LaRose Read online

  Wolfred had left his family behind in Portsmouth, New Hampshire, because he was the youngest of four brothers and there was no room for him in the family business—a bakery. His mother was the daughter of a schoolteacher, and she had educated him. He missed her and he missed the books—he had taken only two with him when he was sent to clerk with Mackinnon: a pocket dictionary and Xenophon’s Anabasis, which had belonged to his grandfather, and which his mother hadn’t known contained lewd descriptions. He was just seventeen.

  Even with the fox on his head, the screeching rattled him. He tried to clean up around the fireplace, and threw a pile of scraps out for the dogs. As soon as he walked back inside, there was pandemonium. Mink and her daughter were fighting the dogs off. The noise was hideous.

  Don’t go out there. I forbid you, said Mackinnon. If the dogs kill and eat them, there will be less trouble.

  The humans eventually won the fight, but the noise continued into darkness.

  Mink started hollering again before sunup. Her high-pitched wailing screech was even louder now. The men were scratchy-eyed and tired. Mackinnon viciously kicked her, or kicked one of them, as he passed. She went hoarse that afternoon, which only made her voice more irritating. Something in it had changed, Wolfred thought. He didn’t understand the language very well.

  The rough old bitch wants to sell me her daughter, said Mackinnon.

  Mink’s voice was horrid—intimate with filth—as she described the things the girl could do if Mackinnon would only give over the milk. She was directing the full force of her shrieks at the closed door. Part of Wolfred’s job was to catch and clean fish if Mackinnon asked. Wolfred walked out, heading down to the river, where he kept a hole open in the ice. He could tell how bad it was and crossed himself. Although of course he wasn’t Catholic, the gesture had cachet where Jesuits had been. When he returned, Mink was gone and the girl was inside the post, slumped in the corner underneath a new blanket, head down, so still she seemed dead.

  I couldn’t stand it another minute, Mackinnon said.

  THAT NIGHT, LAROSE slept between his mother and his father. He remembered that night. He remembered the next night. He did not remember what happened in between.

  They burned the rifle, buried the ammunition. The next day, they decided to take the same path the deer had taken. The land between the two houses was dense with wild raspberry in an area cleared by the fire of lightning that had struck an oak. The heat had moved beneath the bark of the tree, flowing from the twigs and branches down into the roots, until the tree could not contain it all and burst. The fire in the roots had killed the smaller trees in a circle but the rain had contained the fire after that. About a mile outside the mark of that tree, Emmaline’s mother had been raised. In the old time, people had protected the land by pulling up survey stakes. A surveying man had even gone missing. Although the lake at the center, deep and silent, had been dragged and searched, his body was never found. Many tribal descendants had inherited bits of land, but no one person had enough to put up a house. So the land stayed wild and fractionated, except for 160 acres, an original allotment owned by Emmaline’s mother, who had signed it over intact to her daughter. The woods were still considered uncanny. Few people besides Landreaux and Peter hunted there.

  The trees were vivid, the sumac scarlet, the birch bright yellow. Sometimes Landreaux carried his son, sometimes he handed LaRose over to Emmaline. They didn’t speak or answer LaRose with words. They held him close, stroked his hair, kissed him with dry, trembling lips.

  Nola saw them cross the yard with the boy.

  What are they doing here, what, what, why are they, why are they bringing . . .

  She ran from the kitchen and shoved Peter in the chest. It had been a calm morning. But that was over now. She told him to make them get the hell off their property and he told her that he would. He stroked her shoulder. She pulled violently away. The black crack between them seemed to reach down forever now. He had not found the bottom yet. He was afraid of what was happening to her, but it wasn’t in him to be angry when he answered the door—anger was too small—besides, he and Landreaux were friends, better friends than the two half sisters, and the instinct of that friendship was still with him. Landreaux and Emmaline had their boy with them, completely unlike but like Dusty because of the way a five-year-old is—that inquisitiveness, that confidence, that trust.

  Landreaux slowly set the boy down and asked if they could come in.

