Love Medicine (25 page)

We filed in that time. Me and Grandpa. We sat down in our book.-, pews. Then the rosary got started up pre-Mass and that’s when Grandpa filled up his chest and opened his mouth and belted out them words.

HAIL MARIE FULL OF GRACE.

He had a powerful set of lungs.

And he kept on like that. He did not let up. He hollered and he yelled them prayers, and I guess people was used to him by now, because they only muttered theirs and did not quit and gawk like I did. I was getting red-faced, I admit. I give him the elbow once or twice, but that wasn’t nothing to him. He kept on. He shrieked to heaven and he pleaded like a movie actor and he pounded his chest like Tarzan in the Lord I Am Not Worthies. I thought he might hurt himself Then after a while I guess I got used to it, and that’s when I wondered: how come?

So afterwards I out and asked him. “How come? How come you yelled?”

“God don’t hear me otherwise,” said Grandpa Kashpaw.

I sweat. I broke right into a little cold sweat at my hairline because I knew this was perfectly right and for years not one damn other person had noticed it. God’s been going deaf Since the Old Testament, God’s been deafening up on us. I read, see.

Besides the dictionary, which I’m constantly in use of, I had this Bible once. I read it. I found -there was discrepancies between then and now. It struck me. Here God used to raineth bread from clouds, smite the Phillipines, sling fire down on red-light districts where people got stabbed. He even appeared in person every once in a while.

God used to pay attention, is what I’m saying.

Now there’s your God in the Old Testament and there is Chippewa Gods as well. Indian Gods, good and bad, like tricky Nanabozho or the water monster, Missepeshu, who lives over in Lake Turcot. That water monster was the last God I ever heard to appear. It had a weakness for young girls and grabbed one of the Blues off her rowboat. She got to shore all right, but only after Add MEL Attacked this monster had its way with her. She’s an old lady now. Old Lady Blue. She still won’t let her family fish that lake.

Our Gods aren’t perfect, is what I’m saying, but at least they come around. They’ll do a favor if you ask them right. You don’t have to yell. But you do have to know, like I said, how to ask in the right way. That makes problems, because to ask proper was an art that was lost to the Chippewas once the Catholics gained ground. Even now, I have to wonder if Higher Power turned it back, if we got to yell, or if we ‘just don’t speak its language.

I looked around me. How else could I explain what all I bad seen in my short life-King smashing his fist in things, Gordie drinking himself down to the Bismarck hospitals, or Aunt June left by a white man to wander off in the snow. How else to explain the times my touch don’t work, and farther back, to the old time Indians who was swept away in the outright germ warfare and dirty-dog killing of the whites. In those times, us Indians was so much kindlier than now.

We took them in.

Oh yes, I’m bitter as an old cutworm just thinking of how they done to us and doing still.

So Grandpa Kashpaw just opened my eyes a little there. Was there any sense relying on a God whose ears was stopped? just like the government? I says then, right off, maybe we got nothing but ourselves.

And that’s not much, just personally speaking. I know I don’t got the cold hard potatoes it takes to understand everything.

Still, there’s things I’d like to do. For instance, I’d like to help some people like my Grandpa and Grandma Kashpaw get back some happiness within the tail ends of their lives.

I told you once before I couldn’t see my way clear to putting the direct touch on Grandpa’s mind, and I kept my moral there, but something soon happened to make me think a little bit of mental adjustment wouldn’t do him and the rest of us no harm.

It was after we saw him one afternoon in the sunshine court yard of the Senior Citizens with Lulu Lamartine. Grandpa used to like to dig there.

He had his little dandelion fork out, and he was prying up them dandelions right and left while Lamartme watched him.

“He’s scratching up the dirt, all right,” said Grandma, watching Lamartine watch Grandpa out the window.

Now Lamartine was about half the considerable size of Grandma, but you would never think of sizes anyway. They were different in an even more noticeable way. It was the difference between a house fixed up with paint and picky fence, and a house left to weather away into the soft earth, is what I’m saying.

Urnartine was ‘acked up, latticed, shuttered, and vinyl sided, while Grandma sagged and bulged on her slipped foundations and let her hair go the silver gray of rain-dried lumber, Right now, she eyed the Lamartine’s pert flowery dress with such a look it despaired me. I knew what this could lead to with Grandma.

