The Last Report on the Miracles at Little No Horse Read online

  Nanabozho walked along until he came to a place where there was a wolf.

  “Brother,” said Nanabozho, “come here!”

  But the wolf would not, saying, “You only want to kill me!”

  “No, my little brother,” said Nanabozho, “I want to hire you.”

  Well, that sounded interesting to the wolf, so he came around.

  “I want to give you the job of going everywhere to summon all the wolves and the foxes, oh yes, all the best-looking of the wolves and foxes, to come and see me, on this little hill. I have taken the Jesus road, my friends, and I wish to preach to you all!”

  Then once the wolves and foxes arrived, he spoke some more.

  “My brothers,” he said, “these things I am going to tell you are good, and you should accept them indeed! If you take on this religion, no one can kill you. It’s true. But if you do not believe along with me, you will surely die. Now look what I have for you!”

  Nanabozho displayed the poisoned lumps of fat.

  “If anyone eats of this, long will he live!” declared Nanabozho.

  Then the wolves all threw themselves forward, hoping to live long, and Nanabozho dispensed the fat.

  A wolf would come forward, eat the fat, then go. One by one, Nanabozho placed the fat in their mouths, and the foxes, too, until the fat was all gone. And then Nanabozho held up his hand and blessed all the wolves, saying, “Long may you live!” And as he said this and blessed them, the wolves leaped in the air and howled, turned twice in agony, and fell back to earth dead.

  That’s the way Nanabozho gave religious instruction to the wolves. After he saved their souls, he skinned them all and the foxes, too, and as he walked to the French traders carrying their skins, he laughed and laughed. Truly, he said, I have converted them—to money.

  That’s all. Mi’sago’i!

  * * *

  Fleur had entered the cabin to hear the end of the story, and with a cold sarcasm laughed at the unmanly priest and asked what he thought of that?

  Father Damien, for a fact, looked extremely thoughtful. He said nothing as he sipped the tea, and at last he answered that he thought the story was extremely clever but that, if he read the meaning right, the Anishinaabeg were not as stupid as wolves nor did Father Damien need to skin them in order to pay his debts. Nanapush looked happily at the priest now, and started feeling glad he was alive, if only to be presented with the challenge of rattling a promising opponent. At the same time, just to speak of those lumps of fat made him so hungry that his stomach stabbed and groaned. He tried to kill the hunger with another swallow of tea.

  GAAG

  After they had finished the last drop of tea, the three looked gloomily at the walls of the little cabin, as though the tamped poles would somehow leak porridge. As they gazed with a sad, fixed blankness into their private fantasies of food, they heard a sound. At the very first scrape of this sound, Nanapush held up his hand. “Bizindan,” he whispered. He looked at Fleur, and then upon his face there appeared the happy wonder of a child discovering a stash of sweets. The priest listened, mystified. The sound occurred again, right at the southeast corner of the cabin. It was, there was absolutely no mistake about it, a definitive chomp. A munch. A distinct chewing sound.

  “Gaag,” said Fleur, and she and Nanapush dropped down to their knees, crept across the dirt floor wearing such gleeful looks that Father Damien, caught up in their madness, crawled behind them out of intense curiosity. Their stealthy whispers inhibited him from asking any questions. Anyway, they’d forgotten about him. They went outside, stood, slowly sneaked around the side of the cabin and found there an enormous porcupine. Startled, it removed its teeth from the log side of the house and backed away, eyeing the humans with a grave and glistening black stare, apprehensive and somehow, thought Father Damien, pleading.

  Fleur gently crept near the animal, brushed her hands over the porcupine’s quills so they all lay one way. Suddenly she grasped it and raised it by its ferocious tail, at which point it gave a very human gasp, a surprised eeee! With a giant’s swing, she brained the creature on the side of the house, and then knelt with her knife and gutted it in the yard.

  In the past few weeks, in the extremities of hunger, Father Damien was surprised to find how many things he’d eaten that he’d formerly considered inedible. Even covered with quills, the porcupine was making his mouth water. So he gladly helped Nanapush split wood and build up a fire, stoking it so furiously that the flimsy tin stove turned red hot. Fleur brought in the animal and quickly removed its best quills, dipping her hands in a shovelful of wood ash from time to time in order to increase their grip. When she had the quills she wanted off, she spitted the porcupine and roasted it slowly, singeing the remaining quills into the flesh. That, said Nanapush, gave the gaag a better taste.

