Love medicine A wonderful book

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LOVE MEDICINE

by

Louise Erdrich

BANTAM BOOKS TORONTO NEW YORK LONDON SYDNEY AUCKLAND

Holt, Rinehart & Winston edition published October 1984 For information

address: Holt, Rinehart & Winston, 2, Fifth Ave." New York, NY 101

75.

ISBN 0

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553

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34

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5

Published simultaneously in the United States and Canada published by

Bantam Books, Inc. Its trademark, consisting of the words "Bantam

Books" and the portrayal of a rooster, is Registered in U.S.

-

Patent and

Trademark Office and in other countries Marco W

strada.

Bantam Books, Inc." 666 Fifth Avenue, New York, New York 10103.

PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA

0 0 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 Grandma Mary Gourneau, Gertrude Crow Dog, and. my

brothers Mark, Louis, Terry (Amikoos), and Raoul were some people

es

pecially in my thoughts as I wrote this book. I could not have

written it this way without Michael Dorris, who gave his own ideas,

experiences, an attention to the writing. This book is dedicated to

him because he is so much a part of it.

The morning

before Easter Sunday, June Kashpaw was walking down the

clogged main street of oil boom town Williston, North Dakota, killing

time before the noon bus arrived that would take her home. She was a

long

-

legged Chippewa woman, aged hard in every way except ho

w she

moved. Probably it was the way she moved, easy as a young girl on slim

hard legs, that caught the eye of the man who rapped at her from inside

the window of the Rigger Bar. He looked familiar, like a lot of people

looked familiar jar to her. She h

ad seen so many come and go. He

hooked his arm, inviting her to enter, and she did so without

hesitation, thinking only that she might tip down one or two with him

and then get her bags to meet the bus. She wanted, at least, to see if

she actually knew h

im. Even through the watery glass she could see

that he wasn't all that old and that his chest was thickly padded in

dark red nylon and expensive down.

There were cartons of colored eggs on the bar, each glowing like a

jewel in its wad of cellophane. He

was peeling one, sky blue as a

robin's, palming it while he thumbed the peel aside, when she walked

through the door. Although the day was overcast, the snow itself

reflected such light that she was momentarily blinded.

It was like going underwater. Wh

at she walked toward more than

anything else was that blue egg in the white hand, a beacon in the

murky air.

He ordered a beer for her, a Blue Ribbon, saying she deserved a prize

for being the best thing he'd seen for days. He peeled an egg for her,

a pi

nk one, saying it matched her turtleneck. She told him it was no

turtleneck. You called these things shells. He said he would peel

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that for her, too, if she wanted, then he grinned at the bartender an

he ordered another egg.

June's hand was colder from

the outdoors than the egg, and so she had

to let it sit in her fingers for a minute before it stopped feeling

rubbery warm. Eating it, she found out how hungry she was. The money

given her was spent for the ticket. She didn't know exactly when she'd

ea

ten last. This man seemed impressed, when her egg was finished, and

peeled her another one just like it. She ate the egg.

Then another egg. The bartender looked at her. She shrugged and

tapped out a long menthol cigarette from a white plastic case ins

cribed

with her initials in golden letters. She took a breath of smoke then

leaned toward her companion through the broken shells.

"What's happening?" she said. "Where's the party?"

Her hair was rolled carefully, sprayed for the bus trip, and her eyes

were deeply watchful in their sea

-

blue flumes of shadow.

She was deciding.

"I don't got much time until my bus ...... she said.

"Forget the bus!" He stood up and grabbed her arm. "We're gonna

party.

Hear? Who's stopping us? We're having a good tim

e!"

She couldn't help notice, when he paid up, that he had a good

-

sized wad

of money in a red rubber band like the kind that holds bananas together

in the supermarket. That roll helped. But what was more important,

she had a feeling. The eggs were

lucky. And he had a good

-

natured

slowness about him that seemed different. He could be different, she

thought.

The bus ticket would stay good, maybe forever.

They weren't expecting her up home on the reservation. She didn't even

have a man there, exce

pt the one she'd divorced. Gordie. If she got

desperate he would still send her money. So she went on to the next

bar with this man in the dark red vest. They drove down the street in

his Silverado pickup. He was a mud engineer. Andy. She didn't tel

l

him she'd known any mud engineers before or about that one she'd heard

was killed by a pressurized hose. The hose had shot up into his

stomach from underground.

The thought of that death, although she'd only been half acquainted

with the man, always pu

t a panicky, dry lump in her throat. It was the

hose, she thought, snaking up suddenly from its unseen nest, the idea

of that hose striking like a live thing, that was fearful. With one

blast it had taken out his insides. And that too made her throat ac

he,

although she'd heard of worse things. It was that moment, that one

moment, of realizing you were totally empty. He must have felt that.

Sometimes, alone in her room in the dark, she thought she knew what it

might be like.

3

Later on, the dark failing

around them at a noisy bar, she closed her

eyes for a moment against the smoke and saw that hose pop suddenly

through black earth with its killing breath.

"Ahhhhh, " she said, surprised, almost in pain, "you got to be.

"I got to be what, honeysuckle?"

He tightened his arm around her slim

shoulders. They were sitting in a booth with a few others, drinking

Angel Wings. Her mouth, the lipstick darkly blurred now, tipped

unevenly toward his.

"You got to be different," she breathed.

It was later still th

at she felt so fragile. Walking toward the Ladies

she was afraid to brush against anything because her skin felt hard and

brittle, and she knew it was possible, in this condition, to fall apart

at the slightest touch. She locked herself in the bathroom s

tall and

remembered his hand, thumbing back the transparent skin and crackling

blue shell. Her clothing itched.

The pink shell was sweaty and hitched up too far under her arms but she

couldn't take off her jacket, the white vinyl her son King had given

h

er, because the pink top was ripped across the stomach. But as she

sat there, something happened. All of a sudden she seemed to drift out

of her, clothes and skin with no help from anyone. Sitting, she leaned

down and rested her forehead on the top of t

he metal toilet

-

roll

dispenser.

She felt that underneath it all her body was pure and naked

-

only the

skins were stiff and old. Even if he was no different, she would get

through this again.

Her purse dropped out of her hand, spilling. She sat up

straight.

The doorknob rolled out of her open purse and beneath the stall. She

had to take that doorknob with her every time she left her room. There

was no other way of locking the battered door. Now she picked up the

knob and held it by the metal sha

nk. The round grip was porcelain,

smooth and white. Hard as stone. She put it in the deep pocket of her

jacket and, holding it, walked back to the booth through the gathering

crowd. Her room was locked. And she was ready for him now.

It was a relief

when they finally stopped, far out of town on a county

road. Even in the dark, when he turned his headlights off, the snow

reflected enough light to see by. She let him wrestle with her

clothing, but he worked so clumsily that she had to help him along.

She rolled her top carefully, still hiding the rip, and arched her back

to let him undo her slacks. They were made of a stretch fabric that

crackled with electricity and shed blue bear, sparks when he pushed

them down around her ankles. He knocked his h

and against the heater's

controls. She felt it open at her shoulder like a pair of jaws,

blasting heat, and had the momentary and voluptuous sensation that she

was lying stretched out before a great wide mouth.

The breath swept across her throat, tighten

ing her nipples. Then his

vest plunged down against her, so slick and plush that it was like

being rubbed by an enormous tongue. She couldn't get a handhold

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