The Mighty Red

by Louise Erdrich

She wasn’t much of a Catholic, but like other people who crave order, she was superstitious.

Crystal had named her daughter Kismet to attract luck and lightness of heart. But fate was also involved.

Getting close to someone whose angel was as powerful as Gary’s was asking for trouble.

So it was, every teaspoon of sugar that was stirred into a cup or baked into a pudding was haunted by the slave trade and the slaughter of the buffalo. Just as now, into every teaspoon, is mixed the pragmatic nihilism of industrial sugar farming and the death of our place on earth. This is the sweetness that pricks people’s senses and sparkles in a birthday cake and glitters on the tongue. Price guaranteed, delicious, a craving strong as love.

One thing he especially liked about the beetles was that they controlled the weeds but never quite ate all of the spurge, never ate themselves entirely out of existence. They weren’t like people. They respected their existential limits.

The cult had rejected him for being a Catholic because they didn’t accept people who already belonged to a cult.