  Nanapush talked quickly and happily, now, waiting for their meal. He spoke of oddities and miscellany until the meat was roasted. Then they ate. They ate every little scrap. They ate the toes, they ate the brains. Sucked every bone completely clean. Only the teeth and nails were left when, in a genial well-fed mood, Father Damien asked Nanapush if he knew the man named Kashpaw who had given him a ride to the reservation.

  Nanapush did not answer the simple question at once. He stared at the priest in what seemed a sudden fit of idiocy. His mouth dropped. His eyes dulled. That was a smoke screen. He was thinking. For to his great delight, there it was, it all spread from that one question. Nanapush had at last found a way through the thicket of words to the end he sought. And it was easy, so easy, it all lay ripe before him now.

  Changing his expression suddenly to a look of intelligent interest, Nanapush said that of course, Kashpaw was as close as a brother. He told Father Damien that he and Kashpaw had been through much together in their youth, had hunted near and far, through the northern plains, and even lived for a short time in the same lodge. He went on to say that Kashpaw and he were half brothers and that a more distant relative of Nanapush’s was married to him.

  “Of course,” said Nanapush casually, “he has so many wives that this one relative, a niece of my uncle, her name is Fishbone, is hardly noticed in that woman-wealthy lodge.”

  “Wives?” said Father Damien.

  “Oh yes,” said Nanapush.

  “How many?”

  “Let me see . . .” Nanapush proceeded ostentatiously to try to remember exactly, to count on his fingers.

  “Four left now. That’s all.”

  Father Damien was still not shocked, but he was at least intrigued, and as he was clearly stumped for what to say, Nanapush was satisfied. Besides, he was just beginning the slow work of influencing the priest, and he didn’t want to frighten him off. Therefore, he chose other subjects for a short time until the priest himself returned to the question of the wives.

  “My . . . colleague”—Father Damien coughed; he was referring to the actual Father Damien, now long buried in the shadow of a tree—“was concerned about the problem of irregular unions. This must be what he meant. How are such things dealt with here? Who has the authority?”

  Nanapush, though thrilled to be asked the very question he had sought, still did not reel in the priest, but let him drag the line. Again, pretending not to have heard, he spoke of his empty trapline and the lack of good weather until Father Damien grew impatient and tried once more.

  “The authority on such matters,” he reminded.

  “Ah!” Nanapush pretended to collect himself. “Pardon an old man. Here is the truth. Father Hugo was forced to break many an illegal liaison, and his zeal was well-known. But since he died, well, my friend Kashpaw moved down here and got bold. Even some of us old traditionals,” he said, in a fit of outrageous betrayal, “think that he should get rid of some of his wives!”

  “Eyah! So you can have one!”

  Fleur was outraged by the old man’s cunning attempt at sanctimony, and in spite of her hatred of black robes she tried to warn the priest. If Father Damien had only listened, she gav
e away the transparent strategy right there. “Don’t you see, he just wants a wife all for himself? He’s willing to break up his friend’s life just to do it.”

  But Father Damien was dazed with the unaccustomed feeling of a full stomach. Nanapush pulled a long face, though, and answered he only wished that he could handle a wife, but that was impossible in his present weakness.

  It wasn’t that Nanapush ever wanted to hurt his friend, or that family, or to lay blame for all that would happen on Father Damien. Nanapush was incapable of imagining such things as would occur. He knew very well that Kashpaw’s situation had to give, somehow or another. Though the arrangement was based on complicated practicalities and all were seemingly content in Kashpaw’s lodge, a change was coming. Drawing near. No, it wasn’t that Nanapush wanted to destroy his friend’s family and peace of mind, or even that he had to have one of those wives (although if given his choice, Nanapush knew which one he’d pick). It was only that he saw what he saw, and the time was coming. It was like when they were boys and they dammed up a stream to collect the fish. Below the dam, they set out a net, ready for when they let the water go. That was all Nanapush wanted to do. When the dam burst, he wanted to be there, downstream, to catch the fish that swam into his hands.

