Louise Erdrich - Original Fire - Selected and New Poems

He went inside and found a block of paraffin wax that Josette used to seal her jars of plum pickles. He stirred the coals in Josette’s stove and melted the wax in an old coffee can. Then he dipped in his penis. It hurt the first time, but after that not so much, and then not at all. He kept dipping and dipping. It got back to the normal size, and he should have been pleased with that. But Potchikoo got grandiose ideas.

He kept dipping and dipping. He melted more wax, more and more, and kept dipping, until he was so large he could hardly stagger out the door. Luckily, the wheelbarrow was sitting in the path. He grabbed the handles and wheeled it before him into town.

There was only one road in the village then. Potchikoo went there with his wheelbarrow, calling for women. He crossed the village twice. Mothers came out in wonder, saw what was in the wheelbarrow, and whisked their daughters inside. Everybody was disgusted and scolding and indignant, except for one woman. She lived at the end of the road. Her door was always open, and she was large.

Even now, we can’t use her name, this Mrs. B. No man satisfied her. But that day, Potchikoo wheeled his barrow in, and then, for once, her door was shut.

Potchikoo and Mrs. B went rolling through the house. The walls shuddered, and people standing around outside thought the whole place might collapse. Potchikoo was shaken from side to side, powerfully, as if he were on a ride at the carnival. But eventually, of course, the heat of their union softened and wilted Potchikoo back to nothing. Mrs. B was disgusted and threw him out back, into the weeds. From there he crept home to Josette, and on the crooked path he took to avoid others, he tried to think of new ways he might please her.

Along the way back, he got curious and wondered what the hell for white people was like.

As he passed the pearly gates, Saint Peter was busy checking in a busload of Mormons, and so he didn’t even look up and see Potchikoo take the dark fork in the road.

Walking along, Potchikoo began to think twice about what he was doing. The air felt warm and humid, and he expected it to get worse, much worse. Soon the screams of the damned would ring out and the sky would turn pitch-black. But his curiosity was, as always, stronger than his fear. He kept walking until he came to what looked like a giant warehouse.

It was a warehouse, and it was hell.

There was a little sign above the metal door marked ENTRANCE. HELL. Potchikoo got a thrill of terror in his stomach. He carefully laid his ear against the door, expecting his blood to curdle. But all he heard was the sound of rustling pages. And so, gathering his courage, he bent to the keyhole and looked in to see what it was the white race suffered.

He started back, shook his head, then bent to the keyhole again.

It was worse than flames.

They were all chained, hand and foot and even by the neck, to years and years of mail order catalogues. From the old Sears Roebuck to the Sharper Image, they were bound. Around and around the huge warehouse they dragged the heavy paper books, mumbling, collapsing from time to time to flip through the pages. Each person bent low beneath the weight. Potchikoo had always wondered where the millions of old catalogues went, and now he knew the devil gathered them, that they were instruments of torment.

The words of the damned, thin and drained, rang in his ears all the way home.

Look at that wall unit. What about this here recliner? We could put up that home gym in the basement….

To his relief, nature returned manhood to Potchikoo in several weeks. But his troubles weren’t over. One day, the tribal police appeared. They said Potchikoo had been seen stealing fence posts down the road. But they found no stolen fence posts on his property, so they did not arrest him.

More accusations were heard.

Potchikoo threw rocks at a nun, howled like a dog, and barked until she chased him off. He got drunk and tossed a pool cue out the window of the Stumble Inn. The pool cue hit the tribal chairman on the shoulder and caused a bruise. Potchikoo ran down the street laughing, flung off his clothes, ran naked through the trading store. He ripped antennas from twenty cars. He broke a portable radio that belonged to a widow, her only comfort. If a friendly dog came up to this bad Potchikoo, he lashed out with his foot. He screamed at children until tears came into their eyes, and then he knocked down the one road sign the government had seen fit to place on the reservation.

The sign was red, planted in the very middle of town, and said STOP. People were naturally proud of the sign. So, there was finally a decision to lock Potchikoo in jail, though he was dead. When the police came to get him, he went quite willingly because he was so confused.

But here’s what happened.

While Potchikoo was locked up, under the eyes of the tribal sheriff, his mean twin went out and caused some mischief near the school by starting a grass fire. So now the people knew the trouble wasn’t caused by Old Man Potchikoo. And next time the bad twin was seen, Josette followed him. He ran very fast, until he reached the chain link fence around the graveyard. Josette saw him jump over the fence and dodge among the stones. Then the twin got to the place where Potchikoo had been buried, lifted the ground like a lid, and wiggled under.

Let us now pray to those beatified

within the Holy Colonial church

beginning with Saint Assimilus,

patron of residential and of government

boarding schools, whose skin was dark

but who miraculously bled white milk

for all to drink.

To cure the gut aches that resulted

as ninety percent of Native children are

lactose intolerant, let us now pray to the

patron saint of the Indian Health Service,

who is also guardian of slot machines,

Our Lady of Luck, she who carries

in one hand mistaken blood tests and botched

surgeries and in the other hand the heart

of a courageous doctor squeezed dry.

Let us pray for the sacred hearts of all good doctors

and nurses, whose tasks are manifold and made more difficult

by the twin saints of commodity food,

Saint Bloatinus and Saint Cholestrus,

who were martyred at the stake of body fat

and who preside now in heaven

at the gates of the Grand Casino Buffet.

Saint Macaronia and Saint Diabeta, hear our prayer.

It is terrible to be diminished toe by toe.

Good Saint Pyromane,

Enemy of the BIA,

Deliver us from those who seek to bury us

in files and triplicate documents and directives.

Saint Quantum, Martyr of Blood

and Holy Protector of the Tribal Rolls,

assist us in the final shredding which shall proceed

on the Day of Judgment so we may all rain down

in a blizzard of bum pull tabs

and unchosen lottery tickets, which represent

the souls of the faithfully departed

in your name.

Your name written in the original fire

we mistook so long ago for trader’s rum.

Pray for us, all you saints of white port

four roses old granddad and night train.

Good Saint Bingeous who fell asleep upside down on the cross

and rose on the third day without even knowing he had died.

Saint Odium of the hundred-proof blood

and Saint Tremens of the great pagan spiders

dripping from the light fixtures.

You powerful triumvirate, intercede for us

drunks stalled in the bars,

float our asses off the cracked stools