The Round House

Chapter Five. The Naked Now

When the warm rain falls in June, said my father, and the lilacs burst open. Then she will come downstairs. She loves the scent of the lilacs. An old stand of bushes planted by the reservation farm agent bloomed against the south end of the yard. My mother missed its glory. The flimsy faces of her pansies blazed and then the wild prairie roses in the ditches bloomed an innocent pink. She missed those too. Mom had grown her bedding plants from seeds every year I could remember. She’d had her paper milk carton planters arranged on the kitchen counter and on the sills of all south-facing windows in April—but the pansy seedlings were the only ones that lived to get planted outside. After that week, we’d forgotten to take care of all the others. We found the spindly stalks dried to crisps. Dad had dumped the seedlings and dirt in the back and burned the bottoms of the milk cartons with the trash, destroying signs of our neglect. Not that she noticed.

The morning I told my father about the round house, he pushed his chair back, stood, and turned from me. When he turned around, his face was calm and he told me that we’d talk later. We were going to put in my mother’s garden. Now. He’d bought expensive bedding plants from a tumbledown hothouse twenty miles off the reservation. Cardboard flats and plastic trays were set out in the shade. There were red, purple, pink, and striped petunias. Yellow and orange marigolds. There were blue forget-me-nots, Shasta daisies, lavender calendula, and red-hot poker flowers. Dad gave me directions. I set the plants one by one into the flower beds. She had a tractor tire painted white and filled with dirt, and matching rectangles of dirt beside the front steps. I added lobelia and candytuft to the pansies in the narrow beds that lined the driveway. I kept all of the flimsy plastic plant markers for her to see. From time to time, as I worked, I thought of the files. The ghost. The bits and pieces of confusion. The round house. I was beginning to dread the talk with my father. The files again. And the nagging thought of the priest, then the Larks, then the priest again. Behind the house her vegetable garden lay—still heaped with straw. After I’d planted the flowers, I went around back of the house to stack the plastic pots and put away the tools.

Keep those out. We’re going to turn over the dirt in your mother’s vegetable garden, said my dad.

For what?

He just gave me back the shovel I had dropped, and pointed to the edge of the yard, where onion sets and tomato sprouts and packets of bush bean and morning glory seeds waited. We worked together for another hour. When we’d finished with half the soil, it was time for lunch. He left to buy the rest of the plants. I went inside. I was supposed to watch over my mother. I looked around the kitchen. There was a tin of minced ham on the counter, a key fixed to the top to roll the cover back. I made myself a sandwich, ate it, and drank two glasses of water. There was a package of cookies with red jam in the center. I ate a handful. Then I made another sandwich and put it on a plate with two cookies to decorate it. I walked upstairs with the plate of food and a glass of water. Pearl had learned to watch for and wolf down food left outside the bedroom door, so we always brought it into the room now. I balanced the plate on top of the glass of water, and knocked. There was no answer. I knocked harder.

Come in, said my mother. I went in. It had now been over a week since she had walked up those stairs, and the bedroom had taken on a fusty odor. The air was heavy with her breath, as if she’d sucked out the oxygen. She kept the shades pulled. I wanted to set the sandwich down and run. But she asked me to sit.

I put the sandwich and water on the square bedside table from which I had removed so many stale sandwiches and half-drained glasses and bowls of cold soup. If she’d eaten anything I’d not seen it. I dragged a light chair with a cushioned seat close to the bed. I assumed that she wanted me to read to her. Clemence or my father chose the books—nothing sad or upsetting. Which meant the books were either boring romances (Harlequin) or old Reader’s Digest Condensed Books (better). Or those Favorite Poems. Dad had checked “Invictus,” and “High Flight,” which I’d read. They made my mother emit a dry laugh.

Now I reached forward to switch on her bedside lamp—she wouldn’t want the shade drawn up, light to pour through the window. Before I could touch the switch, she gripped my arm. Her face was a pale smudge in the dim air, and her features were smeared with weariness. She’d become weightless, all jutting bones. Her fingers bit hard into my arms. Her voice was fuzzy, as if she’d just woken.

I heard you two. What were you doing out there?

Digging.

Digging what, a grave? Your father used to dig graves.

I shook her arm off and drew back from her. The spidery look of her was repellent, and her words so strange. I sat down in the chair.

No, Mom, not graves. I spoke carefully. We were digging up the dirt in your vegetable garden. Before that, I was planting flowers. Flowers for you to look at, Mom.

Look at? Look at?

She turned over, away from me. Her hair on the pillow was greasy strings, still black, just a few streaks of gray. I could see her spine clearly through the thin gown, each vertebra jutted, and her shoulders were knobs. Her arms had wasted to sticks.

I made you a sandwich, I said.

