Love Medicine

Gordie Kashpaw falls into a depression after June’s death. He begins drinking again, day in and day out. One night, he drunkenly imagines that June is in the house with him, coming for him. He runs out to his car and swerves his way to town, narrowly missing other cars and nearly crashing his own. He hits a deer but doesn’t register it at first. When he finally stops the car to walk over and check on the deer, he realizes that he can sell the deer for its hide and therefore afford more alcohol. He drags the deer into the back seat of his car and keeps driving. Suddenly, he sees that the deer is not dead, just in shock. He takes a crowbar from the passenger seat and strikes the deer in the head, killing it. He suddenly imagines that the deer is June, bleeding to death in the back of his car.

At the Sacred Heart Convent, Sister Mary Martin de Porres wakes up from a strange dream in which she drew a tub of sharp metallic water that she knew would transform her, but she woke up before she could manifest that transformation. This happens often, and the only way to settle back down is to play her clarinet. She is interrupted by Gordie falling against the windowpane. He is drunk and tells her he needs confession. She listens to him tell a bizarre story about killing his wife. Sister Mary walks to his car with him and is startled to see the dead deer instead of a dead woman. She goes back to Gordie, but he is hiding somewhere, crying loudly. As she waits for the police to arrive, she can still hear his howling in the air.

Lipsha Morrissey, taken in by Marie when he was a child, has healing powers. His ability to unknot the pain in people’s bodies is a gift, but he is unable to use it to help his grandfather Nector, whose intelligence has turned to senility with age. Doctors diagnose Nector with diabetes, but his family and friends know that all his genius has imploded within him, making him sick and infantile. Nector still battles between his emotions for two women who love him. He continues to sneak away to Lulu’s house, angering Marie, who loves him with a characteristic sense of chaos. Lipsha decides that Grandpa Nector must be helped, so he goes to the Lamartine house but hides when he sees his grandfather and Lulu having sex. Lulu’s wig falls off her head, and they stop abruptly. Lipsha leaves with Nector, who seems to have already forgotten the whole incident. Lipsha resolves to give Grandpa a mental adjustment.

Lipsha thinks deeply about the various odd stories from his family as he hunts for geese. He shoots at the birds but misses and decides to stick to healing. This resolution pushes Lipsha to make a grave error in judgment about love medicine. He buys two turkeys and removes their hearts, instead of hunting more geese for their hearts. He tries to get the hearts blessed at the Sacred Heart Convent, but the priest is too busy and Sister Martin misunderstands his intentions. She believes that Lipsha wants love medicine for himself so someone will love him, and she encourages him to just be himself. Dejected, Lipsha dips his fingers into the holy water on his way out and rubs the water on the turkey hearts himself.

Lipsha presents the two hearts to Grandma Marie as love medicine. Grandma Marie and Grandpa Nector will each eat one heart to bring their love back together. Grandma, wanting full results, decides they should eat the hearts raw. Marie eats her heart and forces Nector to eat his by hitting him between the shoulders, which makes Nector choke on the heart. Lipsha holds Nector but his healing touch doesn’t work, and Nector dies in his arms. When Marie sees that her husband is dead, she too collapses and is begrudgingly revived at the hospital. Later, at Nector’s funeral, Marie is tight-lipped with Lipsha, but Lipsha knows that his grandpa’s death is both his fault and his grandma’s.

A week after the funeral, Lipsha checks in on Marie in her room. Wide-eyed, she tells him that the love medicine was too strong, that it killed Grandpa and also brought him back searching for her as a ghost. Later that night, Lipsha runs to Marie’s room when he hears a scream. She tells him that Nector has visited again, and Lipsha attempts to send his grandfather’s spirit away.

Marie spends her days after her husband’s death cleaning, prepping food, and not sleeping. One day, she sees Gordie, swaying in her backyard. She helps get him to sleep and sleeps restlessly herself. She wakes to the sounds of Gordie riffling through the kitchen. He asks her for a drink but she tells him she doesn’t keep any alcohol in the house. Gordie, sad, thinks about June.

