs. I walked across the road and found the path Cappy and I had marked out. I had to use my flashlight but switched it off when a car crested the rise on the gravel road. Up near the overlook, we’d already made the hole. I wrapped the rifle and ammo tight in the garbage bags and buried it, scattered leaves, brush, twigs back over the top. At least by the light of a three-quarter moon the place looked undisturbed. I drank some water and started walking back to the powwow grounds. I went back along the same paths, around the same sloughs, down the old two-track dirt roads, the woods paths that a few still cleared to log out their firewood. I crossed a horse pasture and could hear the drums from there, still going, now forty-nine songs and moccasin games. People stayed awake all night gambling in some of the tents. I made it back to our tent and unzipped the bug-proof screen. Cappy was awake. Randall gone. Cappy asked me how it went.

Smooth, I said. I think it went smooth.

Good, he said. We lay on our backs, awake. Doe would have gone home by now and found his house broken into, his rifle gone. He’d have called the BIA/tribal police. There wasn’t any way he’d know it was me. But I didn’t know how I could face him anyway.

Mornings were always the best times—waking with the cool air stirring along the fabric walls. Smelling coffee, bannock, eggs, and sausage. Outside, sun and fresh alfalfa cut for the horses. Suzette and Josey were making their plans for the day and feeding their grandchildren on flimsy paper plates, which always bent or disintegrated beneath the load of food.

Ey! Here. Put another plate underneath, you.

The children walked hunched over to the edge of the grass and ate close to the ground. Every bite was good. The sisters had a Coleman gas stove and a propane tank. They fried bacon and cooked bannock with the grease. Their scrambled eggs were light, fluffy, never burnt. Bread was toasted on the hot griddle. There was a open jar of Juneberry jam. Another of wild plum. They knew how to feed boys. A couple hours after hot breakfast there was cold breakfast—watermelon, cereal, cold bannock, soft butter, and meat. They owned a magnificent blue-speckled enameled tin coffeepot, and a stainless steel one, too, just for tea. The lawn chairs at the camp were always full of gossiping men, and the RV started out crawling with children until one of the sisters put a stop to it and locked them out. After cold breakfast, the sisters made piles of sandwiches, stashed them in the cooler under supervision of their daughters. They retired into the RV to prepare themselves for the day’s Grand Entry. Nothing could disturb them. Not pleas to use their bathroom, screams of vengeance from fighting boys, or their daughters’ feigned panic. The scent of burning sweetgrass wafted from the little pull-down screen windows. Suzette and Josey took their regalia very seriously and made sure all of the bad looks from other women, the grudge thoughts or snapping eyes, were removed from their cloth and beads by the smoke. And their own thoughts, too, perhaps, for their husbands’ eyes were known to roam although they had no proof. The interior of the RV, so cunningly fitted with cabinets and fold-up beds, drawers, cupboards, hidden chests, a tiny toilet, was neatened and perfected. When they emerged, one of them padlocked the door shut from the outside and stashed the key in the beaded striker purse or knife sheath that hung from her belt. They moved off in unison, their hair braided long with mink pelts, gray only at the temples. Grandly, gracefully, they entered the flow of the dancers. Their buckskin fringe swayed with dreamlike precision. Everybody liked to watch them, to see if they’d be thrown off by the swirl of intertribal, when anybody and everyone entered the arena. Little boys in half a grass dance outfit copied big boy moves and knocked against Suzette and Josey. Little girls with eyes glazed in concentration jingle-hopped after their glamorous sisters and tripped into their path. Suzette and Josey did not falter. They talked to each other, broke into laughter, never missed a beat or disrupted the even sway of fringe on their sleeves, shawls, and yokes.

Two skins for each dress, said Cappy. And probably another skin’s worth of fringe. If they fell on top of each other, they’d get snarled up and never break apart.

C’mon down, all you spectators, called Doe, this is intertribal! Put your feet on the ground in whatever you got—boots, moccasins, even hippie sandals. What are those? Birkenstocks, somebody tells me. We found a Birkenstock outside of Randall’s tent last night. Ohhhh, yes. Howah.

