Love Medicine

“It’s not fair,” he muttered. “Just ain’t fair.”

“What is fair?” Gerry picked up the cards, shuffled, dealt them out again. “Society? Society is like this card game here. We got dealt our hand before we were even born, and as we grow we have to play as best as we can.”

It was the first apology that ever made me feel forgiven too

Her hands had held babies and dragged grown men from sloughs; her hands fed and walloped; her hands were rope burned, worked raw, kissed by Nector. Her hands, now stiff, still powerful, should have been protected. I bent my head to look closer.

When things got goin

She was going to tell me that the drowned could stop wandering, go home.

You took care of Rushes Bear, that’s for damn sure. You managed to turn her against her own son!

Nector’s fatherhood. That subject remained untouched.

, I knew that in coming back here I was doing unexpected duty as a son. I had tried to fill my brother’s shoes until the river took my place. Now it was my turn to walk in the tracks that Kashpaw had left. By becoming the worthy adversary my mother now missed, by taking over his factory, I was keeping her instinct to control a man alive, giving her strength

It wasn’t just man-made perfume that hung about her, it was sweetgrass and baby powder, a dish-soapy musk, and then, I suppose, the throbbing cinnamon undertones of Lulu Lamartine herself. She took in the same view I did now, and it made her reflective.

I felt a pang of longing, though I didn’t know for what. Maybe some buried hunter’s mentality, the need to ride out there and shoot myself dinner. Carve off the hide. Chop the carcass into chunks. Dry it. Freeze it. Tan the skin with the beast’s dull brains and live inside it as a shelter. These thoughts left me with appreciation for my instant house, so I turned to look at it—right there, so solid, the darkening vista reflected in its windows of insulated glass.