When Gordie and June ran away to get married, they had only a few dollars between them. They hitchhiked to a motel, where they got an unfurnished room for a cheap fee. There was a lake near the motel where June bathed naked. They held hands on the docks, happy with only each other.

Now, Marie is worried about Gordie. He slams around the house, and Marie notices that “There was something horrid and gentle about his movements, as if he had lost the clumsy weight of humanness” (274). She guards the room where he sleeps with an axe, certain that if he manages to leave the house, he’ll harm himself.

Lulu Lamartine has always felt misunderstood. She loves the world and her life so tremendously that her devotion to living in that love is seen as silly or flirty. For Lulu, men are a part of that world of love. She admits that she always loved Nector the most.

Lulu remembers finding a dead man in the woods when she was a child. She was fascinated by him, and never told anyone about him. When she was forced out of the woods and into the school system, she cried.

Lulu also remembers when Nector sought revenge against her for marrying Beverly. She attended the hearing about repossessing the land her house was on and was shamed for having so many children by different men. She challenged the crowd, saying she could name all the fathers. Men and women alike were nervous about her truth being revealed. In the end, it didn’t matter because Nector set her beloved house on fire. Lulu refused to leave the land after the fire. She and her sons camped there until finally, the tribe arranged a new house for her on repurchased land. The view was beautiful, and she accepted their reparation.

She married Bev, but he was still legally married to Elsa. Lulu sent Gerry with Bev to seek a divorce from Elsa, but Gerry ended up in prison and Bev never came back. Lulu’s boys grew up. Gerry went in and out of prison, and Henry Junior came back from the war dead inside. Lyman lied to her about how Henry Junior died, saying there had been a car accident. She didn’t challenge his lie and nurtured him through his mourning. She finally had a daughter, her last child, at 50 years old. At 65 years old, Lulu moved into the Senior Citizens home, where her sons helped her furnish her comfortable apartment.

The Senior Citizens home was where she met Nector again. She had heard that he had changed, but his new childlike behavior made him seem, to her, like the greedy person he had always been. That’s partly what drew her to him–they were both feeding their own selves all the time. She carried on their affair, ignoring the fact that he was still married to Marie. The two women simply ignored each other. When Nector died, Lulu’s eyesight got worse. Marie volunteered to help her, and in their shared visitation from Nector’s spirit, within their coupled mourning, the two women finally became friends.

Lyman falls into a depression after his brother’s death, believing that all his money-making successes no longer mean anything. He lets his stocks, employments, and bank accounts dwindle. When he receives notice from the government about his taxes, he discovers that he is considered alive and feels inspired to get active once again. He takes a job with the BIA (Bureau of Indian Affairs) and essentially takes over his father Nector’s old job planning contracts for the reservation. One contract in particular interests him greatly, but it would require getting through his mother Lulu’s wrath and her new friend Marie’s anger. The plan is to build a factory that would make museum souvenirs of Indigenous American token items, such as arrowheads.

Lulu finally comes around on Lyman’s factory plan, and he realizes it’s because “By becoming the worthy adversary my mother now missed, by taking over his factory, I was keeping her instinct to control a man alive, giving her strength” (Page 309). Lyman makes sure that enough residents from the reservation, including his critics, get stable jobs with the factory. He appeases them with smiles and donuts, but his mother reminds him that it’s her and Marie’s leadership that keeps the employees from walking out on him.

Lyman mismanages the factory and produces more goods than needed. He starts laying people off and can’t get the factory out of its rut. One day, he sees Marie in the breakroom instead of at her post and he snaps at her, a sign of disrespect between him and an elder. Marie goes back to work, and Lyman goes to apologize to her, but his apology sets off an argument between Marie and Lulu in which they finally address the issue of Nector. Lulu accuses Marie of taking care of Nector’s mother Margaret at the expense of Nector’s own growth. Marie accuses Lulu of pretending that Lyman is not Nector’s son. Lulu mixes her paint with Marie’s, ruining Marie’s job. Marie lets out a traditional war cry, and the entire factory stops their work. Lipsha Morrissey, smiling, takes a tomahawk he’s manufacturing and slams it on the table.

