Tracks

Once again, Nanapush takes up the story of his life and Fleur’s. This chapter overlaps in time with the end of Pauline’s narrative in the previous chapter. Nanapush begins with Fleur returning to the reservation in a dress that is too small for her; he knows, as everyone does, that something is wrong, but in the beginning, no one dares to think that she is hiding a pregnancy.

Nanapush uses his persuasive skills, as Fleur’s adopted uncle, to try to sweet-talk Fleur into revealing what is wrong, but she does not tell him. Later in the fall, she visits Nanapush, and he asks her if she is in trouble. The gossips in town asserts that Fleur has her cousin Moses shop for their supplies with money stolen from dead men, and her absence confirms their gossip that she is pregnant.

However, Eli Kashpaw ruins the gossips’ fun by stepping in and courting Fleur. He comes to Nanapush for advice after he meets Fleur when following a doe he has shot in the Matchimanito woods. Nanapush has had four wives, and he is willing to share his experience with women to help Eli once he sees that he cannot dissuade Eli from pursuing Fleur. Nanapush has previously taught Eli to hunt and trap, so they have a close relationship. Nanapush knows and understands Eli’s character. He also knows Fleur and her reputation for killing men.

Margaret Kashpaw, Eli’s mother, brings Nanapush the news that Eli and Fleur are living together. She is angry about it, and she and Nanapush visit the cabin to see what is happening out at Matchimanito, crossing the dangerous lake in Nanapush’s leaky old boat. Margaret sees with her own eyes that Fleur is pregnant and will deliver in the spring.

Margaret is so desperate to get Eli back home that she lays a trap for the first gossip who can tell her what happened to Fleur in Argus. Pauline obliges her, describing the card games, the drunkenness, and the rape in the smokehouse. Margaret now can prove that Eli is not the baby’s father, but this makes no difference to Eli, who insists that he is “as good as married” to Fleur (57). All of Margaret’s plots and stratagems fail: Eli had been her last hope for a home in her old age, and she knows that Fleur will not be a pliant, meek daughter-in-law.

Lulu is born, after a two-day labor, when a female bear roars into the house, drunk after finding Nanapush’s wine stash in the woods. Pauline shoots the bear, who runs away without leaving any tracks. Nanapush believes that it could have been a spirit bear. Fleur, shocked, fearful, and terrorized, gives birth on the spot. Margaret works hard then to save Fleur’s life. Both Fleur and the baby, whom Nanapush names Lulu Nanapush during her baptism, live. In claiming himself to be Lulu’s father, Eli attempts to add the safety and protection of his name and position within the tribe to Lulu’s life, which has already resulted in chaos, death, and destruction.