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

As he read the notice, a stricken rage boiled up in Damien. It was partly guilt — while paralyzed by an interior misery he had failed to protect his people, his family. The paper crumpled in his hands, he was so furious he imagined the flame of his thoughts might scorch it. His fingers clenched and he said in a small and wretched voice, “I will write to the bishop.” It was not entirely too late. By raiding the church account, Father Damien was able to raise enough to keep Nanapush’s family from utter disaster. Still, the best of their land was lost.

Father Damien’s letters flowed everywhere. He wrote to the governor of North Dakota, to the Commissioner of Indian Affairs, to John James Mauser, to the Grand Forks, Fargo, and Bismarck newspapers. He wrote the President of the United States and to county officials on every level. He wrote to Bernadette Morrissey and to the sick former land agent, Jewett Parker Tatro. He wrote to the state senators and representatives and to an organization called Friends of the Indians. He was determined to restore that land, but once it was gone, it was gone forever from Anishinaabeg hands. He didn’t know that, and as his pen devoured page after page, the Turcot Company and Mauser made roads into the woods. As Damien feverishly plotted, petitioned a tough lawyer, and planned strategies, the crews went in to take the trees and the trees were taken. Some chimookomanag did not come out, it’s true, or last much longer than the stealing of Pillager spirits and disruption of their ghosts. Some did not survive, but enough of them lived to ship the great oaks east, to Minneapolis, where they would line the impressive foyer of Mauser’s house.

FLEUR

Walking home, after the shock of finding out wore off, she began shaking. She stopped in the center of the road, whirled in a circle, her shawl cutting the air. She was filled with rattles, with clicking bones, with small ticking husks and vibrations of bees. Her vision snuffed out, she whipped along blindly through undergrowth until she came to the end of the lake. She stayed there long into the night.

The waves came in film over film, for the night was very calm and the water barely moved. Her land would be taken and the trees cut down and sold. She had exactly two dollars in an old snuff can, and she needed one hundred and ninety-eight more. She opened her mouth and the night bees burst out, swarmed over the rough surface of the lake, roared in a black cloud toward the spirit island. The anger built up again. She waited. This time she smashed a rock down on another rock until she split the rock in jagged stripes. The rage was deep in her spirit. This man who took everything had put it there. He was faceless and voiceless as a jibay, he was a ghost tormentor, shielded from her sight.

If only I could get to him, she thought, but I am nothing. She pondered her thin old green dress, worn makazinan, her faded red blanket-shawl mended and worn through and mended again. She opened her hands, turned them over, and looked at them — Pillager hands, big and spidery, rough from setting and hauling in nets. Clever hands, fingers she could murder with, or smooth away a knot of pain in old Margaret’s shoulders, or swipe a sand of sleep gently from the eye of her little girl. Yes, these hands were clever. Hands like this, she thought, shaking them curiously, would know or imagine everything there was to know about a man. On her face there appeared the glint of a smile — yes, she was nothing. But nothing can go anywhere. Nothing can do things. People don’t see nothing, but nothing sees them. She put her hands on her hips, threw her shoulders back, and glared at the sky. It was a wild night, full of black clouds and rolling wind. For a long while she stood on shore, watching the shapes of things. Slowly, in a sky that reflected her mind, directions appeared.

She removed the bones of her parents from the earth, washed them, and wrapped them in red cloth. Then she fed them a dish of manoomin and berries. She laid a pipeful of asemaa in the red cloth for them to smoke. Then she loaded the bundles in a small cart. If things happened as she foresaw, she would need them to come along with her and support her in all that she did. For what she contemplated was a strange thing. It had come to her as the shape of something, not all at once, but by suggestion. She would find the ghost man, the thief, and be nothing around him. She would watch him, learn everything about him, and from the knowledge ascertain just how she could destroy him and restore her land.

He was rich, that she knew. The rich aren’t difficult to find, she thought, they live in big wika-iganan.

“Aaniin ezhichigeyan, n’mama?”

Lulu had crept up behind her mother and peeked into the red cloth. Fleur showed her what she was doing. Lulu poked at the bones and her mother took her hands carefully away. A frantic laughter, a feeling of painful hilarity seized Fleur, and she grabbed Lulu, swung her around and then put her down and darted off. They raced wildly up and down the lake shore, pulling at each other’s clothes, throwing weeds. When they fell to the ground, Fleur’s heart was beating so fast it felt like a bird trying to leave her chest. She grabbed Lulu and crushed the girl close. Although she was quick as an otter and usually squirmed away from being held and ducked from her mother’s embrace, this time Lulu breathed out one long laugh and then fell asleep with her fingers gripping the cloth of her mother’s blouse. Fleur sat on the shore for a long time with her daughter’s weight heavy against her and the water rolling in, and rolling in, and without pause rolling into the shore.

1920–1922

Agnes slumped at the table in her cabin. Felled with an autumn fever, she had spent a week tossing in bed. To cure her weak dizziness, now, she was drinking a foul, but she hoped nutritious, soup prepared by Mary Kashpaw. There was cabbage in it, she noted, translucent shreds of onions, the neck of a chicken. She closed her eyes to take a sip. The sisters were wary of Mary Kashpaw; except for Hildegarde, they all believed she was dangerous and still advised the priest to be careful lest she attack. Agnes knew that she was endangered only by the girl’s cooking, and she usually sent her out while she ate so that her reactions should not trouble Mary Kashpaw. Agnes had done just that and Mary Kashpaw was out in the yard, then, when the dog walked right in through the open window. A rangy thing, coal black and huge, he stood on the small table, front paw in the soup bowl. Agnes untucked the napkin from below her chin, and swatted at the dog.

“Get!” she weakly cried, and then, through the glowing spots of a half-fainting weakness, she heard it answer.

“Get?” The dog twisted the word sarcastically. “Get what, get where?”

Stricken with a sick wonder, Agnes tried to bolt from the room. The soup was terrible, but capable of such an effect?

“You look surprised to see me,” said the dog. “As you’ll soon find, I serve a greater master than yours. You’ve seen him at a distance, and you’ll soon see him close.”

“What do you want?” Agnes gasped the words out and then her mind cleared. Some prank-pulling member of her parish was using ventriloquism. Who? Narrowing her eyes, she spun around, but saw nothing. The dog opened his dog mouth and spoke again.

“I want Lulu! Where does she live?”

The dog explained that he was sent for the girl, Lulu, who was marked for the taking. But he couldn’t find her on the reservation. Where was her family hiding her? Agnes jumped up, reeling, so angered that she hardly knew what words passed her lips. The strangeness of the scene palled before the idea of danger to Lulu.