Alterating tongue storms and rock-hard silences was hard on a man, even one who didn’t notice, like Grandpa. So I went fetching him.

But he was gone when I popped through the little screen door that led out on the courtyard. There was nobody out there either, to point which way they went. just the dandelion fork quibbling upright in the ground.

That gave me an idea. I snookered over to the Lamartine’s door and I listened in first, then knocked. But nobody. So I went walking through the lounges and around the card tables. Still nobody.

Finally it was my touch that led me to the laundry room. I cracked the door. I went in. There they were, And he was really loving her up good, boy, and she was going hell for leather. Sheets was flapping on the lines above, and washcloths, pillowcases, shirts was also flying through the air, for they was trying to clear out a place for themselves in a high heaped but shallow laundry cart. The washers and the dryers was all on, chock full of quarters, shaking and moaning. I couldn’t hear what Grandpa and the Lamartine was billing and cooing, and they couldn’t hear me.

I didn’t know what to do, so I went inside and shut the door.

The Lamartine wore a big curly light-brown wig. Looked like one of them squeaky little white-people dogs. Poodles they call them.

Anyway, that wig is what saved us from the-worse. For I could hardly shout and tell them I was in there, no more could I try and grab him.

I was trapped where I was. There was nothing I could really do but hold the door shut. I was scared of somebody else upsetting in and really getting an eyeful. Turned out though, in the heat of the clinch, as I was trying to avert my eyes you see, the Lamartine’s curly wig ‘jumped off her head. And if you ever been in the midst of something and had a big change like that occur in the someone, you can’t help know how it devastates your basic urges. Not only that, but her wig was almost with a life of its own. Grandpa’s eyes were bugging at the change already, and swear to God if the thing didn’t rear up and pop him in the face like it was going to start something. He scrambled up, Grandpa did, and the Lamartine jumped up after him all addled looking. They just stared at each other, huffing and puffing, with quizzical expression. The surprise seemed to drive all sense completely out of Grandpa’s mind.

“The letter was what started the fire,” he said. I never would have done it.”

“What letter?” said the Lamartine. She was stiff-necked now, and elegant, even bald, like some alien queen. I gave her back the wig.

The Lamartine replaced it on her head, and whenever I saw her after that, I couldn’t help thinking of her bald, with special powers, as if from another planet.

“That was a close call,” I said to Grandpa after she had left.

But I think he had already forgot the incident. He just stood there all quiet and thoughtful. You really wouldn’t think he was crazy.

He looked like he was just about to say something imp or bomb.-, tant, explaining himself He said something, all right, but it didn’t have nothing to do with anything that made sense.

He wondered where the heck he put his dandelion fork. That’s when I decided about the mental adjustment.

Now what was mostly our problem was not so much that he was not all there, but that what was there of him often hankered after Lamartine.

If we could put a stop to that, I thought, we might be getting someplace. But here, see, my touch was of no use.

For what could I snap my fingers at to make him faithful to Grandma?

Like the quality of staying power, this faithfulness was invisible. I know it’s something that you got to acquire, but I never known where from. Maybe there’s no rhyme or reason to it, like my getting the touch, and then again maybe it’s a kind of magic.

It was Grandma Kashpaw who thought of it in the end. She knows things.

Although she will not admit she has a scrap of Indian blood in her, there’s no doubt in my mind she’s got some Chippewa. How else would you explain the way she’ll be sitting there, in front of her TV story, rocking in herprinchair and suddenly she turns on me, her brown eyes hard as lake-bed flint.

“Lipsha Morrissey,” she’ll say, “you went out last night and got drunk.

” How did she know that? I’ll hardly remember it myself. Then she’ll say she just had a feeling or ache in the scar of her hand or a creak in her shoulder. She is constantly being told things by little aggravations in her joints or by her household appliances. One time she told Gordie never to ride with a crazy Lamartine boy.

She had seen something in the polished-up tin of her bread toaster.

So he didn’t. Sure enough, the time came we heard how Lyman and Henry went out of control in their car, ending up in the river. Lyman swam to the top, but Henry never made it.

