LaRose

  I shoulda been named Summer, said Josette. All you can do is make it snow.

  It was blustery. They were walking toward the place they would meet their father. He had agreed to pick them up after he got Ottie settled back home. They were going to sit in the Subway, maybe split a twelve-inch turkey with American cheese, on whole wheat, for their complexions, with lettuce, tomatoes, pickles, and sweet onion sauce dressing. For sure they would. They were hungrier than usual and had enough money left for the turkey sub if they just drank water.

  It’s better for us, said Josette, who loved Sprite.

  They showed us in health class, said Snow mournfully. Just a can a day you get diabetes.

  Landreaux never bought soda because he didn’t want his kids to lose their feet. When he put it like that, they’d squint as if in pain, Yeah, Dad. They drank forbidden pop at Whitey’s. Now, waiting for their father, they stared down at their sub sandwich wrappers and looked amazed.

  I ate that so fast.

  How’d that happen? Josette burped.

  Gross. Now what?

  We’re broke so we sip our healthful waters.

  And wait for Dad.

  They met each other’s eyes. Nobody at school had been very mean. Everybody in their school had something awful happen someplace in their family. Everybody just got sad for everybody, usually, or said tough shit, or if you were a girl maybe you gave a card. There were no cards for what had happened. But one of her girlfriends had beaded Snow a pair of earrings and she knew it was to say what there were no words to say. There were no words to say to their father, either. At least no words they wanted to say. In the car, maybe they’d be silent. Maybe they’d ask about Ottie or Awan or another client. Maybe they’d say something general about schoolwork. They’d avoid true feelings because it could go real deep real sudden with their father. He would get into that seriously real mode like when he did a ceremony. Where you let thoughts and feelings buried inside you come out into the circle so other people could pray and sing to help you. But, the girls agreed, they weren’t into having that kind of energy leak out of their dad when things were going on like normal. So when he drove up in the Corolla they eye-spoke. Josette would ride shotgun because she was good at keeping him on topics like haircuts, car batteries, winterizing the windows of the house with Saran wrap. And if it seemed like he might veer south, she could always ask him to tell her again what was wrong with drinking pop.

  Y2K KEPT PETER occupied now and when he was preparing he could think of something other than Dusty. On the way to Fleet Farm, he berated himself for not having bought live chickens last spring. He’d been planning on turning one of the old outbuildings into a chicken coop. Nola had even agreed although she was generally against having animals. He’d never gotten organized about the chickens, although the dog, he’d fed the dog he had seen in the woods. Maybe part cattle dog. It would have guarded the house, Peter thought. It would have saved Dusty, maybe. He knew that was irrational, but he bought dog food anyway. Peter also purchased seven bags of parched corn and a windup flashlight. He drove home and brought his new purchases down to the room in the basement where he’d already stored six sealed ten-gallon drums of whole wheat flour, powdered milk, oil, dried lentils, beans, jerky. He’d bought and stocked a freezer, which he’d hooked up to a generator. He’d bought a backup generator. He bought a wood-burning stove and every day he chopped wood for an hour after work. That kept his mind focused, just like the priest. He and Father Travis were chopping themselves calm, miles apart, stacking heartache. Peter had a water filter, but to make sure, he bought another water filter. Last year, he’d had a new well put in, hooked to yet another backup generator. He had prebought shoes enough for two years of growing children’s sizes. Dried apples, pears, apricots, prunes, cranberries. More water in five-gallon plastic jugs. Extra blankets. And then the guns—a gun case and locks. He kept his guns loaded because otherwise he saw no point. Twice he’d shot coyotes off the porch. Once a deer. He’d missed a cougar. The key was taped to the top of the seven-foot case. He was obsessive about testing that the case was locked. Boxes of ammunition. A trunk of flares. Cake mixes, sugar, cigarettes, whiskey, vodka, rum. He could trade it for things they would need—surely there was something he’d forgotten.

