The Round House by Louise Erdrich Page A

asleep if they came out. I could tell right away from the clink of ice, the glasses, that they were drinking together. It would be the Seagrams V.O. from the bottle behind the dishes on the highest shelf. I craned to hear what they would say.
    In all the years we’ve been married we have never once slept apart until now, said my father.
    This of course both repelled and fascinated me. I held my breath.
    She is isolating herself even from Joe. Doesn’t talk to anyone from work, of course. Won’t see visitors, even her old friend from boarding school days, LaRose.
    Clemence says she is cutting her off, too.
    Geraldine. Oh, Geraldine! She dropped a casserole, then this. Well, I know that wasn’t it. I frightened her, triggered her terror of the event.
    The event. Bazil.
    I know. But I cannot refer to it.
    There was silence. At last my father said, the attack. The rape. I must be going crazy, too, Edward. I keep losing track of Joe.
    He’ll be all right. She’ll come out of it, said Edward.
    I don’t know. She’s drifting out of grasp.
    What about church? said Edward. Would it help if Clemence took her to church? You know what I think about it, of course, but there’s a new priest she seems to like.
    I don’t think Geraldine would find comfort there, after all these years.
    We all knew that my mother had stopped going to church after she returned from boarding school. She never said why. Clemence never tried to get her to go, either, that I knew of.
    What about this new priest, though, my father asked.
    Interesting. Good-looking, I suppose. If you like the type. Central casting.
    For what?
    War movie. B western. Man on a doomed mission. Of all things, he’s an ex-Marine.
    Oh god, a trained killer turned Catholic.
    A dead silence opened between the two men and went on for so long it suddenly seemed loud.
    My father rose. I heard him shuffle about. I heard the silken pour of liquor.
    Edward, what do we know of this priest?
    Not much.
    Think.
    Pour me another. He’s from Texas. Dallas. The Catholic martyr on our kitchen wall. Dallas. That’s where this priest is from.
    I don’t know Dallas.
    More correctly, he’s from a little dried-up town outside of Dallas. He’s got a gun and I saw him out popping prairie dogs.
    What? That’s odd for a Benedictine. They strike me as a more genteel and thoughtful bunch.
    True, generally, but he’s new, recently ordained. He’s different from—but oh, who remembers Father Damien? And, ah, he’s searching. He gives very questioning sermons, Bazil. Sometimes I wonder if he’s entirely stable, or then again, if he might be simply . . . intelligent.
    I hope he’s not like the one before him who wrote that scorching letter to the paper about the deadly charms of Metis women. Remember how we laughed about it? God!
    If only it were about God. Sometimes when I’m at the Adoration with Clemence, I see double, just like now.
    What do you see then?
    I see two priests, one dispensing holy water from a silver aspergillum, the other with a rifle.
    Just an air rifle, surely.
    Just an air rifle, yes. But he was fast with it, deadly, and accurate.
    Gopher count?
    Dozen or so. All laid out on the playground.
    The men paused, thinking, then Edward continued, Still, that does not make him . . .
    I know. But the round house. Symbol of the old pagan ways. The Metis women. Setting it all on fire together—the temptation and the crime all burned up as in a fire offering . . . oh god.
    My father’s voice caught.
    Now Bazil, now Bazil, said Edward. This is just talk.
    But I thought the priest’s guilt sounded plausible. That night, from the couch, where I listened and they never knew, I thought I had perhaps heard the truth. All we needed was proof.
    I must have fallen asleep for a good hour. Uncle Edward and my father woke me as they passed into the kitchen, rattling their glasses and flipping on