Louise Erdrich - The Painted Drum

Ira nodded. She reached forward and held Apitchi’s foot. His foot was still fat and round. His foot still fit into her hand.

“I’m sleeping in the chair.”

“Let’s get a roll-away in here,” the doctor said to the nurse.

“Now you”—the doctor touched Ira’s shoulder—“you’re going to have to keep your strength up. Your little boy is going to need you.”

“What about my other two, my daughters?”

“They’re going to be fine, but I’d like to keep them another day or two.”

“That’s good,” said Ira, “because I don’t know where we’re going next.”

“I hear your house burned down,” the doctor said. “I’m sorry.”

Ira said thank you.

“Do you have someone you can stay with?”

“I should go ask Bernard.”

“Okay,” said the doctor. “For now, let’s just take care of your little boy.”

A hospital aide brought in a roll-away cot and shoved it against the wall. The doctor stayed and went over Apitchi’s pulse and temperature again, then she left and later on the nurse left too. Alone with Apitchi, Ira didn’t dare take her eyes off of him. But finally she had to use the bathroom and when she came out he was still all right, he even looked a little better, maybe. So she unlocked the steel hook on the side of the cot and laid out the bed. Then she lay down on it. The bed was so comfortable that she fell asleep for perhaps an hour. When she woke, old Bernard was sitting in a chair on the other side of Apitchi’s bed.

“Oh, hey,” she said. “You’re here.”

“I came to work early,” said Bernard. “Zero visibility out there. I barely did make it. I heard this little one is sick.”

“Pneumonia,” said Ira. “But he had a seizure and they don’t know why. Maybe the fever.”

“Poor little guy,” said Bernard. “A seizure.”

“Scared the living hell out of me,” said Ira, sitting up and staring at Apitchi. “Now they have him on a medicine for that, too.”

“What about you,” said Bernard. “Did you eat?”

“I forgot about supper. I slept.”

“They left a tray here,” Bernard said, collecting it off a table behind the curtain. “Must have seen you were sleeping.”

Bernard brought the tray around the side of the bed and Ira put it on her knees. She’d lost her hunger, but she thought that she should eat, in case.

“Probably got cold,” said Bernard. “Should I go and leave you to eat?”

“No, no,” said Ira. “Stay here and talk to me. Can I interest you in a piece of”—she lifted the plastic dome, wet with condensed steam—“gray stuff? There’s chocolate pudding, too.”

“I’ll keep you company,” Bernard said. “I bring me a lunch every night, but sometimes I eat those good old hospital cafeteria leftovers, too. They bring ’em around to me.”

Ira found that, although she felt no hunger, she was eating everything with quick efficiency. She hoped that somebody had helped Alice cut her meat into little pieces. Perhaps they were asleep now, her daughters; it was late.

“Can I ask you something?” Ira was nervous. “You can say no.”

“All right. What is it?”

Ira stirred her pudding around and around. “Well, I’ve got to ask you, I mean, can we come stay with you? Until we figure out our housing?”

“Okay,” said Bernard.

Ira looked up in relief, she smiled. “Really?”

“I got room,” Bernard said.

“Oh, thank you.” Ira put her hands on either side of her tray. She nodded. Tears suddenly stung in her throat. “Chi miigwech, Bernard.”

“I got room,” he said again.

“I can cook,” said Ira. “I’ll cook for you.”

Bernard waved his hand aside and they both sat in the quiet looking at Apitchi, watching the glowing numbers of his oxygen and the graph of his heartbeat on the monitor. Ira finished up the food on her tray and set the tray on the broad windowsill.

“I sat with your dad in the nights,” said Bernard, “when he was sick in this here hospital. We used to talk.”

“I didn’t know that. I mean, of course I knew you two were friends, and that, but I never knew you stayed with him in the hospital.”

“Oh yes, he told me things I never knew. I learned things about him, when he was here in the hospital.”

“I guess people talk,” said Ira, watching Apitchi’s face, “at night. It can be a lonely place. I wish I could’ve stayed with him. I was taking care of the kids.”

“He sure loved these little ones,” said Bernard.

“I know he did,” Ira said. “Shawnee remembers him best. What kind of stories did he tell you?”

“About the wolves,” Bernard said.

“He gave that name to Morris,” said Ira. “Why was that?”

“Morris was going in the army. He needed that name for protection.”

“Okay,” said Ira.

“I think I have to tell you something,” said Bernard.

“Go ahead.”

“I was sleeping when your daughter heard that drum. I never struck that drum. That drum is no ordinary drum. It is very old and originates generations back. I have been looking after this drum, waiting for it to tell me what to do. Every day I put out my tobacco, and I ask for direction. Sometimes I hear the songs. The drum talked to your daughter.”

Ira sat very still, her hand on Apitchi’s ankle. “I don’t know what that means,” she said.

“I think it means that this drum is now ready to be put to use,” said Bernard. “I was going to wait and say this. But being as your boy here is sick, I think we must act.”

Ira looked into Bernard’s eyes, round and direct as a bird’s. “It can’t hurt,” she said.

“Tonight I’m going to bring the drum up, then,” said Bernard. “I have it sitting downstairs in my office. And I am going to get Morris to help me with the songs.”

“Morris knows them?”

“Some. His mother bothered me to work with him. See, this here drum went traveling for a time. Most of the songs got scattered.”

“What will the nurses say?”

“Oh,” said Bernard, “they’ll be all right. It’s not the first time they had to contend with their own medicine. There’s a hospital policy on traditional healing. We can’t burn any sage, but the drum we can pound as long as we keep it low and everyone is awake. We’ll do it in the morning.”

Bernard left the room and went downstairs. While he was gone, Ira checked on Shawnee and Alice. They were asleep, breathing calmly, and when she slipped from their room she saw Bernard getting off the elevator. He carried the drum in a canvas case, by a strap, and he also carried a cloth case that looked as though it held a short pair of skis, but she knew it held the legs that kept the drum off the floor. She followed Bernard into the room. He took the drum from its case, then put the drum on the recliner, and pushed it against the wall.

“There’s room, isn’t there?”

“Sure,” Ira said, “there’s room.”

Bernard left the case standing in the corner, and he went out the door. The night nurse came in and checked everything about Apitchi. Then she left. Ira smoothed out the covers on the cot again, and climbed in with her clothes on. The drum was behind her head, just above. Immediately, she slept.

The nurse tucked the digital thermometer underneath Shawnee’s arm and she swam up from her dream to half-wakefulness. She heard the whoosh of the pump on the blood pressure cuff, and heard it again as the nurse stood over Alice. An hour ago, Shawnee’s hands had throbbed and itched, but now that the medicine the nurse had given her had kicked in, she was comfortable. The nurse went out of the room, but Shawnee did not return entirely to sleep. The door was open a crack and she could hear the nurses talking at their big round station in the middle of the ward. It was comforting talk. A low babble. Heat flowed softly through the louvered vent alongside the window. Her mother was down the hall with Apitchi, and she had come through the woods. They were all safe. Since they’d been in the hospital, every time Shawnee closed her eyes she was back at the house as it burned, or dragging Alice, or floundering through the snow with Apitchi on her back. Now when she slept, she dreamed the whole thing over again, and several hours later she woke cold. She did not know where she was at first. Her vision was clouded, her eyes weak, and she felt the snow reaching up around her waist. But then she heard the beating of the drum, as she had back in the woods. Once she heard it she slowly allowed herself to return to consciousness. She pushed the sheet down, tossed off the pillow that had fallen over her eyes. As the room and its safety surrounded her, she was flooded by a startling and almost painful happiness.