The Painted Drum

When Ira walks into a bar, sitting beside the only man who spares her a friendly glance. As she sips the beer he buys for her, she admits, “I don’t feel like going home” (196), even though it’s past nightfall. He jokes that she could go home with him, but would “have to sleep on the other side of my wife” (196), who, he adds, knows about “old-time medicines” (197) and is beautiful, despite the scar on her lip.

Ira is beautiful, too. After a few more beers, she extols the attractiveness of her naked body before remarking, more soberly, that she has three children. They have been alone all day in the little house that her father built, 20 miles outside of town. The man lives much closer to town, in a prefab house, and works at the electric plant. Ira allows him to boast that he’s “different” (198), inasmuch as he can control his drinking, but when he keeps “referring to spiritual things” (202), she protests that “[y]ou can either be a drunk or a spiritual person. Not both if you’re an Indian” (202).

Returning to the subject of her children, Ira muses that she shouldn’t have left them alone, especially in such bitter weather, but she needs money. She says she’s at the bar to “sell my body to the highest bidder” (203), but seeing the man’s shock, laughs off her remark and stands to leave. Aware that Ira has no way of getting home, the man offers to buy her some groceries and then take her to his brother, who has a truck .The man’s name is John, and his brother’s name is Morris. Ma’iingan is Morris’s Ojibwe name, which means wolf. 

Shawnee wakes from a dream in which her mother is saying, “Wake up, wake up” (205). The fire has travelled from the make-shift stove over to the window and is climbing the walls. Shawnee and Alice try to extinguish the flames with cups of water, but it is useless. They pull everything they can outside and then huddle inside blankets not far from the blazing house. After a short sleep, the children rise and move closer to the house, “but it was still dark outside [… and] the house no longer gave enough warmth” (206).

With no other option, Shawnee straps Apitchi to her back and leads her sister into the woods to walk to Bernard’s house. It is dark and cold, and, after a while, Shawnee can no longer feel her feet and wonders if they have lost their way. She refuses to stop walking, however, “until the snow gave way beneath them” (207).

Morris lives next to the gas station where John buys Ira’s groceries. Despite misgivings about driving 20 miles with a stranger, Ira gets into Morris’s truck and then notices “[h]is eyes were bugged out, big and staring, white all around the black pebble of the iris” (210). He explains he has a sickness that prevents him from shutting his eyes, so he has to continually use eye drops.

As they drive out of town, Morris asks Ira to hold the steering wheel while he puts drops in his eyes. She leans in beside him to do so, and, after taking the wheel again, he hauls her closer to him. Objecting that he needs to keep both hands on the wheel to navigate the snowy road, Ira scoots away and turns the conversation to his eye condition.

Because he can’t close his eyes, Morris is highly sensitive to lights—especially daylight—and ventures out of his house only at night. He spends his days in semi-darkness listening to audio tapes. After reciting lines from an audio book that conclude “the lightest touch can whither or heal,’” Morris stops the truck and refuses to continue driving until Ira kisses him. Growing increasingly uneasy about her children’s welfare, Ira agrees, covering his eyes with her hand. Afterwards, “[h]e leaned back into the seat like he was fainting a little. She kissed him again” (215). Morris starts the truck again and, noting the smell of blood, explains that he “head-butted a mirror” (215) the day before and had to drive himself to the emergency room.

They turn onto Ira’s road and arrive at “the black and delicately smoking foundation” (215) where her house once stood.

Shawnee dreams that she, Alice, and Apitchi are made of “ash, black reeds, soot, a powder of loneliness, smoke” (216), and, rising to the treetops, they hang in their air. The insistent beat of a drum rouses Shawnee and won’t let her sleep, even though she is so comfortable. Against her will, she stands and pulls her siblings through the snow and darkness as the sound of the drum grows louder. She doesn’t see Bernard’s house until she bumps into it. She finds a window and beats on it until it breaks.

Ira gathers her wits and sets off with Morris in the direction of Bernard’s house. When they reach Bernard’s driveway, they find an ambulance and Ira’s children inside it. The EMT assures Ira that her children are alright but will require hospitalization.

Morris rides to the hospital in the front seat of the ambulance holding gauze to his over-exposed eyes, and Bernard follows in his car, with Ira beside him. Bernard notes that Morris is Chook’s son, and that he is legally blind. To Bernard’s surprise, Ira says Morris drove her home from town and, while she was away, her house burned down. She defends her decision to leave her children by insisting she had to get groceries and fuel, but Bernard can smell alcohol on her breath.

As the car warms up and Ira sinks into sleepiness, Bernard shares what Shawnee told him. The woods were pitch-black and Bernard’s lights were off, but Shawnee found his house because “the drum told her where to go” (221). Ira, half drowsing, jokes that Bernard was drumming and having his “own little powwow” (221) in the middle of the night. Bernard quietly reflects that he was sleeping at the time, and the drum was covered up and in the corner.

At the hospital, Ira divides her time between the room that Shawnee and Alice share and Apitichi’s room. All three children are stable, but Apitchi has a fever. Although no one has accused Ira of irresponsible parenting, she feels guilty, and even more so when a social worker arrives to interview her. She recognizes the woman as Seraphine, the wife of John from the bar. In response to Seraphine’s questions, Ira says she supports herself by making and selling beadwork, but as she starts to explain her trip to town, Seraphine reveals that John told her everything. Without pursuing the matter of the bar visit, Seraphine asks where Ira will live now.

After Seraphine leaves, Ira sits with her daughters. Neither girl looks at her mother, and Ira realizes she should ask them what happened, but she is afraid to know the details since she is responsible. Shawnee’s own thoughts swing between guilt and a longing for Ira to acknowledge that she had saved her brother and sister. When Alice wonders aloud where they will live, Ira holds her.

After checking on Apitchi, who is still feverish, Ira visits Morris. He has been admitted to the hospital because the trek through the woods with Ira aggravated his eye disorder. According to the doctor, he will now likely lose his vision entirely, but he assures Ira that it was bound to happen. The thyroid-related condition has resisted treatments and deteriorated significantly during his military service in Kuwait.

Morris and Ira talk about her late father, who “knew how to give names” (232). He gave Morris the name Ma’iingan, after the wolf. When Ira says the name was special to her father “because wolves saved his life” (233), Morris suggests that the name saved him, too, as he received it just before going to Kuwait. He tells Ira that Seraphine, his sister-in-law, also has war wounds—hers are from boarding school. Like so many Indigenous children, Seraphine attended a school run by white people to learn white ways. When she stubbornly spoke in her native language, a matron slashed her lip with a rug needle.

Ira visits Morris again later that day. He apologizes for coercing her to kiss him in the truck, but she is content to let it go. Ira returns to her children, and Morris admits to himself he has fallen in love with her. He calls his brother to announce that he’s going to kick his painkiller addiction, clean up his act, and marry Ira.

The doctors diagnose Apitchi with pneumonia. He suffers a seizure, “probably related to the fever” (242), but the doctors stabilize him. Ira falls asleep in his room.

Bernard is seated opposite Ira when she wakes, and, to her great relief, he agrees to share his home with Ira and her kids. Bernard believes that the drum spoke to Shawnee and that it is ready to be used again. He recommends using it to heal Apitchi. With Ira’s consent, Bernard recruits Morris, who learned some of the drum’s songs from his father, and the two plan a drum ceremony to be performed at Apitchi’s bedside.