Four Souls

by Louise Erdrich

  “Now I ask you, what have you given to me in return?”

  I turned to my relatives, my people, and opened my arms wide.

  “What have we given her?” To my question, there was no answer. I’d said enough. I walked off and left the assembly to ponder my words. When they voted, they rejected the land settlement. So the dress worked. The medicine was the sacred shame that it provoked in me. I was humbled, and in that mood I decided to return to Margaret. As I neared the cabin, I began an anxious series of requests, all based on my love of Margaret. I hoped she would greet me, no matter how angry. I would endure her whipping tongue, bear the bite of her disdain, if only she would be there, I thought, waiting for me whether to kiss or kill. But when I got to our little home the door was shut, the cabin empty, the stove cold, and her blanket gone. I stood in the center of the quiet, sick and wondering.

  What gives us such cause to harm each other? Where do we come by the substance of our anger and pride? I had no doubt even then that Margaret loved me and I loved her. Yet as a couple our main activity, it seemed, was making each other miserable.

  “Please come home,” I cried out the open door, into the bush, “and let me love you the way you deserve!”

  But from the massed green leaves and the thick growing trees, there was no answer, nor from the weedy flowers or the berries or the silence of the birds. At that moment, I understood that the manidoog were tired of me, too, that I’d gone one step too far. I sank to the earth, put my head in my hands. With all my heart I wished to be forgiven. Going back through the nights and days I began to count up all I’d done to the people around me and chance passersby too. I tried to name each name, I tried to beg their mercy and humbly address each problem I’d created starting with the day I tried to snare Shesheeb. I began with good intentions, but I quickly fell asleep. The list was too long. The day too warm. The breeze so calm and golden.

  TWELVE

  The Fortune

  Polly Elizabeth

  THERE WAS NO packing of the house, since its entire contents would be sold at auction. John James Mauser had fled, leaving me to clean up the copious mess of his belongings, but it was after all part of the agreement. He was to wander the earth. I was to count his handkerchiefs. After I had totaled them up I was to then mark them with a price. I would handle the sale of his accumulated goods, and with the proceeds I would satisfy as many of his creditors as I possibly could. Fleur had taken the automobile, her clothing, and the boy. They had departed before dawn and would take back roads in case they should be followed by those who were alerted to the entire desertion of John James Mauser—the abandonment of his ruined accounts and the bled carcasses of his books and the plucked spars of the solid edifice that once had been his moneyed life.

  And here I was, counting handkerchiefs. To add strangeness to surprise, I was not alone. I was joined. He was polishing a table spread with silver. He had brown eyes and a smile that I now saw as one of unbounded attraction, for it was cast upon me out of love. When Fantan looked at me, the sun came out in any room, and when I looked back at him, I could feel soft fire rise in my own face. What astounding things can happen to us, what change, what absurd luck.

  We’ve lost a fortune, for Mauser’s money of course was the stipend upon which my sister and I lived. But I have gained more than a fortune. I have Fantan. We have plans, grand plans. We are heading north to live in a town just outside the reservation boundary. A little place with a railroad spur and two bars, a piano shop, a newspaper, and a grain elevator. Fantan has saved a small bundle of money, and Mauser secretly added to it before he was picked clean. With it we’ve bought a share in a trading store located on the reservation. Eventually we’ll buy out the half still belonging to the old Lebanese, and then we’ll move into the store’s back rooms. We will live at the ends of the earth. We will sell dried peas and shovels. Fabric and spools of thread. I’ll train a bean vine around the back door and I’ll have a garden filled with squash. Fantan will play cards with Fleur as often as he can, and I’ll read sweet poems to the boy, no matter how big he grows.

  Fantan touches my shoulder and my arm glows. My hand is in his hand. With our box of pens and tags, we’re moving on to the bedside clocks. The racks of ties. The unwrapped boxes of cigars.

  All that Mauser left. Wherever I go in the house, now, Fantan is at my side and the little dog follows us both. I look down at my black Diablo, head on his paws. He is at my feet. He knows that he must trust to my forgiveness for his daily meat. So he wags his plumed tail and noses at my foot and I pat him gently. Affection, I tell him, is how a dog survives. Knowing how to exist without it is how a woman wrests her life into her own hands. But then it comes, it takes one by surprise. Affection and freedom and the will to risk. Everything that happened since I answered the door to Fleur was leading up to this. Warm sun falls on us through diamonds of lead glass as we work. If I am a fool, I am proud to be one. I have married one servant and declared another my sister. My husband and I do not speak in flows of words, but we connect by the heartstrings and by laughter and by signs. I am that rare thing thought only to exist in death. I am a happy woman.

  THIRTEEN

  Red Jacket Beans

  Nanapush

  WHEN 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 o
f 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?

  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 congratulat
ed 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.