Louise Erdrich - The Antelope Wife

Open space plays such tricks on the brain. There and gone. I suppose it is no surprise that it was on the plains that I met my wife, my sweetheart rose, Niinimoshenh, kissing cousin, lover girl, the only one I’ll ever call my own. I take no credit for what happened, nor blame, nor do I care what people presently think of me — avoiding my eyes, trying not to step in the tracks I’ve left.

I only want to be with her, or be dead.

You wouldn’t think a man as ordinary as myself could win a woman who turns the heads of others in the streets. Yet there are circumstances and daughters that do prevail and certain ways. And, too, maybe I have some talents.

I WAS SITTING underneath my striped awning there in Elmo — selling carved turtles. You never know what will be the ticket or the score. Sometimes they’re buying baby moccasins, little beaded ones the size of your big toe. Or the fad is cheap neckerchiefs, bolo slides, jingles. I can sell out before noon if I misjudge my stock, while someone else set up next to me who took on a truckload is raking the money in with both hands. At those times, all I can do is watch. But that day, I had the turtles. And those people were crazy for turtles. One lady bought three — a jade, a malachite, a turquoise. One went for seven — small. Another bought the turtle ring. It was the women who bought turtles — the women who bought anything.

I had traded for macaw feathers also, and I got a good price on those. I had a case of beautiful old Navajo pawn which I got blessed, because the people who wore that turquoise seem to haunt the jewelry, so I believe. A piece gets sold on a sad drunk for gas money, or it’s outright stolen — what I mean is that it comes into the hands of traders in bad ways and should be watched close. I have a rare piece I never did sell, an old cast-silver bracelet with a glacier-green turquoise the shape of a wing. I have to tell you, I can hold that piece only a moment, for when I polish the pattern on some days it seems to start in my hands with a secret life, a secret pain.

I am just putting that old piece away when they pass. Four women eating snow cones as they stroll the powwow grounds.

Who wouldn’t notice them? They float above everyone else on springy, tireless legs. It’s hard to tell what tribe people are anymore, we’re so mixed — I’ve got a buffalo soldier in my own blood, I’m sure, and on the other side I am all Ojibwe. Though my name is Klaus, a story in itself. These ladies are definitely not from anywhere that I can place. Their dance clothes are simple — tanned hide dresses, bone jewelry, white doeskin down the front and two white doeskin panels behind. Classy, elegant, they set a new standard of simplicity. They make everyone else around them look gaudy or bold, a little foolish in their attempts to catch the eyes of the judges.

I watch these women put their mouths on ice. They tip their faces down and delicately kiss the frozen grains. As they sip the sweet lime and blueberry juice, their black, melting eyes never leave the crowd, and still they move along. Effortless. Easy. The lack of trying is what makes them lovely. We all try too hard. Striving wears down our edges, dulls the best of us.

I take those women in like air. I breathe hard. My heart is squeezing shut. Something about them is like the bracelets of old turquoise. In spite of the secrets of those stones, there are times that I cannot stop touching and stroking their light. In that same way, I must be near those women and know more. I cannot let them alone. I look at my setup — van, tent, awning, beads, chairs, scarves, jewelry, folding tables, a cashbox, the turtles — and I sit as calmly as I can at my trading booth among these things. I wait. But when they don’t notice me, I decide I must act bold. I trade store-minding with my neighbor, a family from Saskatoon, and then I follow the women.

Tiptoeing just behind at first, then trotting faster, I almost lose them, but I am afraid to get too close and be noticed. They finish circling the arbor, enter during the middle of an intertribal song, and dance out into the circle together. I lean against a pole to watch. Some dancers, you see them sweating, hear their feet pound the sawdust or grass or the Astroturf or gym floor, what have you. Some dancers swelter and their faces darken with the effort. Others, you never understand how they are moving, where it comes from. They’re at one with their effort. Those, you lose your heart to and that’s what happens to me — I sink down on a bench to watch these women and where usually I begin to drift off in my thoughts, this morning I am made of smoothest wood. They dance together in a line, murmuring in swift, low voices, smiling carefully as they are too proud to give away their beauty. They are light steppers with a gravity of sure grace.

Their hair is fixed in different ways. The oldest daughter pulls hers back in a simple braid. The next one ties hers in a fancy woven French knot. The hair of the youngest is fastened into a smooth tail with a round shell hairpiece. Their mother — for I can tell she is their mother mainly by the way she moves with a sense of all their consolidated grace — her hair hangs long and free.

Dark as heaven, with roan highlights and arroyos of brown, waves deep as currents, a river of scented nightfall. In her right hand she holds a fan of the feathers of a red-tailed hawk. Those birds follow the antelope to fall on field mice and gophers the moving herd stirs up. Suddenly, as she raises the fan high, my throat chills. I hear in the distance and in my own mind and heart the high keer of the stooping hawk — a lonely sound, coldhearted, intimate.

BACK AT MY TABLES, later, I place every item enticingly just so. I get provisions of iced tea and soda and I sit down to wait. To scout. Attract, too, if I can manage, but there isn’t much I can do about my looks. I’m broad from sitting in my foldable chair, and too cheerful to be considered dangerously handsome. My hair, I’m proud of that — it’s curly and dark and I wear it in a tail or braid. But my hands are thick and clumsy. Their only exercise is taking in and counting money. My eyes are too lonesome, my lips too eager to stretch and smile, my heart too hot to please.

No matter. The women come walking across the trampled grass and again they never notice me, anyway. They go by the other booths and ponder some tapes and point at beaded belt buckles and Harley T-shirts. They order soft drinks, eat Indian tacos, get huckleberry muffins at a lunch stand. They come by again to stand and watch the Indian gambling, the stick games. They disappear and suddenly appear. The mother is examining her daughter’s foot. Is she hurt? No, it’s just a piece of chewing gum that’s stuck. All day I follow them with my eyes. All day I have no success, but I do decide which one I want.

Some might go for the sprig, the sprout, the lovely offshoot, the younger and flashier, the darker-hooded eyes. Me, I’m strong enough, or so I think, to go for the source: the mother. She is all of them rolled up in one person, I figure. She is the undiluted vision of their separate loveliness. The mother is the one I will try for. As I am falling into sleep I imagine holding her, the delicate power. My eyes shut, but that night I am troubled in my dreams.

I’m running, running, and still must run — I’m jolted awake, breathing hard. The camp is dark. All I’ve got is easily packed and I think maybe I should take the omen. Break camp right this minute. Leave. Go home. Back to the city, Gakaabikaang, where everything is set out clear in lines and neatly labeled, where you can hide from the great sky, forget. I consider it and then I hear the sounds of one lonely passionate stick game song still rising, an old man’s voice pouring out merciless irony, no catch in his throat.