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Chapter One

The Message

On most winter days, Lulu Lamartine did not stir until the sun cast
a patch of warmth for her to bask in and purr. She then rose,
brewed fresh coffee, heated a pan of cream, and drank the mix from
a china cup at her apartment table. Sipping, brooding, she entered
the snowy world. A pale sweet roll, a doughnut gem, occasionally a
bowl of cereal, followed that coffee, then more coffee, and on and
on, until finally Lulu pronounced herself awake and took on the
day's business of running the tribe. We know her routine--many of
us even shared it--so when she was sighted before her normal get-up
time approaching her car door in the unsheltered cold of the
parking lot, we called on others to look. Sure enough, she was
dressed for action. She got into her brown Citation wearing
hosiery, spike-heeled boots, and, beneath her puffy purple winter
coat, a flowered dress cut evening low. She adjusted her rearview
mirror, settled her eyeglasses on her nose. She started the engine,
pulled away onto the downslope winding road. From the hill, we saw
her pass into the heart of the reservation.

She
rolled along in quiet purpose, stopping at the signs, even
yielding, traveling toward one of two places open at that early
hour. The gas pumps--she could be starting out on a longer trip--or
the post office. These were the two choices that we figured out
among ourselves. When she passed the first, we knew it must be the
second, and from there, we relied on Day Twin Horse to tell us how
Lulu entered the post office beneath the flags of the United
States, the Great Seal of North Dakota, and the emblem of our
Chippewa Nation, and then lingered, looking all around, warming
herself like a cat at the heat register and tapping at her lips
with a painted fingernail.Day
Twin Horse watched her, that is, until she turned, saw him looking,
and set confusion into motion. First she glared a witch gaze that
caused him to tape a finger to the postal scale. The tape seemed to
have a surprising life all of its own so that, as he leaned over,
extracting the finger, balling up the tape, Day Twin Horse became
more and more agitated. For while he struggled with the sticky
underside, Mrs. Josette Bizhieu entered, impatient as always,
carrying three packages. Tending to her needs, Postmaster Twin
Horse was unable to keep an eye on Lulu as she wandered, flicking
at the dials of the tiny boxes that held other people's bills. He
did not see her pause to read the directions on the Xerox machine,
or lean over the glass display case showing pen sets, stamp mugs,
albums that could be purchased by collectors. He did not see her
stop before the wanted posters, flick through quickly, silently,
riffling the heavy roll until she came to the picture of her
son.It
was Josette herself, sharp and wary as her namesake bobcat, who
tipped her chin down, turned her face just a fraction to watch Lulu
Lamartine as she reached into the fall of criminals and with one
quick tug, evenly, as if she were removing a paper towel from a
toothed dispenser, tear away government property. Holding the
paper, Lulu walked over to the copier. She carefully slid the
picture onto the machine's face, inserted two coins into the coin
box. Satisfaction lit her face as the machine's drum flashed and
whirred. She removed the original, then the copy of the picture as
it emerged. She folded it into an envelope and carried it quickly
to the Out of Town slot, where Josette now held her packages as if
deciding which to mail first. Seeing the drop of Josette's gaze,
Lulu quickly posted the letter, but not before Josette caught the
city part of the address, already written onto the outside of the
stamped envelope.Fargo, North Dakota. There it was--the well-known whereabouts
of that stray grandson whom Lulu Lamartine and Marie Kashpaw shared
uneasily between themselves. So Lulu Lamartine was sending the
picture of the father to the son. Perhaps it was a summons home. A
warning. Surely, it meant something. There was always a reason
behind the things Lulu did, although it took a while to find them,
to work her ciphers out for meaning. Now Lulu walked directly
through the glass front doors, leaving Josette and Day Twin Horse
in the post office.The
two gazed after her, frowning and pensive. Around them, suddenly,
they felt the drift of chance and possibility, for the post office
is a place of near misses, lit by numbers. Their gazes fixed upon
the metal postal box doors--so strictly aligned and easily mistaken
for one another. And then the racks constructed for the necessary
array of identical-looking rubber stamps that nevertheless could
send a letter halfway around the world. Of course, there were the
stamps themselves, either booklets or sheets sold in waxed
cellophane envelopes. Eagles. Flowers. Hot air balloons. Love dogs.
