The Round House

She flushed with pleasure and wonder.

They are perfect, she said. I’ll bake when I get home and drop them by tomorrow after work.

I left. I’d learned from my mistake with Father Travis that unusual politeness from a boy my age is an instant suspicion-raiser. I would have to maintain my course until the moment was right. I would have to have more than one conversation, maybe several conversations, before I would dare fit in a question or two about Linda’s brother. So I made sure I was hanging around the house the next day at five o’clock when Linda pulled her car into the driveway. I looked out the window and said to Dad, There’s Linda. I’ll bet you a buck she has banana bread.

You win, he said without looking up.

He was sipping water. Reading yesterday’s Fargo Forum. Mom walked downstairs. She was wearing black pants and a pink T-shirt. Her hair was fluffy and tinted to a shiny darkness. She wore black-and-pink-beaded earrings and her feet were bare. I saw she’d painted her toenails pink. There was the subtle coloring of makeup—her features more dramatic. And that light lemon lotion as she passed by. I got close to her. Stood behind her as she opened the door and accepted the familiar foil brick. She was dressing up for Dad. I wasn’t too dumb to figure that out. She was looking nice to keep his spirits up. Linda entered, sat down in the living room, and Dad put down his newspaper.

Joe, here’s another loaf for you. She pulled another brick from the bag. She didn’t thank me for the bananas in front of my parents, which surprised me. Most grown-ups think everything a young person does should be common knowledge. They brag about the slightest gesture from a boy. I’d been prepared to play down my banana giving, but Linda didn’t put me in that position. She did, however, start in on the weather chatter with my father. Just the way they had before, they pulled out their favorite all-eternal commonplace-choked subject. Sure enough, my mother folded and went into the kitchen to make tea and slice up the banana bread. I decided to try a whole other ploy and sat down across from them on the couch. Sooner or later, they would slog through the atmosphere and say something important. Or Dad would leave and I could bring up golf. They were on rain: inches fallen in which county, and whether we might see hail. They got to hail they’d seen and various forms of hail damage, when I yawned, lay back, and closed my eyes. I pretended to fall into a deep, impermeable slumber, twitching once and then breathing with such deep regularity I was sure they would be convinced. I let myself go limp and heavy. They were talking hail big as golf balls, perfectly round as peas, hail that penetrated roof shingles like BB shot. The couch was wide, the pillows giving. I woke an hour later. Mom was calling my name softly, sitting on the edge of the couch, patting my shin. As happens sometimes drifting out of an unexpected sleep, I did not know exactly where I was. I kept my eyes closed. My mother’s voice and the childhood sensation of her hand stroking my ankle, which was always how she woke me, flooded me with peace. I allowed my consciousness to sink to an even younger hiding place where nothing could touch me.

When I finally did wake, all was dark, the house silent. Pearl panted in her sleep, curled on the braided oval rug across the room. A knitted afghan had been thrown over me. I’d kicked it off and I was cold. I had missed supper and was hungry, so I wrapped myself in the afghan and padded into the kitchen. Pearl rose and followed me. A tinfoil-covered plate of food glinted on the table. The moon was full again and the kitchen was alive with pale energy. Now that I have lived some, I understand what happened to me in the kitchen that night, and why it happened when it happened. During my sleep I’d dropped my guard. The thoughts that protected my thoughts had fallen away. I was left with my real thoughts. My knowledge of what I planned. With those thoughts came fear. I had never really been afraid before, not for myself. For my mother and father, yes, but that fear had been shared and immediate, not secret. And my worst terrors of loss had not materialized. Though damaged, my parents were sleeping upstairs, in the same room, the same bed. But I understood their peace was temporary. Lark would appear again. Unless they found Mayla dead, or she showed up alive and filed a kidnapping charge, he was free to walk this earth.

