Louise Erdrich - The Last Report on the Miracles at Little No Horse

“I would be afraid,” she said. “Not so much of the Indians themselves, but of the many plagues and vermin that assail them — most pathetic of all God’s doomed creatures! Lice are very catching, for instance, and the devil trains them to descend in droves on the unwary priest who forgets to bless himself before he enters one of their homes.”

Father Damien was silent in surprise.

“Oh, I’ll bless myself all right,” he said at last. “With a lye bath every week. And constitutionals. I will look after my health.”

Agnes DeWitt could not help but tease more sharply. “Will you really bathe in lye? How brutal! And what grave difficulties such a pious man as yourself will face when confronted with their shamans and hocus-pocus! I am sure they indulge in séances.”

“Most likely.”

“Trance states, those are probably common. And potions, elixirs, that sort of anodyne.”

“No doubt.”

“There are so many shapes to the evil you will have to contend with. They have, some of them, a tradition of devouring strangers!”

Father Damien could not help glancing down at his lean thighs, pressed together under his cassock. They didn’t look all that tempting even to him. He really had to go. He dispensed a quick blessing and left with the cookies pressed on him by Agnes DeWitt, whom he had managed, though not by the avenues he’d attempted, to cheer so thoroughly that she rose from her couch, folded her blanket, and sitting down at her piano laughed so hard her fingers dropped off the keys.

THE MISSION

Into her brooding there intruded an absurd fantasy, the possibility of escape, though it was to a place few would consider so — the mission and the missionary life. She thought of doing good. Alleviating the pain that others felt might help to assuage her own. She began to pray, asked to regain the clarity of her original religious impulse, her early vocation. Chopin had stolen her from Christ to give to Berndt. Christ had stolen Berndt from her to take for himself. Now she had only her Chopin, his music, for Christ was preoccupied with introducing Berndt to all of the other farmers in heaven and for Agnes he seemed to have no time. She prayed. He did not answer. Chopin was more reliable. She could not stand the farm — not without Berndt. Now that she remembered him, the place was treacherous with the raw ache of memory that returned in unexpected bits, then vanished before she could get the whole of it firmly laid out in her mind.

In her thoughts, she spoke to the priest again, questioned him strenuously, found her own answers. The Ojibwe, she had heard, the Indians up north, were an agreeable people not known for their ferocious instincts, even in the past. She was, of course, not afraid. She was curious, and her curious nature led her down tangled pathways. What was it like up there — wild? She could understand wild. Though her world was tame, the peace she sought was lost within the wilderness of her own heart. Sometimes she howled and savagely tore the wallpaper of her bedroom and then lay on the floor. Spent, she thought that there was no place as unknown as grief.

THE FLOOD

The river pushed over the banks that spring and ripped from the ground the dead horse, the mired car, and the money that had lain unseen underneath the gangster, fallen out of the waistband of the trousers he’d worn under the cassock. The horse swirled to pieces, the car tipped slowly downward, the money floated in thin wads straight north and was in a month or two plowed into the earth of a Pembina potato field. Meanwhile, Agnes kept hers locked in the Fargo bank. Tracing her elusive memories, she had gone where life was deepest many times, and she did not fear the rain. Of course, she did not know the history of the stream — at times deceptively sluggish or narrow as a whip, then all of a sudden pooling in a great, wide, dangerous lake with powerful currents that moved earth in tons. What began as a sheer mist became an even sprinkle and then developed into a slow, pounding shower that lasted three days, then four, then on the fifth day when it should have tapered off, increased.

The river boiled along swiftly, a pour of gray soup still contained, just barely, within its high banks. On day six the rain stopped, or seemed to. The storm had moved upstream. All day while the sun shone pleasantly the river heaved itself up, tore into its flow new trees and boulders, created tip-ups, washouts, areas of singing turbulence.

Agnes rushed about uneasily, pitching hay into the high loft, throwing chickens up after the hay, wishing she could toss the house up as well, and of course the fabulous piano. But the piano was earth anchored and well tuned by the rainy air, so instead of fruitless worry, Agnes lost herself in practice. She had an inner conviction that, no matter how wide the river spread, it would stop at her front doorstep.

She didn’t know.

Once this river started to move, it was a thing that gained assurance. It had no problem with fences or gates, wispy windbreaks, ditches. It simply leveled or attained the level of whatever stood in its path. And moved on, closer. Water jumped up the grass lawn and collected in the flower beds. The river tugged itself up the porch and into the house from one side. From the other side it undermined an already weak foundation that had temporarily shored up the same wall once removed to make way for the piano. The river tore against the house from all around. And then, like a child tipping out a piece of candy from a box, the water surged underneath, rocked the floor, and the piano crashed through the weakened wall.

It landed in the swift current of the yard, Agnes with it. The white treble clef of her flannel nightdress billowed as she spun away, clutching the curved lid. The thing was pushed along, bobbing off the bottom of the flower beds first and then, as muscular new eddies caught it, touching down on the shifting lanes of Berndt’s wheat fields, and farther, until the revolving instrument and the woman on it reached the original river, that powerful vein, and plunged in. They were carried not more than a hundred feet before the piano lost momentum and sank. As it went down Agnes thought at first of crawling into its box, nestling as though for safety among the cold, dead keys. So attached was she to the instrument that she could not imagine parting from it but, as she actually struggled with the hinged cover, Agnes lost her grip and was swept straight north.

REPORT THE FIRST

THE MIRACLE OF MY DISGUISE

3 A.M., March 20, 1996

Your Holiness, I was the woman on the lid of the piano.

Agnes. Beloved of Chopin and Berndt Vogel, raiser of chickens, groomer of blue horse, girl shot by the Actor. Student of memory. I remember some things and have forgotten others. I do know that I was tumbled into the flood of the cold Red River, which is not red but a punishing gray. Whirling once, twice. Even now, the ride stands clear. I sank toward the sludge bottom, struggling in my gown, my shoes like clods on my feet. I had the sense to tear them off and tried to get the nightdress, too, but I had sewn it with too many buttons. This proved my salvation, as it filled with air and ballooned around my shoulders like a life buoy. So I whirled off. I opened my mouth to wail. There was darkness, and I sank into its murmur.

I met the undertow, a quick dark funnel not visible from shore. It must have pulled me farther down the stream, for when I came up, I was floating swiftly, moving in a grand swell. The current crested at the surface and all I had to do was paddle lightly. Even in my swirling gown, it took almost no effort. My dress caught air and floated behind me like a wedding train. It could have dragged me under, but instead I was pushed along. Buoyant, I dropped fear, dropped worry, went beyond cold into a state beyond numb. The rush was so swift and strong.