Four Souls

by Louise Erdrich

  “It is time for me to rest my old bones,” I said in despair. Then I crawled into the corner of the house and burrowed under a heap of blankets. I covered my face, bit my tongue, and turned to the wall. There, I prayed to the spirit of the turtle.

  “Come help me,” I called on my dodem, the mekinak. “Not to stick out my head, my arms, my feet, my tail or niinag.” I thought that if I could only contain myself and stay beneath the covers, Margaret might progress to the end of her anger and find there a morsel of tenderness. The good priest tells us that miracles are part of ordinary life, but not for the lazy or the wicked, and I was both according to the Catholics. As it turned out, I was bound to suffer. To absorb a hard medicine. And Margaret knew exactly what to cook up for the poor old man and how to deliver it most drastically.

  So I had snared her. She would snare me right back. We both knew that she was doing it and both of us knew why, but neither of us had the courage to dismantle the barrier of hard sticks, pointed words, and prickles of jealousy that soon tangled like deep bush between us. I knew she had divined the true prey of that snare I’d set, figured out the reason I tried to kill him, and decided to resurrect my jealousy and use Shesheeb as a weapon. Although I was aware of her ploy, I couldn’t help her scorn from cutting, or the thorns of her words from piercing deep.

  One night, she hummed in an irritating manner, beneath her breath. “Ninimoshe,” she finally let me hear her singing, “sweetheart, little duck, speak softly, for my old man will hear you creeping underneath my blanket.”

  Of course, after that I tossed all night, at each little noise, imagining the absurd picture of the greasy old duck sneaking into our cabin. Now that she slept across the room from me, such a thing was remotely possible. I began to sleep by the door, but then I feared the window. The upshot was I got no sleep at all.

  “People say they know the old man down the road,” she said to me slyly the next day, “but not as I do. His powers are significant. Why, he can turn himself into a fly, buzz about, listen in on people.”

  I tried to bite my tongue, to keep my temper from flaring up. A fly! Saaah! That time, I succeeded. But other times I did not. She laughed, now, when I insisted on accompanying her to Holy Mass. For years, she had begged my presence, hoping to convert one more soul for Father Damien and lure me into a church marriage. Now she refused to let me walk beside her.

  “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.

  “I’m a medicine dancer, according to my dream,” said Margaret, standing proud and straight as her old bones would allow, “I won’t take the ishkode wabo, old man.” She paused, then bent close to me. “Just let me smell it.” She took a whiff. “Those were the days,” she said, a bit mournfully. Much of her anger toward me seemed to have dissolved at the sight of the lengths I was willing to go to win her favor. She knew how many times and for how many years I refused a drink, up until she drove me to the edge. And as well, perhaps the dress helped. She had been working on it when I arrived, and now she held it up against her—a soft, dun-colored, plum-beaded old-time dress. Finished.

  “Put the dress on,” I urged, hoping to coax her into the spirit of authentic forgiveness. “Let me see you in it!”

  I leaned back against a tree, poured the tin cup full again, and watched as she shook off her old cotton majigoode, stood a moment in only her shift. Carefully, she lowered the new medicine dress onto herself and then quickly stalked inside, fetched her eagle fan from its strap on the wall. While she was in there, she braided her hair and painted two black dots at the corners of her eyes. Then she emerged from the cabin and stood regal and queenly before me with a farseeing look of wisdom on her face. I had to stagger around and lower myself to sit against the tree, otherwise I would have fallen over from the simple beauty of the shock. Margaret. Rushes Bear. Great-granddaughter of old Medicine Dress. My love. She looked like a woman out of a dream, a spirit lady from the sky, an old-time ogichidaa-ikwe, a proud grandmother for the ages. Tears stung my eyes, and then I overflowed and wept out loud.

  “My precious sweetheart, are you a vision?”

  “Of sorts,” said Margaret, carried away just a little herself.

  She turned around and around, wishing she could catch more of a reflection of herself than the picture in the tiny scrap of mirror we owned. I tried my best to reflect her, using words. How proudly your bosom thrusts out, I said. And your waist is slim as a girl’s. Your braids are coming along nicely, too, I observed. That was not exactly true. Hers had never grown back properly. They were stubby and gray. Mine were longer. It didn’t hurt to say a good word, however, and she appreciated it. If we had stopped right there, if she had taken off the dress, we would have ended up happily together for the day and on into the night, I am convinced. But my guardian spirits weren’t with me. My love luck failed. For once I fetched the drum and sang for her, and once she started to dance, Margaret ruined the effect. Though the dress was magnificent, my lady love was barely competent. Maybe less. Clumsy, I’d have to call her, out of step, out of balance.