I had to do what I had to do. This act was before me. In the uncanny light a sense of dread so overwhelmed me that tears started in my eyes and a single choking sound, a sob maybe, a wrench of hurt, burst from my chest. I crossed my fists in the knitting and squeezed them against my heart. I didn’t want to blurt out the sound. I didn’t want to give a voice to this roil of sensation. But I was naked and tiny before its power. I had no choice. I muffled the sounds I made so that I alone could hear them come out of me, gross and foreign. I lay on the floor, let fear cover me, and I tried to keep breathing while it shook me like a dog shakes a rat.

I lay under this spell for maybe half an hour, and then it went away. I hadn’t known whether it would or not. I had clenched my whole body so tightly that it hurt to let go. I was sore when I got up off the floor, like an old man with joint pains. I shuffled slowly up the stairs to my bed. Pearl had stayed by me all along. She’d huddled next to me. I kept her with me now. As I fell into a darker sleep, I understood that I had learned something. Now that I knew fear, I also knew it was not permanent. As powerful as it was, its grip on me would loosen. It would pass.

I could not use the bananas a second time, so I decided to run into Linda around noon. I knew that she brought her own lunch most days, but treated herself once a week to what women always got at Mighty’s—the soup and salad bar. I checked the window every day, or went inside and had a grape pop. On the third day, I saw Linda approach the cafe with her cheerful Tonka Truck walk. She waved at Bugger, who was sitting on the narrow strip of stained grass between the two buildings. She stopped and gave him a cigarette. It was a surprise to me that she smoked, but I found out later she carried around a pack just to give a mooch to people when they asked. I parked my bike where I could see it from inside and followed her in. Of course, she knew everyone and talked to everyone. She didn’t notice me until she sat down. I pretended to suddenly see her. Her eyes popped with the thrill of it.

Joe!

I came over and stood looking around, as if for my friends, until she asked if I was hungry.

Kinda.

Then sit down.

She ordered a shrimp basket. Then without asking me, another shrimp basket. The most expensive thing on the menu. And a coffee for herself and a glass of milk for me because I was growing right before her eyes. I shrugged. I tried to look trapped as I sat there.

Don’t worry, said Linda. When your buddies show up you can go sit with them. I won’t mind.

Geez, I said. I didn’t mean to ... anyway, thanks. I only had enough for a pop. Do you always get the shrimp basket?

I never do! Linda twinkled at me. It’s a kind of treat. It’s a special day, Joe. It is my birthday.

I told her happy birthday. Then it occurred to me this was her twin brother’s birthday, too. Could I bring him up? Then I remembered something about the story of her birth.

Wasn’t it winter, though, when the two of you were born?

Why yes, you’ve got a good memory. But I was only physically born that day, you see. The way my life has gone, I was born several other times. I picked a date out of those important turning points to be my birthday.

I nodded. Snow Goodchild brought our drinks. I could hear the sizzle of our shrimps and fries. All of a sudden I was very hungry. I was happy that Linda was buying me lunch. I forgot I hated her and remembered that I’d liked talking to her and that she had always loved my parents and was trying to help even now. The tense prickling left my throat. The right moment would come for questions. I took a drink of cold milk and then a drink of cold water from the ripply plastic glasses.

What day did you pick? The day that Betty brought you home from the hospital?

No, said Linda, I picked the day the social worker brought me home the second time. It was marked on Betty’s calendar. She only put the most special things on her calendar. So I knew she loved me, Joe.

That’s good, I said. Then I didn’t know what to say. We were in a grown-up conversation and I could only go so far. I was stuck. I expected Linda would ask me either how my summer was going or if I was looking forward to getting back to school, the way grown-ups were doing if they did not ask after my dad. Nobody ever asked after my mother, exactly. Instead, they made some comment—I saw your mother going in to work, or I saw your mother at the gas station. The tribal council had given Lark notice that he was barred from the reservation, but there was really no way that could be enforced. It wouldn’t work any better than the persuasion. When people said they saw my mother, it meant they were keeping an eye out for her. I thought that Linda might make such a