The Last Report on the Miracles at Little No Horse (49 page)

When her efforts to meld the two cultures failed, she chose decisively for the one true church and diverted the fever in her soul to the zeal of conversion. She was assiduous in her attempts to lead her people to the knowledge of the Holy Trinity, and used whatever means were at hand to effect enlightenment. Sometimes, it is true, she overstepped the bounds that may be termed proper. These were crimes of passion for the faith, however, and as she continued in her growth she began to understand just how to channel the great zeal she felt into more effective ploys. While in Argus, North Dakota, she took her perpetual vows and then returned to Little No Horse to continue her missionary work among her own people, one of whom she had murdered—

Father Jude paused, blinked at the word, then shook himself, stared fixedly at his pen, and continued writing fiercely.

Granted, she killed out of revenge for his unwanted sexual attentions, but she actually used a sacred rosary to strangle him. Plus she bore his child and then repudiated the girl—no—lived near and tortured her! Leopolda poured boiling water from a kettle onto the girl’s back and then, in an act of shocking viciousness she brained the child with an iron poker and stabbed a hole—

He jumped out of his chair in extreme agitation and began to pace back and forth behind his desk. All this even without Lulu’s testimony, without the children Leopolda had bruised and, maybe worse, grievously humiliated in her classroom, the barbarous use she made of shame, anger, sarcasm—all poisons of the spirit, which she possessed every bit as much as the spirit’s gifts. Because of Sister Leopolda, and Lulu had laughed saying this about her teacher, she’d bathed for six weeks in Hilex water to see if her skin would bleach. Because of Leopolda, children endured memories of ear-ringing slaps, of uglier blows, of the jeering fun she made of their poverty and innocence.

So many know God who never would have! Jude argued with himself, hearing the counterargument. So many turned away from God, because the messenger was frightful. He could not write other than the truth, of course, what had he been thinking? Why this deep thirst to make a saint of this appalling woman? Perhaps the miracles were false concoctions, as many are, or they were simply phenomena unexplainable by what we know of physical science. Then again, perhaps they were true miracles. A tremor of frustration shook him. He closed his eyes and into his mind there fell again the image of the intricately beaded oak tree. He must remember to tell Damien, he thought, and allowed his thoughts to relax in a welcome diversion.

Father Damien. The old priest had fixed himself in Jude’s bland emotional landscape as the first interesting, though irritating, feature in a long while, and then of course Lulu had followed. But he wouldn’t think of her. He set his thoughts on the series of conversations he’d taped over the past few weeks. Placing Father Damien in the context of the writing he was embarked on, he realized that Damien’s story was not only fascinating in itself, but also probably revealed now for the first time to him, Father Jude.

There was Father Damien’s incredible beginning, the years of starvation and disease, the tireless love he had shown in pushing through slough and bush to give solace where he could. Damien had not shirked from physical labor, either, or the tedium of raising money for the Church or for the poor. He had learned the language of the Ojibwe and continued to translate hymns and prayers, even before Vatican II. There was a special sweetness in Father Damien’s relationships with his people. When he spoke, especially of Nanapush and Lulu, the warm humor of his love radiated out. His stories were intriguing—the salvation via Eucharistic corporealization—what to make of that? Then there were the visitation by the snakes, the voices, the continual devilish botherment and baiting of Father Damien.

For the first time, now, stirring himself to frown out the window, Jude considered that Father Damien might actually be telling the truth about the devil. Was Father Damien often in some mystical state of ecstasy? And was he telling the truth about the black dog’s temptation? If so, what more deeply generous act of the spirit than to give up his eternal reward for the life of a child? It was an act of Christ-like goodness—no, more. Jesus had suffered for three hours and then gone to his eternal reward, whereas Damien would suffer for eternity—no comparison!

Of course, and here Jude nodded as though to another person’s obvious question, Lulu was his daughter. What father would not do as much? And the fact that she was his daughter, well, that was a sin and a breaking of his vows, a scandal. But then again, Saint Augustine himself had a mistress and a son, and certainly—here Jude caught himself making an odd comparison—an act of generation should be considered with far more indulgence than an act of murder.

