The Master Butcher's Singing Club by Louise Erdrich

Author:Louise Erdrich [Erdrich, Louise]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
ISBN: 9781417667338
Publisher: Bt Bound
Published: 2003-01-01T05:00:00+00:00

NINE

The Room

in the Earth

A YEAR HAD PASSED since his mother’s death when Markus found himself fascinated by the idea of excavation. Raw or abandoned construction sites are magnets to children of a certain age. There was a place just on the other side of the pine and oak woods a mile or two behind the butcher shop where a grand house had been planned, the basement dug out, the dirt piled in a huge heap behind a mass of trees. The prospective owner of the place had run out of money early on. Not so much as one board had been set in place, nor had a rotting shed in the yard been pulled down and hauled away. Markus stumbled on this place one day when out hunting, which is what he called aimlessly wandering with a slingshot and a pocket of stones. He, of course, jumped down into the basement first, walked the gumbo bottom, then had trouble clawing his way out. Next he admired the scavenging possibilities of the broken-roofed shed. He ducked inside, kicked the mice berms, and poked the swallow nests to see if he could scare the birds out, but they had already flown south. He found rusted cans on the floor and, thrillingly, the head of an ax with a broken shank, which he hefted and carried out with him. Following a short, rutted trail, he then discovered the mound of earth removed from the basement. It was so high and new that it wasn’t even yet grassed over, just sprouting the coarsest weeds like a balding head. He clambered up the sides of the hill. At the top, he put down the precious ax head alongside his slingshot, lay down, and stared up at the sky.

While he was watching the pale streaks of clouds, it seemed to him that something moved beneath him, as though the earth shrugged a little. Perhaps it was the dirt pile rearranging itself, perhaps nothing, but the sensation of the earth’s living quality was very pleasant and he waited to feel it again. Nothing happened except, as often occurred during that first year, he found that he was crying without reason and without even being aware that it was starting. This weeping plagued him, it was very annoying, and he had to watch himself closely when at school, for fear that some of the other boys might see the tears. Several times he’d been forced to run to the outhouse as though he had the shits, just to gather himself. So it was a relief to be alone, with no witnesses, and just let the tears run down naturally, out of his eyes and down the sides of his temples, until they stopped, which they eventually did. When they quit flowing out, he sat up, grabbed his ax head and slingshot, and tried to slide down the hill over the slick weeds. That didn’t work so well, though he ripped up a lot of plants and made a crude tear in the earth.

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