The Last Report on the Miracles at Little No Horse Page 11

  Father Damien, for his part, finally tired of receiving obscure signals from Nanapush. He made motions, as though to leave, which panicked Nanapush into blurting a reproach.

  “You are the one who is supposed to hold forth!” Losing all sense of reserve, and infuriated by Father Damien’s blank stare, he cried out the louder. “It’s your job to set this married man right! You are the priest!”

  Father Damien’s expression did not change. He merely regarded Nanapush with bemused speculation, seeing the shape of the subterfuge at last—and he was the last one to see it, he was sure. How naïve of him, how willingly he’d been put to the use of this rascal. Visit, indeed! The priest had merely been the tool of this old man’s lust.

  “Nanapush,” said Father Damien, sternly, at last. “I see why you have taken me to visit Kashpaw. It is your hope that I will forbid him to have his wives!”

  “Ii’iih,” said Nanapush, trying to slow himself down now that his game was discovered, “isn’t it the rule of the church? One husband? One wife?”

  “Well, yes,” said Damien unwillingly.

  “See there!”

  “You are putting words into my mouth,” said Father Damien, angry at the entire situation, exasperated with Nanapush. “Of course it is Church doctrine, but Kashpaw does not belong to the Church.”

  Nanapush was suddenly crushed. He had not foreseen this.

  “Do you mean to say it is a question of belonging to the church?” he shrieked. “Then if Kashpaw stays a pagan he can keep his wives?”

  “I have no say in it.” Father Damien was now at the exploding point. He could feel Nanapush trying to herd him through a small gate and stubbornly decided to dump doctrine, sound principle, everything that he should rightly have defended as a priest, in order not to let this man’s woman-hunger steer him too.

  “But he will go to hell!” Nanapush was desperate. “I only fear for my friend, as the hell of the chimookomanag sounds extremely painful.” He then proceeded to paint a picture of the flames and pincers that made Kashpaw and Margaret, and then the entire lodge, roll with laughter.

  “To be quite specific about it, no,” said Father Damien when the hilarity was spent. Even he had been tempted to laugh at the old man’s transparent pretense at saving his friend. “Kashpaw will go to a place called Purgatory where there isn’t much to do, and where he won’t ever see God.”

  “I’ve seen enough chimookomanag anyway,” said Kashpaw, “without having to meet the one responsible for creating the white race.”

  “I’d like to see him,” said Mashkiigikwe. “I’d tell him what I thought of his work.” She spat. Father Damien ignored her, focused on the seething Nanapush, and couldn’t help an unpriestlike thought from coming to him. Earlier, the old man had told him something of his life, and now he decided to use his revelation against him.

  “Nanapush,” said Father Damien, in a voice that got everyone’s attention, “you have told me that you, like Kashpaw, were at one time the husband of several wives. What was your reason?”

  Nanapush reluctantly told his story.

  PATAKIZOOG!

  Nanapush

  Father Damien, said Nanapush, struggling with resentment but soon, as always, caught up in the pleasure of talking, if you must know these things, only listen to my story, for it is the way things happened until only just these last few seasons. Here’s how it goes:

  Our band of people in the north were struck at one time with the spirit of disease. The spirit killed so many of us that when the dead were counted it was found that we survivors numbered less than a quarter of our camp. At the time, I wasn’t born, yet I am told how the mourners sat grieving together, willing themselves to be struck down, too. But the destroying spirit had passed. It was then suggested that they kill themselves, all together for courage, and journey as a band to meet their beloved dead in the land of the aadizokaanag. But then one older, wiser woman, a large woman, strong and powerful, stood upright and spoke.

  “Mii’e etaa i’iwe gay onji shabwii’ing,” she said, “gakina awiyaa ninaandawenimaa chi mazhiweyt. Neshke idash tahnee pahtahneynahwug gey ani bimautiziwaad.”

  There were some who looked shocked, who protested, who were surprised that she would exhort the women to make babies in their sorrow, to order the men to stand up their wiinagag, to endeavor valiantly to procreate until they dropped! But, as she had always been a faithful and virtuous woman, they listened to her. She calmed them down and explained her idea. She pointed out how the Bwaanag, or Dakota, to the south had fought against the whites to try conquering them, but that hadn’t worked out as well as the Ojibwe method of making Michifs and wiisaakodewininiwag. She said what everyone knew, that the Creator gave his people the Ojibwe a special love skill that they could always use in times of crisis.

