The Round House Page 16

  There are many stories of children who were forced to live alone, my father went on, including those stories from antiquity in which infants were nursed by wolves. But there are also stories told from the earliest histories of western civilization of humans rescued by animals. One of my favorites was related by Herodotus and concerns Arion of Methymna, the famous harp player and inventor of the dithyrambic measure. This Arion got a notion to travel to Corinth and hired a boat sailed by Corinthians, his own people, whom he thought trustworthy, which just goes to show about your own people, said my father, as the Corinthians were not long out to sea when they decided to throw Arion overboard and seize his wealth. When he learned what was to happen, Arion persuaded them to first allow him to assume his full musician’s costume and to play and sing before his death. The sailors were happy to hear the best harpist in the world and withdrew while Arion dressed himself, took up his harp, and then stood on the deck and chanted the Orthian. When he was finished, as promised, he flung himself into the sea. The Corinthians sailed away. Arion was saved by a dolphin, which took him on its back to Taenarum. A small bronze figure was made of Arion with his harp, aboard a dolphin, and offerings were made to it in those times. The dolphin was moved by Arion’s music—that’s how I take it anyway, my father said. I imagine the dolphin swimming alongside the ship—it heard the music and was devastated, as anyone would be imagining the emotion Arion must have put into his final song. And yet the sailors, though clearly music lovers, as they were happy to postpone Arion’s death and listen, did not hesitate. They did not turn and retrieve him but divided up his money and sailed on. One could argue that this was a much worse sin against art than drowning, say, a painter, a sculptor, a poet, certainly a novelist. Each left behind their works even in the most ancient of days. But a musician of those times took his art to the grave. Of course the destruction of a contemporary musician, too, would be a lesser crime as there are always plenty of recordings, except in the case of our Ojibwe and Metis fiddle players. The traditional player, like your uncle Shamengwa, believed that he owed his music to the wind, and that like the wind his music partook of infinite changeability. A recording would cause his song to become finite. Thus, Uncle was against recorded music. He banned all recording devices in his presence, yet in his later years a few people managed to copy his songs as tape recorders were made small enough to conceal. But I have heard and Whitey confirms that when Shamengwa died those tapes mysteriously disintegrated or were erased, and so there is no recording of Shamengwa’s playing, which is as he wished. Only those who learned from him in some way replicate his music, but it has become their own, too, which is the only way for music to remain alive. I am afraid, said my father that night, to my mother’s stiffened back. The sharp bones of her shoulders pressed against the draped sheet. I’m going to have to leave tomorrow, he said. My mother did not move. She had not spoken one word since we’d begun to eat our dinners with her.

  I am going back down to Bismarck tomorrow, my father said. I want to meet with Gabir. He will not decline this. But I have to keep him connected. And it’s good to see my old friend. We’re going to get our ducks lined up even though there isn’t anyone to prosecute yet. But there will be, I am sure of that. We are finding things out little by little and when you are ready to tell us about the file and the telephone call we will certainly know more, I feel certain of it, Geraldine, and there will be justice. And that will help, I think. That will help you even though you seem to believe now that it won’t help you, that nothing will help you, even the tremendous love in this room. So yes, tomorrow, we won’t have dinner in your room and you can rest. I can’t ask Joe to wait you out like this, to make conversation with the walls and furniture, although it is surprising where a person’s thoughts go. While I’m in Bismarck, I’ll see the governor, too; we’ll have lunch and a conversation. Last time he told me that he’d attended the governors’ conference. While there, he spoke with Yeltow, you know, he’s still the governor of South Dakota. He found out that he is trying to adopt a child.

  What?

  My mother spoke.

  What?

  My father leaned forward pointing like that gundog, motionless.

  What? she spoke again. What child?

  An Indian child, my father said, trying to keep his voice normal.

  He rattled on.

  And so of course the governor of our state, who well understands from our conversations the reasons we have for limiting adoptions by non-Indian parents via the Indian Child Welfare Act, attempted to explain this piece of legislation to Curtis Yeltow, who was very frustrated at the difficulty of adopting this child.

  What child?

  She turned in the bedclothes, a skeletal wraith, her eyes deeply fixed on my father’s face.

  What child? What tribe?

  Well, actually—

  My father tried to keep the shock and agitation out of his voice.

  —to be honest, the tribal background of this child hasn’t been established. The governor of course is well known for his bigoted treatment of Indians—an image he is trying in his own way to mitigate. You know he does these public relations stunts like sponsoring Indian schoolchildren, or giving out positions in the Capitol, aides, to promising Indian high-school students. But his adoption scheme blew up in his face. He had his lawyer present his case to a state judge, who is attempting to pass the matter into tribal hands, as is proper. All present agree that the child looks Indian and the governor says that she—

  She?

