The Painted Drum - Louise Erdrich [99]
“I know he did,” Ira said. “Shawnee remembers him best. What kind of stories did he tell you?”
“About the wolves,” Bernard said.
“He gave that name to Morris,” said Ira. “Why was that?”
“Morris was going in the army. He needed that name for protection.”
“Okay,” said Ira.
“I think I have to tell you something,” said Bernard.
“Go ahead.”
“I was sleeping when your daughter heard that drum. I never struck that drum. That drum is no ordinary drum. It is very old and originates generations back. I have been looking after this drum, waiting for it to tell me what to do. Every day I put out my tobacco, and I ask for direction. Sometimes I hear the songs. The drum talked to your daughter.”
Ira sat very still, her hand on Apitchi’s ankle. “I don’t know what that means,” she said.
“I think it means that this drum is now ready to be put to use,” said Bernard. “I was going to wait and say this. But being as your boy here is sick, I think we must act.”
Ira looked into Bernard’s eyes, round and direct as a bird’s. “It can’t hurt,” she said.
“Tonight I’m going to bring the drum up, then,” said Bernard. “I have it sitting downstairs in my office. And I am going to get Morris to help me with the songs.”
“Morris knows them?”
“Some. His mother bothered me to work with him. See, this here drum went traveling for a time. Most of the songs got scattered.”
“What will the nurses say?”
“Oh,” said Bernard, “they’ll be all right. It’s not the first time they had to contend with their own medicine. There’s a hospital policy on traditional healing. We can’t burn any sage, but the drum we can pound as long as we keep it low and everyone is awake. We’ll do it in the morning.”
Bernard left the room and went downstairs. While he was gone, Ira checked on Shawnee and Alice. They were asleep, breathing calmly, and when she slipped from their room she saw Bernard getting off the elevator. He carried the drum in a canvas case, by a strap, and he also carried a cloth case that looked as though it held a short pair of skis, but she knew it held the legs that kept the drum off the floor. She followed Bernard into the room. He took the drum from its case, then put the drum on the recliner, and pushed it against the wall.
“There’s room, isn’t there?”
“Sure,” Ira said, “there’s room.”
Bernard left the case standing in the corner, and he went out the door. The night nurse came in and checked everything about Apitchi. Then she left. Ira smoothed out the covers on the cot again, and climbed in with her clothes on. The drum was behind her head, just above. Immediately, she slept.
The nurse tucked the digital thermometer underneath Shawnee’s arm and she swam up from her dream to half-wakefulness. She heard the whoosh of the pump on the blood pressure cuff, and heard it again as the nurse stood over Alice. An hour ago, Shawnee’s hands had throbbed and itched, but now that the medicine the nurse had given her had kicked in, she was comfortable. The nurse went out of the room, but Shawnee did not return entirely to sleep. The door was open a crack and she could hear the nurses talking at their big round station in the middle of the ward. It was comforting talk. A low babble. Heat flowed softly through the louvered vent alongside the window. Her mother was down the hall with Apitchi, and she had come through the woods. They were all safe. Since they’d been in the hospital, every time Shawnee closed her eyes she was back at the house as it burned, or dragging Alice, or floundering through the snow with Apitchi on her back. Now when she slept, she dreamed the whole thing over again, and several hours later she woke cold. She did not know where she was at first. Her vision was clouded, her eyes weak, and she felt the snow reaching up around her waist. But then she heard the beating of the drum, as she had back in the woods. Once she heard it she slowly allowed herself to return to consciousness. She pushed the sheet down, tossed off the pillow that had fallen over her eyes. As the room and its safety surrounded her, she was flooded by a startling