Louise Erdrich - The Painted Drum

At last, even though he loved Anaquot, the husband found their life together was no good anymore. So it was he who sent word to the other man’s camp. Now in those days our people lived widely scattered, along the shores and in the islands, even out in the plains. There were hardly roads yet, just trails, though we had horses and wagons and for the winter, sleds. And it was very hard when the other man’s uncle came round, in his wagon fitted out with sled runners, to fetch Anaquot, for she and her husband had argued right up to the last about the children, argued fiercely until the husband finally gave in, turned his face to the wall, and did not move to see the daughter, whom he treasured, wrap herself in her plaid robe alongside the mother in the wagon bed. They left soon after, with their bundles and sacks, not even heating up the stones to warm their feet. The father had stopped his ears, so he did not hear the cry when his son understood all of a sudden that he was the one who would be left behind.

As the uncle slapped the reins and the horse lurched forward, the boy tried to jump into the wagon, but his mother pried his hands off the boards, crying gego, gego, and he fell down hard. There was something in him that would not let her leave him, though. He jumped up and although he was wearing only light clothing, he ran behind the wagon, over the packed drifts. The horses picked up speed. His chest scorched with pain, and yet he pushed himself on. He’d never run so fast, so hard and furious, but he was determined and in that determination it was impossible for him to believe that the distance that soon increased between himself and the wagon was real. He kept running and pretended they would stop, wait for him; he kept going until his throat closed, he saw red, and in the ice of air his lungs shut. Then, he said as he fell onto the board-hard snow, he raised his head. Still watching the tiny back of the wagon and the figures of his mother and sister, something went out of him. Something failed in him. He could feel some interior something break. And at that moment, he truly did not care if he was alive or he was dead. So when he saw the gray shapes, the shadows, bound lightly from the trees to either side of the trail, far ahead, he was not afraid.

The next the boy knew, his father was shaking him, already had him wrapped in a blanket and was carrying him home. Shaawano’s chest was broad and although he already spat tubercular blood that would tell the end of his story, he was still a strong man. It would take him many years to die. In those years, he would tell the boy, who had forgotten this part entirely, that at first when he talked about the shadows he thought his son was visited by manidoog. But then as the boy described the shapes, his father felt very uneasy in his mind and decided to take his gun out there. So he built up the fire in the cabin, and settled his boy near, and went back out into the snow. Perhaps the story spread all through our settlements because the father had to tell what he saw, again and again, in order to get rid of it. Perhaps like all frightful dreams, amanisowin, he had to say it to divide its power, though in this case it would not stop being real.

The tracks of the shadows were wolves, and in those times when our guns had taken all their food for furs and hides to sell, wolves were bold and had abandoned the old agreement between themselves and the first humans. For a time, until we understood and let the game increase, they hunted us. Shaawano bounded forward when he saw the tracks. He could see where the pack, desperate, had tried to slash the tendons of the horses’ legs. Next, where they’d leapt for the back of the wagon, and he hurried on to where the trail gave out onto the broad empty ice of the lake. There, he saw what he saw, scattered, and the ravens only, attending to the bitter small leavings of the wolves.

For a time, the boy had no understanding of what had happened. His father kept what he knew to himself, at least that first year, and when his son asked about his sister’s brown plaid shawl, torn in pieces, why it was kept in the house, his father said nothing. But he wept if the boy asked if she was cold. It was only after Shaawano was weakened by the disease that he began to tell it far too often, and always the same. How when the wolves closed in, Anaquot threw her daughter to them.

When his father said those words, the boy went still in thought. What had his sister felt? What had thrust through her heart? Had something broken in her too, the way something broke like a stick inside of him? Even then, he knew this broken place would never be mended inside him, except by some terrible means. For he kept seeing his mother put the baby down and grip his sister around the waist, her arms still strong enough. Then he saw Anaquot swing the girl lightly out over the board sides of the wagon. He saw the brown shawl with the red lines flying open. He saw the wolves, the shadows, rush together quick and avid as the wagon with the sled runners disappeared into the distance, forever, for neither he nor his father ever saw Anaquot again.

When I was little, my own father terrified us with his drinking. That was after we lost our mother, because before that, the only time I was aware they touched the ishkode wabo was on an occasional weekend when they got home late, or sometimes during berry-picking gatherings, when we went out to the bush and camped with others. Not until she died did he start the heavy sort of drinking, the continual drinking where we were left in the house for days. And then, when he came home, we jumped out the window and hid in the woods while he barged around, shouting for us. We only went back when he fell dead asleep.

There were three of us, me the oldest at ten and my little sister and brother twins of only six years. I was surprisingly good at taking care of them, I think, and because we learned to survive together during those drinking years we always have been close. Their names are Doris and Raymond, and they married a brother and sister in turn. When we get together, which we do when we can, for they live in the Cities now, there come times in the talking and card playing, and maybe even in the light beer now and then, we will bring up those days. Most people understand how it was. Our story isn’t that uncommon. But for us, it helps to compare our points of view.

How could I know, for instance, that Raymond saw it the time I hid my father’s belt? I pulled it from around his waist while he was passed out and then buried it in the woods. I kept doing it every time after that. We laughed at how our father couldn’t understand how when he went to town drinking his belt was always stolen. He even accused his shkwebii buddies of the theft. I had good reasons. Not only was he embarrassed, after, to go out with pants held up with a rope, but he couldn’t snake that belt out in anger and snap the hooked buckle end in the air. He couldn’t hit us with it. Of course, being resourceful, he used other things. There was a board. A willow wand. And there was himself, his hands and fists and boots and things he could throw. He’d never remember. He’d be furious and wreck us, wreck things, and then he’d talk about our mother. But it got so easy to evade him, eventually, that after a while we never suffered a bruise or scratch. We had our own places in the woods, even a little campfire for the cold nights. And we’d take money from him every chance we got, slip it from his shoe where he thought it hidden. He became, for us, a thing to be exploited, avoided, outsmarted, and used. We survived off him like a capricious and dangerous line of work. I suppose we stopped thinking of him as a human being, certainly as a father, after only a couple years.

I got tired of it. When I was thirteen years old, I got my growth earlier than some boys, and one night when Doris and Raymond and me were sitting around wishing for something besides the oatmeal and commodity powdered milk which I had stashed so he couldn’t sell it, I heard him coming down the road. He never learned to shut up before he got to us. He never understood we lit out on him, I guess. So he was shouting and making noise all the way to the house, and Doris and Raymond looked at me and went for the back window. Then they stopped, because they saw I was not going. C’mon, ambe, get with it, they tried to pull me along. I shook them off and told them to get out, be quick, I was staying.