Louise Erdrich - Four Souls

I jumped up, made my way into the woods. The sound wasn’t human, but I didn’t expect Shesheeb to die with dignity. Indeed, I’d made as certain as I could that he’d die in shame. As I ran through the woods, or at least hobbled fast as my old bones would take me, the squeal increased its penetrating intensity. The pitch grew higher, wilder, shaking me to the core, even though I’ve hunted all my life, and fought, and seen men die in difficult ways. It was not a man, however, whose death rang through the leaves. Rounding the corner, I looked and skidded to a halt in wild shock, for it was Margaret I’d snared.

She strained on perfect tiptoe, like a zhaaginaash ballerina dancer, on the flimsy branch that had fallen across the shallow square that I had carved in the path. Her hands were up around her neck attempting to release the tightening wire. Her face was dark red. When she saw me she went silent. For the first time, ever, I had her complete attention. Even in my horror I was somehow gratified, and of course I was on fire to save her. She looked at me with such appeal and in such a state of frantic desperation that I would have done anything, changed places with her if I could. I threw myself down, and crept forward. Terrified to lose her balance, she froze. I edged closer until I was crouched nearly underneath her. She understood my plan and stepped onto my back. Though it might break me, I intended to rise. I marshaled every bit of my strength and lifted her enough so the wire loosened and she was able to pull it over her head. Once she was free, she fell, retching and gasping, beside me in the ditch.

Now that I had saved her, now that she was assured of life, I had only a few moments in which to work on her logic. Because I had included young Nector in plotting and executing my long-ago revenge on the Morrissey, I’d never told Margaret that I was the one who’d set the snare. I positively didn’t want her to connect me with the snare now. Not that I really wanted to lie. I’d tell her later, I decided, when the memory of her experience had dulled. For now, I could see no harm in assigning blame where it would work to my advantage. Therefore, as I scrambled for my walking stick, I cried out, “Shesheeb! Can’t he stick to bad medicine? Must he also set snares all around his house?” Then I gasped, and wheezed, pounded the earth, and vowed I would tear into him right away, crack his skull with my diamond willow stick, beat him senseless for trying to snare my wife.

“Your wife?” said Margaret, rubbing her neck, tough-minded in spite of her near death. “Even now I am holding out for a church wedding, old man, so we’ll get to that ‘wife’ part later. For now, quiet down. Akiwenzii, I have had a vision.” Margaret dragged me to her, grasped my jacket, spoke face-to-face in an earnest and serious voice. “Bizindan. Listen to me, Nanapush.”

As we walked back together, dragging ourselves home through the woods, both weak and giddy with relief, Margaret told me the substance of her revelation. Many times we had to stop, for she spoke with great force, breathing hard. What she’d seen was

no less than a spirit gift, a revelation that could change her life and mine, too. I didn’t know whether to be horrified or proud that I had caused it, I only knew I should for once be quiet as she spoke.

“As the dark closed in around me, as I choked, as I was near death,” Margaret said, “here is what happened, old man. I saw my great-grandmother from the old days. You know the one. They used to call the old lady Medicine Dress. She came to me, looking different from when she died. In my vision she was young and strong. She wore her dress, the medicine dress that she was known for. That dress was powerful. That dress was known for its healing powers. And then she told me its secret, which she’d never told a living person. That secret had died with her but she was giving it to me now, she said, in order to save my life. Here is what she told me. Nothing upon that dress was ever touched by a human, much less a chimookomaan. It was sewn for her by the spirits, she said. Then she told me I must sew my own dress, just like it. Since she couldn’t get the spirits to do the whole thing, I had to follow the other rules she would set out. She said once I had made this dress, I would have great power. In this dress, I could heal anyone. I’d see things when I wore this dress. I’d know things beyond the reach of my mind. After she told this to me, blackness closed around my eyes. I could see no longer. I experienced great sorrow, believing that I would die before I could create this healing dress. I looked up into the sky, and there I saw a circle of women. I heard them dancing— their soft footsteps slapping the earth. I was pierced by the wish to live, opened my eyes, and then saw you! Old man, you have saved me to outfit this vision, to make myself the medicine dress!”

Margaret’s eyes widened and then softened to a deep maple color, and her gaze stuck to me, charming me close. “Dear old man,” she said softly now. “You saved my life and made it possible to sew my vision. Let me show you my thanks.”

As we walked down the path toward our cabin, she clasped my hand in hers and I decided there was no reason at all for her ever, ever, to know I’d set the snare.

I FOUND THAT I liked living by my own laws, not Miss Hammond’s, and by my own law’s devising I saw at last that I should step out of place and speak to Mauser about the state that his household had fallen into since the birth of his son. With Testor in charge and Fleur indifferent to overseeing expenditures, what appeared at table was but a fraction of what was cooked and consumed. The monthly butcher’s bill was what one might expect for an outgoing steamship — to stock it for a transatlantic crossing. Veal chops might appear at dinner, perfectly cooked, but the rest of the calf from ear to split hoof was devoured by Testor’s family and by friends of the family and by the whole neighborhood, I wouldn’t be surprised. I hated to turn tattle on the woman, but after all, I had given her fair warning where my loyalties lay.

So that was how I made myself essentials again, even as the boy grew past the bounds of my care. It happened suddenly, with a bewildering rush, in fact. He seemed to enlarge by the hour, by the day. He burst from his clothes and could not fit into our laps. Sly hungers developed in him. I had to lock the cabinet where our new cook kept the sugar and all sweets, yet one night he pried into it with a butcher knife. He’d pour the contents of a sugar bowl straight down his throat. Weep wretchedly on those rare times he was denied. He began to frighten me. He was as big as some boy twice his age. Then suddenly he stopped growing upward and grew outward, became very plump. It was all we could do to contain him, and then we couldn’t contain him. Where before he had run the household on the whim of his charms, now he ran it by the strange dictates of his temperament.

Some days, I woke to the sound I began to dread, a rhythmical creak. A certain floorboard gave persistently in the corner of his bedroom where he liked to rock, sitting on the floor, his fist in his mouth. He stared at nothing then. He wouldn’t know me when I came in or be stopped or soothed out of his gross repetition by any means. Even Fleur couldn’t pull him from his trance, not that she tried. In fact, at those times, she would sit with him. Simply sit. At first I thought it a mistake — she would encourage his vacancies. But upon observing them both I revised my opinion. For I believe by the rapt expression on her face and the lightest movement of her lips and the far focus of her eyes that she was praying.