  Actually, he’d forgotten what high interest his credit card charged. He was working extra hours now just to pay the minimum. Every time he found himself putting another sack of pancake mix or a shovel on the credit card, he told himself that after Y2K the credit card companies would be so messed up by confusing 2000 with 1900 that chances were his statements would get lost. The credit card companies would vanish, the banking system, crippled, would go back to swapping gold bricks. There would be no telephones, televisions, energy companies, no automobiles except old beaters without computerized engines, no gas pumps, no air traffic, no satellites. He would communicate by radio. He’d had an amateur’s license for years. Already, at night all December, he had tense conversations with his contacts all around the world. Every morning, he woke and jotted down another item on his list. On the weekends, he took Maggie and LaRose with him to purchase a ream of paper, a case of envelopes. Pencils and pens. Stamps. Would there be an old-fashioned ground mail system? Probably, his contacts said. The storage room was jammed. Nola didn’t notice because she was busy cooking those damn cakes.

  Those chickens could have lived for months on the stale cakes, Peter thought. Nola smoothed rich frosting over sheet cakes, layer cakes, Bundt cakes, then carefully decorated each with LaRose’s or Maggie’s name. Even the children had now stopped eating them. He’d rescued the cakes and stored them in the unheated garage. When the local high school was renovated, he’d salvaged things he could use. It almost made him smile to look at the row of tin lockers and realize that behind each numbered door, on the narrow top shelf, there rested a pastel cake.

  THE PARENTS DIDN’T want it, but Christmas came for both families. Nola woke a week before the twenty-fifth, picturing her heart as a lump of lead. It lay so heavy in her chest that she could feel it, feebly thumping, reasonlessly going when she wasn’t interested in its efforts. But Christmas. She turned over in bed and nudged Peter—she resented that he could sleep at all.

  A tree, she said. Today’s the day. We have to decorate a Christmas tree.

  Peter opened his eyes, his bright, dear, blue eyes that never would belong to another child. The boy had come out true to both of them, the best of each of their features, mixed, they had marveled. The framed photographs were still arranged across the top of the dresser. Dusty still ran in the sun, posed as Spider-Man, played in a wading pool with Maggie, stood with them all in front of last year’s Christmas tree. Nola found comfort in the pictures but closed her eyes now so that she would not see the likeness in Peter. To distract herself, she started humming, switched thoughts to her daughter. The thought of Maggie was complicated, sometimes alive with love. Sometimes heart-thumping fury. Maggie looked like her tough, impervious Polish grandmother or like her wild and devious Chippewa auntie. Those slant gold eyes that went black in her head when she was angry. That kind little startling crooked grin.

  Nola’s gentle humming was encouraging to Peter. It was a thing she used to do. He reached out and stroked her fingers. Maybe?

  I can’t, she said. Still, he kept asking either outright or with a touch.

  I’ll take the kids out.

  He had a chain saw, he had three chain saws. They were all big brute chain saws overqualified for cutting Christmas trees. All he needed was a handsaw.

  In fact, he said, sitting up in the chilly room, the handsaw with the red handle. We’ll each take turns sawing down the perfect tree. He pictured it and he was surprised that it was even possible. But it was possible for him to get out of bed and do this thing that he’d done last year with a boy who had worn Maggie’s hot-pink Disney Princess parka because his parka was in the wash. Dusty’d had so much confidence. When Maggie mocked him by calling him her little sister, he
struck a Gaston pose and made Maggie laugh. She used to have a laugh like little bells.

  It had changed, Peter thought. Her laugh had become a jeer, a bark, a series of angry shouts, an outburst. She laughed now when things were sad, not funny.

  OUT IN THE woods, in the scant snow and from a distance, Landreaux saw the three examining small spruce trees. He retreated. He had been checking snares, not looking for a tree. But when he saw them he remembered.

  Well, said Emmaline, yes. We should.

  I want a tree with white lights, said Snow.

  Let’s get out the colored lights, said Josette. White’s too blah.

  I like uniformity, said Snow. Everything else in this house is mixed up.

  Hey, said Emmaline.

  No offense, Mom, but a tree with solid white lights. It would be pretty.

  Let’s cut two trees then, said Emmaline.

  Really? You mean really?

  Little ones.

