LaRose (17 page)

Boxed in, she thought.

Then she had another thought—their tradition worked. Dazzling act. How could she or Peter harm the father of the son they’d been given? She closed her eyes and felt the heavy warmth of LaRose as she rocked him to sleep, legs dangling over her legs, breath steaming a passage to the crater of her heart.

ROMEO HELD ON
to his first love, but generally did not like women, especially when they got older and turned into scabby
vultures. They could tear a man to pieces with their biting talk. Always, he tried to placate them. Always, he tried to bring them gifts. In his work, Romeo often came across pockets of reservation conference swag—extra T-shirts, mouse pads, soft-foam-grip hand exercisers, mini-flashlights, pens and pencils, water bottles, even pristine fleece throws embossed with acronyms and symbols. His special stash of these objects was contained in his giant wheelchair-accessible bathroom.

He had been sunk in dire depression since Super Tuesday. George Bush had nailed the door shut on his man. McCain was out. Romeo had bad feelings about the race now. At the last AA meeting he’d confided to the group that Bush reminded him of all the things he hated worst about himself: weasel eyes, greed, self-pity, fake machismo. In this nation of self-haters, Bush could win. Everyone looked blank except Father Travis, who’d hung his arm for half a second around Romeo’s shoulders, bro-like, afterward. Romeo was moved. The priest was not a hugger. Still, he walked away and decided to put into action a plan for getting regularly wasted until the election was over.

Today he picked out several gift ideas from a large black garbage bag he’d cleaned up with after a tribal college conference. There were the flexy-turtle hand exercisers—but those ladies’ claws were strong enough already, he decided. He threw back some bookmarks, gimme hats, cheap eco bags already fraying apart. The leftover T-shirts were always small and he had XL ladies to appease. Except for dear old Mrs. Peace. She was better than the others, tiny, not so mean. He took one small 5K Diabetes Walk T-shirt, yellow, for her. He found a couple of fleece throws. He examined, but rejected, frog-shaped zipper pulls. Nobody wanted them because they looked too real. He rolled up a fleece throw and left for the lodge.

Not that he always got into their rooms. Not everyone let him in their door. Some people were suspicious of him at the Elders Lodge, like Mrs. Peace. She’d even had a chain put on her door because he’d once foolishly insisted on entry when she wasn’t in favor of it. Romeo drove up to the lodge. As he walked into the
main hallway, he saw Mrs. Peace. As soon as she saw him, she slippered along in her quick and mouselike way, large eyes peeping at him as she made a swift turn into her apartment and clicked the door emphatically shut.

And she used to be my favorite teacher, thought Romeo, sad. She was everybody’s favorite teacher. She took me home. She fed me from her table.

No longer. And she rarely accepted his gifts. But there was always his aunt, or mother, or foster mother, Star. He was bringing Star the prize—the purple fleece throw that said Sobriety Powwow 1999 in one corner. Nice throws had been left over at the giveaway because of relapse behavior. Romeo knocked on Star’s door, remembering the prescriptions she had for severe arthritis. She opened the door, her little smile glinting.

It’s peckerhead! she yelled to her other visitors.

Oh, him, said Malvern Sangrait to Mrs. Webid. Let’s have a look at him. Skinny, but you never know.

For me? Star took the purple fleece. Very cozy.

The women sat at the kitchen table, looking avidly at Romeo. Their eyes were bright and roved over him, but stopped so pointedly that he glanced down, a reflex. Sure enough.

Twenty cows got out the barn door, Mrs. Webid shrieked.

Romeo tugged. His zipper stuck.

The old ladies began to count out loud. They reached thirty before he managed to violently wrest it all the way shut. Watch out! Weweni! Be careful!

Way-weeny, cackled Malvern.

Be careful so its head don’t get stuck! Ow! It’s trying to peek at us!

The women pretended to shield their eyes.

