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

The water boiled. Fleur came in, made spruce-needle tea, went out again. The priest and the old man sipped the stuff from cans. Maybe, thought Nanapush, as with all things there was a reason for this intrusion and something in it for himself. He set his mind to it. There must be some way that Nanapush could use this priest, if he couldn’t get rid of him. And the priest looked set to stay. The priest would probably not do much about Nanapush’s lack of zhooniyaa — priests never gave out money, that he knew. And food, from the starved look of the black robe, was probably not forthcoming. He didn’t seem to have so much as a piece of bannock with him. No, there was not much good that this priest could do in an immediate way. Nanapush thought harder. Grief over his last wife still pressed him, and it was perhaps that grief and longing, coupled with the Nanapush-like need to take advantage when advantage could be taken, that led him to decide — since the priest had yanked him from the calm world of the dead to thrust him into the strife of the living, where he did not want to go — he at least would not sleep in a cold bed. No, if he had to stay alive, Nanapush would get a wife — a big, warm one. She would make a little nest for him every night, blankets spread over cedar boughs. He’d curl beside her and he’d get warm and then he’d make them both happy with what he’d been given, his gift, unless that, too, had starved so skinny it was useless.

So while he sat quietly, Nanapush’s mind was really hard at work, and when it found a direction, his tongue was triggered and wouldn’t stop. Somehow, and Nanapush did not know how it would occur, the talking itself, if he did it long enough, always brought him by roundabout and unexpected ways to the place he intended. And so although he started somewhere altogether far from any discussion of wives or beds, he had no doubt that he would end up where he was going. He spoke what came to mind then, and told a story that he suddenly recalled hearing from a zhaaganaash-akiing Cree.

NANABOZHO CONVERTS THE WOLVES

Nanapush

Our Nanabozho was like me, said the old man, launching it, very poor once — in fact, so poor he didn’t even own a rotten old rag such as I have to dress in, no, he had to go naked and his family, too. So it interested Nanabozho very much when he heard the Frenchmen were traveling around his home ground buying up furs and wolf pelts and buffalo robes. Yes, he thought, that sounded very interesting. He even saw people who had many furs and had bought warm new clothes. But yet, sadly enough, Nanabozho had no furs to sell.

So he went to a Frenchman anyway and tried to persuade him to give some credit, telling him that soon he would have a great many furs to put down on his debt.

Then the Frenchman, who believed Nanabozho, gave him blankets and coats and even a gun. Also, a great deal of clothing. Nanabozho brought these things home and gave them all to his wife. But she was angry and called him crazy.

“How are we going to pay?” she yelled.

“Oh,” said Nanabozho, “I will go back to this Frenchman. You’ll see.”

So Nanabozho went back to the Frenchman and this time he asked for some medicine, poison. He took that poison home and then told his old woman to give him some fat, which she did. She gave him fat. Then he turned around and put that poison into the fat. He patted out many little flat lumps of poison fat and cooled them until they were hard. Then he took them all and went to look for the wolves.

Nanabozho walked along until he came to a place where there was a wolf.

“Brother,” said Nanabozho, “come here!”

But the wolf would not, saying, “You only want to kill me!”

“No, my little brother,” said Nanabozho, “I want to hire you.”

Well, that sounded interesting to the wolf, so he came around.

“I want to give you the job of going everywhere to summon all the wolves and the foxes, oh yes, all the best-looking of the wolves and foxes, to come and see me, on this little hill. I have taken the Jesus road, my friends, and I wish to preach to you all!”

Then once the wolves and foxes arrived, he spoke some more.

“My brothers,” he said, “these things I am going to tell you are good, and you should accept them indeed! If you take on this religion, no one can kill you. It’s true. But if you do not believe along with me, you will surely die. Now look what I have for you!”

Nanabozho displayed the poisoned lumps of fat.

“If anyone eats of this, long will he live!” declared Nanabozho.

Then the wolves all threw themselves forward, hoping to live long, and Nanabozho dispensed the fat.

A wolf would come forward, eat the fat, then go. One by one, Nanabozho placed the fat in their mouths, and the foxes, too, until the fat was all gone. And then Nanabozho held up his hand and blessed all the wolves, saying, “Long may you live!” And as he said this and blessed them, the wolves leaped in the air and howled, turned twice in agony, and fell back to earth dead.

That’s the way Nanabozho gave religious instruction to the wolves. After he saved their souls, he skinned them all and the foxes, too, and as he walked to the French traders carrying their skins, he laughed and laughed. Truly, he said, I have converted them — to money.

That’s all. Mi’sago’i!

* * *

Fleur had entered the cabin to hear the end of the story, and with a cold sarcasm laughed at the unmanly priest and asked what he thought of that?

Father Damien, for a fact, looked extremely thoughtful. He said nothing as he sipped the tea, and at last he answered that he thought the story was extremely clever but that, if he read the meaning right, the Anishinaabeg were not as stupid as wolves nor did Father Damien need to skin them in order to pay his debts. Nanapush looked happily at the priest now, and started feeling glad he was alive, if only to be presented with the challenge of rattling a promising opponent. At the same time, just to speak of those lumps of fat made him so hungry that his stomach stabbed and groaned. He tried to kill the hunger with another swallow of tea.

GAAG

After they had finished the last drop of tea, the three looked gloomily at the walls of the little cabin, as though the tamped poles would somehow leak porridge. As they gazed with a sad, fixed blankness into their private fantasies of food, they heard a sound. At the very first scrape of this sound, Nanapush held up his hand. “Bizindan,” he whispered. He looked at Fleur, and then upon his face there appeared the happy wonder of a child discovering a stash of sweets. The priest listened, mystified. The sound occurred again, right at the southeast corner of the cabin. It was, there was absolutely no mistake about it, a definitive chomp. A munch. A distinct chewing sound.

“Gaag,” said Fleur, and she and Nanapush dropped down to their knees, crept across the dirt floor wearing such gleeful looks that Father Damien, caught up in their madness, crawled behind them out of intense curiosity. Their stealthy whispers inhibited him from asking any questions. Anyway, they’d forgotten about him. They went outside, stood, slowly sneaked around the side of the cabin and found there an enormous porcupine. Startled, it removed its teeth from the log side of the house and backed away, eyeing the humans with a grave and glistening black stare, apprehensive and somehow, thought Father Damien, pleading.

Fleur gently crept near the animal, brushed her hands over the porcupine’s quills so they all lay one way. Suddenly she grasped it and raised it by its ferocious tail, at which point it gave a very human gasp, a surprised eeee ! With a giant’s swing, she brained the creature on the side of the house, and then knelt with her knife and gutted it in the yard.