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

As though suddenly realizing he had broken some taboo, the old priest snatched the letter from Jude Miller’s hands.

“Who are you?”

Trying to regain his balance, Father Jude introduced himself.

“Believe it or not,” he said, with self-deprecating amusement, “I am sent here by the Vatican.”

There was an eerie sweep of wind through the trees. Then silence. The old priest took this news like an electric blow and went rigid in his chair. The current of the statement so held him that Father Jude became concerned, at last, that the old priest’s heart had seized. Just as he was reaching forward to take his pulse, Father Damien sagged forward onto his knees. Arms outstretched, he tried to speak but could not, although an odd sound caught in his throat, eft, eft . His head nodded back and forth, slowly, unbelievingly. An expression of wordless wonder gradually fixed itself onto his features and then joy welled in Father Damien’s eyes, spilled over, sank down his cheeks.

A good long while passed before Father Jude Miller dared address the old priest again, for the palpitations of the old man’s frail heart caused a dizzy sweat and then his lungs, brittle with age, shuddered in his chest like rawhide sacks and refused to inflate properly. But, although when he tried to speak, Father Damien’s skin mottled and his lips went cyotic blue, he managed to welcome the visitor he believed had come straight from the Pope. He even managed to address him in Italian phrases he had memorized for the occasion. All of this alarmed Jude, but just as he was about to rush for the phone to summon an ambulance from the reservation hospital, Father Damien emitted a huge dragging cough. Loud as a death rattle, it had the effect of clearing his chest and restoring his oxygen so that he suddenly snapped back to consciousness.

“Ah, bene, bene, ” he declared, gazing happily at Father Jude. “And when does the inquiry into the life of Leopolda begin?”

Father Jude, whose mission it was to impart the news of the inquiry, a most highly secret undertaking entrusted to him by eminent Catholic authorities, was taken aback. The route to sainthood was exhaustive and the proceedings highly confidential. Not only was he having trouble adjusting to Father Damien’s instant recovery, but the old priest behaved as though he knew in advance his visitor’s commission. In a way, this was irritating. Never before had Father Jude’s assistance been required by Church authority at such exalted levels, never before had he imagined, even, the type of trust that was abruptly bestowed on him by reason of his lifelong proximity to the people and places now in question. What was for him an awesome and unexpected undertaking, however, seemed for Father Damien entirely expected.

“A lay Catholic, a professor of sorts, has introduced the subject. She has written a great deal on Sister Leopolda but from, you understand, an academic standpoint. We are looking now for firsthand and thoroughly witnessed fact.”

Father Damien took this information to himself with prideful glee. Father Jude was nonplussed at such enthusiasm.

“And who will form the council, do you think?” Father Damien now inquired in the bright tones of a younger man. As though he was still involved in the machinery of the Church, he began to speculate aloud. Some of those whom the old priest named were dead or married. Still, he was not so entirely out of touch as his feeble appearance would excuse. The old one named several eminent scholars, Jesuits who were known as investigators, and he inquired shrewdly after the opinions of Bishops Retzlaff and Kelly, Archbishop Day, and the status of any petitions or people’s acclamations. In addition, he asked whether proofs had yet been furnished of Leopolda’s intercessions and gave his opinion that the most delicate points would rest upon the singular question of her mode of existence.

“By which you mean…” Father Jude gazed into the fairy-pale face, the white hair spread in a flossy halo, the great uncanny eyes.

“Her daily example.” Father Damien raised one finger in the air. “Did she lead an exemplary existence? Was she fair, was she honest? Did she give up her foodstuffs, her blankets, her comforts to the poor? Did she have any bad habits, tipple unblessed communion wine? Smoke?” Here Father Damien gave a dry cruel laugh that surprised Jude. “Had Sister Leopolda indulged herself in some area she might have sinned less forcefully in others…? Yes, yes! If only she had smoked!”

Father Damien held up two fingers in a V.

“I don’t smoke,” said Father Jude.

“Well then, look, neshke… I only have one on special occasions.”

Early on, Ojibwe words and phrases had crept into Damien’s waking speech and now sometimes he lapsed into the tongue, especially in his frequent confusion over whom he was addressing.

“Neshke! Daga naazh opwaagaansz!” He gestured again at a small tin box set on the tilting plastic lawn table. Father Jude opened the box, removed a cigarette from a package, lighted it for the old priest, and then sat down patiently to wait as Father Damien breathed in the rank, dry heat. As he intermittently drew quiet puffs and gazed into the fractured halos of moving branches, he spoke.

“Now tell me”—Father Damien’s lips pursed in a calculating bud—“what would be the most, let us say, effective time to reveal what I know of this departed nun’s character?”

Father Jude attempted a reply, but the side-to-side jolts of Father Damien’s mental processes were wearing. Father Damien disregarded the other priest, smoothed his cassock thoughtfully around his knees, adjusted his eyeglass lenses along his nose, and continued in tones of firm analysis.

“I would like to establish myself as the crucial witness in the archive. I want to tread the quicksand of the bureaucratic process. I want to walk on hidden trails of solid ground! I have lived, I believe”—here Father Damien raised a finger to his lips, inhaled absently from the now dead cigarette—“a quiet life. I have sought no following, engaged in no behaviors, holy or otherwise, that would bring me notoriety. I have done only as I was directed by Jesus, with whom I have a personal understanding. In no way have I attempted to invoke or incite spiritual response from others based solely on features of my own personality. I have tried, in other words, to serve God invisibly.”

Father Jude Miller held his peace with an air of vacant gravity. He believed he knew where the old priest was heading, and he did agree: the nun in question’s life had been a contrast. No retiring servant was she, Leopolda, but a fiercely masterful woman whose resounding bitterness of spirit had nonetheless resulted in acts of troubling goodness, inspirations, even miraculous involvements. Which raised the question: Were saints only saints by virtue of their influence, their following, their reputation for the marvelous, or was there room for personal failure — especially when, as evidenced by the miracles and eighteen letters so far, the results of that difficult life were so dramatically good?

“I have here,” said Father Jude, “a copy of a crudely written letter that I will read to you in order to inform you more thoroughly on the important uncertainties we face in regard to Leopolda.”

“By all means.”

“ ‘Dear Bishop,’ ” read Father Jude, “ ‘I run my farming operation just west of town nearby which the place is where the nun Leopolda was hit by lightning and her ashes blown into the convent beehives produced in one $2.99 jar (large) of honey I bought from there concern the following cure of livelong piles….’ ”

Father Damien remained impassive as Jude finished out the missive.

“And this one,” Father Jude went on, choosing from a file folder he had with him. “ ‘I am a strict atheist engaged in the practice of medicine. My specialty is cardiac surgery. My private practice, based in Fargo, North Dakota, encompasses unusual cases from the surrounding region. In February of this year I saw a young girl who suffered a severe case of an unusual virus that destroyed the membrane surrounding the heart and had begun to attack the muscle itself…’ ”