Louise Erdrich - The Antelope Wife

In the space of quiet that followed on his words, then, everyone realized the old man’s bitter ghost was talking.

“Oooo, ishte, niiji,” Bagakaabi said, drawing the wing of the eagle through the air in a soothing and powerful fashion. “Good thing you’ve told us this.” Looking at the rest of the men meaningfully, he said to Asin in a calm tone, “We respect your wishes, brother. However”—and now Bagakaabi held the wing of the eagle stiffly pointed toward the cake—“would we be honorable men if we did not keep our promise even to our enemy? Before we roast the prisoner, let us try his offering.”

Klaus, whose intuition of their meaning just barely kept him horrified, then took from his pile of ingredients a tiny packet of white sweet powder and, with a gravity equal to Bagakaabi’s, coated the top of the cake with the magical dust. Klaus then motioned to everyone to cup their hands, Asin, too. He cut the cake into pieces and served them out. When they all had the cake in hand, they looked at it hungrily and waited for the elder to taste. Asin, however, was too slow and Charlie the future baker too tempted. Charlie bit into the cake. Before he chewed, he gave a startled and extraordinary squeak and his eyes went wide. It was too much for the rest. They all bit. Or nibbled. Tasted. And everyone emitted some particular and undiluted sound of pleasure. There was not a one who’d ever tasted the taste of this cake. It was a quiet and complex sensation on the tongue.

We are people of simple food straight from the earth, thought Charlie. Food from the lakes and from the woods. Manoomin. Wiiyaas. Baloney. A little maple sugar now and then. Suddenly this: a powerful sweetness that opened the ear to sound. Embrace of roasted nut-meats. A tickling sensation of grief. A berry tartness. Joy. Klaus had inserted jam in thin-spread layers. And pockets of spices that have no origin in our language. So, too, there was no explanation for what happened next.

Together, they sat, swallowed the last crumbs, pressed up the powdery sweetness with their fingers. When they had licked every grain into themselves, they sat numb with pleasant feelings. Then, over the group, there stole a tender poignance. Some saw in the lowering light the shadows of loved ones, whose spirits they had fed, as well as they could, food of the dead. Curious, they doubled back. Others heard the sharp violin string played in the woods, the song of the white-throated sparrow. Mary and Zosie spoke lovingly to each other. Booch saw the face of his favorite nurse in the hospital. Bagakaapi tasted on his face the hot sun. He breathed warm thick berry odor and the low heat of the dancing white grass that grows along the road to the other world.

They breathed together. They thought like one person. They had for a long unbending moment the same heartbeat, the same blood in their veins, the same taste in their mouth. How, when they were all one being, kill the German? How, in sharing this sweet intensity of life, deny its substance in even their enemies?

When there is an end of things, and when we fade into the random scheme and design, thought Charlie, I believe we will taste the same taste, mercy on the tongue. And we will laugh the way we are laughing now in surprise and at the same sweet joke, even old Asin.

Ogichidaa rose with his hand out, then embraced Klaus like a brother. It was the first of many times he would imagine his pain was solved.

More and more often, as the years went on, Ogichidaa saw his pain vanish at the golden bottom of a whiskey bottle. He would find his way down to the Cities and there, late in age, still gripped by shell shock before there was PTSD, he would father a son. He would name the baby Klaus, remembering the taste of mercy. His brother Charlie would bake a cake for the occasion and feed it also to his own little grandson, Frank, then watch the toddler’s face for a reaction. Booch would eat two pieces of the cake to make sure, but then he would place his fork on the plate with a sigh.

Ogichidaa would shake his head.

Hope would sink down Charlie’s face and add a few molecules to his baker’s belly.

It was a good cake, there was even poignance and sweet intensity. But always, always, there was something missing.

The pattern glitters with cruelty. The blue beads are colored with fish blood, the reds with powdered heart. The beads collect in borders of mercy. The yellows are dyed with the ocher of silence. There is no telling which twin will fall asleep first, allowing the other’s colors to dominate, for how long. The design grows, the overlay deepens. The beaders have no other order at the heart of their existence. Do you know that the beads are sewn onto the fabric of the earth with endless strands of human muscle, human sinew, human hair? We are as crucial to this making as other animals. No more and no less important than the deer.

ALMOST SOUP

So now you have got the story of how the Roys and Shawanos got tangled up. A dog’s-eye view of history, includes certain details that human people might rather skip. I have no illusions. Humans are capable of anything. For instance, you could end up puppy soup if you’re born a pure white dog on the reservation, unless you’re one who is extra clever, like me. I survived into my old age through dog magic. That’s right. You see me, you see the result of dog wit. Dog skill. Medicine ways I learned from my elders, and want to pass on now to my relatives. You. So listen up, animoshag. You’re only going to get this knowledge from the real dog’s mouth once.

There is a little of a coyote in me, just a touch here in my paws, bigger than a dog’s paws. My jaw, too, strong to snap rabbit bones. Prairie-dog bones as well. That’s right. Prairie. I don’t mind saying to you that I’m not a full-blood Ojibwe reservation dog. I’m part Dakota, born out in Bwaanakiing, transported here just after I opened my eyes. I still remember all that sky, all that pure space, all that blowing dirt of land where I got my name, which has since become legendary.

Here’s how it happened.

I was underneath the house one hot slow day panting in the dirt. I was a young thing. Just chubby, too, and like I said white all over. That worried my mother. Every morning she scratched dirt on me, threw me in the mud, rolled me in garbage to disguise my purity. Her words to me were this — My son, you won’t survive if you lick your paws. Don’t be respectable. Us Indian dogs have got to look as unappetizing as we can! Slink a little, won’t you? Stick your ears out. Grow ticks. Fleas. Bite your fur here and there. Strive for a disreputable appearance, my boy. Above all, don’t be clean!

Like I say, born pure white you usually don’t stand a chance, but me, I took my mama’s advice. After all, I was the son of a blend of dogs stretching back to the beginning of time on this continent. We sprang up here. We had no need to cross on any land bridge. We know who we are. Us, we are descended of Original Dog.

I think about her lots, and also about my ancestor, from way way back, the dog named Sorrow who drank a human’s milk. I think about her because I know it was the first dog’s mercy and the hand-me-down wit of the second that saved my life that time they were boiling the sacred soup.

I hear these words — Get under the house, Melvin, fetch that white puppy now. Bam! My mama throws me in the farthest house corner and sits down on me. I cover up with her but once Melvin is in play distance I can’t help it. I’ve got that curious streak of all the Indian dogs. I peek right around my mother’s tail and whoops, he’s got me. He drags me out and gives me to a grandma, who stuffs me in a gunnysack and slings me down beside the fire.