Thank you, dear, she whispered.

Do you want me to read to you?

No, that’s all right.

Mom, I need to talk to you.

Nothing.

I need to talk to you, I said again.

I’m tired.

You’re always tired, but you sleep all the time.

She didn’t answer.

It was just a comment, I said.

Her silence got to me.

Can’t you eat? You’d feel better. Can’t you get up? Can’t you ... come back to life?

No, she said immediately, as if she’d thought about this too. I can’t do it. I don’t know why. I just cannot do it.

Her back was still turned and a slight tremor began in her shoulders.

Are you cold? I stood and drew the blanket up over her shoulders. Then I sat back down in the chair.

I planted those stripey petunias you like. Here! I emptied my pockets of the little plastic identifying sticks, scattered them on the bed. Mom, I planted all different kinds of flowers. I planted sweet peas.

Sweet peas?

I hadn’t really planted sweet peas. I don’t know why I said it. Sweet peas, I said again. Sunflowers! I hadn’t planted sunflowers either.

Sunflowers will get huge!

She turned over in bed and stared at me. Her eyes were sunk in gray circles of skin.

Mom, I’ve got to talk to you.

About the sunflowers? Joe, they’ll shade out the other flowers.

Maybe I should plant them in another place, I said. I’ve got to talk to you.

Her face dulled. I’m tired.

Mom, did they ask you about that file?

What?

She stared at me in sudden dread, her eyes riveted to my face.

There was no file, Joe.

Yes, there was. The file you went to get on the day you were attacked. You told me you went to get a file. Where is it?

The dread in her face became an active fear.

I didn’t tell you. You imagined that, Joe.

Her lips trembled. She coiled in a ball, put her shrunken fists to her mouth, and squeezed her eyes shut.

Mom, listen. Don’t you want us to catch him?

She opened her eyes. Her eyes were black pits. She did not answer.

Mom, listen. I’m going to find him and I’m going to burn him. I’m going to kill him for you.

She sat up suddenly, activated, like rising from the dead. No! Not you. Don’t you. Listen, Joe, you’ve got to promise me. Don’t go after him. Don’t do anything.

Yes, I’m going to, Mom.

This jolt of strong reaction from her triggered something in me. I kept goading her.

I’ll do it. There is nothing to stop me. I know who he is and I’m going after him. You can’t stop me because you’re here in bed. You can’t get out. You’re trapped in here. And it stinks. Do you know it stinks in here?

I went over to the window and was about to pull the shade up when my mother spoke to me. What I mean is, my before-mother, the one who could tell me what to do, she spoke to me.

Stop that, Joe.

I turned away from the window. She was sitting up. There was no blood in her face at all. Her skin had a pasty, sunless quality. But she stared at me and spoke in an even and commanding tone.

Now you listen to me, Joe. You will not badger me or harass me. You will leave me to think the way I want to think, here. I have to heal any way I can. You will stop asking questions and you will not give me any worry. You will not go after him. You will not terrify me, Joe. I’ve had enough fear for my whole life. You will not add to my fear. You will not add to my sorrows. You will not be part of this.

I stood before her, small again.

This what?

All of this. She swept her arm toward the door. It is all a violation. Find him, don’t find him. Who is he? You have no idea. None. You don’t know. And you never will. Just let me sleep.

All right, I said, and left the room.

As I descended the stairs my heart grew cold. I had a sense that she knew who had done the thing. For sure, she was hiding something. That she knew who did it was a kick in the stomach. My ribs hurt. I couldn’t get my breath. I kept walking straight into the kitchen and then out the back door, into the sunshine. I took great gulps of sunshine. It was as though I had been locked up with a raging corpse. I thought of ripping out every single flower I had planted and of stomping those blossoms into the earth. But Pearl came up to me. I felt my anger blazing out.

I’m going to teach you to play fetch, I said.

I went over to the edge of the yard to pick up a stick. Pearl trotted across the yard with me. I reached down and got the stick and straightened up to throw it, but a blur swept by and the stick was wrenched violently out of my hand. I whirled around. Pearl was standing a few paces away with the stick in her mouth.

Drop it, I said. Her wolf ears went back. I was mad. I walked over and grabbed the stick to take it from her mouth but she gave a meaningful growl and I let go.

All right, I said. So that’s your game.

I walked a few feet away and picked up another stick. Brandished it to throw. Pearl dropped her stick and streaked toward me with the clear intention of tearing off my arm. I dropped the stick. Once the stick was on the ground, she sniffed at it, satisfied. I tried once more. I bent down to pick the stick back up and just as I closed my fingers on it Pearl stepped up to me and caught my wrist in her teeth. I slowly released the stick. Her jaws were so powerful she could have snapped the bone. I stood warily, my hand empty, and she released my arm. There were pressure marks, but not a tooth had broken flesh or scratched me.