  Don’t, said Nola.

  But Peter opened the door. Immediately LaRose looked up at Peter, then peered eagerly into the front room.

  Where’s Dusty?

  Peter’s face was swollen, charged with exhaustion, but he managed to answer, Dusty’s not here anymore.

  LaRose turned aside in disappointment, then he pointed to the toy box shoved into a corner and said, Can I play?

  Nola had no words in her. She sat heavily and watched, first dull, then in fascination, as LaRose took out one toy after the next and played hard with it, serious, garbled, original, funny, obsessively involved with each object.

  From up the stairs, forgotten, Maggie watched everything. Both boys had been born in early fall. Both mothers had kept them home, feeling they were too young for school. When the boys played together, Maggie had bossed them, made them play servant if she was a king or dogs if she was queen of the beasts. Now she didn’t know what to do. Not just in playing but in her regular life. They didn’t want her back in school yet. If she cried, her mother cried louder. If she didn’t cry, her mother said she was a coldhearted little animal. So she just watched LaRose from the carpeted steps while he played with Dusty’s toys.

  As Maggie watched, her stare hardened. She gripped the spindles like jail bars. Dusty was not there to defend his toys, to share them only if he wanted, to be in charge of the pink-orange dinosaur, the favored flame-black Hot Wheels, the miniature monster trucks. She wanted to storm down and throw stuff everywhere. Kick LaRose. But she was already in trouble for teacher sassing and supposed to be locked in her room.

  Landreaux and Emmaline Iron were still standing in the doorway. Nobody had asked them in.

  What do you want? said Peter.

  He always would have asked how he could help a visitor, but only Nola caught that this rudeness was how he expressed the jolts of electric sorrow and unlikeness of how he was feeling.

  What do you want?

  They answered simply.

  Our son will be your son now.

  Landreaux put the small suitcase on the floor. Emmaline was shredding apart. She put the other bag down in the entry and looked away.

  They had to tell him what they meant, Our son will be your son, and tell him again.

  Peter’s jaw fell, gaping and stricken.

  No, he said, I’ve never heard of such a thing.

  It’s the old way, said Landreaux. He said it very quickly, got the words out yet again. There was a lot more to their decision, but he could no longer speak.

  Emmaline glanced at her half sister, whom she disliked. She stuffed back any sound, glanced up and saw Maggie crouched on the stairs. The girl’s angry doll face punched at her. I have to get out of here, she thought. She stepped forward with an abrupt jerk, placed her hand on her child’s head, kissed him. LaRose patted her face, deep in play.

  Later, Mom, he said, copying his older brothers.

  No, said Peter again, gesturing, no. This can’t be. Take . . .

  Then he looked at Nola and saw that her face had broken open. All the softness was flowing out. And the greed, too, a desperate grasping that leaned her windingly toward the child.

  The Gate

  ALONG TOWARD EVENING Nola made soup, laid out dinner on the table, all with great concentration. After each step in the routine, she went blank, had to call back her thoughts, find the bowls, butter, cut the bread. LaRose spooned up the soup with slow care. He buttered his own bread clumsily. He had good table manners, thought Nola. His presence was both comforting and un
nerving. He was Dusty and the opposite of Dusty. Roils of confusion struck Peter. The shock, he thought. I’m still in shock. The boy drew him with his quiet self-possession, his curiosity, but when Peter felt himself responding he was pierced with a sense of disloyalty. He told himself Dusty wouldn’t care, couldn’t care. He also realized that Nola was allowing herself to be helped somehow, but whether it was that she accepted this unspeakable gift as beauty, or whether she believed the child’s absence over time would leak the lifeblood from Landreaux’s heart, he couldn’t tell.

  You take him to the bathroom, Nola said.

  Then . . .

  I know.