There was a little tap and his schoolteacher entered. Mrs. Peace’s feet slapped gently to another chair and she joined the three other women and Romeo at the table. Her coffee cup was still sitting where she’d left it.

Aren’t you asking Romeo to sit himself down?

Sit down, sit down!

Why do you look confused?

His brains are down there, in his ass. Maybe he doesn’t want to crush his thoughts.

Star poured a cup of coffee out for him and pushed a Ball jar full of sugar his way.

There he goes. He’s going to sit. He had to tie his pecker in a knot first, said Mrs. Webid. His thing was trying to get out.

Oh my, gasped Mrs. Peace. She didn’t join in their lewd talk, but her eyes pooled with delight. The ladies stared harder now at Romeo.

He was a puny boy, said Star, he’s just got a little pinkie-doodle in his pants. It was something else he had in his pocket this time.

Perhaps some other little “gift” he scrounged up, said Malvern. Maybe one of his free Maglites—with the dead batteries.

Dead batteries! Mrs. Webid’s face crinkled up. Her cheeks puffed mightily, but she couldn’t contain herself and started to wheeze with happiness.

Have you charged up your batteries lately?

Juiced ’em up?

Mrs. Peace suddenly broke into a startling musical chortle, and Romeo excused himself.

Take your time, take your time, Malvern said. Give those batteries a good hard crank!

Ah, they screamed with merriment.

Romeo closed the door and locked it, turned on the water, pissed, and flushed. In the noisy rush from the faucet he eased open the medicine cabinet. Disappointing. He took one bottle even though the label said, Insert into rectum. There was another painkilling item that did not break down when crushed, but could only be swallowed. It was full, though, and there was a duplicate bottle. Hardly be missed. He combed his watery hands through his hair, retied his skinny ponytail, made sure his zipper was shut, and came out.

It was so nice to see you, my boy, Star said immediately. Nice you
visit your old auntie. Please close my door carefully on your way out, eh?

He did shut the door as he quickly left, which caused a burst of hilarity. It should have roused his suspicions, maybe, but they were always like that.

That night, at home, he decided to sell the rectals in a different bottle, but took a triple dose of the pills that didn’t crush. He took them with a full glass of water, as recommended, and waited. Nothing happened so he took one more. Perhaps half an hour passed. He looked at the date on the bottle, then peered closer and held the bottle in the light of the cockeyed lamp. One label had been carefully pasted over another label. He couldn’t scratch the second label off though he tried with his longest fingernail, tried with a razor blade, and then realized with a twisting rush of his guts that the contents of the bottle were effective in the place the old ladies said his brains were located.

God! The pain was sickening. He loped, slung over his stomach, to the door of the disability bathroom. Crashed through. The toilet still had a decent flush and that night he gave it hard use. The cramps were nails driven deep into his lower abdomen. Those ladies must have rocks in their bowels, he thought. How could they stand it? Even a fraction of a dose would have done the trick. He didn’t sleep. Dawn found him raving, exhausted, dehydrated, famished, gutted, unable to go to work. But no, it wasn’t over. Other feelings surfaced. His skin began to prickle and burn. His nose grew giant and his feet seemed far away. There was an abnormally disgusting taste in his mouth, then his penis turned rock hard and would not go down even if he thought of frog-shaped zipper pulls.

All day, blankets nailed over windows, Romeo lay in his pile of sleeping bags experiencing bouts of sickness, disorientation, and sexual excitement simultaneous with explosive gas. CNN wavered and sparked. Ann Kellan, one of his favorite reporters, was doing a comforting story about the language of elephants. When you hear
these calls, you know there’s going to be a mating event, said Ann. Male bull elephants trumpeted. The competition was on. Trunks blared. Romeo’s penis throbbed. He flicked off the volume. He lay still underneath his sleeping bag. He didn’t dare move for fear of disrupting the weak equilibrium he’d gained below the waist.

