LaRose Read Online Free Page B

Pluto, which still had a school. That’s where Maggie went and where they would send LaRose if this situation lasted. Pulling into the Irons’ empty driveway, Peter cut the engine. The little gray house was completely dark. A half-constructed plywood and buffalo-board platform sagged off the side. The tarps were pulled away from the bent poles of the sweat lodge out back. There was a bird feeder made from a milk jug, a full box of canning jars in the driveway, and a few toys scattered in the yard. The dog that hung around was gone. The Irons had probably gone to visit relatives in Canada, or to the local guy, a medicine man, Randall, for a family ceremony. He knew from his friendship with Landreaux that their people would put them through religious rituals. What they were called, he could not remember. Peter was only vaguely interested in the traditional things Landreaux did. They’d fished and hunted together. Peter knew how careful Landreaux was and it seemed impossible that he could have made such an error. Peter left his car in the driveway and walked out behind Landreaux’s house, into the woods.
    He followed a path that would take him to the spot where Dusty had died. On the way there, he saw that dog—short-haired with a rusty tinge to its coat. It was still, as if waiting for him. The head was sensitive, a lighter buff. Its ears flared up as it came out of the brush. The dog studied him. Peter stopped, startled at its composure and how it measured him. The dog vanished when he took a step. There was no sound, as if the woods had lightly absorbed the animal.
    An overnight blast of wind, a short quick rain, had taken down most of the leaves. They lay brilliant on the ground, layer on layer of shattering color. The morning light struck the white birch to near incandescence. As he passed through a stand of bur oak, the air darkened. At last he stood where Landreaux had stood, straight across from where the buck must have stopped. Directly between them was the climbing tree Maggie had told him about. Peter had no idea his children had been playing so deep in the woods andso far from the house. But the tree with its low crotch and curved limbs was irresistible. One limb was blasted. He walked up and ran his hand along the shafted needle-sharp spikes of wood. Then the patch of ground below the tree limb knocked him to his knees. He put his hand on the place. All around, the ground was trampled and torn. Peter lay on his back. Looking up, he worked it out that just before he died Dusty had climbed the tree—he had been sitting on a limb. He’d seen the great buck. Startled, he’d fallen just as Landreaux shot. Peter had read Landreaux’s statement and everything he said matched.
    Now he lay down on the place where Dusty’s life had flowed into the earth, closed his eyes, listened to the sound of the woods around him. He heard a chickadee, a faraway nuthatch, a crow ragged in the distance. He heard his own voice, crying out. Then the hum and tick of twigs, leaves. Rush of pine needles. The scent of sweetgrass, tobacco, kinnikinnick, offerings. Landreaux had been there, too.

    LANDREAUX WAS AT present doing what he did every couple of weeks. He was helping Emmaline’s mother. Before she was his mother-in-law, she had been his favorite teacher. In fact, she had saved him the way she always saved people. She was not on his client list, but he helped her anyway. He arrived at her apartment in the Elders Lodge, a rangy brick building shaped like a thunderbird—you could see the shape looking down from an airplane. Emmaline’s mother lived in the tail. Nobody called her grandma, kookum, or auntie. Her first name was LaRose, but nobody called her that either. They called her by her teacher name, Mrs. Peace.
    Generations of students had loved her as a teacher and were aware of no vice, yet Mrs. Peace claimed that she wasn’t entirely wholesome. She had a checkered past, she liked to say, though she had at last remained