Louise Erdrich - Four Souls

I took the woods trail back to the house, in order to consider things. Fleur took the roads. She was there when I arrived. Her white car was parked between the lines of pink stones. I stood half hidden, watching her remove the bones and the markers and the cloth from the trunk of her car, and pile them in the middle of a split birch. As I walked to the door, I remembered how years ago Fleur had shaved her own head to halve my shame, and the thought of us two, heads gleaming like dark, peeled onions, made me laugh. I was eager to hold her close and wished as I always did that love had worked out between Fleur and Eli. I couldn’t help it. Fleur Pillager was the daughter of my spirit.

She met me halfway there. She held my arms and smiled at me and I knew it. I saw it right then plain as plain. Her spirit was still longing for her old place, her land, her scraped-bare home that had nothing on it but kind popple, raspberry bushes, and a cabin caved in from last year’s snow.

T HE AGENCY DOORS shut behind Fleur Pillager, and she and Bernadette Morrissey were together in the land office. Those who happened to be passing by the agency turned on their heels and happened to pass back. Those who’d followed Fleur stopped and waited inside the shadow of the building, and those who’d tried to stop her — that is, Margaret and myself — sat on the agency steps. Fleur’s son sat next to me, whittling away at a splinter that had once been a thick knot of wood. We waited, breathless, as though we’d hear what was going on behind those walls. But all that happened was Fleur came out of the door. Then got into the car with her boy and drove off. We felt cheated of entertainment; all the same we were relieved.

The second time she walked into the agency office fewer stood by, and fewer yet the third time and the fourth. It became accepted and then barely noticed. It was part of the day and people got used to seeing her come or go. Still, no one knew what she did once inside the office. And nobody but me seemed to wonder why it should be the same repeat visit at the same time of the day every day. It didn’t take me long to recognize Fleur’s poker game, the one she had played for Argus men’s wages, where she raked them in slow with a hunter’s patience and then sprang her trap. Routine was her favorite strategy. Odd, annoying, humble. And dangerous. The next day, I followed her through the doorway and stood behind her. Fleur was dressed in the same white suit she’d worn when she first appeared on the reservation. The fabric was unmarred. The suit’s lines were the same, stiff and elegant. The cuffs and collar and lapel were made of a material woven with thin, black stripes, so a person had to get up close to detect the slightest hint that the suit had been worn all week. Oh, and the hat. A small black-and-white peaked hat sewn with a clever brim and a spotted veil. At first Fleur had worn it with her hair pinned strictly into a suave roll. For the last two days, ominously perhaps, she had let down her hair and divided it into braids. So her appearance, as I stood behind her, was oddly disconnected, the braids sinuous and shining against the haughty pinch-waisted figure she cut in that suit. She asked one question.

“Have you found out?”

Once she had the answer, always negative, she turned to go.

So I saw it then as I followed her back out into sunlight. Fleur had a question that Bernadette could answer but wouldn’t, and in order to get the answer Fleur was engaged in what the Pillagers always did so well. Nothing. Perhaps, come to think of it, I might have taught this strategy to her myself. For the doing of nothing can be done in a certain way that makes the not-doing in itself an unnerving occurrence. That she would come into the agency every day wearing a suit the likes of which had not been worn hundreds of miles in any direction from where she stood, that she would ask her question every day and not cease or do anything else until it was answered, was clear. That she would be calm, that she would be patient and implacable, was also a given. I enjoyed having Fleur to watch and so did everyone else, except Bernadette, who was shortly exposed as either hiding the answer or not knowing it, for of course once I followed Fleur other people did too, in order to hear the question, the same as always, and the answer that eventually changed from no to the name Jewett Parker Tatro.

He owned Fleur’s land now. From what I can construct of the ownership history, Fleur had brought the deed back to the reservation signed to her in Mauser’s hand and witnessed, only to be told that Mauser had taken his turn after her in not paying his taxes. By plaguing Bernadette, she found that the taxes were paid and the land was bought from the state by Jewett Tatro. He was white and an Indian agent to boot, or a former one. He was now the owner of a bar that he called the Wild Goose. He should not have been allowed to buy reservation land at all, but there was a loophole year, during which the state government had passed a bill that allowed such transfers. The bill was found to contradict federal law and so was nullified, but not quickly enough to prevent Tatro’s smooth theft. And the land once bought and lost from our tribal trust was not to be returned. It never is. Don’t let it go , I tell the people. It never comes back. Unless someone like Fleur has lost the land and wants it returned and is willing and audacious, and again I say patient enough, adept enough at the doing of nothing, to set up a deadfall. A deadfall of boredom. Here is what happened. Shortly after she got her answer Fleur changed her visits, both in time and place. No longer did she come to town every bright morning; she waited until evening, although she wore the same suit.

Now I should make it clear that I don’t know how Fleur kept her suit clean. For while all of this was going on, she was living in her car. Oh, it was a fancy car, yes, and the seats were no doubt comfortable, front and back, though neither she nor her son could stretch out. But it sure didn’t have running water. The car was parked everywhere and nowhere. She refused to stay with Margaret and me, partly because she just wouldn’t, and partly because Lulu told her to leave. Oh, not in so many words or even by looking crosswise or snapping her eyes at her. It was not that direct. It was Lulu’s absence that gave her the clear message. The way she could never be found. Fleur was at the house every day, and Lulu too, but the girl had that sly Pillager pre-knowledge, or just heard the engine maybe, and disappeared every time and before we knew it into the woods.

Meanwhile, Fleur lived in that car, and as I said she lived everywhere. Perhaps she hoped that if she parked in the right spot her daughter would creep near and love her. Or maybe she knew how truly uneasy and disruptive her here-and-there life was making the people. For it was upsetting. Not to know the whereabouts of that most particular Pillager weighed on people’s nerves and caused everyone to look over their shoulders and peer down roads constantly. Old ladies filed reports with one another of Fleur’s sightings. Along with the old men they kept an invisible watch. They constructed a mental pattern of her travels — here, there, she could be anywhere. That was the thing. Anywhere, nowhere. That white car and that woman in the white suit. Driving the reservation roads slowly, hardly raising any dust, and never stopping. No one ever saw where she parked to sleep, if she slept, or knew where she went to gas up, or if her car, which began to be seen as a ghost-car, even required such a thing as ordinary fuel or maybe ran on owl’s breath, dark air. They didn’t like it — there was tension. Things changed from interesting to uneasy. Disturbance lay over us. We saw Fleur’s car idling near Tatro’s bar and we saw him see her, or rather, see her automobile. We saw his eyes fixed on that fancy white car. So get it over with! That’s what the old man said, all the old men younger than I am. Do what you’re doing and be done with it! Mi’iw!