LaRose(86)

He wasn’t going to speak of it. He was going to make a simple announcement. Next Sunday Mass. Or the Sunday after. But— I’m being transferred.

Leaving.

Yes.

Her gaze is fully fixed on him.

When?

I’ll help the next priest for a few months. After that, I go.

Where?

I don’t exactly know yet.

He laughs uncomfortably. Mutters something about a new line of work.

Emmaline turns away, and when she turns back, Father Travis is unnerved to see that she might be crying. It is hard to tell, because she’s talking at the same time as tears well up and disappear without spilling. Father Travis knows that Emmaline rarely weeps. When she cried on that terrible day in his office, it was a rent soul leaking quietly, eclipsed by Landreaux’s tearing sobs. She tries to speak but she is incoherent, which undoes him. Even when emotional she has always made sense before. Emmaline shakes her hair across her face, creases her brows, bites her lips, tries to hold back words, then blurts out nonsense. Father Travis listens hard, trying to understand, but he is rocked by her emotion. She stops.

I’m blubbering! I’m having trouble absorbing this. You’ve always been here and you’ve done so much. Priests blow through here, but you’ve stayed. People love you . . .

She looks down at the balled-up tissues in her hand, not knowing how the clump got from her purse to her hand, stunned that this wave of language poured out of her and what did she say?

What did I say?

I don’t know, but I’ve fallen in love with you, says Father Travis.

She sits down hard in the plastic chair.

Behind them, LaRose is still practicing his forms. Punching air with increasing ferocity, so he doesn’t hear. Everyone else is gone, so nobody sees the priest kneeling before her, offering the large white handkerchief he keeps on his person for out-of-office emergencies. Emmaline puts the square of white cloth on her face, holds it to her temples, and cries beneath it. There is no question now. She is really crying beneath the handkerchief. Father Travis waits for a sign. This is what he began doing when he was a soldier. This is what he has been doing ever since he became a priest. Kneeling, waiting for a sign, comes so naturally to him now that he hardly notices. He focuses on not taking back or apologizing for what he just said. He leaves it all with Emmaline.

That’s not fair, says Emmaline from beneath the cloth.

LaRose is still fighting invisible foes. Kicking the practice dummy so hard it tips and rolls. This one’s for Tyler, then Curtains Peace, another donkey kick for Brad. LaRose whirls to punch Buggy. They blast backward from the force of his attack. They land stunned, writhing on the mats, try to bumble away. One sneaks up from behind. LaRose can see behind his back! Wham. Cronk. Lights out.



HOW DOES AN eight-year-old boy find out where high school boys hang out? White ones? In an off-reservation town? There is a long highway between them, and a lack of access deep as a ravine. He asks Coochy, but his brother doesn’t know who they are at all. He asks Josette, but she doesn’t care to answer. Or, is there some reason she raises her eyebrows? As does Snow. They keep their eyebrows up together, staring at him in a creepy way like they are frozen, until he backs out of the room.

He asks Hollis.

Those *s? Why?

LaRose doesn’t have an answer.

Did one of those guys do something to you?

No.

Sounds like maybe something happened.

No.

Come on. You can tell me.

Nothing happened.

So why’re you asking?

I just wondered.





Okay, so nothing happened. Then there’s nothing you need to know about those guys except avoid their asses.

Sure.

I mean it. Hollis watches LaRose closely as he walks out of their bedroom. It’s weird that a little boy would ask about those guys—about Curtains, that freakin’ jerk who tried to hit on Snow by asking if she wanted to go for a drive in his rusted-out conversion van. Or Buggy, that Indian-hating blackout who walked by Waylon after they trashed the Pluto team in football and called Waylon blackout and Waylon laughed and put the hammer on Buggy and Buggy yelped to his friends, He’s scalpin’ me! Blanket Ass is scalpin’ me! And, because he might have killed Buggy and gone to jail, Waylon slung him away and got into his car.

And so on. Tyler, or was it Buggy, one of those guys once called Josette a squaw, so Josette is already intent on killing him, or them, any one of them, but Hollis wants to get there first.



GETTING A BLOCK or spiking from anywhere was all about jumping, crucial if you were not tall.

That’s what Coach Duke told Maggie.

Out in the barn, Peter marked a stall post with chalk. In the beginning, the height she could jump, reaching up with her arms, took her only a couple of inches above an imaginary net. But every week, she gained a tiny fraction. Coach Duke noticed.

Hey, Ravich, come over here, he said after practice. You’ve put a few inches on your jump. Are you practicing?

She told him about her chalked post. He gave her jumping exercises.

He showed her squats, ankle bounces, step-ups, and his favorite, the four-star-box drill. Coach Duke’s heart beat to inspire. It tuned him up when kids worked at getting better. That Maggie had set herself these personal goals, improving her jump to make up for height, got Coach Duke so happy that he called her parents that same night.