So you don’t play fetch, I see that now, I said.

My father pulled up then and took another cardboard flat of expensive nursery plants out of the car’s trunk. We took them out back and set them alongside the vegetable garden plot. For the rest of the afternoon, we took off the old straw, then spaded and raked black earth. We sifted out the old roots and dead stalks and broke up the clods so the earth was fluffy and fine. The dirt was moist deep down below the surface. Rich. I began to like what I was doing. The ground drained my rage. We lifted out the pot-bound plants and gently loosened the roots before we set them in holes and packed the dirt around their stems. Afterward, we hauled buckets and watered the seedlings and then we stood there.

My father took a cigar from his front pocket, then looked at me and replaced it.

The gesture made me mad all over again.

You can smoke that if you want to, I said. I’m not gonna start. I’m not gonna be like you.

I waited for his anger to snuff mine out but was disappointed.

I’ll wait until later, he said. We have not finished talking, have we.

No.

Let’s put the lawn chairs out.

I set up two lawn chairs where we could overlook our work. While he was gone, I got the empty gas can out from under the steps and I put it underneath my chair. Dad brought out a carton of lemonade and two glasses. I knew from the length of time it took that he’d taken a glass upstairs, too. We sat down with our lemonade.

You don’t miss a damn thing, Joe, he said after a time. The round house.

I took the gas can from under my chair, and set it between us on the ground.

My father stared down at it.

Where ... ? he said.

This was straight down through the woods from the round house. About fifteen feet out, in the lake.

In the lake ...

He’d sunk it in the lake.

Almighty God.

He reached down to touch the can, but drew his hand back. He put his hand on his chair’s aluminum armrest. He squinted out at the neatly planted little seedlings in the garden, then slowly, very slowly, he turned and stared at me with the unblinking all-seeing gaze I used to think he turned on murderers before I found out he only dealt with hot dog thieves.

If I could just tan your hide, he said, I would do that. But it just ... I could never do you harm. Also, I am pretty certain that if I did tan your hide the hiding wouldn’t work. In fact, it might set your mind against me. It might cause you to do things secretly. So I am going to have to appeal to you, Joe. I am going to have to ask you to stop. No more hunting down the attacker. No more clue gathering. I realize it is my fault because I sat you down to read through the cases I pulled. But I was wrong to draw you in. You’re too damn inquisitive, Joe. You’ve surprised the hell out of me. I’m afraid. You could get yourself ... if anything happened to you ...

Nothing’s going to happen to me!

I had expected my father to be proud. To give me one of his low whistles of surprise. I’d expected that he would help me plan what to do next. How to set the trap. How to catch the priest. Instead, I was getting a lecture. I sat back in my chair and kicked at the gas can.

Heart to heart, Joe. Listen, this is a sadist. Beyond the limits, someone who has no ... way beyond ...

Way beyond your jurisdiction, I said. There was an edge of juvenile sarcasm in my voice.

Well, you understand a bit about jurisdiction issues, he said, catching my scorn, then ignoring it. Joe, please. I am asking you now as your father to quit. It is a police matter, do you understand?

Who? Tribal? Smokies? FBI? What do they care?

Look, Joe, you know Soren Bjerke.

Yes, I said. I remember what you said once about FBI agents who draw Indian Country.

What did I say? he asked warily.

You said if they’re assigned to Indian Country they are either rookies or have trouble with authority.

Did I really? said my father. He nodded, almost smiled.

Soren is not a rookie, he said.

All right, Dad. So why didn’t he find the gas can?

I don’t know, said my father.

I know. Because he doesn’t care about her. Not really. Not like we do.

I had worked myself into a fury now, or planted myself into one with every puny hothouse plant that would not succeed in gaining my mother’s attention. It seemed that anything my father did, or said, was calculated to drive me crazy. I was strangling there alone with my father in the quiet late afternoon. A rough cloud had boiled over me—I wanted all of a sudden nothing else but to escape from my father, and my mother too, rip away their web of guilt and protection and nameless sickening emotions.

I gotta go.

A tick started crawling up my leg. I pulled up the cuff of my trousers, caught it, and ripped it savagely apart with my nails.

All right, my father said quietly. Where do you want to go?

Anywhere.

Joe, he said carefully. I should have told you I am proud of you. I am proud of how you love your mother. Proud of how you figured this out. But do you understand that if something should happen to you, Joe, that your mother and I would ... we couldn’t bear it. You give us life ...

I jumped up. Yellow spots pulsed before my eyes.

You gave me life, I said. That’s how it’s supposed to work. So let me do what I want with it!

I ran for my bike, jumped on it, and pedaled right around him. He tried to catch at me with his arms but I swerved at the last moment and put on a burst of speed that put me out of his reach.