The entire factory erupts into a fight. Old tribal feuds rear their heads as the employees attack one another with anything they have, then leave the factory stripped of tools and products. When everyone leaves, Lyman drowns his sorrows with alcohol. Lipsha returns, and in a drunken haze, Lyman watches as Lipsha doubles and triples. Lyman takes a steel chair and attacks Lipsha despite Lipsha’s pleas for mercy.

Lyman heads to the bar, where others gathered after the fight. Marie and Lulu are there, still stewing in resentment. Lyman sits with Marie and apologizes to her. She takes his hands, and he asks her if Nector ever talked about him. Lyman imagines all the ways Marie could answer this question, projecting his desires for approval onto her. Instead, Marie shows him how she injured her hands in the factory to avoid fighting. They sit and hold their hands together. Then, they dance.

Lyman goes back to the factory to clean up. As he reorganizes, he thinks about his next step. He realizes that he could lead the charge to federal approval for casinos. He could start with a Bingo hall, which would fit easily within the factory’s walls. He could build the business into a casino that drew in money and tourists. He enjoys the irony of this–making money off of the white American imperative to assimilate Indigenous people into capitalist thinking.

Gordie and June’s son King Kashpaw has a son named King Junior who goes by his middle name Howard in school. He is advanced for his age, contrary to his tumultuous home life.

Lipsha Morrissey finds out that June was his mother because Lulu, friends with Marie again, stops him in the Senior Citizens home and tells him the secret. Unmoored by this revelation, as well as the fact that everyone else had known all along, Lipsha steals Marie’s stash of hidden money and runs away. He drinks in a motel until he sees a sign advertising army recruitment. Eager to find community, he joins but deserts right away. Meanwhile his father, now revealed to be Gerry Nanapush, is being transferred to a lower-security prison for good behavior. Lipsha visits King despite their tense relationship because King spent time in prison with Gerry and might be able to share some information about him.

King confirms that he knows Gerry while King and Lipsha gamble, but he doesn’t reveal a lot of information. They hear on the news that Gerry has escaped from prison. Suddenly, Gerry walks into the apartment. He sits with Lipsha and King, and accuses King of ratting him out. Gerry heard the tapes of evidence against him, which included King’s testimony. Gerry asks in on their game to gamble for the car King bought with his inheritance from June’s death. Lynette is on edge, a frying pan at hand in case she needs to hit Gerry. Gerry wins the bet and King places the keys to the car on the table, when the police arrive in hot pursuit of Gerry. Howard opens the door for the police and points to his father, believing that the police are there for King, who physically abuses Lynette. Howard is happy to give his father up. Gerry disappears without a trace. The police pursue Gerry. Lipsha demands the car registration. King signs the papers over, and Lipsha leaves with the keys and the form.

Lipsha drives the car away and is confused by a knocking sound coming from the trunk. He stops and opens the trunk to the shocking appearance of Gerry. Gerry takes the passenger seat and Lipsha drives towards Canada, where Gerry has a wife and daughter. Lipsha catches Gerry up on the news from the reservation. He asks if Gerry knew June, and Gerry remembers her fondly. Lipsha also asks if Gerry had actually killed that state trooper, but Gerry says that no one will ever really know what happened in those moments. Lipsha admits to Gerry that the military police are after Lipsha for his desertion. Gerry seems to intuit that Lipsha is of his family, if not actually his son.

They say goodbye at the Canadian border. Lipsha drives to a bridge and stops to admire the water beneath him. He thinks about June and how fortunate he was that his mother gave him into Marie’s care. He decides to let go of his past and cross the bridge to his future.