Thanks to Grandma’s toaster, Gordie was probably spared.

hear what Grandpa and the Larnartine was billing and cooing, and they couldn’t hear me.

I didn’t know what to do, so I went inside and shut the door.

The Larnartine wore a big curly light-brown wig. Looked like one of them squeaky little white-people dogs. Poodles they call them.

Anyway, that wig is what saved us from the-worse. For I could hardly shout and tell them I was in there, no more could I try and grab him.

I was trapped where I was. There was nothing I could really do but hold the door shut. I was scared of somebody else upsetting in and really getting an eyeful. Turned out though, in the heat of the clinch, as I was trying to avert my eyes you see, the Larnartine’s curly wig jumped off her head. And if you ever been in the midst of something and had a big change like that occur in the someone, you can’t help know how it devastates your basic urges. Not only that, but her wig was almost with a life of its own. Grandpa’s eyes were bugging at the change already, and swear to God if the thing didn’t rear up and pop him in the face like it was going to start something. He scrambled up, Grandpa did, and the Larnartine jumped up after him all addled looking. They just stared at each other, huffing and puffing, with quizzical expression. The surprise seemed to drive all sense completely out of Grandpa’s mind.

“The letter was what started the fire,” he said. I never would have done it.”

“What letter?” said the Lamartine. She was stiff-necked now, and elegant, even bald, like some alien queen. I gave her back the wig.

The Larnartine replaced it on her head, and whenever I saw her after that, I couldn’t help thinking of her bald, with special powers, as if from another planet.

“That was a close call,” I said to Grandpa after she had left.

But I think he had already forgot the incident. He just stood there all quiet and thoughtful. You really wouldn’t think he was crazy.

He looked like he was just about to say something imp or Someplace in thelblood Grandma Kasbpaw knows things. She also remembers things, I found. She keeps things filed away She’s got a memory like them video games that don’t forget your score. One reason she remembers so many details about the trouble I gave her in early life is so she can flash back her total when she needs to.

Like now. Take the love medicine. I don’t know where she remembered that from. It came tumbling from her mind like an asteroid off the corner of the screen.

Of course she starts out by mentioning the time I had this ‘dent in church and did she leave me there with wet overacci halls? No she didn’t. And ain’t I glad? Yes I am. Now what you want now, Grandma?

But when she mentions them love medicines, I feel my back prickle at the danger. These love medicines is something of an old Chippewa specialty.

No other tribe has got them down so well. But love medicines is not for the layman to handle. You don’t just go out and get one without paying for it. Before you get one, even, you should go through one hell of a lot of mental condensation. You got to think it over. Choose the right one. You could really mess up your life grinding up the wrong little thing.

So anyhow, I said to Grandma I’d give this love medicine some thought. I knew the best thing was to go ask a specialist like Old Man Pillager, who lives up in a tangle of bush and never shows himself.

But the truth is I was afraid of him, like everyone else. He was known for putting the twisted mouth on people, seizing up their hearts. Old Man Pillager was serious business, and I have always thought it best to steer clear of that whenever I could. That’s why I took the powers in my own hands. That’s why I did what I could.

I put my whole mentality to it, nothing held back. After a while I started to remember things I’d heard gossiped over.

I heard of this person once who carried a charm of seeds that boom.-, looked like baby pearls. They was attracted to a metal knife, which made them powerful. But I didn’t know where them seeds grew.

Another love charm I heard about I couldn’t go along with, because how was I suppose to catch frogs in the act, which it required.

Them little creatures is slippery and fast. And then the power fullest of all, the most extreme, involved nail clips and such. I wasn’t anywhere near asking Grandma to provide me all the little body bits that this last love recipe called for. I went walking around for days ‘just trying to think up something that would work.

Well I got it. If it hadn’t been the early fall of the year, I never would have got it. But I was sitting underneath a tree one day down near the school just watching people’s feet go by when something tells me, look up! Look up! So I look up, and I see two honkers, Canada geese, the kind with little masks on their faces, a bird what mates for life. I see them flying right over my head naturally preparing to land in some slough on the reservation, which they certainly won’t get off of alive.