I knew my father would call Clemence and Edward’s. The gas station was out for the same reason. Cappy’s and Zack’s parents both had telephones. That left Angus. I pedaled straight over to find him outside, crushing last night’s haul of beer cans. None of the cans were Hamm’s. Angus had a scraped cheek and a fat lip. The fact is, sometimes Star would belt him. And when drunk, Elwin had a sly way of trapping Angus and slapping him up—it just about killed Elwin laughing. We wished it would. Besides that, there was a bunch of other guys who didn’t like Angus’s hair, or something, anything. Angus was glad to see me.

Those assholes again?

Nah, he said. So I knew his aunt or Elwin had done it.

As I helped Angus stomp the cans flat in the rock-hard dirt behind the building, I told him all that I’d overheard my father and Edward say about the priest the night before.

If we could find out that the priest drank Hamm’s, I said. Do priests even drink?

Do they drink? said Angus. Hell, yes. They start with wine at mass. After that, I think they get shitfaced every night.

Every time Angus stamped down a can, his hair flew up in a brown mat. Angus had a round face and innocent long eyelashes. He had a crazy disarray of big, gleaming, dangerous-looking teeth. His fat bottom lip bared them in a helpless snarl.

I want to go to mass, I said.

Angus stopped with his foot in midair. What? You wanna go to mass? What for?

Is there a mass?

Sure, there’s a five o’clock. We could just make it.

Angus’s aunt was as pious as Clemence, though I doubted she’d confessed to slugging Angus.

We could check that priest out, I said.

Father Travis.

Right.

Okay, man.

Angus went up to his aunt’s apartment and brought down the bike seat for his pink BMX. He attached it to the hollow rod with a bolt. He put the wrench in his pocket. Whitey had suggested this tactic and given him the wrench when his second mission bike was stolen. Next time someone steals your bike he’ll get his ass reamed anyway, said Whitey. We took off and pedaled the long way to stay out of sight of the gas station, and we made it to the doors of Sacred Heart just before mass started. I followed Angus’s lead, genuflected, and sat down. We took front-row seats. I had meant to observe the priest with a cool and objective calm—the same way, say, Captain Picard viewed the murderous Ligonian who had abducted Chief Security Officer Yar. I summoned to my face Picard’s motionless yet searching gaze as the bell rang to draw the worshippers to their feet. I thought I had prepared myself. But when Father Travis swept in wearing a green robe that looked like a rough blanket, my head seemed to balloon out and fill with bees.

Hey, Starboy, my head is buzzing like a fucking hive, I whispered to Angus.

Shut up, he said.

The little group of twenty or so people began to murmur and Angus thrust a folded paper into my hands. It bore a typed set of responses and the words to hymns. My eyes stuck to Father Travis. I’d seen him before, of course, but I had never really looked at him closely. Boys called Father Travis Pan Face for his expressionless features. Girls called him Father What-a-Waste because his pale eyes glowed over romance-novel cheekbones. His skin was markless and had that redhead’s milky pallor except for the snake of livid scar tissue that traveled up his neck. He had close-set little ears, a grave slash of a mouth, and a buzz cut cap of fox-colored hair that receded back from his temples but came to a slashing point in the center. His teeth did not show when he talked and his boxy chin remained motionless so that the lips alone moved in his still face and the words seemed to wiggle out. Now, the mechanical regularity of his features in which the ever-moving slot of a mouth worked made me dizzy enough to sit down. I had the presence of mind to drop the paper so that I could pretend to search for it between my knees. Angus kicked me.

I’ll puke if you do that again, I hissed. As soon as we could, pretending to find the end of the line for Holy Communion, we slipped out of the church and went down to the playground. Angus had a cigarette. We painstakingly halved it and I smoked my piece even though it brought back the whirling sense of misery. I must have looked as bad as I felt.

I’m gonna go find Cappy.

Yeah, I said. Why don’t you. Tell him I ran away from my dad and to bring some food.

You ran away? Angus frowned. I’d always had the perfect family—loving, rich by reservation standards, stable—the family you would never run away from. No more. His eyes went sharp with pity and he rode off. I wheeled my bicycle into a ruffle of brush and spindly trees, mowed underneath, that marked the edge of the church’s land. I leaned my bike against the tree and lay down in spite of the ticks. I shut my eyes. As I lay there I felt the earth pulling at my body. It seemed I could actually feel the gravity, which I pictured somehow as a huge molten magnet sitting at the center of the earth. I could feel it drawing on me and draining me of strength. I was going past limits, boundaries, to where nothing made sense and Q was high judge in red velvet robes. I fell into a drowse sudden as a fainting spell. Then woke to the vibrations of a quick-moving set of footsteps. I opened my eyes and stared straight up the flowing lines of black cloth to the wooden cross and Father Travis’s rope belt. Above his rigid torso, broad chest, and undercliff of chin, his colorless eyes shone on me under the flat lids.

