Louise Erdrich: Original Fire: Selected and New Poems

with their own tongues

and taste the everlasting life.

Sometimes you have to take your own hand

as though you were a lost child

and bring yourself stumbling

home over twisted ice.

Whiteness drifts over your house.

A page of warm light

falls steady from the open door.

Here is your bed, folded open.

Lie down, lie down, let the blue snow cover you.

At first we all wondered what county or town

she had come from. Quite soon it was clear to us all

that was better unquestioned, and better unknown.

Who wanted to hear what had happened or failed

to occur. Why the dry wood had not taken fire.

Much less, why the dogs were unspeakably disturbed

when she ground the cold cinders that littered our walk

with her run-to-ground heels. That Waleski approached

with a swiftness uncommon for one of her age.

Even spiders spun clear of her lengthening shadow.

Her headlong occurrence unnerved even Otto

who wrapped up the pork rinds like they were glass trinkets

and saluted her passage with a good stiff drink.

But mine is a good word for Step-and-a-Half Waleski.

Scavenger, bone picker, lived off our alleys

when all we threw out were the deadliest scrapings

from licked-over pots. And even that hurt.

And for whatever one of us laughed in her face,

at least two prayed in secret, went home half afraid

of that mirror, what possible leavings they’d find there.

But mine is a good word, and even that hurts.

A rhyme-and-a-half for a woman of parts,

because someone must pare the fruit soft to the core

into slivers, must wrap the dead bones in her skirts

and lay these things out on her table, and fit

each oddment to each to resemble a life.

So the trouble was that Potchikoo had left his old body in the ground, empty, and something had found a place to live.

The people said the only thing to do was trap the mean twin and then get rid of him. But no one could agree on how to do it. People just talked and planned, no one acted. Finally Josette had to take the matter into her own hands.

One day she made a big pot of stew, and into it she put a bird. Into the roasted bird, Josette put a bit of blue plaster that had fallen off the Blessed Virgin’s robe while she cleaned the altar. She took the stew and left the whole pot just outside the cemetery fence. From her hiding place deep in a lilac bush, she saw the mean twin creep forth. He took the pot in his hands and gulped down every morsel, then munched the bird up, bones and all. Stuffed full, he lay down to sleep. He snored. After a while, he woke and looked around himself, very quietly. That was when Josette came out of the bush.

“In the name of the Holy Mother of God!” she cried. “Depart!”

So the thing stepped out of Potchikoo’s old body, all hairless and smooth and wet and gray. But Josette had no pity. She pointed sternly at the dark stand of pines, where no one went, and slowly, with many a sigh and backward look, the thing walked over there.

Potchikoo’s old body lay, crumpled like a worn suit of clothes, where the thing had stepped out. Right there, Josette made a fire, a little fire. When the blaze was very hot, she threw in the empty skin. It crackled in the flames, shed sparks, and was finally reduced to a crisp of ashes, which Josette brushed carefully into a little sack, and saved in her purse.

As a young man, Potchikoo sometimes embarrassed his wife by breaking wind during Holy Mass. It was for this reason that Josette whittled him a little plug out of ash wood and told him to put it in that place before he entered Saint Ann’s church.

Potchikoo did as she asked, and even said a certain charm over the plug so that it would not be forced out, no matter what. Then the two of them entered the church to say their prayers.

That Sunday, Father Belcourt was giving a special sermon on the ascension of the Lord Christ to heaven. It happened in the twinkling of an eye, he said, with no warning, because Christ was more pure than air. How surprised everyone was to see, as Father Belcourt said this, the evil scoundrel Potchikoo rising from his pew!

His hands were folded, and his closed eyes and meek face wore a look of utter piety. He didn’t even seem to realize he was rising, he prayed so hard.

Up and up he floated, still in the kneeling position, until he reached the dark blue vault of the church. He seemed to inflate, too, until he looked larger than life to the people. They were on the verge of believing it a miracle when all of a sudden it happened. Bang! Even with the charm the little ash-wood plug could not contain the wind of Potchikoo. Out it popped, and Potchikoo went buzzing and sputtering around the church the way balloons do when children let go of the ends.

Holy Mass was canceled for a week so the church could be aired out, but to this day a faint scent still lingers, and Potchikoo, sadly enough, was shriveled by his sudden collapse and flight through the air. For when Josette picked him up to bring home, she found that he was now wrinkled and dry like an old man.

After Old Man Potchikoo died, the people had a funeral for his poor, crushed body, and everyone felt sorry for the things they had said while he was alive. Josette went home and set some bread by the door for him to take on his journey to the next world. Then she began to can a bucket of plums she’d bought cheap, because they were overripe.

As she canned, she thought how it was. Now she’d have to give away these sweet plums since they had been her husband’s favorites. She didn’t like plums. Her tastes ran sour. Everything about her did. As she worked, she cried vinegar tears into the jars before she sealed them. People would later remark on her ingenuity. No one else on the reservation pickled plums.

Now, as night fell, Potchikoo got out of his body, and climbed up through the dirt. He took the frybread Josette had left in a towel, his provisions. He looked in the window, saw she was sleeping alone, and he was satisfied. Of course, since he never could hold himself back, he immediately ate the bread as he walked the long road, a mistake. Two days later, he was terribly hungry, and there was no end in sight. He came to the huge luscious berry he knew he shouldn’t eat if he wanted to enter the heaven all the priests and nuns described. He took a little bite, and told himself he’d not touch the rest. But it tasted so good tears came to his eyes. It took a minute, hardly that, for him to stuff the whole berry by handfuls into his mouth.

He didn’t know what would happen now, but the road was still there. He kept walking, but he’d become so fat from his greed that when he came to the log bridge, a test for good souls, he couldn’t balance to cross it, fell in repeatedly, and went on cold and shivering. But he was dry again, and warmer, by the time he reached the pearly gates.

Saint Peter was standing there, dressed in a long, brown robe, just as the nuns and priests had always said he would be. He examined Potchikoo back and front for berry stains, but they had luckily washed away when Potchikoo fell off the bridge.

“What’s your name?” Saint Peter asked.

Potchikoo told him, and then Saint Peter pulled a huge book out from under his robe. As the saint’s finger traveled down the lists, Potchikoo became frightened to think how many awful deeds would be recorded after his name. But as it happened, there was only one word there. The word Indian .