Antelope Woman

Almost Soup is an Ojibwe dog. He directly addresses readers, telling them that in the previous section of the story, they learned how the Roy and Shawano family histories became interwoven. He explains that he, too, is of mixed ancestry: Part dog, he is also part coyote and prairie dog, and he has roots in both Dakota and Ojibwe settlements. He explains how he was able to evade capture and live to a ripe old age, but he also fills in additional details about Augustus, Mary, Zosie and their children. Peace lived a long life, had one son, and two granddaughters whom she raised after their mother disappeared. Almost Soup then informs readers that the story is about to be taken over by Klaus, Ogichidaa’s son. He regrets this turn of events, as Klaus is a difficult and lazy man, but he says that unfortunately Klaus is the best qualified to explain what happened to Blue Prairie Woman’s eldest daughter.

Klaus identifies as an “urban Indian,” and yet he still makes a circuit of the rural powwows, selling his wares. Klaus recalls the day he met his wife. In this memory, he is selling small stone turtles at a powwow in Elmo. He notices women dressed in doe-skin outfits who stand out from the crowd because of the beauty and simplicity of their clothing. There are four women, a mother and her three daughters. Failing to get their attention, Klaus decides to follow them. After a time, he heads back to his table. He continues to watch the women, who are lithe in their movements, like a small herd of antelope. Later that night, he consults Jimmy Badger, a medicine man, on how to capture antelope. Jimmy Badger tells Klaus that antelope possess a natural curiosity about the world around them, and they will approach whatever interests them.

The next day, Klaus sets up his table again but flicks a small piece of sweetheart calico back and forth as the antelope women pass. He manages to get their attention, and once they are at his table, he turns on his salesman’s charm. Eventually, the girls grow tired, and he tells them to rest in his tent. He takes their mother into his van, gives her a sleeping potion, and she falls fast asleep. He then leaves the girls, and all of his wares, in his tent and absconds with the antelope woman. He brings her to his home in the city, and the two live together. He will not let her escape. She begins drinking wine, buys new, tighter clothing, and gains weight, and he worries that she will leave him or be stolen by another man. Jimmy Badger urges Klaus to return the antelope woman, that she is needed in her tribe, but Klaus refuses.

Klaus lives in the bottom half of a duplex owned by his friend and employer Richard Whiteheart Beads. Sweetheart Calico is still with him. He ties her to the bed each night so that she will not escape. During her waking hours she barely acknowledges him, instead moving around silently singing traditional songs to herself softly. One morning, while in the bathroom to take a shower, Sweetheart Calico slips out of the window and runs swiftly away. She has never forgotten her daughters, and she hopes to make her way back to them. Try as she might, however, Sweetheart Calico cannot escape the city. Klaus looks high and low for her, without success. He asks Richard Whiteheart Beads, who tells him that keeping Sweetheart Calico captive is unethical and that he should let her go.

Sweetheart Calico shows up at Frank Shawano’s bakery with a dog in tow. Rozin, Richard Whiteheart Beads’s wife, works there. Rozin does not approve of the way that Klaus treats Sweetheart Calico and gives her free doughnuts and coffee. She offers to let Sweetheart Calico shower in her portion of the duplex. Sweetheart Calico and the dog return to the duplex. The dog does not allow Klaus to tie Sweetheart Calico up. Richard Whiteheart Beads, who is working with Klaus on a project removing mall carpeting, urges Klaus again to return Sweetheart Calico to her daughters.

Klaus has decided that Richard Whiteheart Beads is not his friend, but a foe. Richard gave him two tickets to Maui so that he and Sweetheart Calico (she had returned to him again after leaving him multiple times) could go on vacation together. He is dismayed to learn that he and Sweetheart Calico are not seated together on the plane, and also dismayed to see two large men who seem to be looking at Sweetheart. He knows how appealing she is to strangers, and he worries. When they arrive at their hotel, the men are still there, and he is sure they are assassins. He confronts them and find out that they are there to arrest Whiteheart Beads for illegal dumping. Although he protests and tries to explain that Whiteheart Beads gave him the tickets, that his name is Klaus, they do not believe him. He and Sweetheart Calico spend one night together in Maui, which Klaus is sure he will remember forever, and then they are on their way back to Minneapolis so that he can appear before a judge. He decides to tell the judge everything he knows about his boss in hopes of escaping prosecution himself.

Richard Whiteheart Beads and Rozin’s daughters Cally and Deanna are out with their father when they happen to see their mother out with Frank. The girls excitedly point her out to Richard, but he pulls the girls away from the woman, telling them that it is not their mother. Later, in the yard, several men in grey suits approach Richard and serve him with papers. Initially, he is sure that Rozin intends to divorce him, but upon examining the envelope, he realizes that Klaus informed on him to the authorities and that he is being prosecuted for illegal dumping. Richard reflects on his life and on his very presence in the city, the result of the Relocation Act that saw many of his fellow Ojibwe men and women incentivized to leave their families and move to urban areas, far from their reservations. He thinks that if he had been able to grow up on his reservation, he might have been a medicine man.