There’s no smoking on the playground, he said. One of the nuns saw you.

I opened my lips and a hoarse little sound emerged. Father Travis continued.

But you are welcome at Holy Mass. And if catechism interests you, I teach Saturdays at ten a.m.

He waited.

Again, I made some sound.

You’re Clemence Milk’s nephew... .

The drawing flow of gravity suddenly reversed and I sat straight up, filled with an electric energy of purpose.

Yes, I said. Clemence Milk is my auntie.

Now, remarkably, I found my legs under me. I stood. I actually stepped toward the priest, a small step, but toward him. My father’s phrasing left my mouth.

May I ask you a question?

Shoot.

Where were you, I asked, between three and six o’clock on the afternoon of May fifteenth?

What day was that?

The grave mouth tucked at the corners.

It was a Sunday.

I suppose I was officiating. I don’t really remember. And then after mass there was the Adoration. Why?

Just asking. No reason.

There is always a reason, said Father Travis.

Can I ask you another question?

No, said the priest. One question per day. His scar jumped to life on the side of his throat. It glowed red. You’re a good kid, I hear from your aunt, get good grades. You don’t give your parents trouble. We would love to have you in our youth group. He smiled. I saw his teeth for the first time. They were too white and even to be real. Young as he was, but with false teeth! And that scar like a thick rope of paint up his neck. He put his hand out. The callow artist’s rendering of features resolved. Too handsome to be handsome, Clemence had said. We stood there. The sheen off his cassock reflecting up into his eyes spooked me. He held his hand out steady. I tried to hold back but my hand reached out of its own accord. His palm was cool. The callus smooth and tough, like Cappy’s dad.

So we’ll see you then. He turned away. Then looked back with the hint of a grin.

Cigarettes will kill you.

I stood rooted until he’d entered the church basement door far up the hill. I put my back against a tree and leaned there—not slumping. I was filled with that odd energy. I was allowing the tree to help me think. I decided first of all not to hate myself for what had just passed between the priest and me, that moment. I could hardly have refused. To refuse to shake a person’s hand on the reservation was like wishing them dead. Although I did wish Father Travis Wozniak dead and wanted to burn him alive, even, my wish was contingent on secure proof that he was my mother’s attacker. Guilty. My father would not have condoned a conclusion bereft of factual support. I scratched my back with the ridged tree bark and stared at the place where the priest had disappeared. The door to the church basement. I intended to get those facts, and when my friends came, I would have help.

Cappy appeared with Angus. He had a bread bag half full of potato salad and a plastic spoon. I made a bowl out of the bag by folding down the top, then I ate the salad. It was the kind with mustard in the mayonnaise and pickles and eggs. Cappy’s aunts must have made the salad. My mother made it that way. I scraped my spoon against the inside of the bag. Then I told Cappy and Angus about the conversation I had overheard and how my father’s suspicion had landed on the priest.

My dad said he was in Lebanon.

Whatever, said Cappy.

He was a Marine.

So was my dad, said Cappy.

I’m thinking we should find out if he drinks Hamm’s beer, I said. I was going to ask him but figured I’d give away the game. I did get his alibi. I have to check it.

Angus said, His what?

His excuse. He says he officiated at mass that Sunday afternoon. All I have to do is ask Clemence.

Should we set some Hamm’s on his doorstep and see if he drinks it? said Angus.

Anybody would drink free beer, especially you, Starboy, said Cappy. We got to catch him drinking Hamm’s in private. Spy on him.

Look in a priest’s window?

Yes, said Cappy. We’ll bike around back of the church and convent up to the old cemetery. Then we can slip around through the fence, take our bikes down through the graves. The back of the priest’s house faces the cemetery, and the fence is padlocked, but you can slip through. When it’s dark, we’ll sneak up to the house.

Do the priests have a dog? I asked.

No dog, said Angus.

Good, I said. But at the moment I wasn’t actually afraid of getting caught by the priest. It was the cemetery that unnerved me. I had recently seen a ghost. One was enough, and my father had told me how they visited the cemetery when he worked. This cemetery was the place where Mooshum’s father, who had fought at Batoche with Louis Riel, was buried after he was killed years later racing a fast horse. It was where Mooshum’s brother Severine, who had briefly served at the church as a priest, was buried in a plot specially marked off by white-painted brick. One of the three who were lynched by a mob in Hoopdance were also buried there—they’d taken the boy’s body there because he was only thirteen. My age. And hanged. Mooshum remembered it. Mooshum’s brother Shamengwa, whose name meant the Monarch Butterfly, was buried there. Mooshum’s first wife, alongside whom he would be buried, was marked by a gravestone covered with fine gray lichen. His mother was buried in that place, the one who’d stopped talking entirely for ten years after Mooshum’s baby brother died. And there was my father’s family too, my grandmother’s family and her mother’s family, some of whom had converted. The men were buried to the west with the traditionals. They vanished into the earth. Small houses had been built over them to house and feed their spirits, but those had collapsed in advance of everything else, into nothingness. I knew the names of our ancestors from Mooshum and from my mother and father.

