Original Fire (4 page)
He started back, shook his head, then bent to the keyhole again.
It was worse than flames.
They were all chained, hand and foot and even by the neck, to years and years of mail order catalogues. From the old Sears Roebuck to the Sharper Image, they were bound. Around and around the huge warehouse they dragged the heavy paper books, mumbling, collapsing from time to time to flip through the pages. Each person bent low beneath the weight. Potchikoo had always won
dered where the millions of old catalogues went, and now he knew the devil gathered them, that they were instruments of torment.
The words of the damned, thin and drained, rang in his ears all the way home.
Look at that wall unit. What about this here recliner? We could put up that home gym in the basement….
On his journey through heaven and hell, Potchikoo had been a long time without sex. It was night when he finally got back home, and he could hardly wait to hold Josette in his arms. Therefore, after he had entered the house and crept up to her bed, the first words he uttered to his wife in greeting were, “Let’s pitch whoopee.”
Josette yelled and grabbed the swatter that she kept next to her bed to kill mosquitoes in the dark. She began to lambaste Potchikoo until she realized who it was, and that this was no awful dream.
Then they lay down in bed and had no more thoughts.
Afterward, lying there happily, Potchikoo was surprised to find that he was still passionate. They began to make love again, and still again, and over and over. At first Josette returned as good as Potchikoo gave her, but after a while it seemed that the more he made love, the more need he felt and the more heat he gave off. He was unquenchable fire.
Finally, Josette fell asleep, and let him go on and on. He was so glad to be alive again that he could never remember, afterward, how many times he had sex that night. Even he lost count. But when he
woke up late the next day, Potchikoo felt a little strange, as though there was something missing. And sure enough, there was.
When Potchikoo looked under the covers, he found that his favorite part of himself was charred black and thin as a burnt twig.
It was terrible to have burnt his pride and joy down to nothing. It was terrible to have to face the world, especially Josette, without it. Potchikoo put his pants on and sat in the shade to think. But not until Josette left for daily Mass, and he was alone, did Potchikoo have a good idea.
He went inside and found a block of paraffin wax that Josette used to seal her jars of plum pickles. He stirred the coals in Josette’s stove and melted the wax in an old coffee can. Then he dipped in his penis. It hurt the first time, but after that not so much, and then not at all. He kept dipping and dipping. It got back to the normal size, and he should have been pleased with that. But Potchikoo got grandiose ideas.
He kept dipping and dipping. He melted more wax, more and more, and kept dipping, until he was so large he could hardly stagger out the door. Luckily, the wheelbarrow was sitting in the path. He grabbed the handles and wheeled it before him into town.
There was only one road in the village then. Potchikoo went there with his wheelbarrow, calling for women. He crossed the village twice. Mothers came out in wonder, saw what was in the wheelbarrow, and whisked their daughters inside. Everybody was
disgusted and scolding and indignant, except for one woman. She lived at the end of the road. Her door was always open, and she was large.
Even now, we can’t use her name, this Mrs. B. No man satisfied her. But that day, Potchikoo wheeled his barrow in, and then, for once, her door was shut.
Potchikoo and Mrs. B went rolling through the house. The walls shuddered, and people standing around outside thought the whole place might collapse. Potchikoo was shaken from side to side, powerfully, as if he were on a ride at the carnival. But eventually, of course, the heat of their union softened and wilted Potchikoo back to nothing. Mrs. B was disgusted and threw him out back, into the weeds. From there he crept home to Josette, and on the crooked path he took to avoid others, he tried to think of new ways he might please her.
To his relief, nature returned manhood to Potchikoo in several weeks. But his troubles weren’t over. One day, the tribal police appeared. They said Potchikoo had been seen stealing fence posts down the road. But they found no stolen fence posts on his property, so they did not arrest him.
More accusations were heard.
Potchikoo threw rocks at a nun, howled like a dog, and barked until she chased him off. He got drunk and tossed a pool cue out the window of the Stumble Inn. The pool cue hit the tribal chair
man on the shoulder and caused a bruise. Potchikoo ran down the street laughing, flung off his clothes, ran naked through the trading store. He ripped antennas from twenty cars. He broke a portable radio that belonged to a widow, her only comfort. If a friendly dog came up to this bad Potchikoo, he lashed out with his foot. He screamed at children until tears came into their eyes, and then he knocked down the one road sign the government had seen fit to place on the reservation.