It occurred to him that he was, in his mind, setting the life of Damien out in a scheme next to the life of Sister Leopolda, and he wondered why until he thought,
The life of sacrifice, the life of ordinary acts of daily kindness, the life of devotion, humility, and purpose.
The life of Father Damien also included miracles and direct shows of God’s love, gifts of the spirit, humorous incidents as well as tragic encounters and examples of heroic virtue. Saintly, thought Jude almost idly, then caught himself in wonder.

Saintly? Father Damien? Am I writing the wrong Saint’s Passion?

He rose, the papers sliding from his desk in a sighing mass, the note cards fanning from the rubber band binders, books and notebooks toppling.

22

F
ATHER
D
AMIEN’S
P
ASSION

1996

Time at last to end the long siege of deception that has become so intensely ordinary and is, now, almost as incredible to me as it will be to those who find me, providing I let that happen.
Agnes scratched a red-tipped kitchen match on the rough side of its box. Carefully, shredding the paper, she then burned what she had written over a shallow abalone shell. The fine flakes of ash collected. She was getting rid of evidence. Even as she wrote, she burned what she wrote. That was how she knew her time was coming.

We are ever betrayed by our bodies and animal nature,
she went on.
There is no way around the fact that beneath these clothes I am a shocking creature, to be prodded, poked, and marveled at when dead. Defenseless, that’s how I picture it, and the prospect is so truly dreadful that I prefer to disappear. That is the word I use. To disappear means that I will be elsewhere, not just dead, although of course that is the outcome I have accepted.

The decision calmed her fears and allowed her to prepare.

In the cool days of early June, Agnes decided to put her plan into action. Now was the time. She felt abnormally fit, too strong for her age, impossibly vigorous. Now, in this false summer of existence, she would have the strength. She would go to Spirit Island on Matchimanito. The plan was simple. She would invent a travel itinerary, even purchase tickets, pretend to go someplace warm from whence she would not return. Prepare documents to support the fiction of some tragic disappearance. In the meantime, she would steal a rowboat, take aboard a decent vintage of wine, and row herself out to Spirit Island under cover of night. There, she would burn the boat in a merry bonfire, at which she would drink the wine. At some point, when she was very drunk and deliriously pleased with the whole of her existence, she’d decide, No more! She’d drown herself. Cleverly, by the use of heavy stones, she would make sure that her body was anchored to the lake bottom.

Every time she grew faint of heart, she had only to remind herself of the singular horror of posthumous discovery. The thought of being gaped at, examined, the thought of this body that had sheltered and harbored her spirit all this life, poor thing, in the hands of the curious. Agnes could not bear to imagine the silly furor.

Much better to seek the island.

Besides, maybe once she was there Fleur would talk to her. She’d gone there to be with the last of the Pillagers, her cousin Moses. Nanapush might join them with new and outrageous stories of his life after death. She imagined their bones all mixed up together, spirits arguing and laughing as in the old days. As Agnes proceeded to make preparations and to gather supplies for her successful vanishing, she was oddly cheered at the prospect, however slight, of once again meeting up with her friend. She laid the groundwork. Faked letters from a host, shipped boxes, withdrew all of her money—a surprising amount of money—from the bank. She intended to pin it against her body, under her shirt, in a Ziploc bag. A note would accompany the bills instructing any accidental finder of Damien to resink the body or bury it on the spot and consider the bag of money fair payment for the service. She thought of everything and then mailed one last, irate, good-bye-good-riddance letter.

Pope!

Perhaps we are no more than spores on the breath of God, perhaps our life is just one exhalation. One breath. If God pauses just a moment to ruminate before taking in a new breath, we see. In that calm cessation, we see. All I’ve ever wanted to do is see.

Don’t bother with a reply.