  By the end of the day two small trees were set up in a corner of the living room, one decorated by each sister. For the first time, Emmaline didn’t make the slightest effort—the sisters were competitive. They made ornaments from sequins, ribbons, powwow regalia bling, and LaRose’s Play-Doh. They had never wrapped presents in wrapping paper. They used magazines, colored newspaper, shopping bags. At some point, though, everything stopped and the girls started crying. Coochy rolled his eyes and glared, then stalked out. Hollis made a strategic exit to the boys’ room. Landreaux went to work early, and Emmaline was left stirring a pot of stew. Because of LaRose.

  This exact thing had happened every week or so since Landreaux and Emmaline had explained to the other children what they had done.

  In the boys’ bedroom, Hollis plugged in his blow-up air mattress and turned the dial to inflate. For a minute or two, the high-pitched whine blocked out their voices. When the mattress was plump and comfortable, he lay back and shut his eyes.

  Nothing. There was silence.

  Hollis knew that his own dad, Romeo, had dropped him off with Emmaline and Landreaux sometime around Christmas. He’d been five, maybe six, like LaRose. He’d slept in one of the bunks for a while, but liked the blow-up better. He also knew that he’d been born in some sort of house, not a hospital. His memories of his first years were a jumble of sleeping under tables with people’s feet, or better, in a dog bed with a dog, or with some other kids one winter, all wearing their parkas in the bed. There was a salty skin-dirt smell, overlaid with sour weed and clumped hair, that still closed his throat. The smell was on some people, some kids, and he’d back away from it. He took a shower now every day. He washed his clothes. Liked the smell of ironing. The girls teased him, but they liked it too. Being clean wasn’t something he took for granted, or having his own bed. So, no, he didn’t get involved with this LaRose issue. For safety, he just eased away. But they started up again. He could hear them.

  So will you give me away if you kill somebody, Mom?

  That was Josette shouting.

  Snow stepped forward and slapped Josette, who slapped her back. Emmaline dropped the spoon and slapped them both—she had never slapped her child, or any child, before that moment. It happened so quickly—like a scene choreographed by the Three Stooges, which was what saved it. Emmaline started crying, Josette started crying, then Snow. The three of them clung together.

  I want to cut off my hand, wept Emmaline. I never slapped you girls before.

  We should each cut our hands off, wailed Snow.

  Then making frybread two of us will have to stand together, you know, like each use our remaining hand, pat, pat. Josette and Snow demonstrated.

  Pat, pat, how pitiful, cry-laughed Emmaline.

  Slowly, one by one, they came back to the stew pot that Emmaline kept on sadly stirring. Hollis had dozed off, a short nap. Coochy had wrapped small things that he had stolen months ago from each of his sisters in order to give them something on Christmas. He placed the packages in the branches. Landreaux came home with two black Hefty bags full of mittens and hats, boots, jackets, all new. Father Travis had picked them out from the mission store before anybody else had been through the donations. Hollis came out of the bedroom and helped haul the bags to the house and sort the gifts. He tried to be jovial but couldn’t. It was in his blood to give off feelings of holiday suspicion, instead of cheer, but that gave the girls reason to pick on him.

  Quit making booda, the girls said to Hollis. Get your Christmas game face on and don’t tell LaRose there’s no Santa Claus.

  If you see him, said Josette.

  Snow slumped.

  I’ll find him, said Hollis. He didn’t want to get involved but the words came out. I’ll tell him that Santa’s coming.

  Hollis was not exactly handsome. His nose was big. Yet he was bitter and moody, so maybe more attractive than someone truly handsome. His hair was cut so it swept too neatly across his forehead.

  He smoothed his hair to the side with the palm of his hand.

  Rock it old school, said Josette when she caught him smoothing his hair that way.

  She gave him her raised eyebrow, an accidental gesture that made him stare at her in fascination as she turned away.

