Louise Erdrich - Four Souls

“Don’t follow!” She whacked the earth with her walking stick, and glared. “I’ll kick you sideways if you sneak after me!”

I soon grew to think it would be better for me to live in the woods with the bears than endure the insults she heaped on my head in the form of admiring remarks about Shesheeb. She boasted of the old man’s hunting skills, and how he always had fresh game — waawaashkeshi or mooz.

“Never gopher! Never things I’ve seen you eat!”

“What would you know? You never cook for me anymore.” I tried to make myself meek and pitiful. “You’ll come home from Holy Mass one day and find me dried up in the corner, starved to death.”

“Go snare something then,” she said, heartless.

She walked out laughing at me, came back with bird bones for her dress. I didn’t ask where she got them, only if I could help her dye them red with the bark of speckled alder I’d gathered in atonement.

“You?” She looked at me and sniffed, as though I were covered with moowan. “You might interfere with the dress’s healing properties.”

In other words, she didn’t trust that I wouldn’t contaminate her medicine dress. This cut me deeper than anything she’d done so far and I let myself be naked in my speech.

“I’ve got nothing in my heart but love for you.”

“Nothing in your pants either.”

And with a cruel laugh, she sat against the shady side of the cabin to work on her dress, which after all this time was just about finished. I must admit, she was very patient and did a good job on it. The dress was made of a moosehide she’d pounded and stretched and rubbed to a velvet softness. She’d used raspberry leaf and root dyes to color the bird bones, and unlike the harsh, bright glare of the trader’s beads, these soft pinks and purples put roses in that woman’s cheeks. I said so.

“Don’t touch” was all she answered. “My roses have pickers so long they could pierce your heart and kill you.”

I watched the colors reflect into her face as she sewed that afternoon. She used a fish bone for a needle, sinew for thread. I crept close to her, thinking that maybe the medicine dress would do its healing work and bring us together, but the opposite happened.

“My, my,” she clucked her tongue, her eyes sparking with malicious fire, “I’m dizzy. That old man down the road gave me a sip of wine!”

There comes a time when you reach the last bitter drop that your gullet can hold. That was it. Her words filled me with such hot rage that I had to ice my feelings instantly, or I’d explode. I imagined packing heavy snow around my heart, and made my choice. That was it. I’d had enough. I started walking down the road. She wanted wine? I’d bring wine. I could get it for her. I knew where. Sister Hildegarde Anne made the parish communion wine and kept it in the convent cellar, which opened from a side door with a flimsy bolt that had been placed there years ago, right after I’d taken a few bottles and had a ripping good time. That bolt could easily be jiggled out of place. This time, I’d steal the whole cask, I decided. I’d bring it back to our cabin and have a party with my sweetheart. She wanted wine? I’d get wine. Our love would be just like old times, way back when. We’d have a bush dance for just the two of us! My stride quickened and in spite of myself my heart thawed. My thoughts pumped with hope and a young man’s zeal. Once I made town, I visited around, chewed snuff, collected a few more tiny bones for my woman’s dress. I killed time until it was dark, then crept close to the convent. Crouched beneath an open window, I heard the nuns say their nightly prayers.

“God comfort you, my daughters,” I whispered as they doused their lamps and each made her way to a lonely cell. “May you each get laid.”

After I pronounced my blessing, I waited until they slept and then I slipped up to the cellar door and quietly fiddled with the catch. I used a splinter of partridge bone jammed in the crack between the door and frame to ease the bolt from its casing. It didn’t take long. The cool winey air, earth scented and moldy, rushed at my face as I slipped inside. I lighted a match and by its flare saw that the casks were there for the taking. I hefted the first little wooden keg onto my shoulder, eased out of the cellar quietly, and set out for home. It had been a very long time since I’d tasted wine. In my youth, it made me foolish, stole my brain, and left a bannock between my ears. Drink caused me to sing and gamble, to fight, to chase women who belonged to other men, and even for a short time to forsake the pipe that my father gave me. Liquor did not get the best of my life, but I knew well its powers. I had taken no wine or liquor for many years because I had experienced its evils. And yet, at that moment, all I could think of was its delights — the sour and delicious odor of the fumes that the keg exuded made my mouth water. The air was heavy and growing heavier. I set the cask down and took a rest beside the road. If I should have a drink, I thought, my load would be one drink lighter. So sitting there, in the dark, I took my first drink in many years.

The wine went down easy. The keg went back up slow. An old and familiar warmth burned in my gut and then swirled up around my heart. Again, I started off for home. The moon was up and just bright enough for me to make out the road. As I walked on, the warm thrill of wine reached my tongue and untied it. I found myself singing an old love song. You are paddling away, my sweetheart. But I will come after you. Marry me tonight. Into my thoughts came pictures of the happiness that Margaret and I would feel once we’d put aside all of our foolish attempts to best each other at the jealous game of revenge. Do you hear me correctly? Do you understand what I am telling you? What began as a scheme between Margaret and me to get the best of each other ended up getting the best of us both. Revenge ran away with us, and then it turned around and ran over us. Flattened us good. It is also the case, and I know you’ve remarked it, that my struggle with love and wine paralleled in some ways the journey of Fleur on this earth. We both were tempted, and succumbed. This happens even to strong persons, and perhaps it is most dangerous of all for us to stumble. For we are subject to the worst shame, those of us who are too proud. It is hard for us to admit that we can be tricked by the same ordinary firewater that tricks the common idiot. But the booze makes no distinction, and the smarter we are, the more elaborate our reasons for guzzling.

THE KEG grew heavy again, n’dawnis. I stopped on the road. I took a drink to lighten it, and then another, and then perhaps one too many, for I stumbled as I set off once more. At one point, near dawn, I woke to find myself curled up around my friend, the keg, right in the middle of the road. I’d slept peacefully and was grateful not to have been run over by a wagon. I took another drink. By then the cask was so light I had no trouble reaching the cabin. Margaret greeted me at the doorway. Her look was foul.

“I was up all night, worried! I thought a bear got you!”

“Ah,” I put the wine cask down and covered my heart with the palms of my hands, overcome. “My love! You worried about me?”

She regarded the wine keg suspiciously. “What did you bring, akiwenzii?”

“That is a peace offering,” I said. “It is wine. You told me the black duck tried a sip of wine to win your womanly favors. I thought I’d do him one better and offer you a cask… or most of it.”

Margaret looked down at the keg, frowning, then kicked. It rolled, nearly empty. “Most of it?” she said. For a moment I also feared she recognized it as belonging to the nuns’ cellar. But she only shook her head and hid — perhaps, but I could not be sure of it — a little smile. It had been a very long time since she’d drunk any wine herself, and maybe she was thinking, just as I had thought, what would be the harm of it when we were each so near the end of our days? I poured a tin cup full and offered it to her. For a moment, she looked tempted, but then she knocked the cup out of my hands. “Your damn keg’s nearly empty! You drank it all!” I retrieved the cup midair — a drunk is capable of such tricks — and downed it in one defiant gulp without a drop spilled.