  They looked at each other, searching. Both decided they couldn’t put him to sleep in Dusty’s bed. Besides that, twice LaRose had asked about his mother and accepted their explanations. The third time, however, he’d hung his head and cried, gasping. He’d never been away from his mother. There was his rending bewilderment. Maggie stroked his hair, gave him toys, distracted him. It seemed Maggie could soothe him. She slept in Grandma’s old carved double bed. Plenty of room. I can’t deal with her right now, said Nola. So Peter brought the suitcase and canvas bag of stuffed animals and toys into Maggie’s room. He told Maggie that she was having a sleepover. Peter helped LaRose brush his tiny milk teeth. The boy undressed himself and put on his pajamas. He was thinner than Dusty, tensile. His hair flopped down in a forelock, just a shade darker than Maggie’s. Peter helped him into bed. Maggie stood uncertainly. Her long white flannel nightgown hung like a bell around her ankles. She pulled back the blankets and got in. Peter kissed them both, murmured, turned out the lights. Closing the door, he felt like he was going crazy, but the grief was different. The grief was all mixed up.

  LaRose squeezed the soft creaturelike doll he played with the way his older brother played with plastic superhero action figures. Emmaline had made the creature for him. The grubby fur was rubbed away in spots. One button eye had popped off. She’d pushed cattail fluff through the butt when it split and stitched it back together. Its red felt tongue was worn to a ribbon. At first, the shivers LaRose had been holding back were so delicate they hardly made it from his body. But soon he shook in wide, rolling waves, and tears came too. Maggie lay next to him in the bed, feeling his misery, which made her own misery stop her heart.

  She rolled over and shoved LaRose off the edge of the mattress. He tumbled, dragging the bedspread with him. Maggie tugged it back and LaRose hiccuped on the floor.

  What are you crying for, baby? she said.

  LaRose began to sob, low and profound. Maggie felt blackness surge up in her.

  You want Mom-mee? Mom-mee? She’s gone. She and your daddy left you here to be my brother like Dusty was. But I don’t want you.

  As she said this Maggie felt the blackness turn to water. She crawled down to find LaRose. He was curled in a ball, in the corner, with his scroungy stuffed creature, silent. She touched his back. He was cold and stiff. She dragged out her camping bag and slipped it over them both. She curled around him, warming him.

  I do want you, she whispered in fear.

  Some years later this night became a memory for LaRose. He recalled it, cherished it, as the first night he spent with Maggie. He remembered the warm flannel and her body curled around his. He believed they became brother and sister with each other as they slept. He forgot she’d kicked him out of bed, forgot she’d spoken those words.

  WOLFRED STARED AT the blanketed lump of girl. Mackinnon had always been honest, for a trader. Fair, for a trader, and showed no signs of moral corruption beyond the usual—selling rum to Indians was outlawed. Wolfred could not take in what had happened, so again he went fishing. When he came back with another stringer of whitefish, his mind was clear. He decided Mackinnon was a rescuer. He had saved the girl from Mink, and a slave’s fate elsewhere. Wolfred chopped some kindling and built a small cooking fire beside the post. He roasted the fish whole and Mackinnon ate them with last week’s tough bread. Tomorrow, Wolfred would bake. When he went back into the cabin the girl was exactly where she’d been before. She didn’t move or flinch. It appeared that Mackinnon hadn’t touched her.

  Wolfred put a plate of bread and fish on the dirt floor where she could reach it. She devoured both and gasped for breath. He set a tankard of water near. She gulped it all down, her throat clucking like a baby’s as she drained the cup.

  After Mackinnon had eaten, he crawled into his slat-and-bearskin bed, where his habit was to drink himself to sleep. Wolfred cleaned up the cabin. Then he heated a pail of water and crouched near the girl. He wet a rag and dabbed at her face. As the caked dirt came off, he discovered her features, one by one, and saw that they were very fine. Her lips were small and full. Her eyes hauntingly sweet. Her eyebrows perfectly flared. When her face was uncovered he stared at her in dismay. She was exquisite. Did Mackinnon know? And did he know that his kick had chipped one of the girl’s sharp teeth, left a blackening bruise on her flower-petal cheek?

