The Antelope Wife

by Louise Erdrich

  When he was finished, he took the thick syrupy batter and poured it as though it contained, as it did for him, the very secret of life. He made dark pools in four round baking pans. He bore them ceremonially toward the oven, which yawned, perfectly stoked beneath with coals glowing in the firebox. Bending with maternal care, he placed the pans within the dark aperture. Closed with a toweled hand the oven door. For a moment Charlie, mesmerized by the calm music of the German’s efforts, regarded the words set in raised letters upon the oven door. The Range Eternal. He backed slowly away from the stove and sat down. He offered Klaus a cigarette.

  Outside, the other men sat smoking and thinking. They paid respect to the east. In their thoughts, in their prayers. They respected the manito who guards the south. They regarded with humble pleading the direction of our dead, the west. North was last.

  After a while Charlie went out and sat near them. He sat alone. He sat in a fugue trying to remember each action, each movement, each ingredient. Mary, Zosie, and Peace came into the yard.

  “Don’t go in there,” said Asin.

  “We are waiting for something to bake,” said Charlie.

  The women did not wait, of course. What woman sits waiting for something to cook in the oven? Disgusted by the male mystery and presence in the kitchen, they bustled ostentatiously. Made a lot of noise coming, going. Banged washing boards and banged pots. Banged anything they could, including the chairs of the men, who jumped. Once, but just once, Zosie banged the stove. At which point Klaus leaped high and with a scream that unnerved them all, grabbed her by the apron strings and swung her toward the door. She flew as though shot from a bow. Limber as a wildcat, Klaus poised, light on the balls of his feet, and motioned one and all to hush.

  Everyone crept near, caught in the grip of what the prisoner sensed happening behind the blue enamel of the oven door.

  Light in the window turned subtly more golden. Klaus set pans of water in the oven like offerings. A breeze sprang up. Leaves tapped. Nobody said a thing. Asin’s eyes grew bloody. His hands trembled and the air whistled between his teeth. They sat until finally Klaus rose. Like a groom pacing tranced toward his bride, he approached the oven. At the lip of the door he closed his eyes, cocked his head to the side, listening. Slowly and pliantly Klaus bent, hands wrapped in two thick rags. With firm control he pulled the handle on the door until it opened. Then, just for a moment, the waiting men lost their bearings as the scent of the toasted nuts, honey, vanilla, wild strawberries, sugar, and subtly united oils and flours escaped the oven box. The scent trembled in the air.

  More than delicious. Impossible. Perhaps an Anishinaabe vision-word comes close. Perhaps there is no way to describe what they all experienced as Klaus tenderly drew the pan along the rack until it rested secure between his thick, furry, rag-protected paws.

  More sitting while the brown cake cooled. Eyes of Asin sunk, blackening. He made everyone uneasy now with his scratchy breathing. As the creation cooled, the watchers remembered things they’d rather have forgotten: how Asin had suffered from time to time with nameless rages, pointless furies. These angers had assumed a name and form in the person of the porcupine man, Klaus.

  Air poured in the screen door, cooling and healing. Dusk air. Pure air. Moved onto Ogichidaa. Bagakaabi took his fan, the wing of an eagle, and with immense care he swept the air toward Asin, whose face now worked in and out like a poisoned mud puppy’s, and who said, fixing everyone with eyes crossed:

  “Let us deliver him to the west. We are Ojibwe men—the name has a warrior’s meaning. We roast our enemies until they pucker! Once, we were feared. Our men brought sorrow. Mii-go iw keyaa gaa-izhi-mashkawigaabawiyang mewinzha. What have we here? Chimookomaanag? Women? Our enemy is in our hands and we do not make him suffer to console the spirits of our brothers. We let him cook our food. It is this . . . Klaus”—he scoured the name off his tongue—“whom we should burn to death!”

  In the space of quiet that followed on his words, then, everyone realized the old man’s bitter ghost was talking.

  “Oooo, ishte, niiji,” Bagakaabi said, drawing the wing of the eagle through the air in a soothing and powerful fashion. “Good thing you’ve told us this.” Looking at the rest of the men meaningfully, he said to Asin in a calm tone, “We respect your wishes, brother. However”—and now Bagakaabi held the wing of the eagle stiffly pointed toward the cake—“would we be honorable men if we did not keep our promise even to our enemy? Before we roast the prisoner, let us try his offering.”

