Read Online The Last Report on the Miracles at Little No Horse by Louise Erdrich - Free Book Online
Authors: Louise Erdrich
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rats. Skeletal twisted machinery from tattered farms. A baby carriage with no baby in it. Pieces of houses. A basket of eggs afloat. A priest hanging on a branch.
Not far up the river Agnes DeWitt came upon poor Father Damien Modeste, whom she freely admitted she disliked even as she pitied him now. The drowned man was snagged in a tree, gaping down at her with a wide-eyed and upside-down quizzicality. The wreckage of the rectory auto was already sucked upstream, if he had taken the auto. She didn’t know. Perhaps he was on foot. For a long while, she sat near the tree with the body, considering. She prayed for a sign—what to do? But she already knew. Once she was ready, she acted. She dislodged the priest with a branch that she used like a hook, pulling him down. His body, weighted like a sand-filled sack, shook the loose roots of the tree as it struck the ground. The man was green-white, and in his death more powerful than in life, more severe. Agnes had no way of digging him a grave but to use her two hands. The ground beneath was so soft, so saturated, that she was able to scrape out a rough hole to fit him, though it took her the day. All the time that she worked, the certainty grew.
It was nearly twilight before she rolled him in. Her heavy nightgown was his shroud. His clothing, his cassock, and the small bundle tangled about him, a traveler’s pouch tied underneath all else, Agnes put on in the exact order he had worn them. A small sharp knife in that traveler’s pocket was her barber’s scissors—she trimmed off her hair and then she buried it with him as though, even this pitiable, he was the keeper of her old life.
She could think of nothing to which she was required to return. In fact, as though the cold water had flooded her brain, her memory, again, was a distressing patchwork of eroding islands. Berndt was gone, she knew that, and she remembered that she had loved him, she thought. Also gone: the blue horse, her lovely lattice dress, her leather boots, and even her chickens were probably drowned, too. She could at least recall the chickens in reassuring detail, each of them particular and opinionated. The hens made such a proud fuss over each new egg. Even in the muck, covering the dead priest, she nearly laughed, thinking of her chickens. Then she breathed out, troubled.
There was something, something . . . it was huge and it belonged to her, and it was vast. . . . When she tried to grasp at it the form faded like a dream. A grand dream, prophetic and important. Lines, black dots. She shook her head. Whatever it was, gleaming for a moment, shiny black, had it to do with her hands? She flexed her fingers doubtfully. Sound? She hummed a few bars of Die Lorelei, German Lied . Was she a singer? She cleared her throat, tried her voice. No, that definitely wasn’t it. Well, whatever it was, it was gone. She had no way of knowing that she had lost the vast gift of her music, but she did have the sense that the stark, searching motions of her hands were part of some larger complex of actions. Well, she shrugged, let them tingle away on the ends of her arms. Let them drum, and step-march and ripple. There was nothing to hold her back, now, from living the way she had dreamed of in the hot dark of her loss.
When Father Damien’s grave was tamped over, she stood hungrily in the wreckage as the dusk winds blew the clouds aside. The clear sky revealed its map, star after star, until the world was again marked out for her. In the priest’s hidden pouch there was money, some papers, a crust of cheese. A biscuit spongy with river water. She squeezed out the biscuit and ate the handful of crushed wet crumbs. The priest’s clothes were wool. Though damp, she was warm enough. In time, the moon bobbed up in a cool blur to show her way, and then, under its light, Agnes began to walk north, into the land of the Ojibwe, to the place on the reservation where he had told her he was bound.
L ITTLE N O H
Not far up the river Agnes DeWitt came upon poor Father Damien Modeste, whom she freely admitted she disliked even as she pitied him now. The drowned man was snagged in a tree, gaping down at her with a wide-eyed and upside-down quizzicality. The wreckage of the rectory auto was already sucked upstream, if he had taken the auto. She didn’t know. Perhaps he was on foot. For a long while, she sat near the tree with the body, considering. She prayed for a sign—what to do? But she already knew. Once she was ready, she acted. She dislodged the priest with a branch that she used like a hook, pulling him down. His body, weighted like a sand-filled sack, shook the loose roots of the tree as it struck the ground. The man was green-white, and in his death more powerful than in life, more severe. Agnes had no way of digging him a grave but to use her two hands. The ground beneath was so soft, so saturated, that she was able to scrape out a rough hole to fit him, though it took her the day. All the time that she worked, the certainty grew.
It was nearly twilight before she rolled him in. Her heavy nightgown was his shroud. His clothing, his cassock, and the small bundle tangled about him, a traveler’s pouch tied underneath all else, Agnes put on in the exact order he had worn them. A small sharp knife in that traveler’s pocket was her barber’s scissors—she trimmed off her hair and then she buried it with him as though, even this pitiable, he was the keeper of her old life.
She could think of nothing to which she was required to return. In fact, as though the cold water had flooded her brain, her memory, again, was a distressing patchwork of eroding islands. Berndt was gone, she knew that, and she remembered that she had loved him, she thought. Also gone: the blue horse, her lovely lattice dress, her leather boots, and even her chickens were probably drowned, too. She could at least recall the chickens in reassuring detail, each of them particular and opinionated. The hens made such a proud fuss over each new egg. Even in the muck, covering the dead priest, she nearly laughed, thinking of her chickens. Then she breathed out, troubled.
There was something, something . . . it was huge and it belonged to her, and it was vast. . . . When she tried to grasp at it the form faded like a dream. A grand dream, prophetic and important. Lines, black dots. She shook her head. Whatever it was, gleaming for a moment, shiny black, had it to do with her hands? She flexed her fingers doubtfully. Sound? She hummed a few bars of Die Lorelei, German Lied . Was she a singer? She cleared her throat, tried her voice. No, that definitely wasn’t it. Well, whatever it was, it was gone. She had no way of knowing that she had lost the vast gift of her music, but she did have the sense that the stark, searching motions of her hands were part of some larger complex of actions. Well, she shrugged, let them tingle away on the ends of her arms. Let them drum, and step-march and ripple. There was nothing to hold her back, now, from living the way she had dreamed of in the hot dark of her loss.
When Father Damien’s grave was tamped over, she stood hungrily in the wreckage as the dusk winds blew the clouds aside. The clear sky revealed its map, star after star, until the world was again marked out for her. In the priest’s hidden pouch there was money, some papers, a crust of cheese. A biscuit spongy with river water. She squeezed out the biscuit and ate the handful of crushed wet crumbs. The priest’s clothes were wool. Though damp, she was warm enough. In time, the moon bobbed up in a cool blur to show her way, and then, under its light, Agnes began to walk north, into the land of the Ojibwe, to the place on the reservation where he had told her he was bound.
L ITTLE N O H
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