Wild Bill Hickok. The ordinary world suddenly seemed tenuous, odd.
Josette reared back in suspicion, narrowing her clever eyes. Day
Twin Horse regarded his olive-colored tape. The roll again was
docile and orderly in his hands. He ran his fingernail across the
surface searching for the ridge to pull, the cut, but the plastic
was seamless, frustrating, perfect, like the small incident with
Lulu. He couldn't find where to pull and yet he knew that in her
small act there was complicated motive and a larger
story.As
it turned out, however, there was not much more to know about the
things Lulu did on that particular day. It was later on that we
should have worried about, the long-term consequences. All the
same, we tried to keep a close eye upon her doings, so we know that
soon after she left the post office Lulu Lamartine purchased, from
the fanciest gift shop in Hoopdance, a brass and crystal picture
frame. She brought it back to her apartment, laid it down upon her
kitchen table. Josette, who sat right there with a glass of water,
winding down from all her errands, told how Lulu used her nail file
to press aside the tiny clamps that held in the backing. She
removed the fuzz-coated cardboard, then the inner corrugated
square, and lastly, the flimsy reproduction of a happy wedding
couple. She tossed the sentimental photograph aside, positioned the
wanted poster against the glass. She smoothed down the cheap paper,
replaced the backing, then turned the portrait around front to gaze
upon the latest picture of her famous criminal boy.Even
in the mug-shot photographer's flash, the Nanapush eyes showed,
Pillager bones, the gleam of one earring at his cheek. Gerry
Nanapush had a shy rage, serious wonder, a lot of hair. She looked
for traces of herself--the nose surely--and of his father--the
grin, the smile held in and hidden, wolf-white, gleaming. Looking
down the length of her rounded arms, her face was thoughtful,
Josette said, too shrewd, bent on calculation. In fact, we never
thought Lulu Lamartine wore the proper expression anyway--that of a
mother resigned. Her undevout eyes were always dangerously bright,
her grin was always trying to get loose and work a spell. Her face
was supple, her arms strong, and even touched with arthritis, she
had the hands of a safecracker. Still, we thought the business
would end with the picture sitting on the shelf. After all, he was
recently caught and locked up again for good. We never thought
she'd go so far as she finally managed. We believed Lulu Lamartine
would content herself with changing the picture's resting spot,
carrying it back and forth until she finally centered it upon her
knickknack shelf, a place where you couldn't help noticing it upon
first entering her apartment.Lulu's totaling glance followed Josette that day, not the
picture's rigid stare, but the two pairs of eyes were so alike that
it always took a decision of avoidance to enter the place. Some of
us tried to resist, yet were pulled in just the same. We were
curious to know more, even though we'd never grasp the whole of it.
The story comes around, pushing at our brains, and soon we are
trying to ravel back to the beginning, trying to put families into
order and make sense of things. But we start with one person, and
soon another and another follows, and still another, until we are
lost in the connections.We
could pull any string from Lulu, anyway, it wouldn't matter, it
would all come out the same degree of tangle. Start with her
wanted-poster boy, Gerry Nanapush, for example. Go down the line of
her sons, the brothers and half brothers, until you get to the
youngest, Lyman Lamartine. Here was a man everybody knew and yet
did not know, a dark-minded schemer, a bitter and yet
shaman-pleasant entrepreneur who skipped money from behind the ears
of Uncle Sam, who joked to pull the wool down, who carved up this
reservation the way his blood father Nector Kashpaw did, who had
his own interest so mingled with his people's that he couldn't tell
his personal ambition from the pride of the Kashpaws. Lyman went so
far as to court a much younger woman. He loved and failed, but that
has never kept down Kashpaws, or a Lamartine either, for very
long.Keep
a hand on the frail rope. There's a storm coming up, a blizzard.
June Morrissey still walks through that sudden Easter snow. She was
a beautiful woman, much loved and very troubled. She left her son
to die and left his father to the mercy of another woman and left
her suitcase packed in her room to which the doorknob was missing.
Her memory never was recovered except within the thoughts of her
niece, Albertine--a Kashpaw, a Johnson, a little of everything, but
free of nothing.Excerpted from THE LAST REPORT ON THE MIRACLES AT LITTLE NO
HORSE © Copyright 2001 by Louise Erdrich. Reprinted with
permission from HarperCollins. All rights reserved.