The Round House

Owe you?

He seemed genuinely surprised. His teeth were so straight that I was sure he’d had orthodontic work done when he was young. He started laughing, showing all of those beautiful teeth. He shook his head, wagged his finger at me, laughing so hard he seemed overcome. When I bent down awkwardly to pick up my purse, he laughed so hard he nearly choked. I tried to get away from him, to get to the door, but instead I backed up against the wall and was stuck there in that white, white room.

My father sat silently at the table, hands folded and head lowered. I couldn’t think of what to say at first, but then the silence went on so long I said the first thing that came into my head.

Lots of pretty women own cats. Sonja? I mean, the cats live out in the barn, but she feeds them. You don’t even have a cat. You have a dog. They are picky. Look at Pearl.

Linda beamed at my father and said that he had raised a gentleman. He thanked her and then said he had a question for her.

Why did you do it? he asked.

She wanted it, said Linda. Mrs. Lark. The mother. By the time the whole procedure was settled, I abhorred Linden—that’s the word. Abhorred! But he cozied up to me. Plus, it was ridiculous because now I felt guilty about hating him. I mean, on the surface he was not all bad. He gave to charity cases, and sometimes he decided on a whim, I guess, that I needed his charity. Then he gave me presents, flowers, fancy scarves, soaps, sentimental cards. He told me how sorry he was when he was mean, temporarily charmed me, made me laugh. Also, I can’t explain the hold that Mrs. Lark could exert. Linden was sullen to her and insulting behind her back. Yet he’d do anything she said. He consented because she forced him. And after that, as you know, I became very ill.

Yes, said my father, I remember. You contracted a bacterial infection from the hospital and were sent to Fargo.

I contracted an infection of the spirit, said Linda precisely, in a correcting tone. I realized that I had made a terrible mistake. My real family came to my rescue, got me on my feet again, she went on. And Geraldine too, of course. Also, Doe Lafournais put me through their sweat lodge. That ceremony was so powerful. Her voice was wistful. And so hot! Randall gave me a feast. His aunts dressed me in a new ribbon dress they made. I started healing and felt even better when Mrs. Lark died. I suppose I shouldn’t say that but it’s the truth. After his mother was gone, Linden moved back to South Dakota and soon he cracked again, or so I heard.

Cracked? I asked. What do you mean by that?

He did things, said Linda.

What things? I asked.

Behind me, I could feel the force of my father’s attention.

Things he should have got caught for, she whispered, and closed her eyes.

Chapter Seven. Angel One

Although he was often to be found at the corner of the house sitting on a chipped yellow kitchen chair, watching the road, this was not how Mooshum spent his day but merely a pause to rest his stringy old arms and legs. Mooshum eagerly wearied himself with an endless round of habitual activities that changed with the seasons. In autumn, of course, there were leaves to rake. They came from everywhere to settle on Mooshum’s patch of scrawny grass. He sometimes even plucked them off with his fingers and threw them in a barrel. It delighted him to burn them up. There was a short hiatus after the leaves and before the snow fell. During that time, Mooshum ate like a bear. His belly rounded and his cheeks puffed out. He was preparing for the great snows. He owned two shovels. A broad blue plastic rectangle that he used for the fluffy snow and a silver scoop with a sharp edge for snow that had packed or drifted. He also had an ice chipper, a hoelike instrument with a blade that ran straight down instead of curving over. He sharpened this one with a file until it was so keen it could easily slice off a toe.

Mooshum’s battle array stood ready in the back entry through October. When the first snow fell, he put on his galoshes. Clemence had glued sandpaper of the roughest grade to the bottoms. Every other night or so she changed the paper and let the boots dry on the radiator. Mooshum’s galoshes fit over his rabbit-fur-trimmed moccasins and insulated socks. He wore work pants lined with red flannel and a puffy, fluorescent orange parka that Clemence had given him so that he could be found if he got lost in the snow. Moosehide mitts lined with rabbit fur and a brilliant blue stocking cap with a wild pink pompom concluded this outfit. He went out every single day in his flamboyant gear and labored with incremental ferocity. He was antlike, he hardly seemed to be moving. Yet he shoveled trails to the garbage cans, cleared the snow not only from the walking paths around the house but completely off the driveway and away from the sides of the steps. He kept the snow scraped down to the ground and the concrete and never allowed it to accumulate. When there was no new snow and only the glare of ice, he hacked away with the lethal ice chipper. During the time when everything melted but the ground could not yet be prepared for the garden, he again ate constantly, putting back the flesh he’d lost to his winter war.

Spring and summer involved weeds that grew with vicious alacrity, pilfering animals, bugs, vicissitudes of weather. He used the push mower the way most his age would use a walker, but incidentally clipping the yard down to the nub. He tended a large vegetable garden with invisible zeal, rooting out quack grass, pigweed, and hauling bucket loads of water for the squash hills, again without ever seeming to move. He didn’t care much for the flower garden, but Clemence had a raspberry patch gone wild that mingled with a stand of Juneberry bushes. When the berries began to ripen, Mooshum rose at dawn to defend them. A living scarecrow, he sat in his yellow chair sipping his morning tea. To frighten off the birds, he’d also rigged up a clothesline of tin-can lids. He’d pierced the can tops with a hammer and nail and knotted them close enough to clatter in a breeze. He secured these jangling lines all about the garden, and I was always very careful to note where he hung them as the edges of the cans were sharp and a boy who bicycled through the yard too carelessly might have his throat cut.

By means of this ceaseless and seemingly quixotic activity, Mooshum stayed alive. When he was past the age of ninety years, cataracts were removed from his eyes and false teeth refitted to his shriveled gums. His ears were still keen. He heard so well that he was bothered by the periodic judder of Clemence’s sewing machine down the hall and by my uncle Edward’s habit of humming dirges while he corrected school papers. One morning in the June heat I rode to their house. He heard my bicycle while I was still on the main road, but then I’d clothespinned a playing card to a spoke. I liked the cheerful clatter and also the ace of diamonds was good luck. Anybody might have heard me, but no one would have been so happy at that moment to see me as Mooshum. For he had tangled himself in a large piece of bird netting that he had been attempting to throw over the highbush pembina berries, even though they were nowhere near ripe.

I leaned my bike against the house and untangled him. Then I folded the net back up. I asked him where my auntie was and why he’d been left alone, but he hushed me and said she was inside the house.

She don’t like me to use the net. The birds get tangled up and die in it, or lose their feet.

Indeed, from the folds of the net, at that moment, I picked out a tiny bird’s leg, its minute claw still clenched around a strand of plastic webbing. I undid it carefully and showed it to Mooshum, who peered at it and worked his mouth back and forth.

Let me hide that, he said.

I’m keeping it.

I put the claw in my pocket. I won’t tell Clemence. Maybe it’s got luck in it.

You need some luck?

We put the net away in the garage and walked to the back door. The day was heating up and it was almost time for Mooshum to take his morning nap.

Yes, I need luck, I said to Mooshum. You know how things are. My father had grounded me for three days after I biked off without leaving a note. I’d been at home with my mother all that time. And there was still that ghost I’d never had a chance to figure out. I wanted to ask Mooshum what it meant.

Mooshum’s eyes watered but not from pity. The sun was beginning to glare. He needed the Ray-Ban