The Mighty Red

by Louise Erdrich

What did it matter when destiny would crash the party anyway?

Maybe self-tasering works like electroshock, he mused. Maybe the jolt to my brain has mysteriously banished my dismal sorrows. I feel unusually upbeat and cheerful! Anything is possible!

And so love dies, Crystal thought, pulled down to earth by the tedious weight of a partner’s habits.

An ephemeral blip.

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.

The rough-cut men were preparing to eradicate one of the most nutritious plants on earth in favor of growing the sugar beet, perhaps the least nutritious plant on earth. Evolution thought this was hilarious.

Overhead there was Orion, bright and clear. Not a hunter but a dress on a hanger.