  “Gakinago giigaa kitchi manitiminin. Ininiwag, dagasaa patakizoog! Ikweywug, pagetinamahgehg! Ahau, anishinabedok, patakizoog! Ahua! Manitadaa!”

  With that, she left them to think. As the evening went on, they all came to see it her way. They saw that if they followed her advice there would be new Anishinaabeg by the turn of three seasons. She had even closed by saying that although her hair was gray, she intended to have more children.

  In fact, that very night, she picked the strongest and handsomest young man left among the people. That young man, Mirage was his name, did a lot of work all that night, and the next and next—but the women kept him fed and warm and they all got pregnant. The old woman was my mother, and the young man, who still lives, was made chief for the great duties he continued to perform with his uncounted wives. He re-created our tribe. So you see, that which you Catholics abhor—our gift, which is to mazhiwe at any time of the day or night—is why we do remain strong and why we have not died out.

  And as you see, Father Damien, your friend Nanapush has only followed his mother’s orders. I am an obedient son.

  That is it! Mi’sago’i!

  * * *

  Kashpaw’s powerful shoulders hunched around his ears as he listened to Nanapush, and his tiny eyes, dark with shrewd hilarity, took in the configuration before him.

  “My reasons are no better or worse than those of Nanapush,” he said. “I, too, am the son of that generous young stud who saved us all, and one of the woman who gladly slept with him. We survived. I am proud of it. Why should I change?”

  Nanapush looked resentfully at Kashpaw, who simply shrugged, and let his eye wander appreciatively over the tight barrel of Mashkiigikwe’s rear.

  “What would the white god want with you, anyway?” he said to Kashpaw. “You’re ugly and full of mischief!”

  Kashpaw made a mocking face.

  “Maybe Jesus wants to know my love medicine.”

  “Howah! More likely you can sell your knowledge to Matchimanito, the bad spirit. Eyah.” Nanapush stroked his chin. “I always wondered how it was you got these women to live with you. Now my question is answered. You worked your love snares.”

  “This is the only love snare I need.” Kashpaw gestured down at his sex. Father Damien kept his gaze steady, though his breathing faltered. Nanapush was not in the least embarrassed, but craned to look critically into Kashpaw’s lap. “Yes, it is shaped like a snare, all right, limp and skinny!”

  “Saaa!” Mashkiigikwe walked up behind Nanapush and swiped at his head with her brush, an ingenious thing, not store-bought but created of clipped porcupine quills fastened into a strip of rawhide.

  “I don’t hunt with snares, sweetheart,” Nanapush crooned to Mashkiigikwe. “I use a nice, long, heavy stick.”

  Mashkiigikwe sneered down on him with amused contempt, stuck her little finger out, and wiggled it at him.

  “All you’re good for is bait,” she declared.

  “Let’s go fish together, then,” said Nanapush.

  “I only fish with my old man.”

  “What do you do,” Nanapush inquired, “those lonely nights when he satisfies your sisters?”

  Mashkiigikwe’s mou
th opened. She glared at him with false outrage.

  “Me,” said Nanapush confidingly, “when I had six wives—”

  “Six!” Mashkiigikwe interrupted, laughing sarcastically. “He was drunk and seeing double!”

  Nanapush ignored her. “I was able to put them all to sleep!”

  “By talking!” said Kashpaw, not in the least embarrassed or offended at Nanapush’s suggestive behavior with his wife. He only snickered to himself and looked significantly at Father Damien, who felt that it was his responsibility to take charge and return the conversation to some semblance of a priestly visit; therefore, he accidentally asked a question that would have repercussions, “Mr. Kashpaw, have you solemnized your vows with any one of your wives?”

  Kashpaw shrugged. What did it matter, his frown said, but one of the wives did step up.

  “Niin sa!”

