Oh boy, she said, a handle of Old Crow. You were really going to blast off.
She put the bottle in the corner of the lodge, went in and got the children to the bus. Then she dressed LaRose and herself in warm clothing, took a sleeping bag out for her husband. As he warmed up, she and LaRose built a fire, threw tobacco from a special pouch into it, put grandfather rocks in it, made it hotter, hotter. They brought out the copper bucket and ladle, the other blankets and medicines, everything they needed. LaRose helped with all of this—he knew how to do things. He was Landreaux’s little man, his favorite child, though Landreaux was careful never to let anyone know about that. As LaRose squatted so seriously on his strong, skinny bowlegs, carefully lining up his parents’ pipes and his own little medicine bundle, Landreaux’s big face began slowly to collapse. He looked down, away, anywhere, struck heavily by what had befallen his thoughts. When Emmaline saw him looking that way, she got the bottle and poured it out on the ground between them. As the liquor spilled into the earth she sang an old song about a wolverine, Kwiingwa’aage, helping spirit of the desperately soused. When the bottle was empty, she looked up at Landreaux. She held his gaze, strange and vacant. Right about then, she had her own thoughts. She understood his thoughts. She stopped, stared sickly at the fire, at the earth. She whispered no. She tried to leave, but could not, and her face as she set back to work streaked over wetly.
THEY MADE THE fire hot, rolled in eight, four, eight rocks. It took them extra long to keep heating the rocks in the fire and also keep opening and shutting the flaps, the doors, and bringing in the rocks. But it was all they had to do. All they could do, anyway. Unless they got drunk, which they weren’t going to do now. They were past that, for the time being.
Emmaline had songs for bringing in the medicines, for inviting in the manidoog, aadizookaanag, the spirits. Landreaux had songs for the animals and winds who sat in each direction. When the air grew thick with steamy heat LaRose rolled away, lifted the edge of the tarp, and breathed cool air. He slept. The songs became his dreams. His parents sang to the beings they had invited to help them, and they sang to their ancestors—the ones so far back their names were lost. As for the ones whose names they remembered, the names that ended with iban for passed on, or in the spirit world, those were more complicated. Those were the reason both Landreaux and Emmaline were holding hands tightly, throwing their medicines onto the glowing rocks, then crying out with gulping cries.
No, said Emmaline. She growled and showed her teeth. I’ll kill you first. No.
He calmed her, talked to her, praying with her. Reassuring her. They had sundanced together. They talked about what they had heard when they fell into a trance. What they had seen while they fasted on a rock cliff. Their son had come out of the clouds asking why he had to wear another boy’s clothing. They had seen LaRose floating above the earth. He had put his hand upon their hearts and whispered, You will live. They knew what to make of these images now.
Gradually, Emmaline collapsed. The breath went out of her. She curled toward her son. They had resisted using the name LaRose until their last child was born. It was a name both innocent and powerful, and had belonged to the family’s healers. They had decided not to use it, but it was as though LaRose had come into the world with that name.
There had been a LaRose in each generation of Emmaline’s family for over a hundred years. Somewhere in that time their two families had diverged. Emmaline’s mother and grandmother were named LaRose. So the LaRoses of the generations were related to them both. They both knew the stories, the histories.