  Now came Father Damien’s first lesson in Ojibwe social planning. When he rose to take his leave, Nanapush gathered his blanket and snowshoes, ready to leave with him. Fleur had crawled into her small, domed sweat lodge, removing herself in disgust. It was a surprise to Father Damien that by listening to Nanapush’s description of Kashpaw’s whereabouts and nodding politely, he had in actuality agreed to visit, but as they walked Nanapush persuaded him that, though it was growing dark, Kashpaw’s place was not far off, right on the way back to the church, in fact, and even better, there was a good possibility that Kashpaw’s family might have food in the kettle, for not only Kashpaw but a couple of his wives and sons were good hunters. Even though his stomach had felt bursting tight an hour before, Father Damien’s starving body had magically emptied it. Food sounded good. So it was that Father Damien was introduced to the endless Ojibwe visit, in which a get-together produces a perfectly convincing reason to seek another, and then that visit another, and so on. Father Damien tramped earnestly along and looked forward to meeting the household of Kashpaws.

  6

  THE KASHPAW WIVES

  1912

  Their arrival at Kashpaw’s camp was greeted with a loud blast from Mashkiigikwe’s powerful rifle. She stood in the clearing, round and strong as an autumn bear, the barrel held upright in one hand. With a fascinated contempt, she observed the priest’s clumsy approach. Obviously, the black robe was still not adept at walking through the bush. Thorns grabbed his cassock. Vines bound his ankles. His steps gave way in pockets of watery snow. Exhaustion gripped him. His weak knees trembled as he slogged behind Nanapush, from whom the wife of Kashpaw had already turned with a groan of disgust.

  Kashpaw lived with his wives in two houses, one a cabin very similar to Nanapush’s, the other an old-style lodge constructed of limber saplings bent over, sunk in the earth, tied, and covered with slabs of bark. There was also a rough pole shed, which housed the horses that Kashpaw loved and bartered. Several milled in a corral; others were picketed by the edge of the woods, where they could paw up old grass through the snow.

  Mashkiigikwe returned, bloody to the elbows. In her hand, she held a dripping piece of the deer she’d just shot. When Kashpaw appeared, she tossed the meat to him and delicately, wielding his razor-sharp hunting knife, he sliced it into strips and offered each of the men a portion in greeting.

  Even without the vast red capote, the yellow turban, the buffalo robe, wool shawls and velvet, Kashpaw was impressive. He was a powerful, hunched, comic-looking man, rather ugly Father Damien supposed, looking at him closely, and yet attractive for his keen eye and a sense of barely withheld mirth. The priest and Nanapush entered the smaller bark lodge behind Kashpaw. He began singing a soft tune in a mournful and teasing tone. Inside the shadowy large birch-bark lodge, well behind him and seemingly unaffected by the cold, two women worked at some task with a concentrated air.

  “Boozhoo!”

  At his word, one of the wives poked her head at the men. She wore a red knitted hat that flopped over her brow like a crest, her nose was sharp, and Father Damien could not help thinking of her as an angry woodpecker. Of the two, she was much older, and she seemed to have been disturbed in the midst of a satisfying tirade, for she jumped up and laughed harshly at her sister wife, who suddenly rushed from the hut, stifling a racking sob.

  Nanapush and Father Damien settled themselves on a pile of skins and blankets, and Kashpaw made all of the gestures of a generous host while Father Damien appreciated all he saw and ate like an affable guest. Nanapush sat back. He made an effort to stop his tongue, to contain himself. It was important to proceed with delicacy. Not to give away his plan, but to let it unfold as if it were natural, in the course of things. He told himself that all he had to do was put the priest into the situation, and wait. Priests and extra wives were mutually opposed, he had seen it before. This priest was of course much younger, oddly feminine, and a good deal subtler than Father Hugo, but that his intentions were fundamentally those of a priest, Nanapush had no doubt.