Shawanobinesiik, Elizabeth, Southern Thunderbird. Adik, Michael, Caribou. Kwiingwa’aage, Joseph, Wolverine. Mashkiki, Mary, The Medicine. Ombaashi, Albert, Lifted By Wind. Makoons, The Bearling, and Bird Shaking Ice Off Its Wings. They lived and died too quickly in those years that surrounded the making of the reservation, died before they could be recorded and in such painful numbers that it was hard to remember them all without uttering, as my father did sometimes as he read local history, and the white man appeared and drove them down into the earth, which sounded like an Old Testament prophecy but was just an observation of the truth. And so to be afraid of entering the cemetery by night was to fear not the loving ancestors who lay buried, but the gut kick of our history, which I was bracing to absorb. The old cemetery was filled with its complications.

To approach the cemetery from the back we had to go past an old lady who had dogs. You never knew how many dogs or what kind of dogs. She fed the rez dogs. Therefore her house was unpredictable and we always made a detour around it. As we got near, we prepared. Cappy had his pepper can. I grabbed up a heavy stick, thinking of how Pearl hated it, and why. Angus stripped some willow wands for a whip. We got our battle plan together and decided that I would go first with the stick and Cappy would bring up the rear with the pepper. The woman’s name was Bineshi and she was tiny and hunched as was her rickety little frame house. There were two wrecked cars in the yard where the dogs lounged. We thought we might make it if we had enough speed and zoomed past. But as soon as we turned onto the dirt road that ran along the edge of her yard, the dogs came bounding out of the wrecked cars. Two were gray with short legs, three were big, one was huge. They flashed up to us, barking with a vicious intensity. A small gray dog darted in and seized Angus by the pants cuff. Angus expertly kicked it, lashed its face with his whip, and kept riding.

They sense fear, yelled Cappy. We laughed.

The dogs were growing bolder now, as often happened if one made a move. Angus gave a hideous yell. A filthy whitish dog went for his arm and Angus dropped his whips and punched it square in the snout. The dog did not whimper and slink off, but sprang again. Once more Angus connected his blow, but as the dog twisted away, its head came down on Angus’s leg and it tore his pants.

Get him off me!

Cappy turned. Dust flew. He scraped his feet in the dirt and pulled up beside Angus with the open pepper can, took a handful and flung it in the dog’s face. It yipped and disappeared. But the others now surrounded us, clamoring for blood, their ears laid back. They snapped and gnashed like land sharks. We couldn’t drop our bikes and run since we’d just have to retrieve the bicycles later. Anyway the dogs were quicker and would catch us before we could build up speed. Awkwardly, sticking close together, we climbed off and walked our bikes. Cappy peppered another dog. I clobbered two. The peppered dogs recovered and jumped back, drooling for revenge. They formed a circle and advanced, stiff-legged. Cappy dropped the can of pepper on the road and it spilled.

Ah shit, he said. We’re gonna die.

We need fire, cried Angus. I clubbed a dog. It popped up. All of a sudden the dogs’ heads turned. Their ears perked. As one pack they loped off. We heard the door of the little house slam.

She must be feeding them, said Cappy.

Maaj! cried Angus. We jumped back on our bikes and flew up the rest of the road, hardly noticing the rise. Then we ran our bikes down through the woods and hoisted them over the chain-link fence. We were safe in the graveyard. It was nearly dusk. Through the thick pines below we could make out a fractured glow from the windows of the priest’s house. We wheeled our bikes down toward it. The fear I’d had of passing through the graveyard was eclipsed by relief. The dogless dead felt safe. We lingered on our stroll until it was almost dark, pointing out landmark gravestones. We each had ancestors in common, dotted here and there. The air was beginning to stir and a rainbird called over and over in the blue woods.

It’s time, said Cappy when we reached the bottom.

The gate was loosely held together by the padlocked chain. We pulled it wide and eased our bikes through. With trepid stealth we rolled them to the far edge of the churchyard. The grass was clipped short, the stubble cool with evening dew. We slipped up beside the small cottage, just a one-story modernized cabin. Father Travis lived there by himself. We crouched into a scraggly bush. The low mutter of a television came from inside the house. We crawled around the far side to the window where the sound was loudest.

