The Round House (32 page)

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.

O
ur 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.

W
e 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.

T
he 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.