The Last Report on the Miracles at Little No Horse (42 page)

“Eat up, old man.” She banged the plate down before him. He saw she was implacable, and then he thought back to the way he had got around the impasse of the maple syrup before, and resolved to do exactly the opposite of what he felt. And so, resigned to sacrifice this night to pain, desperate, he proceeded to loudly enjoy the beans.

“They are excellent, niwiiw, crunchy and fine! Minopogwud!” He wolfed them down, eager as a boy, and tore at the moldy moose as though presented with the finest morsels. “Howah! I’ve never eaten such a fine dish!” He rubbed his belly and smiled in false satisfaction. “Nindebisinii, my pretty fawn, oh, how well I’ll sleep.” He rolled up in his blankets by the door, then, and waited for the gas pains to tear him apart.

They did come. That night was phenomenal. Margaret was sure that the cans of grease rattled on the windowsill, and she saw a glowing stench rise around her husband but chose to plug her ears with wax and turn to the wall, poking an airhole for herself in the mud between the logs, and so she fell asleep not knowing that the symphony of sounds that disarranged papers and blew out the door by morning were her husband’s last utterances.

Yes, he was dead. She found when she went to shake him awake the next morning that he was utterly lifeless. She gave a shriek then, of abysmal loss, and began to weep with sudden horror at the depth of her unforgiving nature. She kissed his face all over, patted his hands and hair. He did not look as though death had taken him, no, he looked oddly well. Although it would seem that a death of this sort would shrivel him like a spent sack and leave him wrinkled and limp, he was shut tight and swollen, his mouth a firm line and his eyes squeezed shut as though holding something in. And he was stiff as a horn where she used to love him. There was some mistake! Perhaps, thought Margaret, wild in her grief, he was only deeply asleep and she could love him back awake.

She climbed aboard and commenced to ride him until she herself collapsed, exhausted and weeping, on his still breast. It was no use. His manliness still stood straight up and although she could swear the grim smile had deepened on his face, there were no other signs of life—no breath, not the faintest heartbeat could be detected. Margaret fell beside him, senseless, and was found there disheveled and out cold, so that at first Father Damien thought the two had committed a double suicide, as some old people did those hard winters. But Margaret was soon roused. The cabin was aired out. Father Damien, ravaged with the loss, held his old friend Nanapush’s hand all day and allowed his own tears to flow, soaking his black gown.

And so it was. The wake and the funeral were conducted in the old way. Margaret prepared his body. She cleaned him, wrapped him in her best quilt. As there was no disguising his bone-tough shkendeban, she let it stand there proudly and she decided not to be ashamed of her old man’s prowess. She laid him on the bed that was her pride, and bitterly regretted how she’d forced him to sleep on the floor in the cold wind by the door.

Everyone showed up that night, bringing food and even a bit of wine, but Margaret wanted nothing of their comfort. Sorrow bit deep into her lungs and the pain radiated out like the shooting rays of a star. She lost her breath. A dizzy veil fell over her. She wanted most of all to express to her husband the terrible depth of the love she felt but had been too stubborn, too stingy, or, she now saw, afraid to show him while he lived. She had deprived him of such pleasure: that great horn in his pants, she knew guiltily, was there because she had denied him physical satisfaction ever since the boat ride behind the moose.

“Nimanendam. If only he’d come back to me, I’d make him a happy man.” She blew her nose on a big white dishcloth and bowed her head. Whom would she scold? Whom would she punish? Whom deny? Who would suffer for Margaret Kashpaw now? What was she to do? She dropped her face into her hands and wept with uncharacteristic abandon. The whole crowd of Nanapush’s friends and loved ones, packed into the house, lifted a toast to the old man and made a salute. At last, Father Damien spoke, and his speech was so eloquent and funny that in moments the whole room was bathed in tears and sobs.

It was at that moment, in the depth of their sorrow, just at the hour when they felt the loss of Nanapush most keenly, that a great explosion occurred, a rip of sound. A vicious cloud of stink sent mourners gasping for air. As soon as the fresh winter cold rolled into the house, however, everyone returned. Nanapush sat straight up, still wrapped in Margaret’s best quilt.

