The Mighty Red

by Louise Erdrich

It used to be that the town well-off were considered the normal ones. They were like the people in movies and TV shows so it seemed they were Americans but lately Crystal and Kismet had come to know on some level that they were the real Americans—the rattled, scratching, always-in-debt Americans.

‘Yeah, that would be great,’ said Kismet. She blinked, coming back to herself. ‘I do would be more correct here,’ said Father Flirty in his most catechismal voice.

The air between the two of them, the swirl of headlights in the misty murk, the peaceful whine of tires rolling by on the wet asphalt of main, outside, and just Kismet and Hugo in the dim bookstore, and the many titles, Anna Karenina among them, which mirrored their ecstasy and now their plight, and Chekhov, ‘The Lady with the Dog,’ ending at the moment where their difficulties also had begun, and contemporary novels of betrayal and adultery and sin, which Kismet and Hugo would read for confirmation of themselves and which often ended with death the justice, but most often only for the woman.

In some places, lambsquarters is considered the Prince of Greens, one of the most nutritious greens ever analyzed; it was one of the earliest agricultural crops of the Americas. It also resembles amaranth, but the brothers rarely spoke of that. 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.

Practically everything she and the Geists did, and even her mother’s job, was destroying what she had just witnessed, the joinery of creation.

Braiding Sweetgrass

Most farmers knew this or were becoming aware of it or even agreed, but nobody liked anyone not trying to survive off farming to tell them what to do.