Louise Erdrich - Four Souls

As a matter of fact, it was how he had made his living in New Orleans, and the reason he joined up with me, the both of us in ardent flight, he from an unsustainable loss, welshing out of a debt, and I from your sister, who had me so far in the hole I didn’t know how I’d get out with her, either. I’m not going to dwell on that, however, don’t purse your lips. Fantan had possession of the can of sardines, something we’d kept circulating there among us, one winning it, then the other, though most times it sat in Fantan’s breast pocket, guarded against theft. There wasn’t much else that we could play for, you see, and the can had a rather nice heft to it by then, a history like the sweet pea vine, a familiarity and weight, like a talisman once you carried it. And indeed, no one had been hit while in possession of the can, that much was true. I can still see it — the worn yellow seal, the fading print. PRINCE OF WALES BRISLINGS IN MUSTARD SAUCE, the small black official-looking seal down in the corner. FISHMONGERS TO THE KING had been torn or rubbed away, but the aura clung. I associated the can with the royals in each suit and imagined the King himself, flapping his linen serviette from its folds, sitting down to a steaming cup of brewed tea one morning, his servant lifting the silver dome away from a Wedgwood plate that held rounds of sweet buttered toast, an egg, poached of course, and one perfect Prince of Wales Brisling with a dollop of its own fishy mustard sauce athwart the tail.

Fantan made his living by his wits and by his looks too, I should add. Women clung to his boots, though I suppose you’re immune to such things, schooled by the redoubtable Hammond of the Ham Bosoms, a polish on you, porcelain finish that wipes clean, resistant to finger marks or any foul smears a man might leave there. But I’ve gone astray again, haven’t I, sister. I do apologize. It was on that cold afternoon, suspecting we would have to prepare for an attack, our gas equipment piled at each of our elbows, that we dealt for the can.

I was its most recent host, but after the game Fantan was the new possessor. We were laughing. I removed it from my breast pocket and just as I passed it over to him the luck ran out of the can. For as I bent to scoop the cards up as well, the can blew straight out of my fingers. Blasted forward by a sniper’s bullet, the can exploded up through Fantan’s chin, slicing his tongue and thereby correcting his speech forever of his frequent obscenities and much else too. That was the beginning of a fierce attack that shot my lungs and scored my nerves — I was no good after seeing Fantan’s mouth shredded by the can. No good after seeing so many other things, Polly Elizabeth, that made his poor wound as nothing. No good, no good, and after raving for some months sent back here. Insisted that Fantan stay with me, forever. Now you know why.

I WAS QUIET. I had put down my coffee. Fantan had come into the room and now we looked at each other steadily. I noticed his brown eyes, the lashes darkened as if by soot. I had never seen him as a man or even known he was intelligent. He wouldn’t speak to me because he knew I despised him and he even affected foolish maneuvers around me, which I now saw were ploys. The two had laughed behind my back at my dismissal, at my prudery, and my sorry treatment of the man was suddenly a feature of livid shame. I believe I went red and caught my breath in and wished to cry.

“No, no,” said Mauser, dropping his hand on mine. His hard brown hand. “Fantan doesn’t hold it against you, now, do you, Fantan?” Through tears, I gazed up at the savior of the father of the boy I thought of, a fancy of mine, as my godchild. Fantan looked down at me with some amusement. He shrugged to show that my approval or disdain was all the same to him, and I began to laugh. So you see, once a person drops the scales of prejudiced certainty and doubts appear, there is no telling how far a heart can open. Even toward Fantan. From outside, there was Mr. Mauser and his rare creature of a wife, his heir, his proud household. A solid construction. Scandalous, perhaps, but wealth fixes that. From within, I saw a poor collection of wrecked knaves and flawed hearts, and where before I’d had to mask such truths, now the honest understanding provided comfort. We had our shortcomings, at least, in common, if not our triumphs.

A MAN FINDS happiness so fleetingly, like the petals melting off a prairie rose. Even as you touch that feeling it dries up, leaving only the dust of that emotion, a powder of hope. That is how it happened with me. There was more to these years than what happened to Fleur, of course, in her faraway mansion in the city. Out of Margaret’s linoleum there developed a life-and-death struggle of my own, right here on the reservation. No sooner had Margaret Kashpaw installed her new floor, and no sooner had I taken a dizzy swallow of air and at last forgiven her for it, than our joy was disrupted. Our peace was shattered. Our love was challenged. My life’s enemy, Shesheeb, returned to set up his house down my road. He lived yet, though I’d tried to kill him many times.

Nothing is complete without its shadow. Shesheeb was the older half brother of Pauline Puyat, who’d left to pray herself into a lean old vulture. Perhaps Shesheeb came to take her place on the reservation — otherwise I suppose we would have been too light, too sun-filled, too trusting, and floated up without our anchors of dark.

Ever since he was born and guns sounded across the lake, Shesheeb had been my special foe. My mother said that when I heard those guns crack I cried and went stiff with rage in her arms. Even when we were babies, I believe he lay waiting to singe me in his cradle board, his tikinaagan. Or to whip me with a lash made of deerhide strips off his mother’s tanning frame. For he did these things. While we were still small, he stood on the far edge of a slough in late fall, after a light dust of snow, and called me across the ice with a frantic wave and cry so that I bounded onto the thin crust, skidding with alarm, and went through. If he’d only laughed! But he just looked at me from the other side with sly, gloating wonder.

He was given to his aunt, Iron Sky, to raise. She gave him the charcoal, the burnt stick, the ashes, which was a sign for him to fast and find his vision and his spirit helpers. One morning, he darkened his face and went off into the woods to ask for help, which never came. His aunt gave him the charcoal again, and then again. Nothing. Finally he snatched it from her grip with a glare and went out to fast until he grew so gaunt his nose stuck out and his eyes were big and staring in his head. Iron Sky would not give up — she knew already that the mind of her boy was a complex knot. Only for the manidoog to untangle, she said, or to cut. The last time she sent him out he was nearly dead once he returned. He staggered and dropped flat over on the path. It was on that trip that something happened to him we can’t say, we don’t know, we haven’t a name for and don’t want one. Listen.

When he came back, he stared straight at everyone as if to capture or pierce. Only, if you looked back, as I dared to do, his eyes flickered away — flat, nerveless. He needed to get near people. He would not be alone, and glanced around in a constant, anxious way to see who noticed him or as though he was followed. What did he see? Form of the owl, flight soundless, a ruffled heart. Night-seeing and invisible. Balls of crackling light. A man paced swiftly with his head twisted backward on his neck. Two rabbits screamed from the same snare. Shesheeb discovered cruelty. He cut the tongue from a slow, harmless porcupine and watched it stand in surprise there at his feet, bleeding until it toppled. He laughed, and Iron Sky understood that to laugh at the pain of a harmless animal is the sign of a mind twisting in on itself. She sent him from her place soon after, with her thoughts shut carefully on what he had become.