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

He chose her as though choosing a dancing partner. He did everything but bow — walked up to her and took her hand with a polite but peremptory firmness, so that it would not have been out of character with his manner for the two of them to step out onto the dance floor and begin a slow waltz. And it was as though they were engaged in some sort of dance as they walked out the door. Only she was held the wrong way. When she stumbled, perhaps purposely, not following his lead, he wrenched her closer. As he pulled her against the door of the car he’d entered, as she balanced on the running board, he called out, “Come after me and I will blow her head off, Mister Sheriff.”

Then the ragged bum who had sat with arms neatly crossed at the side of the street accelerated the car with a roar. Slow Johnny the sheriff, solid in his tracks, raised his pistol, sighted carefully along the barrel, pulled the trigger, and shot Miss DeWitt. She took the bullet in the hip. So much was happening all at once — more shots fired, mad swerving to avoid an ice truck, two children diving into the roots of a lilac bush, sheer speed — that she felt the impact as a blow that rang her bones, but did not pain her, until the car hit a great freak of earth that nearly threw Miss DeWitt halfway into the open window on the driver’s side. Immediately, she was cast into an almost mystical state of agony. The heavens seemed to open. Black stars rang down. She heard the motor and then, later, more gunshots as from a great, muted distance. Thick strains of music looped through her mental hearing, all jumbled and spectacular. Held on the running board by an arm that seemed strung of pitiless wire, proceeding at a dreamlike pace down the smoothly tamped and rolled roadbeds that led out of town, in a state of clarity and focused keenness she told herself, I am being kidnapped. I have been shot.

As the auto jounced her along she began to lose certainty. In her pain she imagined herself back at the convent in her tiny closet of a room. She closed the door, crawled doglike into the wet bush of unconsciousness, lay huddled small and unknowing. From time to time, she experienced a moment of reprieve. She was capable of standing upright. Gravely, she surveyed the country she passed through and found in the faint spring clouds of green a raw sweetness. The robber’s arm gripped her waist. She gripped the luggage rack. Her hair, unpinned and flying backward, made a short banner in the wet, fresh wind.

The Actor took the old Patterson road, by which she knew he understood the lay of the land, and by which, too, she knew if he took the turnoff he would pass by one of Berndt’s fields, their fields, where Berndt was likely to be working. Her heart pounded in hope. But the driver dressed in rags did not turn and she then thought instantly in great relief that Berndt wouldn’t be put in danger now. Just as she did so, the car sped first past the hired man and then farther on, Berndt, on his big slow horse, plodding. He was dragging along a harrow to be repaired. She tried to hide herself when he came by, but she was still balanced on the running board. So it was, he saw her approach from down the road like a figurehead on the prow of a ship. She stood at grand attention, her one leg a flare of blood. He stopped. His face went slack with uncomprehending shock. She rushed by close enough for their hands to meet and then she was gone, swallowed into the distance.

BERNDT VOGEL

Berndt followed the car not because he saw fear in her eyes — there was none, only a dreamy concentration — but because he grasped the whole scenario. Unhitching the harrow, then turning on his horse, he had no precise notion of her danger or any thought of how to rescue her but acted on instinct and absurdity. He was not afraid for her. Having met her in the first place nearly naked within the smoky radiance of his own barn, he knew she would survive the ordeal. There was always a side to her he could not touch. He felt indeed that she was a woman created of impossibility.

Although he sent his horse along at a smart pace, the car was soon out of sight. He had to keep an eye on the road to know from the tire marks at each turnoff that they had, in fact, stayed on the main road. And they did, moving farther from him at every moment. He moved, following them, wondering in useless desperation the location of Slow Johnny. On the chase?

No, not quite. The sheriff and the deputy, in trying to commandeer a car, met resistance not so much from the owner’s lack of agreement about the need for it, but because Slow Johnny was a notoriously poor driver. Beyond that, the two or three citizens whom he approached thought he would do more harm than good chasing down the Actor and probably get Miss DeWitt completely killed, if not himself, the deputy, and any bystander in a stone’s throw radius.

Berndt was far ahead, then, of any other form of help. As he traveled along behind the Actor’s car, he put his mind to the subject. By the process of recalling certain news items about local robberies, he had pretty well figured out what was happening. His equilibrium failed, and he experienced a wave of terror for Agnes so intense that he whipped the poor horse to a momentary froth. As soon as the Percheron rocked into a huge gallop, Berndt realized that he would kill his horse if he continued. Speed now was useless, and besides, with each mile covered he gained a distinct advantage. The car would eventually run out of gas. The horse, if Berndt was careful to conserve its energy, would last. And then, too, Berndt had the advantage of terrible road conditions. Since it was spring, it would be surprising if any car could get through the big washout Berndt knew of six miles up the road.

THE BLUE HORSE

The Actor’s car ripped through the silent country until, just as Berndt anticipated, they hit the washout. The car shimmied to a perplexed stall. The Actor pulled Agnes roughly into the back seat and the driver revved twice without result. With a fabulous jolt the powerful engine caught and they lurched free, only then to slip off the other side of the road into a more serious predicament. There was no moving, not at all, no matter how the men pushed, roared, swore, kicked. Turning in a circle of frustrated fury, the Actor spied at some distance the horse, the rider.

“Look sharp,” he spoke. The men and he changed suddenly to meeker, commoner sorts and began to work with assiduous uselessness on the car’s engaged tires. Pulling up beside them, Berndt casually offered his assistance. The words did not strangle his throat. He was calm. He tapped his farmer’s brim as he glanced into the back seat. The Actor had spread a blanket over Miss DeWitt’s legs, and she looked all right, though pale and dazzled.

Berndt did not know that the Actor, with an eye to concealing the stolen money, had taken wads of it from the canvas bag. During the ride he had thrust as many bills as he could into his shirt. He had shoved the bag itself under the blanket, next to Miss DeWitt, whom he instructed to not bother getting out of the car. He smiled a genial greeting to Berndt, who nodded at Miss DeWitt, and set to work.

As did she. Quickly, surreptitiously, with a busy intelligence, Agnes pulled sheaves of bills between her fingers and thrust these bills into the ripped lining of her jacket — and was able to feel, in spite of the swooning pain in her hip, that she was very glad to have been a careless seamstress. As for Berndt, by eagerly hooking the good beast to the car’s bumper and making an ostentatious show of straining its powers, Berndt made every appearance of helping the gang. Yet by degrees, through prods and signs, he actually caused the horse to mire them ever deeper. Soon they were in a more helpless state than before. The Actor didn’t see it at first, but then, trained to supersensory human clues, he caught a glance between the farmer and the hostage that betrayed their connection. Just as he moved to grab the reins and question this, there appeared at last Slow Johnny and the deputy, riding in the dead teller’s car.