  While he sat at Kashpaw’s fire and waited, Nanapush appreciated the wife of his friend, the hunter who’d just shot the deer, the one whom he intended to take for his own when the dust settled. Mashkiigikwe’s legs were oak fence posts and her neck, solid, was packed with a power that surged up through her body and flashed from her eyes. He drifted in admiration as she tore wolfishly at a piece of deer liver with strong little teeth, and chewed each piece with a thoughtful frown, as though she was masticating some inner meaning from her food. Yet, when well fed, she could be very jolly, too. Her singing voice was of a surprising lilt and softness, and her songs were often children’s games. It charmed Nanapush to watch her and spurred him to help matters along.

  Children popped out, hair sticking straight up. They were deliciously round, seemingly healthy, and completely naked. Two ran out just as they were into the frigid air and, chased by the oldest wife, dove back into the lodge, bearing in their fists some tiny tidbit from the carcass. And then two men showed up, young men, older sons of the sharp-tongued Margaret. A boy named Nector glanced inside, took in the configuration, nodded, and left. A quiet woman emerged, fully pregnant, from a pile of robes and arranged the children carefully before her. She was softer, plainer than the others, and moved with extreme grace, even pregnant and huge. She rubbed the faces of the children, patted their hands, and when she was given a piece of the venison she spitted morsels of it on green sticks, elegantly roasted the meat, and cooled each bit with her breath before offering it to each child. They obeyed her with huge gravity. As they chewed, she ate, too, and told them a teasing story in her language.

  Her name was Fishbone, and Father Damien later baptized her Marie. Margaret, of course, already had a chimookoman name and was a good Catholic, except in respect to her married life. The woman she had caused to cry, Quill, was later christened Marie as well. As for Mashkiigikwe, Father Damien never got a chance to name her, for she cleft to her own religion, and would have knocked the dipper of blessed water from his hand.

  The priest sat silently and simply watched the goings-on around him, while the other men talked over old times. It certainly was not Father Damien’s intention to walk into the family and make a declaration of any sort, but Nanapush kept giving him encouraging sideways glances, then somewhat sterner nods, even little gestures. Finally, Nanapush purposely let a lull develop in the conversation, which he’d artfully maneuvered toward his topic of interest by inquiring about the health of each wife, and in that small silence he motioned toward the priest.

  “Let the priest speak,” he encouraged.

  “If you’d ever shut up,” said Margaret, “the priest would have spoken before.”

  “My f
riend Nanapush has such a kind heart,” said Kashpaw, “that he had to ask after each one of the women.” Kashpaw glanced shrewdly at Margaret, and she gave a sour little suspicious frown.

  “Funny that he is so interested in our health.” She turned away. She was unripe gooseberry, pure vinegar. Margaret’s presence puckered up the room like a basket of chokecherries. Her glance dried laughter, her hard snakelike impenetrable glare shook men to the core but also, in Kashpaw’s case anyway, caused a certain shiver of interest. There was something both frightful and seductive about her cold temperament. As for Kashpaw, he allowed as it was odd that Nanapush was suddenly so very solicitous, but he sat back with amusement and said nothing else, for he knew very well the reason for his old friend’s attentive inquiries. They were nearly brothers, after all, and had sat with their foreheads touching, smoked their pipes in grief over many deaths. Kashpaw knew the lay of his friend’s mind and understood that he was lonely, that his bed was cold, his arms empty, his wiinag bored, his days given to sad memory. Kashpaw knew his own wives were now more than a source of envy, they were a possible selection pool for Nanapush himself if this priest, who sat with them now trying not to look bewildered, prevailed upon him to give them up. Oh yes, Kashpaw had no illusions. Yet he didn’t hold these things against Nanapush but accepted the scheming as an inevitable part of his friend’s nature. The fact was, Kashpaw enjoyed anticipating Nanapush and thwarting his plans, so when the priest failed to respond to the pointed hints he dropped, Kashpaw was happy to further distract the priest. He asked questions, as if he was considering conversion. Can Jesus kill a windigo? Why did their god kill Father Hugo? He enjoyed the slow attention that Father Damien gave the questions, and even more, the steaming frustration of his friend beside him. He would have a good laugh later on with Margaret over the way Nanapush prodded and tried to steer the priest toward his purpose.