Modeste

After she wrote and sent off the letter, she found herself procrastinating, clinging to life. Small things brought tears to her eyes—the jar of wild clover honey Mary Kashpaw bought to sweeten the ever charred toast, the blue jay stamp put out by the U.S. Postal Service, the tremulous sifting of dark into the room where her piano gleamed. Her piano! Notes of the
bacarolle
she had played to greet the snakes. Leave these things, leave them lovingly and easily, she told herself, touching the angry bedpost where so often she had prayed. But it was not easy to leave.

The job of becoming Father Damien had allowed the budding eccentricities of Agnes to attain full flower. Thus the church that drew tourists, and her friends the snakes. Her rock-floored church, and the statue that Sister Leopolda had claimed wept quartz tears that melted in her pockets, and the slow-growing stunted oaks, the golden light, the lilacs. All these things would remain while she did not. How strange that her absence would have no effect whatsoever on the things of this world. Proving that they were not just things, she thought, proving that they were spirit surrounded by a shell of substance, just like her.

There were drums that refused to sound for any but the one who made them, and drums that got up and walked away in the night if they were neglected or felt lonely or cheated of attention. There were violins that wept for their original owners, cellos that groaned for a woman’s touch, guitars that responded only to men. Agnes thought now, with comfort, of her drowned piano. Their fates would match. She sorted her music and took her favorite pieces, thinking,
I have never played the planted
allées
of Haydn or Brahms or even Schubert with the real devotion I gave the thick forests of Beethoven. I always went deeper into the crevasses, complicated the treatment of each note, brought up the minor and scoured the truth out of Bach.

Why could I not have lived more simply?

It would be suspicious for Father Damien not to take his music, so Agnes planned to burn it at her private good-bye party. These soft leaves of yellowed Chopin bearing her painstaking, hopeful self-notations, at least, should go with her! As for her refreshments, they were in the trunk of the car—an entire case.

On the dawn that Agnes prepared to leave, Mary Kashpaw appeared. She entered the yard so promptly that it was apparent she had been up for some time, waiting for her priest to make his move. As Agnes walked out to the car, Mary Kashpaw stood on the path in the swimming energy of the sunrise, its colors behind her. Her face was half shrouded in the blue pre-dawn light. She barred the way. Watching with a solid and hidden gravity, she extended her hand. In her palm, a book of matches.

“So you know, you understand,” said Agnes simply.

Mary Kashpaw’s face, illuminated by a sudden streak of new light, was cloudy and exhausted, her eyelids translucent, puffy, her lips bitten almost bloody. She stared blindly. Within her, like water set to boil on a stove, an emotion pressed for escape. It found her fingers, and her hands flapped abruptly as though they were two dishrags. Then her knees shook. A look of distress twisted across her features and she sank to a kneel. Slowly, she opened her embrace. With an intimate and grieving tenderness, she clasped her arms around Agnes’s knees and bent so that her broad sweep of forehead rested against her thighs. They were still for a long while, just breathing together. Agnes put her hand upon Mary Kashpaw’s great, gray head and stroked the whirlwind of hair at her crown. In its swirl, she saw the flourish of the ax, heard the runners of the sleigh traveling along the grass, saw, as she closed her eyes, how well Mary Kashpaw knew her and had kept her secret.

She took a coat from the mission store, a thing no one would recognize, a hatchet, the Ziploc bag of money, and another waterproof container of matches. Mary Kashpaw hadn’t trimmed Father Damien’s hair lately and it curled around her pate, a halo of white floss, so she brought a hairbrush. She threw in a heavy blanket, which she’d sink, and a nondescript pillow. She assembled all of these things and prepared for her trip as though for an adventure, which of course it was: death, the ultimate wilderness.

Rowing out to Spirit Island with cheese and crackers, candy bars, a bag of apples, and a case of wine, she stopped often to rest and to contemplate the easy chasing waves that rippled beside her. The wind was with her, so she corrected her drift and breathed the fire from her chest and the stinging emptiness from her muscles. The air was so pure and watery that it tasted like a tonic food. Her mind was phenomenally clear. Memories came back in waves, thoughts, passages of music, old songs Nanapush had taught her. They’d sing together once she reached the island. The trip took her most of the day, and it was dusk by the time she arrived, pulled up, and tied the boat to a tree.