Tracks: Chapter 6 Summary & Analysis

Pauline realizes she is pregnant, but doesn’t know when she might be due. Pauline has already committed herself to God, so she tries to cause herself to miscarry. Bernadette catches her doing this and stops her. Pauline reveals that it is Napoleon’s child, and Bernadette says she’ll take the baby. Pauline declines, asking Bernadette to help her abort the child, but Bernadette reminds Pauline that this is a mortal sin.

Pauline and Bernadette plan to hide the pregnancy as long as Pauline promises not to try to stop the pregnancy again. Pauline struggles with this, knowing that Moses Pillager could make a potion to cause her to lose the child. Bernadette watches Pauline closely, though, and she complies. Pauline knows the child will be a girl, and Bernadette says her name will be Marie, after the Virgin, but Pauline thinks the child is more the spawn of Satan.

Bernadette also insists that Napoleon not show his face to Pauline, and makes him stay in the barn. Pauline watches him eat from her window and then listens to him play his fiddle, a sound that is painful for her to hear. Sophie and Philomena dance to the music, growing thin as Pauline grows more and more pregnant.

Fall comes, and the men gather the last of the wheat. The armistice bells clang, keeping Pauline awake. She goes into labor, Bernadette coaching her through, but Pauline realizes that she doesn’t want to let the child go because she’ll be lonelier without her. She tries to hold the child inside of her.

Pauline tells Bernadette that she wants herself and the child to die so that the baby won’t be tainted by original sin. Bernadette leaves the room and returns with a coil of rope and two cooking spoons. Bernadette ties Pauline’s arms and legs to the bed, and then uses the spoons to grasp the child’s head and pull. Pauline sees the bruises left by the spoons and says she has been marked by the devil’s thumbs. Bernadette hands the baby to Pauline to try to feed, but Pauline refuses. She leaves the house as soon as she is well enough, and goes to the convent.

At the convent, Pauline rises earlier than all the others to begin her chores. She is hungry and cold, and offers up these feelings of discomfort to God. She believes that God visits her, sitting on the stove at night. He tells her that she is not Indian at all, but white, and that she was chosen to serve. He tells her she is forgiven for Marie, and that Pauline should forget her.

Many people die that winter, and Pauline tends to them. God tells Pauline that she must make room for him in the minds of the Indians. Sister Saint Anne announces that the order won’t accept Indian girls, and Pauline is thankful to have found out that she is not Indian.

Pauline tells Sister Saint Anne that God visits her in the dark and talks to her, but that he doesn’t stay long because it is too cold. Sister Saint Anne allows Pauline to stoke the fire before bed to welcome the Lord, and gives Pauline her thin wool blanket, though Pauline is sure the sister wears her heavy wool cloak to sleep. She thinks about telling the Sister about how she is the chosen one, but Pauline then sees her own shadow move separate from her, a sign of the devil, and decides not to tell the sister. Pauline waits for God to tell her what to do about Fleur, who Pauline believes is the gateway to the lake monster and Manitous for the tribe. She realizes that she can be this same gateway to Catholicism for them.

Pauline relays a story from Nanapush about guiding a group of white men to hunt buffalo. They killed so many for only their tongues and hides that the few who remained began to act strangely. The living buffalo ate the bodies of dead and tried to cripple each other, even attempting suicide. Only when the thunder came did the animals calm down. Pauline sees a similar thing happening with the remaining people of the tribe. Pauline has a vision of all of the souls she has delivered to God by preparing them for death, and asks what she should do. God tells her to bring him more.

Pauline goes to Fleur’s cabin with the goal of converting those inside. Fleur opens the door and Pauline sees that she’s clearly hungry, though surviving despite the difficult times, and is also pregnant. Pauline asks if she can come in, and Fleur calls her a Morrissey. Pauline enters anyway, asking for something to eat. Eli refuses to acknowledge Pauline. Fleur removes her headscarf to remind Pauline of her bald head. Pauline is surprised that she is being taken as a Morrissey, and claims she left them behind because she couldn’t fend off Napoleon forever. Fleur smirks at her and then at Eli, as though she knows different.

Fleur brings up Marie, and Pauline claims to know nothing about her, but Fleur identifies that this can’t be true—because Pauline has already revealed she knows the baby was a girl. She says that the baby has a Puyat mouth, but “hers hasn’t told any lies.” Fleur allows Pauline to sit near the fire and feeds her bannock.

Nanapush, who spends much of his time at the Pillager cabin and is there now, mocks Pauline, asking to see her hairshirt. She reveals that she has made herself underwear of scratchy potato sacks, and he suggests she might like the feeling. Pauline contests, saying her suffering is a gift to God. Nanapush continues teasing her, but Margaret tells him to stop. Margaret then dishes out some watery soup to all of them, skipping her own bowl. Nanapush hands most of his plate back to Margaret, who eats a spoonful and gives the rest to Fleur, claiming that she ate while she cooked.

Pauline continues to visit Fleur’s cabin, and Nanapush notices that she wears her shoes on the wrong feet, another way of punishing herself as an offering to God. Pauline does this only when away from the convent, because the Mother Superior discourages these strange acts of penance. Nanapush tells Pauline she is unusual, and Pauline feels proud that he could be noticing that she is chosen. In fact, he is observing that she never allows herself to go to the outhouse. Indeed, Pauline only allows herself to use the outhouse twice a day. Pauline admonishes Nanapush for his crude comments, and he stops.

