Bloof!
Yes. There it was. Good thing he didn’t jump out, she muttered. She began to tramp, with her carrying straps and an extra sharp knife, in the direction of the noise.
In fact, that Nanapush did not jump out was not due to his great stubbornness or bravery. When the moose jolted the boat up the lake shore, the tackle that already wound around his leg flew beneath his seat as he bounced upward and three of his finest fishing hooks stuck deep into his buttocks as he landed, fastening him tight. He screeched in pain, further horrifying the animal, and struggled, driving the hooks in still deeper, until he could only hold on to the edge of the boat with one hand, gasping in agony, as with the other he attempted to raise the gun to his shoulder and kill the moose.
All the time, of course, the moose was wildly running. Pursued by this strange, heavy, screeching, banging, booming thing, it fled in dull terror through bush and slough. It ran and continued to run. Those who saw Nanapush, as he passed all up and down the reservation, stood a moment in fascinated shock and rubbed their eyes, then went to fetch others, so that soon the predicament of Nanapush was known and reported everywhere. By then, the moose had attained a smooth loping trot, however, and passed with swift ease through farmsteads and pastures, the boat flying up and then disappearing down behind. Many stopped what they were doing to gape and yell.
Mr. Onesides saw it and said that his attention was attracted by a blast from the gun of Nanapush and that he saw the moose stop still in its tracks a moment, as though struck by a sudden thought. As there was nothing to aim at for Nanapush but the rump of the huge animal, he had indeed stung its hindquarters. But other than providing it an unpleasant sensation, all Nanapush succeeded in doing was further convincing the moose that he’d best flee, which he did suddenly, so that the boat jumped high in the air and cracked down as the moose sped forward, again, raising a groan from Nanapush that Onesides would always remember for the flat depth of its despair. Still, although he ran for his rifle, he was too late to shoot the moose and free poor Nanapush.
One day passed. In his moose-drawn fishing boat, Nanapush toured every part of the reservation that he’d ever hunted, and saw everyone he’d ever known, and then went to places he hadn’t visited since childhood. At one point, a family digging cattail roots were stunned to see the boat, the moose towing it across a smaller slough, and a man slumped over inside, for by now poor Nanapush had given up and surrendered to the pain which, at least, he said later, he shared with his beast of the shot rump. He’d already tried to leave the best part of his butt on the canoe bench, but no matter how he tried he couldn’t tear himself free, so he had given up and went to sleep as he always did in times of stress, hoping that he’d wake up with an idea of how to end his tortured ride.
He did have a notion. He lifted the gun and this time tried to shoot the rope, which, being a target nowhere near the size of the moose’s great hairy, heaving cheeks, he missed, again stinging the moose who, as he told it later, soon commenced shooting back at him, the moose pellets zinging to the right and left as the moose began again to run, heading now for the very most remote parts of the reservation, where poor Nanapush was convinced he surely would die. He began to talk to the moose as they strode along—the words jounced out of him.
“Niiji!” he cried, “my brother, slow down!”
The animal flicked back an ear to catch the sound of the thing’s voice, but kept on covering ground.
“I will kill no more!” declared Nanapush. “I now throw away my gun!” And he cast it aside after kissing the barrel and noting well his surroundings. As though it sensed and felt only contempt for the man’s hypocrisy, the moose snorted and kept moving.
“I apologize to you,” cried Nanapush, “and to all of the moose I ever killed and to the spirit of the moose and the boss of the moose and to every moose that has lived or will ever live in the future.”
As though slightly placated, now, the moose slowed to a walk and Nanapush was able, finally, to snatch a few berries from the bushes they passed, to scoop up a mouthful of water from the slough, and to sleep, though by moonlight the moose still browsed and walked, toward some goal, thought Nanapush, delirious with exhaustion and pain, perhaps the next world. Perhaps this moose was sent by the all-clever creator to fetch Nanapush along to the spirit life in this novel way. Just as he was imagining such a thing, the first light showed and by that ever strengthening radiance he saw that his moose indeed had a direction and intention and that object was a female moose of an uncommonly robust size, just ahead, peering over her shoulder in a way apparently bewitching to male moose, for Nanapush’s animal uttered a squeal of bullish intensity that was recognizable to Nanapush as pure lust.