I wanna look in, whispered Angus.

He’ll see you, I said.

There’s blinds. Angus raised his head.

He came down quick.

He’s sitting there watching!

Did he see you?

I dunno.

We went back around to the most hidden side of the house. There were footsteps inside and a sudden spill of light out the window just above our heads. There was a pause. The priest’s silhouette loomed behind the curtain. We pressed ourselves to the clapboard. Just behind our heads a gentle splattering started.

Cappy mouthed the question Taking a piss? I shrugged because it sounded more like someone had taken the cap off a bottle and was gently shaking a delicate stream of water into the toilet. It took a long time and there were pauses. Then the toilet flushed, the faucet went on and off, the light went out, a door shut.

He’s a low-key pisser, said Cappy.

Well, he is a priest, said Angus.

Do they piss funny?

They don’t have sex, said Angus. With no regular use, maybe the plumbing could get rusty.

Like you know, said Cappy.

You guys stay here.

I crawled around the side of the house to the bluish TV glow. Anyone who came into the yard or passed beneath the black pines would have seen me. I stood and leaned slowly to the edge of the window. It was open, to catch the June breeze. I could see the back of Father Travis’s head. He was sitting before the television in an easy chair and at his elbow there was a city beer, a Michelob. I couldn’t tell what he was watching at first, and then I realized it was a movie. Not a television movie.

I sank down and crept back.

He’s got a VHS player!

What’s he watching?

This time Cappy went to look and after a little while he came back and said it was Alien, which had played two hours south of our reservation and which we’d only heard brain-bending stories of because we had no way down there and besides were too young to get in. There were no rental places on the reservation yet.

He must own it, I said, forgetting the open window.

He owns a copy? Owns it?

Shut up, you guys, whispered Cappy. He’s got his screens in.

Angus leaned back against the foundation of the building and drew his legs up to his chest. We put our heads together and spoke low.

Could you see it very good?

I could see it fine. He’s got a thirty-inch.

So that’s how we finally saw Alien—standing at the window behind the young priest we suspected of an unspeakable crime. Father Travis even turned the sound up so we could hear the whole movie. When the credits started to roll, he switched it off and we ducked down and crawled around to where the bedroom had to be. We were still in delicious shock. Angus lay down and poked his fist up from his stomach and jerked his legs. The light went on in the bathroom again and there was the trickling noise. Then toothbrushing and gargling noises. Then the light went on in the bedroom. We edged along the foundation. Slowly rose. There were curtains and rolled-down shades, but there was a gap where the shade met the window. The curtains were transparent panels. We could see just fine. We watched Father Travis take off his wizardly cassock and hang it up. He had big hard muscled shoulders and rocklike pecs. Crazed scars looped down the divided slabs of his stomach. He shed his boxers and stood butt-naked, then turned around. His scars all connected in a powerful tangle around his penis and balls. His equipment was there, but obviously sewn back on, said Angus later, awed, telling Zack. Everything down there was scar tissue—ridged, slick, gray, purple.

We panicked, scrambled away. The lights went out. We darted toward our bikes but Father Travis was unbelievably swift out the door and with a sure bound he seized Angus. Cappy and I kept running.

Come back here, you two, said Father Travis in an even voice that carried perfectly. Or I’ll rip off his head.

Angus yelped. We slowed and looked back. He had Angus by the throat.

He means it!

Say your Hail Marys, said the priest.

Hail Mary, Angus choked.

Silently, said Father Travis.

Angus’s mouth began to move. Cappy and I turned and walked back. The night wind came in and the pines sighed around us. The flickering yard lamps that lighted the church parking lot didn’t reach beneath the black trees. Father Travis walked Angus before him, to the house. Behind us. He ordered Cappy to open the door and once we were in he threw a dead bolt and kicked a chair up to the door.

As you know, there’s no back way out, he said. So you might as well make yourselves comfortable.

He flung Angus at the couch and we jumped forward and sat down on either side of Angus, hands folded in our laps. Father Travis pulled a plaid shirt on and grabbed his easy chair. He turned it to face us. Then he sat down. He was wearing the boxers and the plaid shirt hung open. His chest was massive. I noticed a set of free weights on the floor and barbells in the corner.

Long time no see, he said to me and Angus.

We were petrified.

Got an eyeful, huh? You dumb monkeys. Whaddya think?

He kicked me in the shin, and although he was barefoot my leg went numb and I rocked backwards.

Say something.

But we couldn’t.

Okay, dogface, he said to Cappy. You tell me why you were spying on me. I know these two, but I don’t know you. What’s your name?

John Pulls Leg.

A jolt of admiration shot straight through me. That Cappy could give a fake name at this moment.

