Four Souls: A Novel

by Louise Erdrich

  As soon as I saw the boy, I put his presence together with what I knew of Lulu’s hatred of her mother. The story was not hard to assemble. In sorrow over losing Lulu and the tiny one besides, Fleur had warped this one. Kept him too close, plied him, spoiled him, sweeted him. None of which would have made the slightest difference to a child of strong, raw stuff. But it was clear to see that from the beginning this one was liquid dough, half baked, demanding, and full of longing. There was also damage in him not of Fleur’s own making.

  Perhaps the Pillager stuff was all used up in Fleur. She was the last, and like the longest-boiled kettle of maple sap, she was the strongest and darkest. Or if the Pillager stuff had not given out, maybe it was blocked. Perhaps the spirits of all those she had sent on the death road had lined up against her on the other side. I pictured it. Drowned men glared into her cabin with dead, white eyes. Frozen men, their hair drifted over with crystals of ice, stared at her star-lashed in hollow unforgiveness. The one in the lake was jealous. My own son, Eli, would never be the same after knowing Fleur Pillager. He lived alone in the woods with only spirits for company. Had he cursed her? Had all of them? Why had she no children who’d call her mother? And now, this boy.

  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.

  FIFTEEN

  The Game of Nothing

  Nanapush

  THE 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!

  Fleur wasn’t done yet. No apologies. More reckoning was in order and of course she needed her land. Signed over, safe, and in her name. And until that happened, everybody had to contend with a restless spirit in a car that never collected dust crisscrossing the whole reservation day and night as if patrolling. Or maybe trolling would be more like it, because by now everyone wanted to bite. What was she going to do? When would her car actually stop and park on the gray weed-afflicted bareness glittering with crushed and broken glass that surrounded the bar that nobody called by Tatro’s fanciful name but instead just ziiginigewigamig, the pouring house, or Tatro’s. When would she stop there and when would she leave her shell of white metal and walk into the one room and sit down at the table in the corner where an endless, low-stakes poker game went on day and night, never ended and never finished, never changed except that players came and went and always were replaced but usually by family members who looked similar, so that the game itself had become the reservation’s purgatory, where once a person entered there was no way out. Someone else in your family surely would lose the amount you had won, for instance, and must borrow your winnings to retrieve the loss. Then you would have to step back into the game to make sure you got your loan back. On it would go. By this intricate means there was a fixed and yet shifting amount of money that might be owned or owed but eventually went back into the game so that over the years the figures and the numbers hovered in the air like an abstract cloud.

  I suppose Fleur’s entrance brought things down to earth. She was not there to enter into the game of eternal subtractions and additions. She was there to throw the balance off. She was there to get what she wanted and once she did she wouldn’t give it back. It wouldn’t ever go back into the game. Tatro didn’t know this. In fact, he didn’t know what she wanted at all. For a man who had lived among us for thirty years he had not learned much, but that wasn’t why he stayed, anyway, to learn anything or know anything or even acquire things, though he did, as by now our most beautiful and even sacred objects hung upon the walls of his bar. They were either won in the poker game or traded to him for hard liquor—fair and square, we could not dispute that. Yet many turned their backs away from the wall in order to drink. These things were watching. Our grandmothers’ and our grandfathers’ hands had made them. And no, they shouldn’t have been traded, should not have been sold except perhaps to feed a person’s children. There were cradle boards, tight beaded on velvet, that once held the drunks beneath them. There were gun belts and shoulder bags that only our head men used to carry. Makizinan, old-time buckskin dresses, intricately woven purses and sashes and carrying bags. There was even a drum. Each thing represented, then, a transaction, which is what held Tatro. He really didn’t know why he stayed at all and in fact he constantly harped on it and made all sorts of plans to go back east. He didn’t know that what held him was the pain itself. It had got into and afflicted him. It had seeped down upon him from his loaded walls. He could not do much, less and less, except pour liquor and play cards. On some days, he didn’t get out of his bed and only dragged himself out when his all-night bartender threatened to quit unless he was relieved. Once he got his day started, Tatro usually revived and was more or less himself by sundown in the summer and late spring. In fall and winter the sun set too early and usually caught him frowning at his own hands or staring out the window until the window reflected Tatro and he was staring into his own eyes. Sometimes he didn’t recognize himself. People saw him start and pull away from his reflection. He didn’t look much different from it, anyway, all hollow-eyed and bluish gray from lack of sleep and smoky air. He was skinny and wrecked, with a drift of gray hair, but he would live to be a hundred, probably, people said. That kind of old whiteman always did.

