Mauser by Louise Erdrich What Seems Hard to Believe Turns out to be Believable and Satisfying

Mauser, by Louise Erdrich, is a short story that is so well-written and packs so many emotions (love, heartbreak, infidelity, corruption, lust, rage) into so few pages -- taking a highly unlikely set of personalities and dynamics and making them actually seem highly likely, believable -- it leaves the reader frustrated and yet entertained at the same time. Clearly, Louise Erdrich has created a piece of fiction that is both realistic and unbelievable. The story causes a reader to wonder: how could a woman -- though obviously emotionally unsettled while going through the anguish and heartache of being dumped by a man who works in the same place as she does -- take such risks to help a guy who was very flaky, married, and dangerously lackluster in his values? But in the end, in the last scene, that flaky man, whose job was partly sustained through false reports regarding the weight of gravel in his truck, gets his punishment, meets his own negative karma, as he is buried in his own gravel.

What was there about this...

Still, she was heartbroken over being dumped and she was sensually attracted to Travis the flake: she was very taken by his good looks, his charm, "Christ-like eyes," "tanned and muscular" forearms and the fact that he appeared to be "a man worth meeting" in the eyes of any woman. And she had had enough, and wasn't going to take any more, in a manner of speaking.
What happened in the final scene to bring the theme to a head, and a conclusion at the same time? "When I love someone, that's it," the narrator states, suggesting that she just had to take a stand, even if it was as nutty and rage-inspired as the scene in the movie, "Ferris Bueller's Day Off," where Ferris's friend allows his dad's expensive sports…