Pulls Leg. What kind of frickin’ name is that?

It’s an old traditional name, Sir!

Sir? Where’d you get that Sir!

My father was a Marine, Sir!

Then you’ve disgraced him, you puling ass-wipe shit. Son of a Marine spying on a priest. What’s your dad’s name?

Same name, Sir!

So you’re Pulls Leg Junior?

Yes, Sir!

Well, Pulls Leg Junior, how’s this?

Father Travis reached out and yanked Cappy off the couch with one streaming jerk of his leg. Cappy hit the floor hard but didn’t cry out.

Pulls Leg, huh? Is that how you got your dumb-shit name?

He loomed down and Cappy put his dukes up but the priest just reached down and threw Cappy back on the couch.

All right, Pulls Leg Junior, what’s your real traditional old-time name?

Cappy Lafournais.

Doe’s your father?

Yeah.

Good man. He pointed a thick finger at Angus. And I know who your aunt is.

He stuck his finger in my face next. I couldn’t breathe.

I know your dad, and I think I know why you pathetic scum-butts are here, spying on me. You. I started thinking about your question earlier this evening. Why you would ask me what I was doing on Sunday, May fifteenth, at such and such a time. Like you were asking for my alibi. I thought it was funny. Then I remembered what happened to your mom. And bingo.

Our knees, our feet, our shoes, had taken on a profound significance. We were studying them closely. We could feel his hammered silver eyes on us.

So you think I hurt your ma, he said softly. Well? Answer.

He kicked me again. The numbness turned to pain.

Yeah. No. I thought maybe.

Maybe. Then the answer came in a flash, so to speak, huh? Im-poss-ee-bley. So you know. And just for your information, you little rat-pukes, you cat farts, you jerk-off freaks, I wouldn’t use my dick that way even if I still could. You yellow-shit horndogs, I have a mother and I have a sister. I also had a girlfriend.

Father Travis leaned back. I glanced up at him. He was watching us from under his brow, his hands folded in his lap. His eyes had taken on that cyborg gleam. His cheekbones looked like they were going to break right through his skin. Not only did he own a copy of Alien, not only did he have an amazing and terrible wound, but he had called us humiliating names without actually resorting to the usual swear words. Besides that there was the deft speed with which he’d caught Angus, the free weights beside the television, the fancy Michelob. It was almost enough to make a boy want to be a Catholic.

You had a girlfriend?

Father Travis’s face tightened to bone-white. I could not believe Cappy’s nerve. For a moment I thought he was dead. But Cappy hadn’t asked it in a taunting or sarcastic way at all. That was the thing about Cappy. He really wanted to know. He’d asked the question the way I know now a good lawyer might interview a potential witness. To find out about the other person. To hear his story.

Father Travis didn’t speak for a time, but Cappy maintained a silent willingness to listen.

Yes, said Father Travis, at last. His voice was thicker now, and low. You skinny creamers don’t know about women yet. You may think you do, but you don’t. I was engaged to a real one. Extremely beautiful. Faithful. Never faltered. Not even when I got hit. She would have stayed. I was the one who ... Do you boys like girls?

I do, said Cappy, the only one who dared answer.

Don’t waste your time on sluts, said Father Travis. You in high school?

Going into high school, Cappy said.

All the better. There’s a beautiful girl nobody else has noticed. You be the one to notice her.

All right, said Cappy.

So, said Father Travis. So.

He spread his hands over the arms of the chair. He watched us in silence until finally we raised our eyes to meet his lock-in stare.

You want to know how it happened. You want to know how I deal with it. You want to know things that you have no right to know. But you’re not bad boys. I can see that now. You wanted to find out who hurt your mother, his mother. He stared at me.

I was at the U.S. Embassy in ’83 and got lucky. I’m here, right? The spigot works. I have to take extremely good care of it. Otherwise, infections. Some sex drive. All sublimated. I was in seminary school before becoming a Marine. Had a spell of anger. Came home like this, a sign. Finished up. Ordained. Shipped here. Any questions?

I told him no priest here had ever shot the gophers.

Sisters gas ’em. You like to be gassed in a tunnel? Better thing to die clean, outside. They die like that. He snapped his fingers. Turn over and look at the sky, huh? The clouds.

He wasn’t looking at us. He wasn’t looking at anything now. He waved his hand, dismissing us. We half rose. He was far away. He steepled his hands together and lowered his forehead to rest against his fingers. We edged past him to the door, quietly moved the chair, and undid the dead bolt. We shut the door carefully and then we walked over to our bikes. The wind was blowing harder now. Beating the hood of the yard light so it flickered. The pines groaned. But the air was warm. A south wind, brought by Shawanobinesi, the Southern Thunderbird. A rain-bearing wind.