  So he was there as if waiting when Fleur entered with her son, who sat down next to her, vacant-eyed, and popped a sweet mallow-pillow into his mouth. He let it dissolve while he stared off into what passed for air inside that bar. The boy stared through drifts and curls of smoke. He stared through people who came and went. He stared but didn’t see. The last thing people would have thought he noticed was the game played to either side and spread out before him, but in fact, when he moved his lips and kept his eyes turned toward the ceiling as if reciting a fool’s prayer, he was working out the whole game in his head from the first card played and he was gathering tics and habits, little sighs or intakes of breath. And he was learning the language of the toothpick. For instance, on which side Tatro chewed it when his hand was good. Jewett Tatro had a tender tooth on one side and if he had a bad hand Tatro would shift the toothpick in his jaw and bite down to distract himself. That toothpick told everything and the boy, the idiot, marked it and learned its habits while his mother played a demure game right next to him.

  Yes, demure. She played modest and even and I don’t need to tell you, dangerous. She played a snake’s game. And of course she came back every night at the same time. She took no drink, but the marks of it were on her anyway. I could tell what she had done and, I hoped, quit doing down there in the city. There was still the reek of it and even the beginnings of ruin on her beautiful face. It hurt me to see this. It hurt us all, especially Margaret, who I noticed had gone unusually silent and thoughtful when it came to Fleur. Anyway, it did relieve me that Fleur didn’t drink when she played, first that she still could—not drink, I mean. She wasn’t that far gone. And I was also pleased because it indicated that she was going to pursue some strategy, the end of which I thought I knew already—everyone did, except Tatro. We all thought we knew why she was there.

  Tatro knew the land had once been hers but didn’t figure that she needed it back—not her in that white suit and that fancy car, which he coveted. Tatro got into the game every few days or so, which was another way that so much of our wealth ended up hung from nails above the bar. He liked to play for things because that made the game more interesting and also, even at that time, Tatro believed that the ways of making these old things were dying out and he was intrigued to have the last of such objects in his collection. So he played Fleur, having some vague idea of her reputation as a card player, and that she wasn’t winning big from him and even occasionally losing a hand puffed him up. So far so transparent to me, to us all. But what about the boy beside her? What was he doing there?

  It wasn’t clear to me until some days had passed and Tatro was clearly bored of the game. A person’s boredom always worked to Fleur’s advantage. I sat in the corner of the bar, never touching a drop as I nursed too recent a memory of my shame. I sat there and drank orange soda fizz from a bottle. And I watched, night after night, for something to change. But what finally happened dismayed me. With no warning and in the middle of a game, Fleur called out, just after she’d lost a hand.

  “Double whiskey!”

  Down her cards went. Then the two shots.

  “Oooh,” she crowed, “that was good, that’s better.”

  Then she ordered another.

  “N’dawnis, gego minikweken!” I couldn’t help advise her, but Fleur just turned to me with a look of indulgent amusement and kept on playing. She drank her poison more slowly, but then in short order it hit her and I saw her fumble. Her words thickened and her laugh, too loud, jarred the room. Her so
n sat next to her, impervious. Fleur saw things funny, funnier, and as she grew louder and more shrill everyone in the place collected around the table. When she shouted for more and in short order lost another hand to Tatro, more people slipped in through the door.

  “I have no money now,” she shrieked. “I am broke to the bone!”

  She began to laugh and her caw of mirth was terrible to one who loved her. There is perhaps nothing quite socially painful as watching one you admire make herself foolish in other eyes. For yes, there were some now openly mocking her, saying how the Pillager used to be too good to look down at the shit on her shoes and now see what she’s become. But others, most of the others, were very quiet. It was no small thing to see a woman who had represented something—oh yes, maybe fearful, maybe something that they didn’t like—but represented the old ways, succumb to the new. We could feel that Pillager knowledge dissolving in the burning water. She was the last of the Pillagers, and to see her as a common drunk would take something out of every one of us. A terrible, thin, coldness slipped down my veins. Despair, though I couldn’t name it right then, is a thin and bitter chill. I pulled my thin old shirt tight around my neck. I could not watch Fleur go lost.