LaRose

by Louise Erdrich

His brain will not read the phrases in sequence, though the words Romeo just used pop out here and there.

Part of him already knew what Romeo would say and had been waiting for this. It didn’t feel like news. It felt like corroboration.

But he can see his son in the leaves, and where before Dusty was at peace, gone instantly in one shock, now his eyes are open, he is calling.

Peter slides into the driver’s side, starts the vehicle, pulls out. Where are we going? Hunting. It isn’t hunting season, says Landreaux. Yes it is, says Peter.

Landreaux turns toward the hill. A giddy ease steals into him. That all of this will soon be over. Peter is a good shot. It will be like vanishing. No more hiding his miserable truth. No struggle with the substance or not the substance. No waiting for Emmaline to love him again.

The unwelcome desire to live nearly thwarts Landreaux as he gazes down into the woods where Peter is waiting.

WHEN ROMEO LEAVES the Alco parking lot, he wanders, now empty of purpose. All of his being was concentrated on this one attainment. It is finished, he says. He has triggered events over which he now has no control. My work here is done.

The AA meeting beckons. Destination? Romeo recalls that the group was maundering on about the step that includes a searching and fearless moral inventory. Romeo’s favorite. He loves to listen to his compatriots’ new inventory items every week.

What’s going on? It is as if a different Romeo is speaking, an interior Romeo. This unknown alternate Romeo has staged a coup. This Romeo Two has infiltrated his communication infrastructure. Are the drugs betraying him? What did he take again? What shape of pill? Romeo thinks it was a big white oval but there also were some smaller yellow articles. Perhaps crisscrossing side effects. Romeo is startled to silence even as Romeo Two becomes voluble, moved to unload certain acts undertaken for certain reasons. Romeo Two’s mouth claptraps, his voice shifts gear, high and higher, until Romeo One understands in despair that Romeo Two has frog-leaped all the way to that holy step somewhere beyond three, maybe four, five, where you tell God and another human the exact nature of your wrongs.