Doe was always teasing Randall and his friends about their continual efforts at snagging women.

Fuck, said Randall, behind us. Some fuckers broke into our house last night and stole one a Dad’s deer rifles.

They get anything else? asked Cappy. He didn’t turn around to look at Randall, but frowned out at the dancing.

Nah, said Randall. That rifle shows up, I’ll coldcock somebody.

How’s Doe taking it?

He’s mad, Randall shrugged, but not that mad. He says it’s odd they just took that one rifle. They might of tried to take the TV, dropped the toolbox. Amateurs. Couldn’t find any tracks or nothing. Drugheads.

Yeah, said Cappy.

Yeah, I said.

Either the dogs weren’t doing their jobs or they knew who did it.

Or somebody coulda thrown them a piece of meat, said Cappy.

Randall made a disgusted noise. Wasn’t his favorite rifle anyway. If they got his favorite, he’d be mad.

That’s good, I said.

I felt so low I wanted to slide under the bleachers and crouch there with the dead cigarettes, melted snow-cone wrappers, balled-up diapers, and brown splats of spit snoose.

From now on we’re gonna keep the house better locked, Cappy said.

I’m going home tonight, said Randall. Sleeping on the couch with my shotgun until we fix the door.

Don’t shoot your nuts off, said Cappy.

Don’t worry, nutless. Fuckers show up to finish the job, they’ll be sorry.

You’re the man, said Cappy. He clapped his brother’s shoulder and we sauntered off. We walked around and around the arena. After a while he clapped my shoulder too.

You did it smooth.

I hate myself though.

Brother, you must get over that, said Cappy. He will never know, but if he did know, Doe would understand.

Okay, I said after a while, but when I do it, the rest of it, I do it alone.

Cappy sighed.

Listen, Cappy, I said, hoarse, nearly whispering. I’m going to call this like it is. Murder, for justice maybe. Murder just the same. I had to say this a thousand times in my head before I said it out loud. But there it is. And I can take him.

Cappy stopped. Okay, you said it. But that’s not the whole point. If you ever hit five, no, three cans in a row, just once, I’d say maybe. But Joe.

I’ll get close to him.

He’ll see you. Worse, you’ll see him. You’ve got one chance, Joe. I’ll just be there to steady your mind, your aim. I won’t get implicated, Joe.

Okay, I said out loud. No way, I thought. I had decided I would not tell Cappy what morning I was going to the overlook. I would just go there and do it.

The weather the first part of that week was forecast clear and hot. Linda had said her brother played early, before anybody else was out. So just after sunrise I rose and sneaked downstairs. I told my parents that I was getting in shape for fall cross-country—and I did run. I ran the woods trails where I would not be seen. I was getting good at skirting yards and using windbreaks for cover. I took a washed-out pickle jar of water in one hand and a candy bar in my shirt pocket. I made sure the stone Cappy gave me was in my jeans pocket. I wore a brown plaid shirt over a green T-shirt. The best I could do for camouflage. When I got to the overlook, I scraped the sticks and leaves away and set them aside. Then, I took the earth off the gun in the bags and set that aside too. I took the rifle out of the bags and loaded it. My fingers shook. I tried deep breaths. I wrung my hands and brought the rifle to the oak tree, sat down, and held it. I put the jar of water next to me. Then I waited. I would see any golfer on the fifth tee well before he came to the place where I planned to shoot. Then while Lark was starting down the fairway behind a screen of young pine trees, I would walk down the hill with the rifle and hide behind a riffle of chokecherry bush and box elder. From there, I’d aim and wait until he got close enough. How close he came would depend on where he hit the ball and which way it rolled, where he stood to putt, and other things. There were many variables. So many that I was still weighing possibilities when the sun got so high I knew I’d been sitting there for hours. Once the regular stream of golfers began, I got up and unloaded the rifle. I packed it in its bag, rolled the other bag around it, reburied it, and scattered the leaves and twigs over the ground. On the way home, I ate the candy bar and put the wrapper in my pocket. My stomach had stopped jumping. Done for the day, I felt almost euphoric. I drank the last of the water and carried the empty jar along and didn’t think. I looked at every tree I passed and it amazed me with its detail and life. I stopped and watched two horses browse in the weedy pasture. Born graceful. When I got home, I was so cheerful that my mother asked what had got into me. I made her laugh. I ate and ate. Then I went upstairs and fell asleep for an hour and woke into the same great wash of dread I began with every time I woke up. I’d have to do the same thing tomorrow morning. And I did. As I sat against the oak tree there were moments I forgot why I was there. I would get up to leave, thinking I was crazy. Then I remembered my mother stunned and bleeding in the backseat of the car. My hand on her hair. Or how she had stared from her bedcovers as if from a black cave. I thought of my father helpless on the linoleum floor of the grocery. I thought of the gas can in the lake, on the hardware store shelf. I thought of other things. Then I was ready. But he did not show up that Tuesday. He did not show up on Wednesday either. On Thursday rain was forecast, so I thought maybe I’d stay home.

