Louise Erdrich - The Antelope Wife

“They don’t come here much,” says Frank when he steps back in.

Rustling, groans. Frank starts forward but the steel door barges open. Klaus has thrown it wide. He is staring at them like a confused scraggly coyote who doesn’t know how it got into this body. Or understand why his clothes are covered with filth or what to do with the feet that can’t steady the rest of him. His hands reach out, shaking, his face twists like a rag.

“Nibi,” he cries, and staggers forward. Frank pours from a plastic pitcher, then gives Klaus the pitcher. Klaus drops the pitcher.

“Oops.”

Sweetheart Calico slides in and stands behind Klaus as he staggers forward, and in her eyes there is something Rozin can’t name at first. Not kindness, not love. Maybe a savage mercy.

It is really painful when we self-sabotage , her look says to Klaus. I know where you are at . Sweetheart grabs his arm. Turns him. In her hand there is a plastic cup of water. Stumbling and reeling, he tries to accept. His hand won’t cooperate. He swipes toward the cup and misses. Holds his elbow with the other arm and concentrates. It takes Frank sitting him down on the floor and crouching next to him, holding the cup to his lips.

And all the time Sweetheart is sitting across from Klaus, looking at him, her eyes fixed in his eyes, their minds locked in some form of knowing. They rise in unison. She somehow imparts her grace to him and they float out the door with their arms around each other. Between them, the pilot light of alcohol, dead blue and steady.

Gakaabikaang. That’s the name our old ones call the city, place of the falls is what it means from way back when it started as a trading village. Although driveways and houses, concrete parking garages and business stores cover the city’s scape, that same land is hunched underneath. There are times, like now, Frank gets a sense of the temporary. It could all blow off. And yet the sheer land would be left underneath. Sand, rock, the Indian black seashell-bearing earth.

The red beads were hard to get and expensive, because their clear cranberry depth was attained only by the addition, to the liquid glass, of twenty-four-carat gold. Because she had to have them in the center of her design, the second twin gambled, lost, grew desperate, bet everything. At last, even the blankets of her children. She won enough, just barely, for the beads. And then the snow fell. Gazing into the molten hearts of the ruby-red whiteheart beads, the children shivered, drew closer, chewed on the hem of her deerhide skirt. First one, and then the other, plucked up the beads from behind her hand. Even knowing they were not food, it was the look of them, bright as summer berries, that tempted their hunger. When her fingers finally closed on air, she turned, saw her youngest quickly swallow the last bead. The mother looked at her children, eyes dazed, fingers swollen, brain itching. All she could think of was finishing her work. She reached for the knife. Frightened, the children ran.

She had to follow them, searching out their panicked trail, calling for them in the dark places and the bright places, the indigo, the white, the unfinished details and larger meaning of her design.

THE DOG IS standing on his chest again, looking down into his face and grinning the same curious, confiding dog grin that started Klaus on this eternal binge. The dog is a scuffed-up white with spooky yellow-brown eyes and a big pink dragging tongue. The damn thing has splayed wolf paws, ears alert and swivel-based like a deer’s, and no pity whatsoever for Klaus.

“Boozhoo, Klaus, you are the most screwed-up, sad, fucked-in-the-face, toxic, shkwebii, irredeemable drunk I’ve talked to yet today,” says the dog Klaus calls Wiindigoo Dog.

“Get off me,” says Klaus.

Weary. Tired. Klaus had thought wiindigoog were strictly human until this dog came to visit him on a rainy afternoon this summer. Sweetheart Calico has, of course, left him, too. Come back. Then left again. Sent back this dog in her place. Wiindigoo. Bad spirit of hunger and not just normal hunger but out-of-control hunger. Hunger of impossible devouring. Utter animal hunger that does not care whether you are sober or brave or have your hard-won GED certificate let alone degree. No matter. Just food. Klaus is just food to the wiindigoo. And the wiindigoo laughs.

“Shit-faced as per usual.” The dog yawns. Its black gums gleam and its ears point straight at Klaus. “I suppose we should have one of our little sessions?”

“No!” Klaus firmly says. “No!” Louder. “Nooooo…”

But Wiindigoo Dog is dragging his fat blazing purple killer tongue all over Klaus’s face, feet, hands, everywhere. With each tongue lick Klaus shrieks and gags with laughter until he is crying in hysterical hiccups, at which point the dog leans down into Klaus’s face and breathes month-old fishhead dog breath on Klaus.

When he is utterly immobilized, then, he leans down and tells Klaus his latest dirty dog joke.

“SO KLAUS, NOT too long ago I overhear these three dogs. A Ho-Chunk dog. A Sioux dog. An Ojibwe dog, too. They’re sitting in the veterinarian’s office waiting room talking about why they’re here. The Ho-Chunk dog says, ‘Well, the other day they were eating that good stew they make, just lapping it up right in front of me. That night they put the cover on the stew pot but they forgot to put the pot away. So I sneaked into the kitchen and I took the top of that pot in my teeth, set it down careful, and ate all the rest of that stew. Then I got in the garbage and ate the bones and the guts of everything that went into that stew. Then I wanted to sleep but oh, by that time I had the worst stomachache. I just had to go. I barked, but the Ho-Chunks, you know they sleep good. They never even stirred in their sleep, so, well, I just went caca all over the house. Now, I guess, they’re so mad they’re going to put me to sleep. I guess I'll go easy anyways. What about you?’

“ ‘Me,’ said the Dakota Sioux dog, ‘I have a similar story. You ever heard of the stew the Dakotas make with guts? It’s mighty good, and my owner had a big plate of that plus all the makings for Indian tacos in his pickup one day. He was driving home and I was proudly sitting in the cab of the truck when he stopped. He get out, left me sitting there with all that good stuff, and I just couldn’t help it. I wolfed it all down. Every bite. Man, was it ever good! But then I waited and waited and my owner, he was having a good time, and he didn’t come back. I tried to hold it for a long time but finally, well, I just had to go. I went all over that cab of his pickup. Boy, when he came back, was he ever mad! He brought me here. I’m going to be put to sleep too. And you, what about you?’

“ ‘Well me,’ said the Ojibwe dog, ‘I was sitting on the couch one day just dozing off. I was half asleep and my owner, she likes to vacuum her house in the nude, she was doing her usual housework. She was working on the carpet right in front of me and usually, even though I’m not fixed, I’ve got a fair amount of self-control. But then she bent over right in front of me and I just lost it. I went right for her.’

“ ‘Sexually?’ asked the others.

“ ‘Yeah,’ the Ojibwe dog admitted.

“ ‘Gee,’ said the other dogs, shaking their heads, ‘that’s too bad. So she’s putting you to sleep too.’

“ ‘Gawiin,’ said the Ojibwa dog, modestly. ‘You know us Chippewa dogs, we got the love medicine. Me, I’m getting a shampoo and my nails clipped.’ ”

“YOU’RE A VERY sick dog,” says Klaus.

“You’re the blooming picture of health yourself,” says the wiindigoo dog. “I gotta motivate out of here.”