The Antelope Wife: A Novel Part 2

"Bring them home, please protect them," prayed Peace to the spirits of her ancestors who had peered over their shoulders at her in the train station.

Chapter 4.

The Blitzkuchen 1918. END OF THE WAR. So many spirits out, wandering, including Augustus Roy, who looked down into the sum of money he was counting one day and saw a shade of blue he had never seen before roar open marvelously into another life. And so he died. His wives mourned him, but not as deeply as Peace, who really did cut most of her hair off and slash her arms before she felt any better. It helped when she found out all three of her brothers would return.

When the youngest, Shawano, came home from the land of the frog people he was half spirit, too. But that is often how warriors are when they return. Booch had served in the supply lines and come down with the Spanish flu. Charlie had spent the war in an army kitchen. Only young Shawano got decorated with a medal and a ribbon. Only he felt crazy. Ogichidaa, they called him, now, warrior. Ogichidaa had lost his best buddy, who in the warrior's blood relation was more like another self and could not be adequately revenged.

"Sa tayaa," he cried suddenly. They were sitting at Asin's house. "I tried. I made his mark on every German soldier that I killed!"

"Was it a deep mark?" hissed wrinkled-up Asin. The old man had become so violent in his thoughts he seemed unhinged to most people. For instance his opinion was that the Americans should make all the Germans into slaves. Ship the whole country full of people here and teach them to be humble. That's how they would have done it in the old days. He couldn't get over how he had heard our government gave back most of their territory. Bagakaabi, whose name implied that he saw clearly, was more reasonable and said everyone was humbled by this war. He had heard it took a wheelbarrow full of money there to buy a loaf of bread.

"They get to eat bread?" cried Asin. "While the Indians must eat bannock?"

Bagakaabi shrugged. He loved bannock.

Ogichidaa was a slim and handsome boy when he left, but his look when he returned was reeling and deathly. His face was puffed up and his eyes were like pits in his face. He had a thousand-year-old stare.

"My buddy, he took a stomach wound," said Ogichidaa. "I had to stuff his guts in loops back into his body, and all the time he kept his eyes on me. He couldn't look down. When I had them back in, his teeth were clicking together and he got these words out. 'You sure you got them back in the right order?' I said I did my best. 'Because I don't wanna be p.i.s.sing out my ears,' he said. His voice was real serious and I answered, 'I checked. Your p.i.s.ser made it. No damage, brother.' He seemed real happy with that statement. The ground shook around us. Close one landed. I lost my hold and they all poured out of him again."

Ogichidaa was exhausted and his brothers urged him to sleep. Before he slept, though, he gave Asin a funny look and repeated himself, "Old man, I did what you told me. I sent as many as I could with him after that to be his slaves in the land of spirits. It didn't help."

Old Asin looked at him long, deeply, watching.

"Maybe," said Asin at last, "you need to do the next thing."

"Which is what?"

Asin hunched into his gnarled body and then tapped a leathery bone finger on the pocket of his shirt just over his heart.

"Replace your war brother with a slave brother."

The Capture Ogichidaa mulled the idea over, took it in slowly. It was not a bad idea, he thought, a way to kill the rage that soured his heart and woke him in the night. A way to erase the picture of those guts. But he could hardly go all the way back to Germany, and the idea of taking revenge on a German immigrant who'd been turned into an American citizen seemed an act of weakness. In the morning he asked Asin where he could get a German.

"Oh, they're all over the place here," Asin said, sweeping at the air side to side with the flat of his hand. "All over here like frogs. Perhaps they are called Omakakii-wininiwag because they popped out of nowhere," said the old man. "In the beginning, there were whole village tribes of them, we heard, shipped over here to tear up our land. They took it over. They killed it. Most of the land is now half dead. Plowed up.

"There is also a whole bunch of defeated soldiers who shipped over because of that money problem. They want to stay in this country now. They moved up north and work the timber, two on a cross-end saw. Ditch timber roads. Learn only swear English. Walk along piercing the earth with pointed iron bars, tamping in seedlings with their shoes."

Asin smiled. "You could take one of those."

ON A MOONLESS NIGHT then, Ogichidaa sneaked into the lumber camp.

The men were summoned the next morning to his house.

"I stole the German at night," said Ogichidaa. "I crept right up to the barracks without detection."

"Without detection." Asin gloated. He was excited by this ancient working out of the old-way vengeance, pleased young Ogichidaa had taken his advice. He nodded at Booch and Charlie, grinning. The old man's teeth were little black stubs-all except for a gold one. That tooth glinted with a mad sheen.

"I dropped the gunnysack over the Kraut's head when he came outside to take a leak," Ogichidaa went on. "Bound his arms behind him. Got him right back through the fence and from there, here."

Silent, they looked at the figure sitting bound in the corner. Barefooted. Wearing a baggy shirt and pants of no particular color. The man, his head covered by the gunnysack, was quiet with a peculiar stillness that was not exactly fear. Nor was it sleep. He was awake in there. The men could feel him straining to see through the loose weave over his face.

Bagakaabi got spooked by the way the German composed himself, and suddenly he couldn't stand it. He went over and ripped away the gunnysack hood. Maybe some expected to see a crazy eagle-how they stare mad into the air from their warrior hearts of ice-but they did not see an eagle. Instead, blinking out at them from spike tufts of hair, a chubby boy face, round-cheeked, warm and sparkling brown eyes. The men all reared back at the unexpected sense of warmth and goodwill from the German's pleasant smile.

