Louise Erdrich - Four Souls

W HEN I WOKE on the false floor that Margaret had traded away for most of her son’s birthright land, I swam for a while in the world of my dreams. There was my gentle Omiimii, the touch of her hand soft as air. There was my comical Red Cradle, licking maple sugar. As dawn came, I saw my father walking over the hill into a great band of brilliance. Then all but his shadow was consumed by light. I rose, drank gallons of water from the pump we were so fortunate to have, then realized I was still wearing Margaret’s dress. I took it off. The hem was ripped here and there, but repairable I thought. I would sew it. Naked, I lay in the sun and gathered my strength to ply the needle. Once I felt stronger, I rose and searched for my clothing, but couldn’t find my pants, at least in one piece.

Ai! My woman had revenged herself! For there they were, my pants, all ripped to pieces scattered here and there upon the floor. My woman challenges me, I muttered out loud. Fair enough! Inside of her sewing box there was a needle, thread, and sinew. I would not only repair her dress, but I would splice my shreds of pants back together. I knew very well that for me to be seen with her in such raggedy pants (perhaps next Sunday at Holy Mass, no matter how hard she banged her stick) would be infinitely more humiliating to Margaret than if I showed up naked.

I sat on a folded blanket and began the tedious process of piecing together my trousers. What I made was soon composed more of holes and thread than any cloth. Margaret had been most thorough in her destruction. Some pieces were the size of chokecherry leaves and others were not only tiny but bitten or chewed up into the bargain, as if she’d vented her rage by gnashing the cloth between her teeth. Evidence of such a fabulous fury should have been enough to warn me off the whole enterprise. Or at least I should have gone somewhere else in my thoughts and fears. Not to the same old place I’d been for so long — back to Shesheeb. But here’s a human truth that cannot be denied, no matter how painful: Jealousy is a powerful, many-toothed creature whose bite leaves a poison in the blood. I was not rid of all that poison yet. It was with me, affecting my brain.

I fell to brooding. Each little piece of maliciousness, each wounding word, each cruel joke between myself and Margaret made its way back to pain me anew. Each time I remembered some bitter exchange, the various emotions that went along with it boiled up inside me like a foul sap. I could not help dwelling especially on the most recent things she had said about Shesheeb, the searing compliments. The boasts of his riches and cleverness. His knowledge of old-time medicines. His powers. So he could change into a fly! I laughed out loud, my voice scratchy from last night’s singing. Very appropriate. He was a maggot in his youth. Flies fed on shit. If he showed up in such a form I’d swat him dead.

“I invite you,” I muttered. “I dare you. I would enjoy it!” I wasn’t serious of course, just thinking aloud. Nevertheless, as though in answer to my speech, a fat, black, buzzing blowfly, just the sort of fly that Shesheeb would be if he turned himself into a fly, landed on the sorry old crust of bannock I was about to eat, and began cleaning off its legs.

I took the floppy makizin off my foot and hit, missed the fly, sent my bannock spinning across the slippery linoleum floor. The fat thing lifted off and began to buzz just out of reach. When you’re nursing a vengeful hangover, there is nothing more irritating than a fly, not to mention a big one with a loud gassy sputter that insists on dive-bombing your swollen, aching head. Again and again it attacked, brushing my ear, my neck. I could not destroy the thing. I tried, but could not connect. Its clever persistence infuriated me. I stalked the fly, tried to sneak up on it, swatted dozens of times, and always missed. I sat very still beside a spot of syrup I used as bait. Poised with my makizin ready to hit it. But time and time again, it disregarded the sticky syrup, landed on the makizin and then bumbled off with a mocking clatter of its dirty wings. The fly laughed at me by sitting still, then disappearing when I moved. It anticipated where my shoe would land. I was halfway across the room only to have it buzz my head. I began to think that it was more than a fly. It read my mind. It played with me, flashing beneath my nose and then vanishing, until finally I lost all patience and uttered a murderous howl that raised the bark off the trees.

“Shesheeb,” I screamed, and leaped after the fly, batting right and left, destroying the careful arrangement of Margaret’s house. Wild to kill, I tipped over baskets, burst bags, capsized her stacked tins. Flour sifted through the air. Coffee burst out upon the floor. Margaret’s carefully sorted beads spilled crazily across the linoleum. Her bundles of herbs spun off the wall. Still, I could not kill the fly.

“I give up.” I collapsed finally. “I hope I wounded the old bugger, or at least showed him I meant business.” For a moment, there was utter calm. The cabin was still. I got to my feet hoping the war was finished, but then the fly buzzed me, brushing my face with its filthy wings.

I snapped, then, like a stick that can only stand so much bending. I threw myself down and held the tender bag of my throbbing head. It was from that depth that I was visited by a most private urge. My ojiid called out sternly for attention, for release. It was then, in a state of sorry derangement, abandoned by the love of my life, hung over, tormented by a fly, that I sank to a new low of cunning.

“Hey, Shesheeb,” I cried, “ombay omah.” I pulled down my pants and let go right on the floor. In moments, the foul bug landed on what I left. In one swift move, I clapped a lard pail over it. Silence. Triumph, of sorts. Either I had bested Shesheeb, at last, or captured my own shit. Now what? Bury it, lard pail and all, I told myself. So I went outside and grimly dug a hole in the corner of the clearing. Returning, I tapped on the pail. An annoyed buzz answered from within. How to make certain of my little captive? Ah! I had knocked to the floor our sharpest skinning knife. Retrieving it, I plunged it into the linoleum and carefully cut a circle out around the can. Then securing the can, fly, and moowan, I carried the whole thing outside most carefully and with utmost precision buried it in the ground.

After I had tamped down the earth and smoothed it over, I came back to my senses. I still had not succeeded in repairing my pants or Margaret’s dress. Instead, I had given myself a whole new problem. I walked back into the cabin. There, in the center of Margaret’s greatest pride, her linoleum, was the hole I’d confidently cut around the lard can. Margaret would be more than furious — she would never forgive me in this life, or the next life. I was doomed to a lonely outcast’s death forever, unless I could come up with an explanation.

I put my mind to it. Marshaled my sagging wit, my faltering brain. The afternoon shadows crept out and I feared that now Margaret would make her way home. I thought of darkness. The moon at half. Stars. Something about the thought of stars hung me up, maybe something I could pin my survival on. I focused on those stars. As I did, one fell out of the sky in a lingering arc of fire, and I suddenly knew the answer.

In a fever, I calculated the exact place on the roof that the hole would have to be cut for the star to have blasted through, and blazed on to destroy Margaret’s floor. Quickly, as the shadows ran into one another, blending into darkness, I worked. I burned the edges of the hole in the floor, then I went on top of the roof, cut the corresponding hole and scorched its edges, too. When I was finished, the burnt and ragged holes matched precisely. Then I rehearsed. I would tell Margaret that I was minding my own damn business and sleeping when out of the heavens that star sizzled down right through the roof and went through the floor too and made that regrettable hole. It was unfortunate — here I practiced my sorrowful look — but exciting at the same time. A blazing, shooting star! As I practiced my story, elaborating on the sight, I thrilled myself. What a marvel! The hole in our roof was not just any hole, nor was the hole in the floor. They were evidence of a celestial event, a proof of something essential and special — perhaps that Margaret and I were meant for each other. I looked from the hole in the ceiling to the floor and back again. Troubled, suddenly, I stared at the hole in the floor through which there was visible a patch of the earth beneath the house. For now the hole raised yet another question. Where was the star itself? It would have buried itself in the earth beneath the house. Margaret, no fool, would surely dig to find it. Of what does a star consist? What does a star look like once it reaches the earth?