  It was Margaret, her red hat bobbing. Beneath it her tough face was carefully cut as though with fine tools. Her thinning hair still rose fiercely off her brow and was collected in braids. Her mouth, both sweet and treacherous, now twisted sarcastically. Perhaps, thought Father Damien, she would have been beautiful—if there was any softness to her. Her voice was sharp as thorns. “I forced him to take the Eucharist and then we were joined by Father Hugo.” She looked furiously from side to side, as though someone would challenge her.

  “Kashpaw says they scrap like badgers,” said Nanapush. “The other wives send them from the house when they fight. She bit him once.”

  Kashpaw displayed his arm, a short, thick white scar.

  “Right to the bone,” said Margaret in satisfaction.

  “Have you confessed your sin?” Father Damien asked, irritated by this woman’s smug ferocity.

  “What sin?” she answered. “He deserved it.”

  “Dispensing punishment is God’s task and right,” Damien went on. “In all ways a good spouse is gentle.”

  “And slow,” said Nanapush solemnly to Mashkiigikwe, “and takes his time where it counts, and . . .”

  She turned away and hummed, as though suppressing a yawn.

  “If the priest won’t say it,” Nanapush lost patience at last, “I will say it. Kashpaw! You have too many wives. You’ll have to get rid of at least three!”

  Kashpaw probably expected this outburst, for now, with a dramatic pause, he concentrated on his pipe, drew it from its case of red cloth and fitted its bowl to the carved stem. Once he had done this, everyone around him fell silent and in the vacant quiet the coals of the fire hissed and flared. He loaded the rose-red bowl with pinches of tobacco, then proceeded to light the pipe and to draw meditatively on the stem, emitting two thin streams from the corners of his mouth.

  At last, he set down his pipe and looked reproachfully at his visitors. His expression slowly registered convincing bewilderment. “Wives?” he said. “Who is calling these fine ladies my wives?” Craftily, he feigned insult, knowing that he could be considered in violation of certain laws, not of his tribe’s making, but of the government’s. “I offer shelter to these women beneath my roof.”

  “And I,” said Nanapush, unable to contain himself around Mashkiigikwe, turning to her, “I offer shelter to you in my bed. And since my cabin has a leaky roof, I’ll offer to lie down over you to keep the rain off.”

  He looked directly at Mashkiigikwe, who pressed her lips together in pretend fury and then covered herself with indifference.

  Kashpaw ignored this absurd sweet talk and addressed the priest. “I am still interested in this god who kills off his favorites, wipes them from the earth. I would like to know”—here he eyed Damien with frank curiosity—“what makes you walk behind this Jesus?”

  This question of great simplicity caused the priest’s thoughts to wheel together like a flock of startled birds. What indeed? What cause? All Father Damien could do at first was contemplate the pattern of the flock out of which the great logos of his passion was written.

  “It is love,” he said. “That is the sole reason. Love.”

  The others looked uncertian. In the Ojibwe language the word does not exist in the same sense—there is love out of pity, love out of kindness, love that is specific to situations or to the world of stones, which are alive and called our grandfathers. There is also the stingy and greedy love that white people call romantic love. This love of Christ, this love that chose Agnes and forced her to give up her nature as a woman, forced Father Damien to appear to sacrifice the pleasures of manhood, was impossible to define in Ojibwe.

  The boy named Nector ducked into the lodge, sat down next to him, peered at the slight new priest with curiosity. The boy was well dressed, extremely neat, and even wore an expensive-looking, smart, plaid cap. His father finally spoke.

  “I am going to send my boy here, this Nector, to your church. He will investigate,” said Kashpaw. “He will tell me if this spirit is any good. If there is something to this god, I’ll come see for myself.”

  There was a mutter of protest and consternation from the women in the tent, then, and Mashkiigikwe pounded the earth with her feet.

  “Why do the chimookomanag want us?” she growled. “They take all that makes us Anishinaabeg. Everything about us. First our land, then our trees. Now husbands, our wives, our children, our souls. Why do they want to capture every bit?”

  Father Damien, whose task it was to steal even the intangible about the woman beside him, had no answer.