  “I guess I never saw you dance before,” I mumbled, shocked and dizzied by her bobbing missteps.

  “Sure you have,” said Margaret, “many times. As you remember, I was head female dancer years ago.”

  “Mii nange,” I mumbled, not sure of anything. “You’re tipping!”

  “You’re tipping, old shkwebii,” she was irritated. “You can’t see straight.”

  But she was wrong. There were two of her hopping in as miserable a crow step as a white woman. It hurt to watch.

  “Dagasana, please,” I shielded my eyes and I asked her very gently, as careful with my words as could be, “let me put on the dress and show you how to do it!’

  She stopped dancing with a jerk, drove her hands to her hips, and glared. She puffed out her cheeks and looked as though she might explode in a cloud of bird-bone beads and tattered bashkwegin. Then she flipped her fan and suddenly laughed, harsh and mean, “I’d love to see you in a dress, old crazy. The medicine is strong in this one. Maybe it will sober you up!”

  “I don’t care about that, lady love,” I said to her in my most sincere voice. “I just want to make sure you don’t make a fool of yourself.”

  At that, she stood still and almost ripped the dress off her body.

  “Here”—she thrust it at me—“you be the fool!”

  The wine was treating me well at that point. I felt my own dignity rise up in me. “Give me the fan, too, old lady, and get ready for some old-time traditional woman dancing. You take the drum! My feet move light as a doe’s!”

  “Oh yai!” She was outraged, I knew it, but I thought to win her over with my patient instruction. I tried my best not to anger her, and started easily, keeping to the beat with what I thought was wondrous perfection. My steps were subtle. I moved like water. I could feel how well I floated around on the grass of the yard, and lost myself in the beat although the drum had stopped. I could feel her eyes upon me, full of unwilling admiration, at least I thought so. But when I chanced to look around, at last, expecting to collect praise and take in the pride on her face, I was surprised to find that I was quite alone. She was gone. I was miserably wounded, but only for a second, and in the next instant my suspicions grabbed me. Off to Shesheeb’s, no doubt! I put her eagle fan back in the house and started through the bush, intending to have it out with him at last.

  The leaves grew thick. Roots tripped me. Raspberry pickers scratched my arms and grabbed my ankles, but I held to my path. I skirted the scene of recent disaster, the sprung snare, and eventually found the clearing around the little house that once had belonged to Iron Sky and now sheltered sly Shesheeb. It was a scene of calm. He hadn’t kept the place up though, at all. The roof was already sagging. The yard was a mess of garbage. A thread of smoke twisted in the still air. My heart squeezed—was he inside the house with Margaret? I was just about to rush the cabin when the door opened and the old man emerged, hunched over, groping his way into the sun. He turned his face up to the light, squinting. It relieved me to see that he was alone.

  So this was Shesheeb. Well, he was not much! Where was his power? His medi
cine? I made a small movement and he turned his head. His hearing, at least, was very keen.

  As long as I was discovered, I stepped forward and presented myself before him. I didn’t expect to react so strong and quick, but my blood rose, hot, and my heart beat murderously. I could hardly contain my hate. There were no words I needed to say. There was no message. I stood entirely still in the sun and allowed him to examine me with what eyesight he had, to recognize me and in so doing recognize his crime. I waited. He blinked his white eyes, opaque and cloudy with cataract. His face had collapsed around his nose. His nostrils quivered, his chin strained toward me, he tried to sense all he could, to hear the beating of my heart. His rag of white hair hung to his waist and he wore a strange purple vest made of some heavy flowered material. His pants were filthy and held up by rope. He was nothing to look at and didn’t even have shoes on so I could see that his feet were filthy clawed things, splayed and frightening. I could not imagine what Margaret saw in him—in fact, it was now clear that all along she’d just been trying to pique my jealousy. I edged backward. I now wished I’d never come to make any sort of challenge. Best to leave a sleeping duck lie in its dirty nest.

  “Who are you?” Shesheeb asked, at last. “You beauty, have you come to tempt me?”

  I stepped back, startled, as you can imagine. I had entirely forgotten, in my examination of the old man, that I was dressed as a quite attractive woman. I said nothing, though sudden laughter welled inside of me and I was hard put to contain it. That’s when I got an idea. I’d get the old fake to fall in love with me. I’d torture his heart! I’d make him beg for my attentions, then abandon him and have a good laugh with Margaret. Perhaps I’d kill him and eat him just like he devoured my sister. I didn’t dare use my voice.