The Antelope Wife by Louise Erdrich Read Free Book Online

lakeshore property. By the time Peace was five years old, all the land around them was lumbered to stumps. By the time Charlie was five, the lakeshore was filled with white people’s cabins. By the time Booch and young Shawano were five, the Indian agent came while Augustus was at work and their mothers out picking medicines. Only old Victoria was there.
    The agent, Hiram Talp, believed that he was doing the best for all concerned except the children. He had received a letter from a government boarding-school superintendent informing him that in order to meet a certain quota at his school, he was willing to pay Talp good money for his assistance in persuading students from his reservation to attend. Talp collected the children by assuring Victoria that he was going to show them the newly built train station. It was the talk of the town.
    At the train station, the agent showed Victoria the fancy ladies’ restroom. He encouraged her to step inside. When she did, he locked the door. Then he tried to herd the children onto the train. When Peace saw that he’d locked their grandmother in the bathroom she took Charlie’s hand and they backed slowly away from the agent. Booch and Shawano slipped behind their sister and brother. This was the way they had been taught to treat a bear. They backed toward the ladies’ restroom door, which had a frosted glass window. A blurred version of their grandmother jumped up and down behind the window, screaming in an eerie tremolo. People gathered. Sound of the commotion reached the bank. Augustus walked across the street toward the familiar tone of distress. The children were silent. Victoria tore a piece of framing from a mirror and began to beat at the window. Still, Hiram Talp persisted, talking soothingly to the children and explaining the situation to the people who surrounded the scene. He tried to take Peace’s hand and she bit him. He tried to take Charlie’s hand and she kicked him hard enough to make him double over. When Talp staggered up she put a finger in his eye. She was not her mothers’ daughter for nothing.
    Augustus waded into the shocked little crowd surrounding Talp, who had doubled over in pain again. The people murmured warily at Peace, who did not look fierce at all in her neat blue dress, trimmed with a yellow collar, cuffs, and even a yellow ruffle. It was made by the screaming grandma in the frosted window, and lent to all of the children an air of respectability even though, well, they were clearly Indians.
    Augustus registered the crowd’s comments without surprise. Once they saw that the children belonged to him, the people hushed.
    “Give me the key,” said Augustus to the stationmaster, who pointed mutely at the agent. Augustus said to Hiram, again, “The key.” A woman looked at Hiram’s eye and declared he deserved to be blinded. Everyone was now on the children’s side. Hiram pointed at his shirt pocket. Augustus removed the key and released Victoria.
    As the children and their grandmother walked away with Augustus, the Indian agent called out, warning everyone that the children would now grow up to be illiterate and violent drunks. Augustus stopped in the door of the train station.
    “Hiram Talp,” he called, “what is six plus its additive inverse?”
    Hiram glowered out of one eye. His hand was still clapped over the other.
    “Zero,” said Peace.
    “What is the sum of 20,862, 39, 459, 66, and 7,088?” asked Augustus. He saw the answer spiral from soft yellow to a scorched orange, but Peace saw the sum as violently green. As she answered, they kept walking, adding and subtracting numbers as they went along. It was a game they played. Augustus looked at his daughter and noticed that the freckles just beneath her skin stood out like flecks of iron.
    The Storyteller
    After what Old Shawano and Victoria had told him about their days in boarding school, Augustus was determined to educate his children at home. He understood that the loneliness