The sign was red, planted in the very middle of town, and said
STOP
. People were naturally proud of the sign. So, there was finally a decision to lock Potchikoo in jail, though he was dead. When the police came to get him, he went quite willingly because he was so confused.
But here’s what happened.
While Potchikoo was locked up, under the eyes of the tribal sheriff, his mean twin went out and caused some mischief near the school by starting a grass fire. So now the people knew the trouble wasn’t caused by Old Man Potchikoo. And next time the bad twin was seen, Josette followed him. He ran very fast, until he reached the chain link fence around the graveyard. Josette saw him jump over the fence and dodge among the stones. Then the twin got to the place where Potchikoo had been buried, lifted the ground like a lid, and wiggled under.
So the trouble was that Potchikoo had left his old body in the ground, empty, and something had found a place to live.
The people said the only thing to do was trap the mean twin and then get rid of him. But no one could agree on how to do it. People just talked and planned, no one acted. Finally Josette had to take the matter into her own hands.
One day she made a big pot of stew, and into it she put a bird. Into the roasted bird, Josette put a bit of blue plaster that had fallen off the Blessed Virgin’s robe while she cleaned the altar. She took the stew and left the whole pot just outside the cemetery fence. From her hiding place deep in a lilac bush, she saw the mean twin creep forth. He took the pot in his hands and gulped down every morsel, then munched the bird up, bones and all. Stuffed full, he lay down to sleep. He snored. After a while, he woke and looked around himself, very quietly. That was when Josette came out of the bush.
“In the name of the Holy Mother of God!” she cried. “Depart!”
So the thing stepped out of Potchikoo’s old body, all hairless and smooth and wet and gray. But Josette had no pity. She pointed sternly at the dark stand of pines, where no one went, and slowly, with many a sigh and backward look, the thing walked over there.
Potchikoo’s old body lay, crumpled like a worn suit of clothes, where the thing had stepped out. Right there, Josette made a fire, a little fire. When the blaze was very hot, she threw in the empty skin. It crackled in the flames, shed sparks, and was finally reduced
to a crisp of ashes, which Josette brushed carefully into a little sack, and saved in her purse.
With his old body burnt, Potchikoo existed in his spiritual flesh. Yet having been to the other side of life and back, he wasn’t sure where he belonged. Sometimes he found his heaven with Josette, sometimes he longed for the pasture gate. He became certain that the end of his living days was near, and he felt sorry for himself. He was also very jealous when it came to Josette, and convinced that old men were in love with her, just waiting for him to croak. Therefore, he decided to have himself stuffed and placed in a corner of their bedroom, where he could keep an eye on his widow. He told her of his plan.
“That way, you’ll never forget me,” he crooned in a pathetic voice.
“I’ll never forget you anyway,” said Josette. “Who the hell could?”
Potchikoo sought out a taxidermist in a neighboring town, the sort of person who mounted prize walleyes and the heads of buck deer.
“What about me?” said Potchikoo.
“What about you?” said the taxidermist.
“I’d like to get stuffed,” said Potchikoo.
“You must be dead first,” said the professional.
Oh yes, Potchikoo had forgotten this. Dead first. How to accomplish that? He considered this obstacle as he walked back to his house. Death. Potchikoo thought harder. At last, another option
presented itself. Potchikoo decided to spend his golden years carving a lifelike statue of Potchikoo from the tall stump of an old oak tree right outside the door. Thus, once he was gone, he would watch over his love and present a forbidding sight to any akiwenzii who came to court her. Delighted with his notion, he began carving the very same day.
