The Round House: Chapter 7 Summary & Analysis

One morning, Joe rides to Edward and Clemence’s house. When Joe arrives, he finds Mooshum outside, tangled in netting for the garden. Joe frees him and they go inside, where they find Clemence dressed for church. Clemence serves Mooshum tea as she and Mooshum bicker about Mooshum’s care and his interest in young women. Once Clemence leave for mass, Joe tells Mooshum about the ghost he saw outside his window, which also appeared to Randall in the sweat lodge. Mooshum tells Joe that it is not a ghost; it is someone “throwing their spirit at [him].” Joe asks if it could be Geraldine’s attacker, but Mooshum says no, since usually these spirits help people. Mooshum advises Joe to go to his doodem (the type of animal he is spiritually affiliated with), the crane, for luck. Mooshum finishes his tea and then falls asleep. Joe helps him to his daybed to rest.

When Clemence comes back from mass, Joe bikes to the lake to look for cranes. Joe spots a heron. Suddenly, the heron takes flight to the other side of the lake. At first, Joe is disappointed. Then, when he looks down into the water in front of him, he sees a plastic doll. Joe fishes the doll from the lake. He pulls the doll’s head off to dump out the water inside and finds that it is packed with money. Joe throws the doll in his pack and rides with it toward the gas station.

When Joe gets to the gas station, he walks in with the doll hidden under his shirt. Sonja is busy with a customer, but when the customer leaves, Joe shows her the doll with all the money in it in the private office. Sonja is shocked. Together they unravel the money as Joe explains that he found the doll in the lake. Sonja calls Bazil and tells him that she is taking Joe on errands. They say goodbye to Whitey, who is pumping gas, and drive to Sonja and Whitey’s house. Joe follows Sonja into her bedroom, where she sets up an ironing board and irons each hundred-dollar bill from the doll dry. Once they have put all the bills in envelopes, Sonja places the doll in a bag, and they put the envelopes of money into an aluminum box and bring it to the car. Sonja puts the doll in the trunk and tells Joe they are going to open a college savings account.

Sonja and Joe drive around the area together, opening several savings accounts in Joe’s name at different banks. Sonja throws the doll in a garbage can at a rest stop. Finally, when all the money is in different accounts, Sonja takes Joe to get fast food takeout, and as they eat, Joe ogles Sonja’s breasts. On their way home, Joe looks through the passbooks for the bank accounts, adding up the total to forty thousand dollars. Joe asks why they can’t keep any cash, and Sonja tells Joe that whoever lost that money could be someone dangerous, making Joe swear not to tell anyone. Sonja and Joe then drive to a tree called the hanging tree, where several Chippewa men were once lynched, and they bury the passbooks fifty steps into the woods.

As they drive back home, Joe says that he wants to use the money to buy shoes like Cappy’s and he will tell everyone he got the money by working at the gas station. Sonja asks if he wants a real job at the gas station, and Joe, excited to get out of his house, says yes. Sonja tells him he must behave because he will be representing reservation business to the white people watching them, like the Larks. Joe warns Sonja to watch out for Linden, and Sonja tells him she likes using Linden to make Whitey jealous because Whitey thinks he owns her.

When Joe gets home from putting away the money with Sonja, Bazil and Soren Bjerke, the FBI agent on Geraldine’s case, are drinking coffee at their kitchen table. Joe explains that the FBI has some jurisdiction over reservations because of a series of laws that were passed in the first half of the 20th century limiting Native autonomy. Before Joe arrived, Geraldine had refused to speak with Soren. Joe walks past Soren into the living room, but he does not want to walk past Geraldine’s room, so he goes back into the kitchen.

Joe gets a glass of milk and a slice of cake. Feeling guilty about the doll, he decides to tell Bjerke about the gas can to alleviate some of his discomfort. Joe records and signs an affidavit about finding the can, then Bjerke makes small talk with him about school and his summer. Joe, still feeling guilty about the money, tells them about how Geraldine received a phone call and went to retrieve a file on the afternoon of her rape. Bazil pushes Joe for more information, but Joe, not wanting to talk about the money in order to protect Sonja, only tells them about finding a cooler full of beer, which he and his friends drank, and a pile of clothes on the day they found the gas can. Joe is horrified by how quickly he ratted out Cappy, Zack, and Angus in order to protect the money and Sonja. Feeling ill, he runs to the bathroom.

When Joe gets back from the bathroom, Bazil and Soren give Joe a citation for underage drinking, and they propose to cite Joe’s friends as well. Joe lies and says he drank both six packs himself. Soren then tells Joe that the cooler and clothes did not belong to the attacker, but to a local vagrant named Bugger Pourier. Joe apologizes as he backs up, then climbs the stairs. In his room, Joe thinks about how, as Geraldine painted his room when she was pregnant, cranes kept flying by the window. Joe thinks about the money, and then about Sonja’s breasts, and then about his family. Joe watches a crane fly past his window, bathed in evening light.