“I just couldn’t hold it in anymore,” he said, embarrassed to find such an assembly of people around him. He proceeded, then, to drink a cup of the mourner’s wine. He was unwrapped. He stretched his arms. The wine made him voluble.

“Friends,” he said, “how it fills my heart to see you here. I did, indeed, visit the spirit world and there I greeted my old companion, Kashpaw. I saw my former wives, now married to other men. Quill was there, and is now beading me a pair of makazinan to wear when I travel there for good. Friends, do not fear. On the other side of life there is plenty of food and no government agents.”

Nanapush then rose from the bed and walked among the people, tendering greetings and messages from their dead loved ones. At last, however, he came to Margaret, who sat in the corner frozen in shock at her husband’s resurrection. “Oh, how I missed my old lady!” he cried and opened his arms to her. But just as she started forward, eager at his forgiveness and acceptance, he remembered the beans, dropped his arms, and stepped back.

“No matter how I love you,” he then said, “I would rather go to the spirit world than stay here and eat your cooking!”

With that, he sank to the floor quite cold and lifeless again. He was carried to the bed and wrapped in the quilt once more, and his body was closely watched for signs of revival. Nobody yet quite believed that he was gone and it took some time—in fact, they feasted far into the night—before everyone, including poor Margaret, addled now with additional rage and shame, felt certain he was gone. Of course, just as everyone accepted the reality of his demise, Nanapush again jerked upright and his eyes flipped open.

“Oh yai!” exclaimed one of the old ladies, “he lives yet!”

And although the mourners well hid their irritation, it was inevitable that there were some who were impatient. “If you’re dead, stay dead,” someone muttered. Nobody was so heartless as to express this feeling straight out. There was just a slow but certain drifting away of people from the house and it wasn’t long, indeed, before even Father Damien left. He was thrilled to have his old friend back, but in his tactful way intuited that Margaret and Nanapush had much to mend between them and needed to be alone to do it.

Once everyone was gone, Nanapush went over to the door and put the bar down. Then he turned to his wife and spoke before she could say a word.

“I returned for one reason only, my wife. When I was gone and far away, I felt how you tried to revive me with the heat of your body. I was happy you tried to do that, my heart was full. This time when I left with harsh words on my lips about your cooking, I got a ways down the road leading to the spirit world, and I just couldn’t go any farther, my dear woman, because I wronged you. I wanted to make things smooth between us. I came back to love you good.”

And with that, between the confusion and grief, the exhaustion and bewilderment, Margaret hadn’t the wit to do anything but go to her husband and allow all of the hidden sweetness of her nature to join the fire he kindled, so that they spent, together, in her spring bed, the finest and most elegantly accomplished hours that perhaps lovers ever spent on earth. And when it was over they both fell asleep, and although only Margaret woke up, her heart was at peace.

Margaret would not have Nanapush buried in the ground, but high in a tree, the old way, as Anishinaabeg did before the priests came. A year later, his bones and the tattered quilt were put into a box and set under a grave house just at the edge of her yard. The grave house was well built, carefully painted a spanking white, and had a small window with a shelf where Margaret always left food. Sometimes, she left Nanapush a plate of ill-cooked beans because she missed his complaints, but more often she cooked his favorites, seasoned his meat with maple syrup, pampered and pitied him the way she hadn’t dared when he was alive, for fear he’d get the better of her, though she wondered why that ever mattered, now, without him, in the simple quiet of her endless life.

19

T
HE
W
ATER
J
AR

1962

Mid-July and a windless morning. After the day began, dust would lift and hang solid in flat ribbons along the reservation boundaries, but for now the dew held down the surface of the roads. For the ladies, who had risen early, who now stood behind the long plate-glass windows of the Senior Citizens’ lounge, the air was clear enough for them to see that, for the third morning in a row, the man had come through the night and was still sitting in his car.