Nanapush, though, has not given up on teasing Pauline. On a day when Pauline needs badly to use the outhouse, Nanapush brews some sugary sassafras to tempt her, and Pauline can’t resist and drinks several cups. Nanapush then begins to tell a story of a girl slowly flooded by water, and Pauline begins to pray the rosary in her head. The only way for the girl to save herself from drowning is by grabbing something that sticks out of the water, which the girl does. Pauline feels the need to pee grow and grow, tapping her feet anxiously, as Nanapush tells the story of the water rising. When the water finally retreats, the girl makes good on her promise and copulates with the thing that was sticking out of the water.

Nanapush tells that nine months later the girl bore a child, and he pulls a condom from his pocket. He begins to fill the condom with the tea, and says that the child was made of nothing but water. Pauline is in agony, and the condom bursts, spilling tea everywhere. Pauline runs from the room, having wet herself.

Back at the convent, Pauline imposes new limits on her life. She won’t allow herself to move at night while she tries to sleep. She plunges her hands into icy buckets of water in the morning. She denies herself most food and drink, having only hot water and small bits of bread. She sews burrs and grass into her dress to irritate her skin and allows her toenails to grow uncomfortably long. She also makes herself suffer Nanapush’s insults to her as he refuses to allow her inside because of her stinking underwear, but she still won’t allow herself to wash.

Fleur offers to wash Pauline’s clothes so that she can come inside. Fleur tells Lulu to gather snow to melt into water from outside. Margaret leaves, accompanying Eli and Nector to town to sell some wood to pay the land fees. Pauline allows herself to undress, and hands her clothes to Fleur. Fleur and Lulu wash Pauline, but Pauline reminds herself not to enjoy the experience. When Fleur begins to wash her hair though, she can’t help but feel pleasure. Pauline uses the outhouse, and Fleur gives her floursacks to wear for underwear instead of the potato sacks.

Pauline then notices that Fleur is bleeding, and Fleur asks Pauline to retrieve some alder for her to stop the premature birth. In the lean-to, Pauline sees how little they have to eat for the rest of the winter. She knocks many of the containers to the floor looking for the alder. She grabs something that she is unsure is the alder, and begins to boil it. Lulu puts on her thin patent leather shoes and goes to Margaret’s house to retrieve the others. Fleur tells Pauline to get moss to plug the bleeding. Pauline fumbles through the actions that Fleur directs her to take. It seems as though it is taking too long for Margaret and Nanapush to arrive. Fleur holds onto Pauline and repeats the word “no” as the baby emerges.

Fleur grabs the child and tries to resuscitate it. Finally, it cries. Fleur then goes to the lean-to to gather more roots and powders, aware and angry that Pauline boiled the wrong thing. She boils a new mixture and drinks it down. She tries to give the baby some of the cooled liquid, too. Pauline worries that Fleur has died, until she stands and staggers across the room. Fleur stands over Pauline, threatening to kill her as well if she and the baby die, believing that Pauline’s bumbling attempts were not genuine. Pauline sits dazed in the glow of the baby’s serpent eyes. Fleur then plunges a knife down and it pins Pauline’s skirt to the floor. Fleur opens the door to leave the cabin, and Pauline is freed. Pauline follows the mother and child down to a road by the lake in the biting wind and snow. The beaten, icy path makes it clear Fleur has made this journey before. Pauline imitates Fleur’s method of tying bark to her feet as snowshoes.

Pauline is surprised at all the Indians she sees on this path with them. She sees buffalo and unfarmed land. She sees no fences or tracks. Pauline realizes the others she sees are the dead she has blessed, and sees her own mother and father, too. She begs Fleur to turn back, but they approach a fire where they see the three men from the butcher shop playing a game together. Fleur asks them to deal her in, and she loses the first round. A woman emerges to take the baby from Fleur, signifying the death of the baby. Lily then pulls out a lock of Lulu’s hair and a patent leather shoe, and Fleur plays now for Lulu’s life. She wins with four queens and a wild, saving Lulu’s life.

The men look at Pauline, and she is no longer invisible. She can tell they know it was her who sealed them in the meat locker on the day of the storm. Fleur and Pauline race back to the cabin just before Margaret arrives. Pauline finds that her skirts are again pinned by the knife Fleur plunged into the floor. Margaret stokes the fire, warms the medicine, and rails against Pauline for not doing a better job of helping Fleur birth her baby. Pauline frees herself and goes to Fleur’s side to try to baptize the dead baby, but Fleur bats her away. Margaret wraps the baby in a box and gives it to Eli, who ties the tiny coffin high in the trees, out of reach of the forest animals.

Pauline sees herself out, saying she’ll send Father Damien and Bernadette. Margaret, holding a knife, spits on Pauline’s shoes and then her veil, and Pauline holds out her hands, tempting Margaret to stab a stigmata (the wounds of Christ on the cross) into her hands as punishment, but Pauline claps her palms together at the last moment and runs out the door, avoiding injury. At the convent she scrapes her hands raw on the ice caking the bucket of water, until Mother Superior tells her to go to sleep.