Love Medicine by Louise Erdrich

Author:Louise Erdrich
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
ISBN: 0060975547
Published: 0101-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

LYMAN LAMAR TINE

I was the first one to drive a convertible on my reservation. And of course it was red, a red Olds. I owned that car along with my brother Henry junior. We owned it together until his boots filled with water on a windy night and he bought out my share. Now Henry owns the whole car, and his younger brother Lyman (that’s myselo, Lyman walks everywhere he goes.

How did I earn enough money to buy my share in the first place? My one talent was I could always make money. I had a touch for it, unusual in a Chippewa. From the first I was different that way, and everyone recognized it. I was the only kid they let in the American Legion Hall to shine shoes, for example, and one Christmas I sold spiritual bouquets for the mission door to door. The nuns let me keep a percentage. Once I started, it seemed the more money I made the easier the money came.

Everyone encouraged it. When I was fifteen I got a job washing dishes at the Joliet cafe, and that was where my first big break happened.

it wasn’t long before I was promoted to bussing tables, and then the short-order cook quit and I was hired to take her place.

No sooner than you know it I was managing the Joliet. The rest is history. I went on managing. I soon become part owner, and of course there was no stopping me then. It wasn’t long before the whole thing was mine.

After I’d owned the Joliet for one year, it blew over in the worst tornado ever seen around here. The whole operation was smashed to bits.

A total loss. The fryalator was up in a tree, the grill torn in half like it was paper. I was only sixteen. I had it all in my mother’s name, and I lost it quick, but before I lost it I had every one of my relatives, and their relatives, to dinner, and I also bought that red Olds I mentioned, along with Henry.

The first time we saw it! I’ll tell you when we first saw it. We had gotten a ride up to Winnipeg, and both of us had money. Don’t ask me why, because we never mentioned a car or anything, we just had all our money. Mine was cash, a big bankroll from the Joliet’s insurance.

Henry had two checks-a week’s extra pay for being laid off, and his regular check from the jewel Bearing Plant.

We were walking down Portage anyway, seeing the sights, when we saw it.

There it was, parked, large as life. Really as if it was alive.

I thought of the word repose, because the car wasn’t simply stopped, parked, or whatever. that car reposed, calm and gleaming, a FOR SALE sign in its left front window. Then, before we had thought it over at all, the car belonged to us and our pockets were empty. We had just enough money for gas back home.

We went places in that car, me and Henry.

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