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

Father Jude’s room was rectangular, too, with the window at its end and southern wall. He always liked south light, and the curtainless sky-filled panes of glass pleased him. He sat on the single mattress, bounced a bit. There was no comfortable reading chair or bedside lamp in the room. Apparently, no appreciation here of the intimate pleasure of reading in a pool of lamplight. Perhaps it was considered by the resident priest an indulgence, but for Jude the nightly reading was a necessary prelude to sleep. Without an orderly transition from consciousness, he was often subject to the tedium of insomnia. When so afflicted in his own surroundings, he read himself back to sleep, or, occasionally, if he was in an appropriate place, walked out into the night.

His methods of whiling away those dreadful hours were not much different, he thought now, from the apparent routine of Father Damien. That was not surprising. He, Jude, still thought of himself as young although he had never really had a young man’s habits or inclinations. His combination of energy and reserve had originally attracted him to the priesthood. A loner, he had always felt unsuited to the company of his peers. As a priest, to his great relief, his refinement and discipline of behavior made it possible to live within the limitations of his profession. He was an excellent priest, practical and intelligent, without the restlessness that so often accompanied the vows of those who had chosen to stay with the Church through its most turbulent recent years. He wasn’t meek, but he was in his person deeply resigned to what he did. It was this immense resignation to the shape of his life that opened him every day to the experience of joy.

The night before, he’d been too tired to organize himself. Now, he carefully unpacked his clothing, hung up and smoothed each sock and hankie, refolded every T-shirt into a drawer. Everything was put away before he noticed how tired he still was, how graven his exhaustion. He climbed into the bed he’d occupy until he completed this report for the diocese. Father Jude turned out the lights and rolled gratefully between the covers. He lay stiffly on his back, relaxing only very gradually, and in the oily dark he mulled over the information he’d received from Father Damien.

If it was true that his subject had struck a young novice and practiced subterfuge in regard to the deliverance of holy wounds, that invalidated her, he would expect. However, suppose these things were true and yet Christ had seen fit to reward and forgive the penitential vows of Leopolda by bestowing upon her the highest of bloody honors? The stigmata, or wounds resembling them, the hands that held the crown of thorns. Did he or any investigatory tribunal have the right to contradict such awesome signs of forgiveness? Obviously, the thing to do next was to interview the postulant. By now, she would be elderly, if she lived at all.

Marie. What was it. Kashpaw? Star of the sea. She will shine when we’ve burned off the salt.

Where did that come from? First thing next morning, he would track down this woman. Meanwhile, yawning, Father Jude shuffled mentally through files bound in pale manila. In what now he considered his hometown another odd occurrence — miracle, coincidence — documented, no less, with photographs taken by the subject herself. The face of Christ in a pane of ice, the cracks forming a gaunt visage with deep spiritual eyeholes in the skull. Shattered spikes, white and grim, a crown of frozen thorns. The photograph, reproduced in a clipping from the local newspaper and in a small pamphlet printed at the convent, had lost definition and smeared, yet the features of the face were marked clearly enough to resemble those bled into the famous Turin shroud. Those knifelike cheekbones, those pinched and painful brows. Sister Leopolda had been nearby when the cracks in the ice appeared. “The Manifestation at Argus”—title of the thin green pamphlet published by the local convent — noted her presence in the school yard. A child was the cause, or perhaps the catalyst that produced the icy features.

Everything was connected, loop upon loop. That child was, in fact, someone known to Jude in his later life. There was no doubt in his mind that some greater power was at work. Already, he’d done an interview with her as well. A bold girl, she’d smashed down face first from a slick play slide. The cracked visage of Christ appeared where she landed. The miraculous portrait had been sawed out of the ice and carefully deep frozen, only to be lost in a summer power outage.

There was, and more recently, a well-witnessed occurrence in which a local contractor had been struck into the earth by a statue of the Virgin Mary, the statue snapping its chains during unloading. Miraculously, some said, he had been spared. Due to a holy card stuck carelessly in his pocket? A portrait of the nun in question? Or due to a bed of sand that drove the man deep, stabilizing his limbs, and stopped the statue from landing upon him full force?

Father Miller tried to disconnect his thoughts, and even proceeded in a mental exercise to stack the materials he’d gathered, pat the files into a neat stack. He composed his mind to deliver his evening prayers. He usually prayed on his knees, beside the bed, or if he was cold or exhausted, tucked underneath the covers. Tonight, he folded himself comfortably and wearily on his side and mumbled, exasperated and pleading. “God,” he said, “help me out, here.” Falling away from consciousness, he worked out the bones of a plan that would take him between the reservation and Argus. The mark of the smashed face. The marks of the nails. The contractor rammed into the earth but only dizzied. And yet, what good works? What kindnesses had Leopolda performed? The ordinary markers were the stuff he sought now, the shape of his subject’s daily existence. Among the parishioners here on the reservation, he decided, he would find those she had helped. He would sit with them as long as it took, get their stories, record every nuance, every word.

MARIE KASHPAW

Though in age her flesh had tightened and roped to her bones, as though to tether itself to earth, Marie Kashpaw was still a formidable mass. Her hair, dove gray and cut into a helmet, had grown down over her eyebrows, but she refused to trim it. She gazed from beneath her bangs as under a visor, and regarded Father Jude with an indifferent acceptance. They sat on fat, mildewed, easy chairs.

“How come you’re here? What’s this for?” she asked, for she was a suspicious and brutally intelligent woman.

Father Jude told her he was gathering material about Sister Leopolda. “Leopolda!” She nodded and laughed without mirth. She popped a sourball into her mouth and smoothed her powerfully withered hands across the patterned stuff of her dress.

“What do you want?” she said again. Her eyes were round, hooded with wrinkles like a turtle’s.

Father Jude explained in more detail the testimony he was collecting. He mentioned Father Damien, and a slow smile creased her face. He left out most of what was told to him by Father Damien, all that was imparted in the intimacy of the confessional.

“Sister Leopolda Puyat?” Father Jude prompted.

“I don’t talk about her.” Marie Kashpaw gazed down at the hidden swirls and leaflike gestures in the pattern of her dress material. Slowly, heavily, she frowned. She wore nylon anklets, neatly folded down. Her wide tan shoes appeared to be bolted to the floor.

“I see,” said Father Jude. He allowed a deeper silence to cloak them. Together, they sat in the shabby sun. He smoked peacefully, wondering whether or not to tell her more. Finally he asked Marie Kashpaw, “Are you a discreet woman? Can you keep a secret?”

“No,” she said.