Louise Erdrich - Four Souls

WHEN THE original fire tore itself ragged out of the sky and plunged to earth, only scraps of it, the stars, were left. We were all made of that original fire. The stars are relatives. Yet we have no idea how they appear up close, and that was my problem. Questions upon questions I had never thought to ask. If stars are fire, upon what substance does their burning feed? Is there a core, something visible? How are these fires fixed and supplied? Most important, how much of this did Margaret know, and what would persuade her that one had fallen through the roof?

There were of course the Catholic stars painted on the ceiling of the church — these were guided by a far simpler history. Gilded by Father Damien’s wish and desire, they gleamed in a false sky. Five-pointed and of a regular decorative shape, they were easy to mimic. In the end, I couldn’t think of any other solution but that my star would be a Catholic star. I couldn’t pluck one off the vault of the church, though, and would have to find some other source.

I thought of chipping one from stone and dipping it in golden paint that I would beg from Father Damien, but when I considered the entire procedure I knew I hadn’t the time. I thought of carving a star of wood, but Margaret might consider it odd that the star hadn’t burnt itself up. And how would a tree grow far off in the sky, anyway, and who would have carved such a thing but me? No, the answer lay somewhere else. Metal, I thought, would be perfect. I picked up Margaret’s baking pan and wished that I could think of a way she wouldn’t miss it. I could cut the star from the pan with a very sharp knife, but she knew every dent in its surface, every scar, every nick. She would immediately catch on to me and then on top of her roof and her linoleum I would have destroyed her pan. No. There must be something else. And sure enough. Once I examined with a purposeful eye each object in our cabin, the answer jumped out at me. The humble bean can. There it sat, emptied of its beans in making the rabbit stew I had absurdly rejected. Used ever since then for nothing but skimming, it contained only a bit of venison fat that Margaret surely wouldn’t miss.

I cleaned the can out and removed the label, to be burnt. I polished the can until the metal shone, studied it for inspiration on where to make my cuts. Down the sides, I decided, and the bottom would be the center of the star. I then proceeded, using infinitesimal care. Cutting slowly, shielding my fingers from the sharp edges with a bit of moosehide, I made what turned out to be a spectacular star. Using careful diagonal cuts along each ray, I curled the edges with a spoon’s side and a dull knife. It was a picture. Ojibwe ingenuity knows no limits, I congratulated myself. Better than I’d dared to hope, the star was strange, rich, and complicated. I had never seen a thing like it. I could sure not tell it had ever been a lowly tin can.

“You will save my hide,” I said to my creation, turning it this way and that to catch the light. I proceeded to dig a space directly beneath the hole in the linoleum and to bury the star in the dirt, right where I’d say it fizzled out.

WHEN MARGARET returned to the cabin, I had planned to be lying out cold on the floor next to the hole, or staring at the hole with a gaping mouth, as though dazzled by the catastrophe. But she caught me by surprise. She was so long in showing up that I ate the rest of a wheel of bannock she’d forgotten, and fell asleep on the sagging pole bed in the corner.

“Gitimishk!” she cried, finding me there.

I was chagrined to be found and called lazy. I rubbed my eyes, and quickly remembered my plan. I must present myself as addled and confused by the star’s blazing passage. I blinked and squinted, pretending to try to focus on her.

“How the light hurts my eyes,” I complained.

“What light?”

“The fire!” I roared suddenly as though in fear. She looked around in irritation, taking in the mess, and it was then she saw the hole in the floor, a dark and gaping spot, jagged around the edges. It looked to be still smoldering. It was even uglier and stranger to one who chanced upon it, and Margaret gasped in horror to behold the destruction. Speechless in shock, she turned to me. And I was ready with the story, completely prepared to act the part. In my excitement, I almost persuaded myself. I showed her exactly how close I was standing when the star blasted through the roof, leaving the hole through which a sweetly clouded sky was now visible. With my hands, swooping in a swift movement, I indicated the star’s trajectory. I showed her how far I’d leaped for safety, and then I displayed the pan of water I had poured from the storage can to douse the bits of fire that trailed in the star’s wake. Margaret nodded, her mouth open, astonished at the strangeness of my story, but nearly convinced. Encouraged, I invented the extraordinary scorching sensations I had suffered as the hot star plunged itself into our floor. It occurred to me to add how close I’d come to being struck and killed. A bit more to one side or the other and she would have found her love, her only Nanapush, a smoldering heap. Silence fell after that as she stared at me, sinking toward me in contemplation of her close call with loss. A look of forgiving softness, a tender blossoming of sentiment warred with her wrath at the ruin of her linoleum. Forgiveness began in her, I could tell by the slight tremor at one edge of her lower lip, but she caught it with her sharp tooth. Her eyes were still suspicious.

“And this star,” she reasoned, just as I had anticipated, “after it burned through my beautiful floor, destroying my floor, it must have extinguished its light in the dirt.”

“Mii nange,” I said, “of course! Unless it burned itself deep into earth, beyond reach, it is surely there.”

Margaret fixed me with a challenging look in which there was a hint of an ironic smile, and I saw that I hadn’t quite managed to persuade her of my story. This would be the test. She waited for me to offer to dig, and when I made no move she gave a slightly contemptuous snort and fetched her heavy cook spoon, her good steel one. That she would use her precious spoon to dig dirt impressed me with the serious nature of her cause and I inwardly congratulated myself on thinking past her, on creating the star, on burying it in the precise spot where she was digging now. Even more so, the minute she found it, did I inwardly rejoice. For once the earth was brushed off my creation’s points and curlicues, how it gleamed and caught the light! Margaret held the star out in amazement and turned it around in her hands. I watched her face as the knowledge of the vastness of her find sank in. She was absorbing this, I could see it, she was filling with belief. She was imagining herself the owner of this visitor from the sky world, or from the whiteman’s heaven. She was picturing the many curious visits and questions from relatives and friends. She was even forming in her mind the story I had given, which would become her story too. For a long while, she stared in wonder at the star. Then carried it in two hands, carefully, to the table beside our window.

“Old man,” she said, very softly at last, “I believe we have been chosen for some purpose. First the medicine dress. Now this!”

“Yes, my sweet face,” I gravely agreed with her, barely containing the force of my delight, “we must have been chosen.”

From outside, the sun, striking sudden from behind a cloud, then threw a fierce shaft of light in our direction. It slanted through the window and picked out the star in Margaret’s hands. Marveling at it, she bent to examine it with a close eye. I smiled to see her, but the smile dropped off my face when with a huge gasp she squinted even closer and then slowly, slowly, with a dangerously changed expression held her miraculous find out to me.