  The girls had decided to bring out the Eau Sauvage for their mom last. They did not trust Hollis or Willard, or even their dad, not to shatter the bottle with their feet. It was like that to live with guys. They just stepped on things, even gifts. Ojibwe girls, traditionally and now throwback traditionally, were taught from a young age not to step over things, especially boy things. Grandma’s friend Ignatia Thunder, their traditional go-to elder, had told them all that their power might short out the boys’ power. It was sexist, Josette said, another way to control the female. Snow semi-agreed. Emmaline went poker-faced. Maybe the Iron women weren’t a hundred percent with the rule, but they still couldn’t get themselves to forget about it.

  The girls had bought weird gadgets for their brothers and dad. For the first time ever, Josette and Snow had bought colored tissue. They carefully arranged the boxes wrapped in transparent red paper. They put the box for their mother on a shelf. The glossy bow they’d bought for it shed red glitter on their hands.

  What do we do with the presents for LaRose? said Snow.

  They pushed aside the stuff on the big table—their beading, the jar lids of screws, the newspapers, schoolbooks—and began to eat their bowls of stew. Josette wanted to go over to the Ravich house and give the presents to LaRose. Snow said she couldn’t stand Aunt Nola because she was picky. Coochy just hung his head down and ate. Hollis looked at him and ducked his head down too. Emmaline watched them until they turned to her.

  Did you make LaRose his moccasins? Coochy asked. He had been the youngest until LaRose. There was a note in his voice of something like panic, and his eyes were glossy with tears.

  Every year Emmaline made each of them new moccasins out of smoked moosehide, lined with blanket scraps; sometimes the ankles were trimmed with rabbit fur. She did this while visiting her mother, or at home, while watching her favorite TV shows or sitting with her children at the table to make certain they finished their homework. She was very good at it and people bought special orders from her. Her moccasins sometimes fetched two or three hundred dollars. The family was proud of her work and only wore their moccasins inside the house. Even Hollis wore them—his feet cute with beadwork, not cool. They each had a box of moccasins—one pair for every year.

  I made them, said Emmaline.

  SHE MADE LAROSE his moccasins, Landreaux told his friend Randall, who ran sweat lodges and taught Ojibwe culture, history, and deer skinning in the tribal high school. Randall had been given ceremonies by elders he’d sought out and studied with—medicine people. Landreaux had demons, he said. Demons did not scare Randall, but he respected them.

  It must have been something that happened to me when I was a kid but I can’t remember, Landreaux said.

  That’s what everybody thinks, said Randall. Like if you suddenly remember
what happened, you kill the demon. But it’s a whole hell of a lot more complicated.

  Going up against demons was Randall’s work. Loss, dislocation, disease, addiction, and just feeling like the tattered remnants of a people with a complex history. What was in that history? What sort of knowledge? Who had they been? What were they now? Why so much fucked-upness wherever you turned?

  They had heated up and carried in the rocks and now the two were sitting in the lodge wearing only baggy surfer shorts. Landreaux got the tarp down and sealed them inside. Randall dropped pinches of tobacco, sage, cedar, and powdered bear root on the livid stones. When the air was sharp with fragrance, he splashed on four ladles of water and the hot steam poured painfully into their lungs. After they prayed, Randall opened the lodge door, got the pitchfork, and brought in ten more rocks.

  Okay, we’re gonna go for broke, he said. Get your towel up so you don’t blister. He closed the door and Landreaux lost track of the number of ladles Randall poured. He went dizzy and put the towel across his face, then dizzier, and lay down. Randall said a long invocation to the spirits in Anishinaabemowin, which Landreaux vaguely understood. Then Randall said, Ginitam, because Landreaux was supposed to speak. But all Landreaux could think of to say was, My family hates me for giving away LaRose.

  Randall thought on this.

  You did right, he said at last. They’ll come to know. You remember what all the elders said? They knew the history. Who killed the mother of the first one, Mink, and what she could do. Then her daughter, her granddaughter, the next one, and Emmaline’s mom. Evil tried to catch them all. They fought demons, outwitted them, flew. Randall talked about how people think what medicine people did in the past is magic. But it was not magic. Beyond ordinary understanding now, but not magic.

  LaRose can do these things too, said Randall. He has it in him. He’s stronger than you think. Remember you thought they said he was a mirage?

  Gave him the name, Mirage. I know.