Deanna and Cally’s grandmothers, Grandma Noodin and Grandma Giizis, arrive in Minneapolis. One hopes that Richard and Rozin will separate, the other that they will stay together. They tell their granddaughters the story of a Blue Prairie Woman, an ancestor who married a deer. Her brothers, disapproving, had killed her husband and brought her back to their village. She’d seen her young daughter disappear in a raid, strapped to the back of a dog in a cradle board.

Rozin takes Deanna and Cally to McDonalds. The girls are almost 10 now, and they are excited that it is summer. They ask to be taken to the state fair, and so Rozin, her cousin Cecille, and Frank take them. Rozin thinks that Frank is good for her and notices how kind and diplomatic he is. The girls have fun taking in the sights and the sounds of the large event. Frank and Rozin surprise the girls by going on a ride called the Gravitron, but there is an issue with the ride’s operator. He seems to be having some sort of psychotic episode, and he increases the speed of the ride over and over. People gather around his operator’s booth, but he has locked the door. Eventually Cecile smashes his window with a tire iron, and the ride slows. Rozin seems unfazed, but Frank looks pale and ashen, and Rozin leads him over to a quiet spot in the grass to comfort him.

Rozin and her daughters wait for the school bus. They ask her if the story about Blue Prairie Woman is true. She rolls her eyes and tells them not to worry about “that old” story. After the girls get on the bus, she goes back inside. Richard is in the kitchen. She recalls their early years together while both were involved in AIM. She thinks that the movement was better to men than women and remembers how much Richard cheated on her. She feels justified in leaving him for Frank in part because of that, but also because he’s always involved in some kind of quasi-illegal scheme, and she is sick of it. He asks her outright if she loves Frank, and she replies that she does. He tells her that he and Klaus plan to change their identities and pretend to be unhoused. They are going to live down by the river. Alarmed, Rozin tells Richard that she thinks it’s a terrible idea.

It is Thanksgiving. Grandma Noodin and Grandma Giizis are in Minneapolis for the holiday. They both still live in houses on their family’s original reservation allotments, but they are frequent visitors to their urban relatives’ homes. Noodin has a unnamed gynecological complaint for which Rozin has scheduled a doctor’s visit, and although everything goes well at the appointment, afterwards she is in a sullen and silent mood. She storms around the house as the other women prepare food for the holiday meal, and she goes to bed without speaking to anyone. Richard and Klaus have taken off and are in hiding from the government, and Sweetheart Calico is left alone in Klaus’s apartment. Rozin and Cecile worry about her: The rent is paid only through November, and she will have to get a job soon. Cecile speaks openly of her disgust for Klaus and Richard, and although Frank (always the diplomatic one) tries to shush her, Cecile tells him that it is important to talk about difficult subjects and to recognize the various ways that Ojibwe people, but particularly Ojibwe women, are disempowered both in society as a whole and within their families. She judges Klaus and Richard for running away from their troubles and their responsibilities by pretending to be unhoused, noting that they could be arrested for their lies. The conversation moves on to more personal topics, and the women are equally open about their bodies and the bodies of the men in their lives. Noodin shares that she thought that her gynecologist was too forward. She had used some of Cecile’s spray glitter, thinking that it was feminine hygiene spray, and the doctor had called her “glitzy.” Frank and Rozin continue to flirt and make eyes at each other, and it is obvious to everyone that the two are getting serious.

Cally and Deanna are upset that Rozin and Richard are getting divorced. Although the girls have always liked Frank, they tell their mother that they would prefer him as a kindly uncle rather than a stepfather. They are so distraught that they refuse to go to school. Rozin has to leave for work, and so she enlists the help of Sweetheart Calico to look after them. Sweetheart Calico takes the girls on a long walk through the worst neighborhoods in the city, and it is only her dog, Almost Soup, who manages to rescue the Cally and Deanna. He takes them home, where Rozin anxiously awaits their return, cooking wild rice in order to distract herself. Rozin is so grateful that she gives the dog an entire pound of ground meat.

Having had an adventure and rescued the twins, Almost Soup resumes the story of his life. He is descended from Blue Prairie Woman’s dog, Sorrow. Almost Soup has survived into middle age, which, he explains, is no easy feat for a reservation dog such as himself. Although his people do not eat dogs, per se, they are not opposed to doing so on occasion, and they are perfectly willing to dispatch an animal that becomes a nuisance. He has learned to eat at any opportunity provided, to be cute but elusive, and to avoid cars, cats, and the many other dangers that lurk around every corner.

Rozin is late to work for days after her daughters’ return, and she is laid off. She signs up for unemployment benefits, which would help her to make ends meet, but not to pay her mortgage. Frank offers to help her to pay the mortgage on her house, but Rozin does not want to depend on a man, so she takes Cally and Deanna up to stay with their grandmothers. The girls become gravely ill with a fever that drains them of their energy before sending them into violent seizures and causing them to vomit blood. Rozin is forced to take the girls to Indian Health Services, where they are given intravenous fluids and recover. Almost Soup watches this all happen, knowing that he is doing his best to keep the girls’ spirits safe. When they have recovered, Almost Soup watches Rozin create intricate beadwork and reflects on the way that the beads symbolize individual lives that come together, because, ultimately, everything on the planet is connected.