I went anyway. Once I got to the overlook, I went through all of the actions that had become routine by now. I sat under the oak tree with the rifle, safety on. The water beside me. There was low cloud cover and the air smelled like rain. I had been there for maybe an hour, waiting for the clouds to break, when Lark walked onto the tee dragging his clubs in a stained old canvas wheeled cart. He disappeared behind the planted pines. Cradling the rifle the way Cappy had taught me, I stepped down the hill. I’d told myself exactly what to do so often that at first I thought I’d be all right. I found the spot marked out just at the edge of the bushes where I could stand, nearly hidden. From there I could sight and aim just about any place Lark might be on the green. I thumbed off safety. I gulped in air and let it out explosively. I held the rifle gently the way I’d practiced, and tried to control my breathing. But each breath got stuck. And there was Lark. He hit from a low rise near the pine trees. The ball arced and landed at the edge of the clipped circle with a bounce that took it another yard toward the hole. Lark walked down quickly. The scent of minerals began to seep out of the earth. I brought the rifle to my shoulder and followed him with the barrel. He stood sideways, staring down at his golf ball, squinting his eyes, opening them, squinting again, completely absorbed. He wore tan pants, golf shoes, a gray cap, and a brown short-sleeved T-shirt. He was so close I could read the logo of his defunct grocery store. Vinland. The golf ball rolled to a spot half a foot from the hole. He’d tap it in, I thought. He’d bend over to scoop it out. When he straightened up I’d shoot.

Lark walked forward and before he could tap it in I shot at the logo over his heart. I hit him someplace else, maybe in the stomach, and he collapsed. There was a loud silence. I lowered the rifle. Lark rolled over on his knees, staggered to his feet, found his balance, and began to scream. The sound was a high squeal like nothing I’d ever heard. I got the rifle back to my shoulder, reloaded. I was shaking so hard I rested the barrel on a branch, held my breath, and shot again. I couldn’t tell where that shot went. Once again I worked the bolt, reloaded, aimed, but my finger slid off the trigger—I couldn’t shoot. Lark pitched forward. There was another silence. My face was drenching wet. I wiped my eyes on my sleeve. Lark began to make noise again.

Please, no, please, no. I thought I heard those words, but I could have said them. Lark was trying to get up again. He pedaled one foot in the air, rolled over, onto his knees, and rose in a crouch. He locked eyes with me. Their blackness knocked me backward. The rifle was lifted from my arms. Cappy stepped forward beside me. I didn’t hear the shot. All sound, all motion, had stalled in the sullen air. My brain was ringing. Cappy picked up the ejected casings from around my feet and put them in the pockets of his jeans.

C’mon, he said, touching my arm. Turning me. Let’s go.

I followed him uphill in the first drops of rain.