The Round House

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.

The 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.

She was quiet for so long that I thought she wouldn’t answer. I felt no anger from her, no surprise, no embarrassment, merely a period of concentration.

I wish I knew, she said at last, why I could not lie. Last week, in the hospital, I sat there looking at your father and I suddenly wished that I had lied from the beginning. I wish I had lied, Joe! But I didn’t know where it happened. And your father knew I didn’t know. And you knew, too. I told you both. How could I change my story later on? Commit perjury? And remember, I knew that I didn’t know, too. What would happen to my sense of who I am? But if I had understood all that would come of my not knowing, exactly what happened, him going free, him with the sick gall to show himself, I would have.

I’m glad you would have.

She looked straight ahead.

Clearly, she was done talking. I looked at the road coming at us, thinking: If you had lied, if you had changed your story, so what. You’re my mom. I’d love you. Dad would love you. You lied to save Mayla and her baby. You did that easy. If they could prosecute Linden Lark, I would not have to lie about the ammunition or practice to do what someone had to do. And quickly, before my mother figured out her version of stopping him. There was no one else who could do it. I saw that. I was only thirteen and if I got caught I would only be subject to juvenile justice laws, not to mention there were clearly extenuating circumstances. My lawyer could point out my good grades and use that good-kid reputation I had apparently developed. Yet, it was not that I wanted to do it, or even thought I could do it. I was a bad shot and I knew that. I might not get much better. Plus, the reality of the thing. So I didn’t let the whole of it enter my mind at any one time. I only let one piece and then another piece fall into place. We fell silent again. After a while, I realized the next piece: I was going to have to go to Linda Wishkob. I was going to have to find out if her brother played golf anymore, for sure, and if he had some kind of schedule. I was going to have to get some soft and spotted bananas, or buy some firm bananas and allow them strategically to rot.

Three days of shooting practice later, I showed up at the post office with a bag of bananas I’d watched carefully in my room. They were soft and spotted, but not black.

Linda peered over the scale at her window, her round eyes glistening. And that unbearable, doggy grin. I bought six stamps for Cappy, and gave her the bag of bananas. She took the bag with her chubby little paws, and when she opened it her whole face glowed as though I’d given her something precious.

Are they from your mother?

No, I said, from me.