Nanapush now wished he had aimed for the huge swinging balls of the moose and he wept with exasperation.
“Should I be subjected to this? This too? In addition to all that I have suffered?” And Nanapush cursed the moose, cursed himself, cursed the fishhooks, cursed the person who so carefully and sturdily constructed the boat that would not fall apart, and as he cursed he spoke in English, as there are no true swear words in Ojibwemowin, and so it was Nanapush and not the devil whom Zozed Bizhieu heard passing by her remote cabin at first light, shouting all manner of unspeakable and innovative imprecations, and it was Nanapush, furthermore, who was heard howling in the deep slough grass, howling though more dead at this point than alive, at the outrageous acts he was forced to witness there, before his nose, as the boat tipped up and his bull moose in the extremity of his passion loved the female moose with ponderous mountings and thrilling thrusts that swung Nanapush from side to side but did not succeed in dislodging him from the terrible grip of the fishhooks. No, that was not to happen. Nanapush was bound to suffer for one more day before the satisfied moose toppled over to snore and members of the rescue party Margaret had raised crept up and shot the animal stone dead in its sleep.
The moose, Margaret found, for she had followed with her meat hatchet, had lost a distressing amount of fat and its meat was now stringy from the long flight and sour with a combination of fear and spent sex, so that in butchering it she winced and moaned, traveled far in her raging thoughts, imagined sore revenges she would exact upon her husband.
In the meantime, Father Damien, who had followed his friend as best he could in the parish touring car, was able to assist those who emerged from the bush. He drove Nanapush, raving, to Sister Hildegarde who was adept at extracting fishhooks. At the school infirmary, Sister Hildegarde was not upset to see the bare buttocks of Nanapush sticking straight up in the air. She swabbed the area with iodine and tested the strength of her pliers. With great relief for his friend and a certain amount of pity, Father Damien tried to make him smile. “Don’t be ashamed of your display. Even the Virgin Mary had two asses, one to sit upon and the other ass that bore her to Egypt.”
Nanapush only nodded gloomily and gritted his teeth as Sister Hildegarde pushed the hook with the pliers until the barbed tip broke through his tough skin, then clipped the barb off and pulled out the rest of the hook.
“Is there any chance,” he weakly croaked once the operation was accomplished, “that this will affect my manhood?”
“Unfortunately not,” said Hildegarde.
The lovemaking skills of Nanapush, whole or damaged, were to remain untested until after his death. For Margaret took a long time punishing her husband. She ignored him, she browbeat him, but worst of all, she cooked for him.
It was the winter of instructional beans, for every time Margaret boiled up a pot of rock-hard pellets drawn from the fifty-pound sack of beans that were their only sustenance beside the sour strings of meat, she reminded Nanapush of each brainless turning point last fall at which he should have killed the moose but did not.
“And my,” she sneered then, “wasn’t its meat both tender and sweet before you ran it to rags?”
She never boiled the beans quite soft enough, either, for she could will her own body to process the toughest
sinew with no trouble. Nanapush, however, suffered digestive torments of a nature that soon became destructive to his health and ruined their nightly rest entirely, for that was when the great explosive winds would gather in his body. His boogidiwinan, which had always been manly, but yet meek enough to remain under his control, overwhelmed the power of his ojiid, and there was nothing he could do but surrender to their whims and force. At least it was a form of revenge on Margaret, he thought, exhausted, near dawn. But at the same time, he worried that she would leave him. Already, she made him sleep on a pile of skins near the door so as not to pollute her flowered mattress.
“My precious one,” he sometimes begged, “can you not spare me? Boil the beans a while longer, and the moose, as well. Have pity!”
She only raised her brow and her glare was a slice of knifelike light. Maybe she was angriest because she’d softened toward him during that moose ride across the lake, and now she was determined to punish him for her uncharacteristic lapse into tenderness. At any rate, one night she boiled the beans only long enough to soften their skins and threw in a chunk of moose that was coated with a green mold she claimed was medicinal, but which tied poor Nanapush’s guts in knots.
“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.