"Hay', " they exclaimed. Expectation was something more impressive than a porcupine man! His hands were chubby, his skin almost as brown as theirs. Around his circle eyes his stubby hair poked out like a quill headdress. His smell-that came off him too now-was a raw and fearful odor like the ripe armpit stink of porcupine. He moved slowly like that creature, his deep eyes shining with tears. He took them all in one by one and then cast his eyes down, bashful, as though he would rather be under the porch or inside his own burrow.

"Babagiwayaaneshkimod atoon imaa oshtigwaaning ji-gaajigaadenig omaji-dengway," said Asin hurriedly.

"No," said Ogichidaa, hurt and surprised at the meekness of his catch.

"Grusse!" The prisoner bowed. His voice was pie sweet and calm as toast. "Was ist los? Wo sind wir?"

n.o.body answered his words even though he next made known by signs-an imaginary scoop to his mouth, a washing motion on his rounded stomach-his meaning.

"Haben Sie Hunger?" he asked hopefully. "Ich bin ein sehr guter Kuchenchef."

"Gego bizindawaaken waa-miigaanik!" Asin's att.i.tude was close to panic. The kitchen window shed frail light on an old wooden table, the stove in the background of the room, the prisoner blinking.

Shawano picked up the gunnysack uncertainly, ready to lower it back onto the porcupine man's head.

"Nishi! Aapijinazh! Nishwanaaji' a'aw maji-ayi'aawish ji-minonawe'angwaa gigichi-Anishinaabeminaanig gaa-onjigiyang." Asin now spoke in a low and threatful tone. At his command, everyone fell silent. The old man was behaving in a way that did not befit an elder. Yet the younger men had been taught to respect him.

"Why should we do that?" asked Bagakaabi. "He can't be a slave if he is dead."

"It is the only way to satisfy the ghosts," Asin answered.

"Haben Sie alle hunger, bitte? Wenn Sie hunger haben, werde ich fur sie einen Kuchen machen. Versuches mal, bitte." The prisoner offered to bake for them. He spoke modestly and pleasantly, though he seemed now in his wary poise to have understood the gravity of Asin's behavior. He seemed, in fact, to know that his life might hang in the balance. Although Asin had spoken his cruel command in the old language, his ferocity was easily translated. With a burst of enormous energy, the German tried to make good on his offer using peppy eating motions and rubbing his middle with more vigor.

Booch, always eager for food, finally nodded. He knew the word kuchen. "Why not let him prepare his offering? We will test it and see if his sweet cake can save his life."

He said this jokingly, but Asin's gleam and nod told that he took the baking test seriously and looked forward to the German's failure.

The First Metaphorical Cake The porcupine man drew a tiny diagram or symbol for each thing he needed. Little oval eggs, flour in a flour sack, nuts of a rumpled shape, strawberries, sugar, and so on. By now, even though the men had no money extra, they had to go along and so they all dug deep into their hands, socks, the liners of their shoes, and the rabbit fur inside their moccasins. They sent Charlie to the traders' for these things and he returned with his lower lip stuck out and fire in his eyes. He thought this whole plan was wrong and yet he was curious about the cooking aspect, the baking, which would in time become his pa.s.sion.

The stove. The German seemed to have a problem with that. He fiddled and poked it and tried to figure out its quirks. The brothers picked red berries for him, though, ode'iminan, heart berries, from the clearings. So fresh and dewy and tender. The sweet red melted in your mouth. Charlie gave the prisoner a makak full of the berries, and was surprised by the emotional way he accepted the offering. The German lifted the container in his hand, inhaled the fragrance of the berries. His dark round eyes filled again and this time spilled over with tears.

"Erdbeeren," he said, softly, with mistaken and genuine sincerity. "I f.u.c.k you thank you. Klaus. Klaus." He pointed at his chest.

The men stood there in the kitchen before the stove and looked down at their feet, at the floor. Charlie reached out and shook the German's hand, or paw, which he saw with a certain fear had fur on the back.

"Gaawiin niminwendanziinan omaamiishininjiin misawaa-go minode'ed," he said.

Charlie's kindness was tinder to Asin's low fury. Asin flared up, insisted that Klaus had just delivered a most clever insult veiled in ignorance, fixed Klaus with a crushing stare. Asin bared his black teeth and gave a startling snarl. Booch and Shawano stepped out the door. Klaus waved Asin and Bagakaapi away from the smoking woodstove abruptly and began his efforts. Charlie stayed.

From inside the kitchen, then, where Charlie had stubbornly placed himself, the others got as much of the story as they could, or maybe as anyone was ever supposed to know.

First, the prisoner pounded almonds to a fine paste between two lake rocks. Took the eggs, just the yellows in a little tin cup. He found a long piece of wire and cleverly twisted it into a beater of some sort. He began to work things over, the ingredients. Using the bottom of an iron skillet, he ground pods and beans and spices into the nuts. He added the sugar spoon by spoon.

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 ap.r.o.n strings and swung her toward the door. She flew as though shot from a bow. Limber as a wildcat, Klaus poised, light on the b.a.l.l.s 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. n.o.body said a thing. Asin's eyes grew b.l.o.o.d.y. 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, c.o.c.ked 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 a.s.sumed 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 s.p.a.ce 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 gra.s.s 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 sh.e.l.l 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.

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 pa.s.s on now to my relatives. You. So listen up, animos.h.a.g. 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 s.p.a.ce, 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 a.s.sociation 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.