It was a dull green two-door Chevrolet, the kind of car that escaped most attention, but the man inside it, usually obscured by blowing dirt, could be seen clearly at this hour. Even from the shoulders up, his good looks were obvious. His face was bold and strong featured. His thick gray hair was trained to sweep back over the ears. He looked well dressed, but not until some hours later would the full effect of his dark and well-cut suit be shown. He sweltered and sweat in it all that time. The heat descended and the air was thick and punishing by noon. Breezes too faint to stir the heavy brown drapes hung by the government’s contractor occasionally filtered through the screens below the glass. Men with bad knees or weak lungs joined the ladies who might, in their privacy, have worn nothing but their baggy nylon slips. By now, the dozen or so who sat and watched had little left to say that was original. The man was simply there.

In two days no one had seen him leave the car, take a drink of anything, or eat a bite of food. He never dozed or relieved himself, by daylight anyhow. He was so silent that a bird flew in the window, hopped around and flew back out. He was so handsome that Mrs. Bluelegs looked his picture up in her collection of star magazines. He wasn’t anyone. The good looks were a distant impression, too. Up close, the tribal police said, he was surprisingly old. They stopped twice on their rounds to make sure he wasn’t dead and examine his license.

Father Gregory Wekkle. Eyes brn. Hair brn. Height 6'3". Indianapolis address. There was nothing out of order. Everything was up to date. He was not possessed of liquor or narcotics. He wasn’t wanted for any crime. When they asked what he was doing, he asked if there was any law against a guy sitting in his car. He kept his eyes on the convent, the church, but did not seem interested in those who came and went.

Someone thought it might be best to tell the sisters up the hill. However, when it came right down to it, no one wanted to interfere.

He wasn’t blocking any traffic. He wasn’t in people’s way. He wasn’t anybody’s business, and so they let him be. As the day went on and he sat without moving, he drew escalating interest from the young who roared past, raising dust, then stopped just to watch it settle on his windshield. Thicker by the hour, that dust coated the fenders and hood, his hair and the one arm crooked half out the window, thicker, heavier, until he was obscured, almost part of the landscape, and it was a shock that caused the men to crane forward and the women, finally, to open the door and file onto the sidewalk and shield their eyes against the sun when upon that third day the car’s engine roared into gear.

It was as if the road itself had moved. The ladies behind the window, deaf to the engine’s catch, pointed to the car bucking into first gear and chugging up the remainder of the hill.

From there the story came down.

Sister Mary Martin was the one who told what happened after he had parked at the convent, got out, and walked up to the door.

When he disappeared into the entry, the women outside the Senior Citizens dropped their hands from their eyes and retreated. There was nothing to see from all that distance. According to Sister Mary Martin, the man knocked on the door and she opened it wide. By then, his hair was the tan of the air and his face and clothes were drifted with the road’s same powder. He would not come in, but he would be very much obliged for some water. His voice was hoarse, his look was patient. Sister Mary Martin left him standing, went back into her kitchen, found a clean mayonnaise container, and filled it from the tap. She brought this back down the hall. The man was standing just inside the door. In exchange for the jar of water, he gave Mary Martin the contents of his pockets. Then he removed the cover of the jar, allowed himself one careful swallow, and sealed it again.

“You don’t look well,” said Mary Martin. “Please come, sit down.”

His skin was dead-white, gray around the deep-set eyes, his lips were baked and cracked. His hands shook so badly that the water in the jar rippled.

“No, thank you,” he said, backing to the door.

He pushed out into the yard with his shoulder and Mary Martin grasped his elbow and helped him to balance. The wind had risen. His hair, caked with a clay of sweat, dust, and oil, remained secure and stationary, but his dark suit flapped.

The man pointed at the low rebuilt cabin where Father Damien lived, and asked if he lived there still. When Mary Martin said yes, but that just at present he was hearing confessions, the man started off eagerly, striding in a rapid uncontrolled stagger. She stared after him in amazed concern and didn’t think to look into her hand until he had passed beneath her gaze. Not until she turned to enter the convent did she open her fingers. Then she found that she held a piece of paper money folded into a tiny square, a quarter, a penny, a sodality club button, and two car keys on a small aluminum ring.

FORGIVENESS