Maybe the old ladies were right—his brains were in his ass and now it was cleared out—for he found himself thinking with uncommon clarity. Thinking with strange focus. Considering where he’d sell and how much he’d reap for the pills he’d stashed, even counting it all up in his head and deciding what he would do with the money. He thought of his aunt, who’d raised him at the edge of her household, Aunt Star. In spite of her evil trick, he would buy groceries for her. Clean her place up so it didn’t stink. He thought of ordinary and extraordinary things. Should he live this way? He asked himself that. Should he be subject to the cruel pecking of the buzzards at the Elders Lodge? How could he rise? How could he gain respect? Should he run for office? Which office? If he was on the tribal council he would immediately declare it against tribal law to store psychotropic laxative erection pills in a painkilling drug container. He spent the most time, though, reviewing bits, sorting words, scanning possibilities. Information. What certain knowledge might get him. He considered all aspects of what gossip gave him what sorts of power. He made up his mind to go deeper, investigate, maybe put up a bulletin board of clues like his
Law & Order
hero, Lennie Briscoe. He’d put everything together.

WOLFRED SORTED THROUGH
the options: they could run away, but Mackinnon would not only pursue but pay Mashkiig to get them first. They could stick together at all times so Wolfred could watch over her, but that would make it obvious that Wolfred knew and they would lose the element of surprise. Xenophon had lain awake in the night, asking himself this question: What age am I waiting for to come to myself? This age, Wolfred thought. Because they had
to kill Mackinnon of course. Really, it was the first thing Wolfred thought of doing, and the only way. To feel better about it, however, he had examined the options.

How to do it?

Shooting him was out. There might be justice. Killing him by ax, hatchet, knife, or rock, or tying him up and stuffing him under the ice, was also risky that way. As he lay in the faltering dark imagining each scenario, Wolfred remembered how he’d walked the woods with her. She knew everything there was to eat in the woods. She probably knew everything there was not to eat as well. She probably knew poisons.

Alone with her the next day, he saw she’d managed to sew her dress together with a length of sinew. He pointed to the dress, pointed in the general direction of Mackinnon, then proceeded to mime out picking something, cooking it, Mackinnon eating it, holding his belly and pitching over dead. It made her laugh behind her hand. He convinced her that it was not a joke and she began to wash her hands in the air, biting her lip, darting glances all around, as though even the needles on the pines knew what they were planning. Then she signaled him to follow.

She searched the woods until she found scraggly stalks that drooped with black shriveled berries. She put a bit of cloth on her hand, picked the berries, and tied them in the cloth. Then she searched out a stand of oaks, again covered her hand, and plunged it into the snow near a cracked-off stump rotted down to almost nothing. Eventually, from beneath the snow, she pulled out some dark-gray strands that might once have been mushrooms.

That night Wolfred used the breast meat of six partridges, the tenders of three rabbits, a shriveled potato, and the girl’s offering to make a highly salted and strongly flavored stew. He unplugged a keg of high wine, and made sure Mackinnon drained it well down before he ate. The stew did not seem to affect him. They all went to their corners, and Mackinnon kept on drinking the way he usually did until the fire burned out.

In the middle of the night, his thrashing, grunting, and squeals of pain woke them. Wolfred lighted a lantern. Mackinnon’s entire head had turned purple and swollen to a grotesque size. His eyes had vanished in the bloated flesh. His tongue, a mottled fish, bulged from what must have been his mouth. He seemed to be trying to throw himself out of his body. He cast himself violently at the log walls, into the fireplace, upon the mounds of furs and blankets, rattling guns off their wooden hooks. Ammunition, ribbons, and hawks’ bells rained off their shelves. His belly popped from his vest, round and hard as a boulder. His hands and feet filled like bladders. Wolfred had never witnessed anything remotely as terrifying, but had the presence of mind not to club Mackinnon or in any way molest his monstrous presence. As for the girl, she seemed pleased at his condition, though she did not smile.