Months passed, a year passed, and Potchikoo’s statue became a legend. His project, begun in jealousy, became through rumor a sign of enormous grace. Divine light had descended on a habitual miscreant. Talk was that the old rascal had converted and was carving the Virgin Mary, or maybe Saint Joseph, or perhaps again the people’s own Blessed Kateri, right in his front yard. Potchikoo put up a canvas screen and worked there every single day. The wrenching sound of his chisel and the tapping of his mallet could be heard at any time, but he allowed no glimpse of his masterwork. He gave no interviews. Just kept working. Not until the statue was finished did he speak, and then it was only a notice of the unveiling. Which would occur on Easter morning.
At least a hundred people gathered after Mass, and another hundred were there already, waiting for the canvas that surrounded the statue to drop. Potchikoo was very pleased, and made a most glorious speech. The speech was long, and very satisfying to Potchikoo, and at the end of it he suddenly pulled the cord that held the curtain before the statue.
Silence. There was a lot of silence from the people. Potchikoo interpreted their silence as awe, and for sure, he felt the awe of it too. For the statue of himself had all of his unmistakable features, including the fantasy of his favorite part of himself at its most com
manding. Those who were religious shook their heads and quickly left. Those who weren’t, but who had good taste, left as well. That left only the pagans with bad taste to admire what they saw, but that was enough for Potchikoo. He considered his project a success. During the years of quiet happiness that followed with Josette he never mislaid his hat, as there was a place to hang it right beside the door.
1
Once, my braids swung heavy as ropes.
Men feared them like the gallows.
Night fell
When I combed them out.
No one could see me in the dark.
Then I stood still
Too long and the braids took root.
I wept, so helpless.
The braids tapped deep and flourished.
A man came by with an ox on his shoulders.
He yoked it to my apron
And pulled me from the ground.
From that time on I wound the braids around my head
So that my arms would be free to tend him.
2
He could lift a grown man by the belt with his teeth.
In a contest, he’d press a whole hog, a side of beef.
He loved his highballs, his herring, and the attentions of women.
He died pounding his chest with no last word for anyone.
The gin vessels in his face broke and darkened. I traced them
Far from that room into Bremen on the Sea.
The narrow streets twisted down to the piers.
And far off, in the black, rocking water, the lights of trawlers
Beckoned, like the heart’s uncertain signals,
Faint, and final.
3
Of course I planted a great, full bush of roses on his grave.
Who else would give the butcher roses but his wife?
Each summer, I am reminded of the heart surging from his vest,
Mocking all the high stern angels
By pounding for their spread skirts.
The flowers unfurl, offering themselves,
And I hear his heart pound on the earth like a great fist,
Demanding another round of the best wine in the house.
Another round, he cries, and another round all summer long,
Until the whole damn world reels toward winter drunk.
Butch once remarked to me how sinister it was
alone, after hours, in the dark of the shop
to find me there hunched over two weeks’ accounts
probably smoked like a bacon from all those Pall-Malls.
Odd comfort when the light goes, the case lights left on
and the rings of baloney, the herring, the parsley,
arranged in the strict, familiar ways.
Whatever intactness holds animals up
has been carefully taken, what’s left are the parts.
Just look in the cases, all counted and stacked.
Step-and-a-Half Waleski used to come to the shop
and ask for the cheap cut, she would thump, sniff, and finger.
This one too old. This one here for my supper.
Two days and you do notice change in the texture.
I have seen them the day before slaughter.
Knowing the outcome from the moment they enter
the chute, the eye rolls, blood is smeared on the lintel.
Mallet or bullet they lunge toward their darkness.
But something queer happens when the heart is delivered.
When a child is born, sometimes the left hand is stronger.
You can train it to fail, still the knowledge is there.
That is the knowledge in the hand of a butcher
that adds to its weight. Otto Kröger could fell
a dray horse with one well-placed punch to the jaw,
and yet it is well known how thorough he was.
He never sat down without washing his hands,
and he was a maker, his sausage was
echt
so that even Waleski had little complaint.
Butch once remarked there was no one so deft
as my Otto. So true, there is great tact involved
in parting the flesh from the bones that it loves.
How we cling to the bones. Each joint is a web
of small tendons and fibers. He knew what I meant
when I told him I felt something pull from the left,
and how often it clouded the day before slaughter.
Something queer happens when the heart is delivered.