  Klaus, whose intuition of their meaning just barely kept him horrified, then took from his pile of ingredients a tiny packet of white sweet powder and, with a gravity equal to Bagakaabi’s, coated the top of the cake with the magical dust. Klaus then motioned to everyone to cup their hands, Asin, too. He cut the cake into pieces and served them out. When they all had the cake in hand, they looked at it hungrily and waited for the elder to taste. Asin, however, was too slow and Charlie the future baker too tempted. Charlie bit into the cake. Before he chewed, he gave a startled and extraordinary squeak and his eyes went wide. It was too much for the rest. They all bit. Or nibbled. Tasted. And everyone emitted some particular and undiluted sound of pleasure. There was not a one who’d ever tasted the taste of this cake. It was a quiet and complex sensation on the tongue.

  We are people of simple food straight from the earth, thought Charlie. Food from the lakes and from the woods. Manoomin. Wiiyaas. Baloney. A little maple sugar now and then. Suddenly this: a powerful sweetness that opened the ear to sound. Embrace of roasted nut-meats. A tickling sensation of grief. A berry tartness. Joy. Klaus had inserted jam in thin-spread layers. And pockets of spices that have no origin in our language. So, too, there was no explanation for what happened next.

  Together, they sat, swallowed the last crumbs, pressed up the powdery sweetness with their fingers. When they had licked every grain into themselves, they sat numb with pleasant feelings. Then, over the group, there stole a tender poignance. Some saw in the lowering light the shadows of loved ones, whose spirits they had fed, as well as they could, food of the dead. Curious, they doubled back. Others heard the sharp violin string played in the woods, the song of the white-throated sparrow. Mary and Zosie spoke lovingly to each other. Booch saw the face of his favorite nurse in the hospital. Bagakaapi tasted on his face the hot sun. He breathed warm thick berry odor and the low heat of the dancing white grass that grows along the road to the other world.

  They breathed together. They thought like one person. They had for a long unbending moment the same heartbeat, the same blood in their veins, the same taste in their mouth. How, when they were all one being, kill the German? How, in sharing this sweet intensity of life, deny its substance in even their enemies?

  When there is an end of things, and when we fade into the random scheme and design, thought Charlie, I believe we will taste the same taste, mercy on the tongue. And we will laugh the way we are laughing now in surprise and at the same sweet joke, even old Asin.

  Ogichidaa rose with his hand out, then embraced Klaus like a brother. It was the first of many times he would imagine his pain was solved.

  More and more often, as the years went on, Ogichidaa saw his pain vanish at the golden bottom of a whiskey bottle. He would find his way down to the Cities and there, late in age, still gripped by shell shock before there was PTSD, he would father a son. He would name the baby Klaus, remembering the taste of mercy. His brother Charlie would bake a cake for the occasion and feed it also to his own little grandson, Frank, then watch the toddler’s face for a reaction. Booch would eat two pieces of the cake to make sure, but then he would place his fork on the plate with a sigh.

  Ogichidaa would shake his head.

  Hope would sink down Charlie’s face and add a few molecules to his baker’s belly.

  It was a good cake, there was even poignance and sweet intensity. But always, always, there was something missing.

  Part Two

  Niizh

&nb
sp; The pattern glitters with cruelty. The blue beads are colored with fish blood, the reds with powdered heart. The beads collect in borders of mercy. The yellows are dyed with the ocher of silence. There is no telling which twin will fall asleep first, allowing the other’s colors to dominate, for how long. The design grows, the overlay deepens. The beaders have no other order at the heart of their existence. Do you know that the beads are sewn onto the fabric of the earth with endless strands of human muscle, human sinew, human hair? We are as crucial to this making as other animals. No more and no less important than the deer.

  Chapter 5

  Wiindigoo Dog

  ALMOST SOUP

  So now you have got the story of how the Roys and Shawanos got tangled up. A dog’s-eye view of history, includes certain details that human people might rather skip. I have no illusions. Humans are capable of anything. For instance, you could end up puppy soup if you’re born a pure white dog on the reservation, unless you’re one who is extra clever, like me. I survived into my old age through dog magic. That’s right. You see me, you see the result of dog wit. Dog skill. Medicine ways I learned from my elders, and want to pass on now to my relatives. You. So listen up, animoshag. You’re only going to get this knowledge from the real dog’s mouth once.