  She is Lakota or Dakota or Nakota or anyway Sioux, as the governor says. But she could be any tribe. Also that her mother—

  Where’s her mother?

  She has disappeared.

  My mother raised herself in bed. Clutching the sheet around her, groping forward in her flowered cotton gown, she gave a weird howl that clapped down my spine. The she actually got out of bed. She swayed and gripped my arm when I stood to help her. She began to retch. Her puke was startling, bright green. She cried out again and then crept back into the bed and lay motionless.

  My father didn’t move except to lay a towel on the floor, and so I sat there in stillness too. All of a sudden my mother raised her hands and waved and pushed this way and that as if she was struggling with the air. Her arms moved with disconcerting violence, punching, blocking, pushing. She kicked and twisted.

  It’s over, Geraldine, my father said, terrified, trying to hush her. It’s all right now. You’re safe.

  She slowed and then stopped. She turned to my father, staring out of the covers as out of a cave. Her eyes were black, black in her gray face. She spoke in a low, harsh voice that grew large between my ears.

  I was raped, Bazil.

  My father did not move, did not take her hand or comfort her now in any way. He seemed frozen.

  There is no evidence of what he did. None. My mother’s voice was a croak.

  My father bent near. There is, though. We went straight to the hospital. And there is your own memory. And there are other things. We have—

  I remember everything.

  Tell me.

  My father did not look at me because his gaze was locked with my mother’s gaze. I think if he’d let go she would have collapsed forever into silence. I shrank back and tried to be invisible. I didn’t want to be there, but I knew if I moved I’d snap the pull between them.

  There was a call. It was Mayla. I only knew her by her family. She’s hardly ever been here. Just a girl, so young! She’d begun the enrollment process for her child. The father.

  The father.

  She’d listed him, my mother whispered.

  Do you remember his name?

  My mother’s mouth dropped open, her eyes unfocused.

  Keep going, dear. Keep going. What happened next?

  Mayla asked to meet me at the round house. She had no car. She said her life depended on it, so I went there.

  My father drew a sharp breath.

  I drove into that weedy lot,
parked the car. I started out. He tackled me as I was walking up the hill. Took the keys. Then he pulled out a sack. He dragged it over my head so fast. It was a light rosy material, loose, maybe a pillowcase. But it went down so far, past my shoulders, I couldn’t see. He tied my hands behind me. Tried to get me to tell him where the file was and I said there’s no file. I don’t know what file he’s talking about. He turned me around and marched me . . . held my shoulder. Step over this, go that way, he said. He took me somewhere.

  Where? said my father.

  Somewhere.

  Can you say anything about where?

  Somewhere. That’s where it happened. He kept the sack on me. And he raped me. Somewhere.

  Did you go uphill or downhill?

  I don’t know, Bazil.

  Through the woods? Did leaves brush you?

  I don’t know.

  What about the ground—gravel? brush? Was there a barbed-wire fence?

  My mother screamed in a hoarse voice until her lungs emptied and there was silence.

  Three classes of land meet there, my father said. His voice pulled tight with fear. Tribal trust, state, and fee. That’s why I’m asking.

  Get out of the courtroom, get the damn hell out, my mother said. I don’t know.

  All right, said my father. All right, keep going.

  Afterward, after. He dragged me up to the round house. It took a while to get there. Was he marching me around? I was sick. I don’t remember. At the round house he untied me and pulled off the sack and it was . . . it was a pillowcase, a plain pink one. That was when I saw her. Just a girl. And her baby playing in the dust. The baby put her hands up into the light falling through the chinks in the pole logs. The baby had just learned to crawl, her arms gave out, but she made it to her mother. She was an Indian, she was an Indian girl, and I’d got the call from her. She’d come in on Friday and filed the papers. A quiet girl with such a pretty smile, pretty teeth, pink lipstick. Her hair was cut so nice. She wore a knit dress, pale purple. White shoes. And the baby was with her. I played with that baby in my office. So that’s who made the call that day. Her. Mayla Wolfskin.

  I need that file, she said. My life depends on that file, she said.