  KASHPAW’S PASSION

  Kashpaw sat on the ground with his sacred pipe before him on a flat pale rock. Gizhe Manito, tell me what to do, he prayed. His heart was so dark and heavy that when he bent over to take up his pipe, it felt like it might tumble from his chest. For all of his power, right now he felt like a frail container. So much conflict was stuffed inside him that his skin seemed too thin to contain it. This young priest’s arrival had disturbed everything. Margaret, his one church-married wife, lambasted the others. Pushed past her limit, Mashkiigikwe threatened to brain the older woman. Fishbone drooped quietly and poor Quill, whose mind was sensitive, desperately clung to her older sister and begged Mashkiigikwe not to leave.

  “The time for this arrangement is long over,” said Mashkiigikwe, “even the other full-blood families are starting to laugh at us. Now that this priest listens to old Nanapush, who as we know is only fishing for a leftover wife from Kashpaw, we’ll have no peace.”

  Kashpaw pressed his knuckles to his eyes. A man’s heart was generous, giving, like a skin that could hold more and more water. But there was always a limit, the last drop, a sorrow that could burst it. Thinking of parting with Mashkiigikwe, of not hearing her bold call as she entered the clearing with good news of her hunting, that was unthinkable. Not to laugh at her jokes or wonder at her kindness to her sister, Quill, whom she had begged Kashpaw to marry in order to save her from facing a situation in which her peculiarities of mind were exploited. No, he could not grasp what would happen if Mashkiigikwe were to leave. And yet Fishbone, pregnant, could not be the one to leave either. Vulnerable as she was, and helpless, she must surely stay. She had no family to return to. Kashpaw tried not to allow the vision of her calm grace to sway him, or his wish to curve her against him at night, to feel the heat of her gravid body. He tried not to think of her long fingers or the sadness in her hidden smile. Fishbone, he greatly loved. And he loved Margaret as well. Her acid humor pleased him and the times she allowed him near, unexpectedly, her startling inventiveness and bold behavior overwhelmed him with admiration. Besides, she was the first of his wives, and they had come to each other very young and as virgins. He could not forget those nights and how they had been the teachers of one another. Their children came one after the next, and each was stronger and more intelligent than he had any right to wish. No, Margaret could not leave. Impossible.

  The leaves rustled inconclusively. His thoughts turned back and forth in the wind. First one side then the other, quick as popple. This young priest possessed a surprising power, one he seemed unaware of
, which made it all the more effective. The young priest had calmed Quill and made her happy. His mere presence had affected the change. After his visit, Quill fell to her knees whenever her mind swelled. By striking her breast and crying out in her own words a message to the priest’s god, she emptied her mind of the deadly thing that possessed it. Nothing else, no doctoring, had helped. But the priest, she liked.

  So that was the first of several arguments Kashpaw’s mind put up. He didn’t listen to the self-serving evidence that his covetous friend Nanapush laid out before him. Even thinking of Nanapush’s transparent scheming, Kashpaw had to laugh. If Mashkiigikwe ever got her hands on the old dog, she would break him like a twig. And Margaret, he doubted anyone but himself could survive the ravages of Margaret’s love. Yet what could he do? It was clear that things must change, only he didn’t have the ability to make a decision. Each loss was impossible. Each solution meant destruction. If he did nothing, would his land be seized? Margaret mentioned that, but was she inventing the possibility for her own purposes?

  Kashpaw grasped his pipe tenderly and touched the warm red bowl of the stone to his forehead. Why did a man have to love so much? The stone cooled in his fingers while he let his mind wander through all of the sorrows of possible answers.

  *

  Agnes tried to tell herself, later, that it was not one thing or another that broke up the Kashpaw family and set chaos into motion. Yet she could not ignore the fact that Father Damien started it with his visit. Later, when she was able to reflect upon the fall of events, Agnes pictured a tornado descending, one composed of political gusts and personal fabrics of wind, a twister in the eye of which rose Pauline Puyat, later to become Sister Leopolda, nemesis and savior.

  Father Damien knew all that happened through the boy with the plaid cap, for Nector Kashpaw did show up, at first to stand uneasily within the nave, and then later to become an altar boy. The boy served Holy Mass each Sunday with great seriousness and precision, a contrast to his increasingly desperate home life, which he recounted to Father Damien over the post-Mass rolls and meat, tea and dried apples that Damien provided and Nector ate with strict intensity.