Oh well, said Mrs. Peace, here we are. It’s a wonder.
This ain’t Oz, said her mother.
Looks like Oz down in your graveyard. All those green glowy lights.
No poppies there in winter.
I’ve got better stuff in here.
Mrs. Peace rummaged around. Under all of the papers and mementos in the rose tin, she kept her Fentanyl patches — white with green lettering, in translucent pouches. She was extremely careful with their use. She was supposed to keep ahead of the pain, but she didn’t like to get too cloudy. She let the pain crank her up until she could think of nothing else. Her patches gave the medicine out in a slowly timed release. The amount she took now would have killed her years ago.
Exterminate or educate.
Just take the pain away, she said.
It was good we became teachers so we could love those kids.
There was good teachers, there was bad teachers. Can’t solve that loneliness.
It sets deep in a person.
Goes down the generations, they say. Takes four generations.
Maybe finally worked itself out with the boy.
LaRose.
Could be he’s finally okay.
It’s possible.
The recliner went plushier. The air dripped with sound. Watery streams of soft noise rushed along her sides. She put out her arms. Her mother took her hands. They drifted. This is how she visited with her mother, who had died of tuberculosis like her mother and grandmother. It was a disease of infinite cruelty that made a mother pass it to her children before she died. Mrs. Peace had not died of her mother’s tuberculosis. She had been in the sanitarium in 1952, the year isoniazid and its various iterations astonishingly cured the incurable.
I was sure that I would die like you. So I tried not to get attached to anything or anyone. You are numb for years, she said to her mother, then you begin to feel. At first it is a sickening thing. To feel seems like having a disease. But you get used to sensations over time.
You were saved for a reason, eh?
Those kids, said Mrs. Peace. To knit with them, make them powwow clothes, bring them up dancing. Have our little tea parties where I put just a little coffee in their mugs of milk.
Do you ever see them now?
From time to time, the ones that lived. Landreaux, of course. And that Romeo comes around. I hear about lots of others. Successful. Not.
The two bobbed in space, still holding hands, and her mother cried out, Even I want to give you all the love I never could! I hated to die and leave you. How good that we can be together now!
NOLA DRAGGED MAGGIE to Holy Mass. While kneeling, Maggie slumped, resting her buttocks impudently on the edge of the pew. Her mother elbowed her, and Maggie slid out of reach. The sly movement triggered Nola and she struck out. In one motion, she backhanded Maggie and clawed her back into place. She’d moved with such swift assurance that Maggie gaped and plunked down. Nobody else around them seemed to notice, though Father Travis’s eye flicked as he walked up to the pulpit.
Father Travis had long ago stopped giving sermons. He just told stories. Today he told how Saint Francis preached to the birds, the fish, the faithful rabbit, and then was called in to rescue an Italian village from a ravenous wolf.
Father Travis walked out into the middle of the aisle and acted out the meeting between Saint Francis and the wolf. He described the Wolf of Gubbio, monstrous large and enthusiastic about eating people. When Saint Francis arrived at the village, he followed the wolf’s tracks into the woods and then confronted the wolf. This wolf had never been challenged, and was surprised that Saint Francis was not afraid. The wolf listened to Saint Francis and agreed to stop marauding the village. The wolf sealed its promise by placing its paw in St. Francis’s hand.
When a person speaks calmly and exudes peace, even a wolf may listen, said Father Travis.
Maggie thought, Yeah, but sometimes you have to bite.
Saint Francis brought the wolf back to the people of Gubbio and extracted mutual promises. They would feed the wolf. Every day it could make the rounds of the houses and receive a handout. In return, it would stop attacking people. Again, the wolf put its paw in Saint Francis’s hand, this time in front of the villagers. The wolf swore an oath by rolling over on its back and then bounding up on its hind legs and howling. So there was peace. The wolf died of old age. The people of Gubbio buried it beneath a tombstone and mourned its passing.
Maggie held her fury back because she wanted to hear the story, but when Father Travis finished, she moved away again, this time safely out of her mother’s reach.
People only listened to the wolf because it ate them. Maggie was certain.
EVERYONE KNEW THE stray rez dog who’d lived in the woods was Peter’s dog now. But the dog slipped off his dog run and made a polite visit to Landreaux’s place one afternoon. So when Landreaux had to go take his shift at the housing complex, where Awan waited for attention, he coaxed the dog into the back of his car, intending to drop him off at the Ravich house.
Landreaux meant to leave the dog at the door, that’s all. But Peter answered, and after he took the dog back he abruptly spoke.
We should finish that conversation.
I’m late, said Landreaux.
Won’t take long, said Peter. Can you come in? Five minutes?
Landreaux hunched his shoulders, made to kick off his boots at the door.
Nah, don’t worry, said Peter.
Landreaux sat down at the table, touched the edge. He didn’t want to speak, to bring up the thing he dreaded. He could feel the tension bubbling up inside, the quickened pump of his heart.
The agreement, whatever we call it, Peter started.
Landreaux just nodded, staring at his fingers.
The question is, said Peter.
Landreaux’s heart just quit.
The question is, said Peter. What’s it doing to him?
Landreaux’s heart started beating again.
What’s it doing to him, he weakly said.
He’s sad, said Peter. Missing his family. Can’t understand. You’re right there down the road. I catch his face in the rearview when we pass. He’s so quiet, just looking at his old house.
This was all Peter could stand to tell. About the muffled crying, nothing. About LaRose beating his head with his hands, nothing. About his secret questions whispered only to Peter, Where is my real mom?, he couldn’t tell.
Landreaux took in what Peter did say, then spoke. Feel like I used him to take it off me. Traditional ways. Fuck. This isn’t the old days. But then again there was reason in it. I wanted to. .
Landreaux trailed off. Help, thought Peter.
I think it does. I know it does. Help. As long as we’re with LaRose we’re thinking about him, and we love him. He’s a decent boy, Landreaux, you’ve raised him right. Him being with us helps Nola. Helps Maggie. It does help. . but what’s it doing to him? I mean, he’s holding Nola together. Big job. Meanwhile this is probably tearing Emmaline apart.
Oh, said Landreaux, she hides it.
Nola doesn’t hide it, said Peter. You can see it everywhere. He gestured, jerky with anxiety, around the area — living, dining, kitchen. Both men dropped into their own thoughts. An itchy claustrophobic feeling had been gathering in Landreaux. This feeling was stirred up whenever he entered a house or building that was aggressively neat. He had already felt that here — life consumed by order. Also in Landreaux’s past there were the buzzers, bed checks, whistles, bells, divided trays, measured days of boarding school. There was the unspeakable neatness of military preparation for violence.