Summary
A short vignette follows giving sparse but devastating details of Vera’s life in captivity: men who smell of hot oil, liquor, sweat, spoiled meat, cigarettes, and “the language of the wolverine.” To run away, she would need to run through knives and be skinned alive. She hears her mother calling her name, occasionally, like a gong. The passage is vague on details—we do not know if this is a dream, a vision, a real-life episode, or something else entirely—but conveys a visceral sense of danger.
There is a parade on Saturday on the reservation for which the whole community gathers. The highlight of the parade is the crowning of the homecoming king and queen. Sharlo, daughter of Thomas and Rose, is crowned homecoming queen, which prompts joy and surprise. Thomas has a flashback to when he saved Sharlo from falling onto the ground and notices a similar expression of “arrested flight” on Sharlo’s face. Patrice remembers when she was crowned homecoming queen and the sweet revenge of being honored in sight of the peers who teased and bullied her as a child. There is a promenade and dance after the homecoming parade where all the dressed-up couples show up and take a turn around the gym. Barnes is crushed that Patrice hasn’t come to the dance and tears up. Valentine, one of Patrice’s coworkers at the factory, spots Barnes and offers him a ride to a bush dance, which he accepts.
Barnes makes out with Valentine and Doris separately at the bush dance and realizes that he has feelings for them too. He is surprised and upset to learn that he can like a girl other than Pixie. His romantic concerns are batted away once Thomas approaches him with the idea of setting up a boxing card, a re-match between Wood Mountain and Joe “Wobble” Wobleszynskiki—to raise money to send an Indian delegation to Washington D.C. to argue against the termination bill, which he agrees to. Barnes gets Joe to agree to a re-match with Wood Mountain. While doing so, he observes that Joe walks with a slumped left shoulder. He mentions this to Mountain, who suggests that Joe might be faking it. Barnes in turn begins thinking that they could have Wood fake an arm injury to mislead Joe in the lead up to the match.
Wood Mountain’s feelings for Patrice grow more urgent and torturous to the point that the sound of her chopping wood arouses him. He restarts training for the match against Joe with Barnes, who plays fast-paced music to urge Mountain into a speedy rhythm of boxing.
After the bush dance, Patrice notices that Valentine and Doris seem to be talking furtively and keeping a secret between themselves. However, she is too preoccupied with the new baby at home and the still-missing Vera to care. Betty Pye, a fellow worker who took off work to get her tonsils removed, is back and showing off her tonsils in a jar. During lunch break, their supervisor informs them that they are suspending coffee breaks temporarily, which upsets all of them. Later, Valentine tells Patrice that Barnes kissed her and Doris both, separately, in a conspiratorial whisper. Indifferent to the news, Patrice lies and tells them that she already knew because Barnes had told her.
Patrice once again has Wood Mountain at her house caring for the new baby. He tells her that the baby likely needs a warm bag and a cradleboard. He offers to make the cradleboard himself, which is significant because usually the father makes the cradleboard. She accepts his offer. Wood Mountain asks her whether she thinks Vera will return. She does, citing the dreams where Vera often appears. Wood mentions that he overheard something from Bernadette that has been bothering him, something like “she’s in the hold”—which makes him think that Vera is in the hold of a ship. He mentions that there are ships in the Mississippi River and in the Gitchi Gumi, the Great Lakes. Patrice stares at him, questioningly. He says that ships are filled with men, suggesting that Vera has been trafficked as a sex slave on one of these ships. Patrice shuts her mind and walks out.
Thomas sends a letter to Millie Cloud, a part-Indian academic and daughter of Louis Pipestone, asking for assistance in testifying before the Senate, given that she conducted an economic survey of the Turtle Mountain and could use that material as evidence of their current impoverishment.
Millie is a Chippewa scholar living in Minnesota currently working three part-time jobs. She is very fond of geometric patterns, which she wears almost exclusively. She is forward, direct, irritable, and forceful, and as a result, men do not like her. She grew up raised mostly by her mom, occasionally seeing her Indian father, Louis. Later, for her master’s thesis, she visited the reservation and conducted an economic and physical survey, which gave her important insight into what it would have been like to have grown up on the reservation with her father. Upon receiving Thomas’ letter, she becomes excited at the prospect of being useful to her father’s people.
Vera, in a state of deep physical and emotional devastation, is dressed in a dead man’s clothes and removed from the ship. She is left for dead at the end of an alley in Duluth, Minnesota.
Back on the reservation, Biboon is close to death and has a mystical experience wherein he reflects on time. He sees time not as a linear movement dictated by a calendar, but as a “holy element” that moves back and forth, upside down. He sees an unbroken line of buffalo trudging across a horizon on one side of the world.
Analysis
The juxtaposition between Vera’s situation of brutal captivity and the family-friendly fun of the homecoming parade highlights Erdich’s skill in weaving together dissonant plot lines and tones, oscillating from horror to comedy to nostalgia within the span of a few pages. The scene in “Agony Would Be Her Name” is figurative and oblique, enhancing the sense of horror by employing the reader’s imagination. The extreme brutality that we briefly glimpse is then starkly juxtaposed with the light-hearted and low-stakes enjoyment of the homecoming parade. Sharlo, the daughter of Thomas and Rose, is crowned homecoming queen, and the expression on her face of joy and surprise reminds Thomas of past moments with her. Patrice thinks about the time when she was crowned queen herself and her sweet revenge over the girls who used to bully her.
In another juxtaposition, Barnes is disappointed that Patrice doesn’t show up to the homecoming dance, but ends up making out with Doris and Valentine later. This juxtaposition imbues a dissonant note through the novel as unseen horror creeps under daily life on the reservation.
Female friendship and romance are themes that continually appear through the relationships between Patrice, Doris, and Valentine. Their relationship is full of affection but fraught with envy, as Doris and Valentine are tired of the amorous attention that Patrice receives but seems to reject from men. Thus, their intimate encounter with Barnes at the bush dance gives them an experience to hoard and bond over, exclusively, without Patrice. While Patrice feigns indifference, saying that she is too worried about her sister to care about the shenanigans of her friends, the fact that she lies and tells Doris and Valentine that Barnes had already informed her about the kiss reveals that she does desire vengeance over the girls. Even amidst her worry for her trafficked sister, Patrice is still enmeshed in her minor grievances and desires.
Mille Cloud is a new character and a different kind of American Indian from the other characters in the novel. She is mixed, raised mostly by her white mom with occasional visits from her Indian dad, Louis Pipestone. She grew up outside of the reservation largely assimilated in white American culture, yet retains a strong identification with her father's tribe. She attended university and has completed a master's degree. She lives alone and works three part-time jobs to support herself. Her incorporation in the novel reveals the ways that one’s indigenous identity is not straightforward, but co-exists and is intermingled with other lineages and communities, which one can choose and claim, even if not raised within it.
Biboon, Thomas’ father, is nearing the end of his life, and he knows it. He has a lot of time to sleep and think alone. His wonders about death and what comes after it. The appearance of the buffalo, an animal symbolic of a now extinguished Indian way of life, is a sign that he is experiencing multiple temporalities simultaneously. His meditation on nonlinear time (“time was all at once, back and forth, upside down") serves not only as a reflection of his personal philosophy, but also of the novel's, which screws up and mixes different temporalities together.