  She was thrown on the ground. Her hands were taped up behind her. The baby crawled over the dirt floor. She was wearing a ruffled yellow dress and her eyes, so tender. Like Mayla’s eyes. Big, brown eyes. Wide open. She saw everything and she was confused but she wasn’t crying because her mother was right there so she thought things were all right. But he had Mayla tied up, taped up. Mayla and I looked at each other. She didn’t blink just kept moving her eyes to the baby, then me, back to the baby. I knew she was saying to me I should take care of her baby. I nodded to her. Then he came in and he took off his pants, just kicked them off. He wore slacks. Every word sticks with me, every single word he said. The way he said things, in a dead voice, then cheerful, then dead again. Then amused. He said, I am really one sick fuck. I suppose I am one of those people who just hates Indians generally and especially for they were at odds with my folks way back but especially my feeling is that Indian women are—what he called us, I don’t want to say. He screamed at Mayla and said he loved her, yet she had another man’s baby, she did this to him. But he still wanted her. He still needed her. She had put him in this awkward position, he said, of loving her. You should be crated up and thrown in the lake for what you’ve done to my emotions! He said we have no standing under the law for a good reason and yet have continued to diminish the white man and to take his honor. I could be rich, but I’d rather have shown you, both of you, what you really are. I won’t get caught, he said. I’ve been boning up on law. Funny. Laugh. He nudged me with his shoe. I know as much law as a judge. Know any judges? I have no fear. Things are the wrong way around, he said. But here in this place I make things the right way around for me. The strong should rule the weak. Instead of the weak the strong! It is the weak who pull down the strong. But I won’t get caught.

  I suppose I should have sent you down with your car, he suddenly turned on Mayla. But, honey, I couldn’t. I just felt so sorry for you and my heart split wide open. That’s love, huh? Love. I couldn’t do it. But I have to, you know. All your fucking shit’s in your car. You don’t need anything where you’re going. I’m sorry! I’m sorry! He struck Mayla, and struck me, and struck her again and again and turned her over. You want to tell me where the money is? The money he gave you? Oh, you do? Oh, you do now? Where? He ripped the tape away. She couldn’t talk, then she gasped out, My car.

  He would have killed her then, I think so, but the baby moved. The baby cried out and blinked, looked into his eyes without understanding. Ah, he said, well isn’t that. Isn’t that.

  Don’t talk no more. I don’t want to hear it, he said to Mayla. You are still money in the bank, he said to the baby. I am taking you back with me . . . unless you, dirt. He rose and kicked me and went over and kicked her so hard she wheezed. Then he bent over and looked into my face. He said to me, I’m sorry. I might be having an episode. I’m not really a bad person. I didn’t hurt you, did I? He picked up the baby and said to the baby in a baby voice, I don’t know what to do with the evidence. Silly me. Maybe I should burn the evidence. You know, they’re just evidence. He put her down gently. He uncapped the gas can. While he had his back turned and was pouring the gas on Mayla, I grabbed his pants and put them between my legs and I urinated on them, that’s what I did. I did! Because I’d seen him light his cigarette and put the matches back into his pocket. I was surprised that he didn’t notice that the pants were wet with urine, but he was absorbed in what he meant to do. Shaking too. He was saying, Oh no, oh no. He poured more gasoline over her and splashed gas on me, too, but not the baby. Then, then, when he couldn’t start the fire with the matches from his pants pocket he turned and gave the baby a heavy look. She began to cry and we—Mayla and I—lay perfectly still as he went to comfort the baby. He said, Sshhh, sshhh. I have another book of matches, a lighter even, down the hill. And you, he shook me and said into my face, you, if you move an inch I will kill this baby and if you move an inch I will kill Mayla. You are going to die but if you say one word even one word up in heaven after you are dead I will kill them both.

  I poured myself a bowl of cornflakes and a glass of milk. I put half the milk on the cereal, sprinkled sugar on the cereal, and ate it. I filled the bowl with cereal a second time and drank the sweet milk from the bottom of the bowl and finished off the glass. I dipped a wide-mouth jar into the bag of dog food in the entry, filled Pearl’s bowl, and gave her fresh water. Pearl stood by me as I spray-soaked the garden and the flower beds. Then I got on my bike and went to work. I saw my father before I left. He had stayed in the bedroom with my mother. He’d sat up next to her all night. I asked him about the file, and he told me that my mother wouldn’t talk about it. She needed to know the baby was safe. Mayla was safe.

  What do you think’s in that file? I asked.

  Something to work with.

  And Mayla Wolfskin? What about her?

  She went to school down in South Dakota, said my father. And she’s related to your mother’s friend LaRose. Maybe that’s why your mother won’t see LaRose—she’s afraid of breaking down, of saying something.

  That’s not what I meant. What about Mayla Wolfskin, Dad? Is she alive?