  Giimiikawaadiz, whispered Wolfred. He knew the words for how she looked.

  Carefully, reaching into the corner of the cabin for what he needed, he mixed mud. He held her chin and with tender care dabbed the muck back into her face, blotting over the startling line of her brows, the perfect symmetry of eyes and nose, the devastating curve of her lips. She was a graceful child of eleven years.

  THEY SLEPT ON the floor last night, said Nola. I told Maggie it had to stop. If you want the ground, I’ll ground you. She sassed me. Okay, I said. You’re grounded to your room. You won’t be going outside. He’s crying again. I don’t know what to do.

  She flapped her fingers. Her face was pinched and gray, her body frail. She’d done well all week, but now it was the weekend, and Maggie home all day.

  Let her out, said Peter.

  Ohhh, she’s out already, wouldn’t mind me, said Nola, angry. She’s eating breakfast.

  Why don’t you let them play together? They’ll be happy.

  Peter and Nola had resolved always to uphold each other’s decisions where the children were concerned. But things were breaking down, thought Peter. A few minutes later, he caught Nola pushing Maggie’s head, almost into her bowl of oatmeal. Maggie resisted. When Nola saw Peter, she took her hand off Maggie’s neck as if nothing had happened.

  Breathing hard, Maggie stared at the oatmeal. It was congealed and her mother didn’t let her have raisins or brown sugar because she might get a cavity. She looked up at her father. He sat down and while Nola’s back was turned he scooped most of her oatmeal into his bowl. He mimed eating. She lifted her spoon. He dipped his in first and put the oatmeal in his mouth, made a sad clown face. Maggie did the same. They rolled their eyes at Nola like anxious dogs. So did LaRose, though he didn’t know what was going on. Without turning around, Nola said to Peter, Stop that shit.

  Peter gripped his spoon and stared hard at her back.

  Peter thought his wife would begin to heal once this was resolved. He thought it was time to take LaRose home. But he wanted Nola to say so. Instead, she invented plans.

  I’m going to make him a cake, she said, eyes blurring. With candles on it like a birthday cake. I’ll put them in over and over, and let him blow them out. He can have a hundred wishes.

  She turned away. The doctor had given her a few Klonopin. She would drug herself on Christmas. I’ll make LaRose a cake every day, she thought, if he’ll only stop crying, if he’ll cling to me like Dusty did, if he’ll only be my son, the only son I will ever have. Some stubborn long-standing resentment had kept Nola from telling Peter that her periods had stopped shortly after Dusty, and the doctor couldn’t tell her why. Peter hadn’t noticed the change, but then, she had always been secretive about her body. Emmaline was the only person she had told. How breathtaking that she had entrusted that secret to Emmaline! Her heart clenched. It was, thought Nola, the reason LaRose was brought to her. Emmaline understood.

  Because her half sister understood her so well, Nola would turn from her, af
raid of her, and harden herself against Emmaline.

  PETER FINALLY WENT over to find Landreaux. He could have walked, it was just a half mile. West, there was Hoopdance. East and north, reservation and reservation town. South, the dying little community of Pluto, which still had a school. That’s where Maggie went and where they would send LaRose if this situation lasted. Pulling into the Irons’ empty driveway, Peter cut the engine. The little gray house was completely dark. A half-constructed plywood and buffalo-board platform sagged off the side. The tarps were pulled away from the bent poles of the sweat lodge out back. There was a bird feeder made from a milk jug, a full box of canning jars in the driveway, and a few toys scattered in the yard. The dog that hung around was gone. The Irons had probably gone to visit relatives in Canada, or to the local guy, a medicine man, Randall, for a family ceremony. He knew from his friendship with Landreaux that their people would put them through religious rituals. What they were called, he could not remember. Peter was only vaguely interested in the traditional things Landreaux did. They’d fished and hunted together. Peter knew how careful Landreaux was and it seemed impossible that he could have made such an error. Peter left his car in the driveway and walked out behind Landreaux’s house, into the woods.