  There is a little of a coyote in me, just a touch here in my paws, bigger than a dog’s paws. My jaw, too, strong to snap rabbit bones. Prairie-dog bones as well. That’s right. Prairie. I don’t mind saying to you that I’m not a full-blood Ojibwe reservation dog. I’m part Dakota, born out in Bwaanakiing, transported here just after I opened my eyes. I still remember all that sky, all that pure space, all that blowing dirt of land where I got my name, which has since become legendary.

  Here’s how it happened.

  I was underneath the house one hot slow day panting in the dirt. I was a young thing. Just chubby, too, and like I said white all over. That worried my mother. Every morning she scratched dirt on me, threw me in the mud, rolled me in garbage to disguise my purity. Her words to me were this—My son, you won’t survive if you lick your paws. Don’t be respectable. Us Indian dogs have got to look as unappetizing as we can! Slink a little, won’t you? Stick your ears out. Grow ticks. Fleas. Bite your fur here and there. Strive for a disreputable appearance, my boy. Above all, don’t be clean!

  Like I say, born pure white you usually don’t stand a chance, but me, I took my mama’s advice. After all, I was the son of a blend of dogs stretching back to the beginning of time on this continent. We sprang up here. We had no need to cross on any land bridge. We know who we are. Us, we are descended of Original Dog.

  I think about her lots, and also about my ancestor, from way way back, the dog named Sorrow who drank a human’s milk. I think about her because I know it was the first dog’s mercy and the hand-me-down wit of the second that saved my life that time they were boiling the sacred soup.

  I hear these words—Get under the house, Melvin, fetch that white puppy now. Bam! My mama throws me in the farthest house corner and sits down on me. I cover up with her but once Melvin is in play distance I can’t help it. I’ve got that curious streak of all the Indian dogs. I peek right around my mother’s tail and whoops, he’s got me. He drags me out and gives me to a grandma, who stuffs me in a gunnysack and slings me down beside the fire.

  I fight the bag there for a while but it’s warm and cozy and I go to sleep. I don’t think much of it. Just another human habit I’ll get used to, this stuffing dogs in sacks. Then I hear them talking.

  Sharpen up the knife. Grandma’s voice.

  That’s a nice fat white puppy. Someone else.

  He’ll make a good soup for the ceremony, but do you think enough to go around? Should we kill another one?

  Then, right above me, they start arguing about whether or not I’ll feed twenty. Me, just a little chunk of a guy, Gawiin! No! I bark. No! No! I’m not enough for even five of your big strong warrior sons. Not me. What am I saying? I’m not enough for any of you! Anybody! No! I’m sour meat. I don’t want to be eaten! In response, I get this tap from a grandma shoe, just a tap, but all us dogs know feet language. Be quiet or you’ll get a solid one, it means. I shut up. Once I stop barking all I can do is think and I think fast. I think furious. I think desperate puppy thoughts until I know what I’ll do the moment they let me out.

  A puppy has just one weapon, and there really is no word for it but puppyness. Stuck in that bag, I muster all my puppyness. I call my tail wags and love licks up from deep way back, from the dogs going back to dogs unto the beginning of our association with these predictable and exasperating beings. I hear them stroking the steel on steel. I hear them tapping the boiling water pot. I hear them deciding I’ll be enough, just barely. Then daylight. The bag loosens and a grandma draws me forth and just quick, because I’m smart, desperate, and connected with my ancestors, I look for the nearest girl child in the bunch around me. I spot her. I pick her out.

  She’s a visitor, sitting right there with a cousin, playing, not noting me at all. I give a friendly little whine, a yap, and then, as the grandma hauls me toward the table, a sharp loud bark of fear. That starts out of me. I can’t help it. But good thing, because the girl hears it and responds.

  “Grandma,” she says, “what you going to do with the puppy?”

  “Gabaashimgabaashimgabaashim,” mumbles Grandma, the way they do when trying to hide their actions.

  “What?” That gets her little-girl curiosity up, a trait us dogs and children share in equal parts, what makes us love each other so.

  “Don’t you know, you dummy,” shouts that boy cousin in boy knowledge, “Grandma’s going to boil it up, make it into soup!”

