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

Held visible in an intricate glass lunette, the wafer trembled before his eyes as he prayed. These days, Agnes and Father Damien became one indivisible person in prayer. That poor, divided, human priest enlarged and smoothed into the person of Father Damien. As though the unseen were a magnetic draw upon Father Damien’s spirit, his thoughts leaped like iron filings. His requests, sharp black slivers of metal, pierced the sun, and his praises melted in his ears. Now, in that rapt concentration, he moved along the road. Sometimes he held the Sacred Host aloft, feeling a soft power flow through his arms. Sometimes he held the Host before him at a more intimate level. With each step, gentle waves of air brushed around him as though the earth cheerfully flexed underneath each footstep. Each breath was sunlight. Green love surrounded him. Present on the hillside with the body of his Christ, he breathed an easy adoration. One step. The next. Sorrows, confusions, pains of flesh and spirit, all melted into the sweet trance of the moment.

Then, he tripped.

Agnes thought, later, how odd — odd or typical — that she should stumble in the full flow of the gift, in the radiant immediacy of pure grace. What happened next, and next, followed from the first misstep. Father Damien went down holding fast, but, as though an unseen hand yanked, the monstrance bearing the Host bounced upward, turning in the sun. The moment, fluid as he rolled over swamped in flowing vestments, could have been rescued. Had he jumped directly to his feet. Had only the procession halted…. But no, it appeared that he was part of something larger. Uncanny, the design. For now it happened. Just as he went to earth, the presence white as flowers and dead as bone, the Puyat woman with buffalo skulls and jackal face, emerged from a hidden spot. Barefoot, dragging the skulls on thongs fastened somewhere within her habit, she raised her arms in horror to see the Host defiled. She bounded forward just before the garlanded wagon bearing the brooding statue, the children, Quill, and Kashpaw. Her oversize habit flapped like a sail. She flung herself into the wagon’s path.

The horses panicked and reared in their traces. They pranced, hopped, twisted away from the Puyat, then exploded with a wild energy. They shot down the path until they reached the bottom and could run cross-country. They tore pounding through tangled farmsteads. Through town. Men chased as they wheeled by, shouting, “Cut the lines!” But Kashpaw carried with him only one dull hatchet, and the best he could manage in the wild tumble were awkward scrapes across the reins. Rounding a curve the statue of the Virgin shot out like a torpedo. That, in itself, was an event that caused repercussions deep into the future. For her halo sliced right through an oiled paper window and the rest of the statue followed, straight into the house of seven of the most notorious drunks in Little No Horse, who lay groaning that very moment for whiskey.

THE SEVEN DRUNKS

Instead of a bottle, the Blessed Virgin flew through the window. Skidding across the room, she tipped upright so that, by the time the sodden ones looked blearily up, she stood tall. Her glance of disgusted sweetness shone down upon the four men and three women, including a much too young Sophie Morrissey and a couple of Lazarres. Their sore eyes pinned upon the Virgin, who stood directly in the square of light from the broken window. Of course, the drinkers all knelt, blessed themselves, wept in astonishment and converted — not to Catholicism, but at least to a much less potent form of alcohol: to wine. Henceforward, they were strict in their loyalty to the grape — even though, they claimed, no matter how much they poured down their gullets, they couldn’t get satisfyingly shkwebii anymore. And even as a result of their encounter with the Virgin, some were afflicted with a mild friendliness and industry.

THE RUNAWAYS

The children in the back of the wagon jounced along, thrilled at first, then shrieking. The fortunate little girl cousin popped over the edge of the wagon and landed safely in a heap of slough grass. Still, the vehicle flew, banging crazily behind the horses as they galloped toward disaster. It was over in an instant.

The wagon approached a sudden fold in the land with ravenous ease. The violence of the drop broke the back of Quill. A low-branched tree speared Kashpaw. They were mortally wounded, though they lasted in their mutual agony for several hours. Their daughter survived in the overturned wagon box, dragged along until the horses came to the end of their terror. The men who found her deep in the bush had to pry away the crushed and splintered boards from the child. They later told their wives in low voices how she’d wept, as from her arms and her legs they drew the nails.

KASHPAW’S VISION, QUILL’S PEACE

The men laid Quill and Kashpaw out together side by side in the long fine grass underneath a deep-grown oak tree. After her rescue, their child was allowed near to hold their hands and would not be moved from them even in her pain. So the three at least possessed the comfort of one another’s presence. In that time, Quill, at peace though her back was severely broken, spoke to her daughter and to Kashpaw, who answered, though the branch that pierced him made his voice pinched and strange. Though the helpers and gapers who approached muttered at the helpless horror of it, they listened. For Quill and Kashpaw were able to talk. In talking, they gave reason for those present to think that in this extremity the eyes of Kashpaw saw into the near future of his people, while the heart of Quill saw far into the past.

The two of them prophesied while they were dying. Quill was rational and spoke in a sincere attempt to right wrongs stubbornly fixed between reservation factions. For his part, Kashpaw first saw a spirit approach, and it was one he knew well, and had spoken with, and feared. Nanapush was called to sit with his old friend and sing him into the next world.

“N’tawnis,” whispered Kashpaw, “he approaches. I see him.”

“Who, my friend?” Nanapush spoke lightly, though his heart was bursting in his breast. Each breath he took stabbed him with pity and yet he smiled gently so as to ease along his brother-cousin.

“That tall spirit wearing the black hat. My brother, it is he himself, the one who comes to warn me of disease.”

“Where is he going, this spirit?” asked Nanapush.

“Coming toward us. Coming here,” Kashpaw gasped. “Ah! He will take me first, then he will return for many others.”

“This is sad news,” said Nanapush, in truth, terrified. “I will give you a smoke.” With that, he lighted his sacred pipe and the two shared the fragrant tobacco. A slender curl of it crept out of the hole the stick made in Kashpaw’s lower breast and Nanapush nearly cried out, seeing it.

“Give niwiiw a smoke, too,” said Kashpaw, jabbing his lip sideways to indicate Quill, and Nanapush brought the pipe to her side — in fact, he then sat between them, passing the pipe to each, hearing as they spoke.

“Our daughter will dig our grave for us and then she will keep on digging,” said Kashpaw. “She will dig graves for two hundred Anishinaabeg who will die of this sickness that approaches from the east.”

“It comes from the east, you say,” said Nanapush.

Father Damien, kneeling beside him in a miserable state of despair, praying with his whole being, looked to the east and then passed a trembling hand over his eyes. Silhouetted against the horizon, a gaunt and precipitous walker wavered toward them. There was a dot at its side, a dog, a companion. Who saw what? This thing was too tall to be human.

It was gone when he blinked.

“If we lighted great bonfires or dug ditches full of water or allowed no visitors—” said Nanapush.