  “Aaay,” my girl says, shy and laughing. “Grandma wouldn’t do that.” And she holds out her hands for me. Which is when I use my age-old Original Dog puppyness. I throw puppy love right at her in loopy yo-yos, puppy drool, joy, and big-pawed puppy clabber, ear perks, eye contact, most of all the potent weapon of all puppies, the head cock and puppy grin.

  “Gimme him, gimme!”

  “Noooo,” says Grandma, holding me tight and pursing her lips in that terrible way of grandmas, when they cannot be swayed. But she’s dealing with her own descendant in its purest form—pure girl. Puppy-loving girl.

  “Grandmagrandmagrandma!” she shrieks.

  “Eeeeh!”

  “GIMMEDAPUPPY!GIMMEDAPUPPY!”

  Now it’s time for me to wiggle, all over, to give the high-quotient adorability wiggle all puppies know. This is life or death. I do it double time, triple time, full of puppy determination, desperate to live.

  “Ooooh,” says another grandma, sharp-eyed, “quick, trow him in the pot!”

  “Noooo,” says yet another, “she wants that puppy bad, her.”

  “Give her that little dog,” says a grandpa now, his grandpa heart swelling up. “She wants that dog. So give her that little dog.”

  That is how it goes pretty much all the time, now, theseadays. In fact I’ve heard even grandmas have softened their hearts for us and we Indian dogs are safe as anywhere on earth, which isn’t saying much.

  My girl’s doll-playing fingers are brushing my fur. She’s jumping for me. Spinning like a sweet maple seed. Straining up toward her grandma, who at this point can’t hold on to me without looking almost supernaturally mean. And so it is, I feel those ancient dog-cooking fingers give me up before her disappointed voice does.

  “Here.”

  And just like that I’m in the most heavenly of places. Soft, strong girl arms. I’m carried off to be petted and played with, fed scraps, dragged around in a baby carriage made of an old shoe box, dressed in the clothing of tiny brothers and sisters. Yes. I’ll do anything. Anything. This is when my naming happens. As we go off I hear the grandpa calling from behind us in amusement, asking the name of the puppy. Me. And my girl calls back, without hesitation, the name I will bear from then on into my age, the name that has given so many of our breedless breed hope, the name that w
ill live on in dogness down through the generations. You’ve heard it. You know it. Almost Soup.

  Up to the Present

  Having introduced myself, I believe that it is now appropriate to bring time and place back into the picture. Time the judge has released Augustus Roy to easy death. Zosie and Mary have also trudged with their brothers toward the spirit world. Peace lived quietly, like her name. She was a shy old woman married to a shy old man named Waabizii, The Swan. She bore one son and feared to have more children lest they turn out twins. Her mothers always made her enough trouble. But her son grew up safely in her care and then fathered twin girls at too young an age. Their mother disappeared and Peace raised them. Until Zosie and Mary died, Peace was caught between two sets of yoked wills. At least she had the numbers, the bank, her father’s desk, and a changing array of colors that flowed beneath her pencil. Her father had taught her to love the sun on her shoulders and wind in every mood. She named the twins for these pleasures, Giizis and Noodin, hoping for happy spirits. But they turned out shrewd, sour, and sometimes ferocious, like their great-grandmothers. In the end, Peace just gave up.

  There was a wave of giving up, and then there was a new government policy designed in the kindest way to make things worse. It was called Relocation and helped Indians move to cities all over the country. Helped them move away from family. Helped them move away from their land. Helped them move away from their dogs. But don’t worry. We followed them down to Gakaabikaang, Minneapolis, Place of the Falls. I will return. But I am sorry to say that I must leave you now.

  I must give the story over to one particular descendant, Klaus, a man whom we dogs have failed to shape. Though named for the German, an industrious man, Klaus was a sorry piece of work from the get-go. Even though his elderly father counseled him with care, Klaus was lazy, needy, skilled from a tender age at self-deceptions, according to impartial dogs. He was always pining for something over the horizon. I am only letting him speak because he is, unfortunately, and to his own shame, best qualified to tell what happened next. Though sky and space divided the oldest daughter of Blue Prairie Woman from her sisters, her tribe, her family, and the descendants of her rescuers who walk this earth, it only took one drunken idiot to reconnect.