Fleur

“He’s a thing of dry foam, a thing of death by drowning, the death a Chippewa cannot survive.”

Pauline uses parallel structure to describe Misshepeshu, the water man, and death by water as a terrifying fate for the Chippewa. That Fleur survives it twice suggests that she has powers beyond the mortal realm either because she is cursed or in conspiracy with him. To Pauline, Fleur’s power can be seen as both good and bad as all power is the story is presented as dual-natured.

“She laid the heart of an owl on her tongue so she could see at night, and went out, hunting, not even in her own body.” 

Pauline notes that Fleur’s second drowning changes her and that she acquires supernatural powers. She is said to embrace charms and dark Chippewa arts while also being able to shapeshift into an animal. This shapeshifting is a theme of the work, as Fleur is never exactly what she seems; only Pauline can see her animal nature as well as her human nature.

“That’s what this story is about.” 

Pauline separates the story of Fleur in Argus from the stories told about her at Lake Turcot. This reminds the reader that the short story “Fleur” is just that—a story. In doing so, Pauline simultaneously declares her authority and invites doubts about her reliability. 

“Because I could fade into a corner or squeeze beneath a shelf, I knew everything, what the men said when no one was around, and what they did to Fleur.” 

At Kozka’s Meats, Pauline is figuratively invisible because she is not attractive and because she is small enough to hide. This gives her power the power of observation. Pauline’s invisibility is one type of female power the story presents, in contrast to Fleur’s more obvious abilities. 

“They were blinded, they were stupid, they only saw her in the flesh.” 

The men at Kozka’s are immediately charmed by Fleur’s appearance and by her brashness in playing cards with them. But, unlike Pauline, they cannot recognize Fleur’s animalistic traits and magical abilities. Pauline’s ability to see both aspects of Fleur gives her a power and perspective which the men do not possess.

“Since that night she put me in the closet I was no longer afraid of her, but followed her close, stayed with her, became her moving shadow that the men never noticed, the shadow that could have saved her.” 

Pauline is noticed by Fleur when Fleur asks her for money for the card game. This quotation shows the bond Pauline and Fleur form while also highlighting the way the men continue to ignore this bond and Pauline at large. Additionally, this quotation explores the complicated ways Pauline views Fleur; Pauline sees her as both a source of fascinating beauty and also a source of fright. 

“In the sound of the ring Lily moved, fat and nimble, stepped right behind Fleur and put out his creamy hands.”

Lily reaches for Fleur after moving quietly toward her. This quotation highlights the color of his skin, his defining feature, connecting the attack on Fleur with race and, in particular, the violence enacted by of white colonizers on Native Americans.

“They went down and came up, the same shape and then the same color, until the men couldn’t tell one from the other in the light and Fleur was able to launch herself over the gates, swing down, hit gravel.” 

While Lily wrestles the pig during his attack on Fleur, the men note that Lily and the pig became interchangeable. Lily is described as both fat and snakelike in the story, and here he becomes a pig while acting like a snake. This quotation fits with the shapeshifting and animal imagery used throughout the story.

“This is where I should have gone to Fleur, saved her, thrown myself on Dutch. But I went stiff with fear and couldn’t unlatch myself from the trestles or move at all. I closed my eyes and put my head in my arms, tried to hide, so there is nothing to describe but what I couldn’t block out, Fleur’s hoarse breath, so loud it filled me, her cry in the old language, and my name repeated over and over among the words.” 

Pauline describes her presence during the attack on Fleur passively, as she chooses not to interfere even though she knows she should have. Pauline even blocks her greatest power—observation—choosing instead to blind herself to the truth. That Pauline hears the old language and her name underscores that only she is in a position to help, leading to questions about her complicity and reliability as a narrator.

“Lily was paler and softer than ever, as if his flesh had steamed on his bones.” 

After assaulting Fleur, Lily’s skin appears even whiter than before. His whiteness is his defining characteristic, indicating that committing such a heinous act on Fleur reinforces his essential character. The emphasis on his whiteness here also more firmly connects the attack to race, implicitly linking the assault on Fleur with the history of America and Native Americans.

“Then I heard a cry building in the wind, faint at first, a whistle and then a shrill scream that tore through the walls and gathered around me, spoke plain so I understood that I should move, put my arms out, and slam down the great iron bar that fit across the hasp and lock.” 

During the storm, Pauline seals the fate of the men from Kozka’s, locking them in the meat locker. However, she tells the reader that she did not choose to do so but that, rather, some other force (presumably Fleur) compelled her to do so. This is another action of Pauline’s that makes her seem unreliable as a narrator, as she obfuscates her own role in the action. 

“We must have stood there a couple of minutes before we saw the men, or more rightly, the humps of fur, the iced and shaggy hides they wore, the bearskins they had taken down and wrapped around themselves.”

Days after the storm hits, Fritzie asks about the fate of the men who worked at Kozka’s, and they are then found in the meat locker. They are dead and covered in animal hides, resembling the source of the meat that surrounds them more than the men they were. This imagery completes the men’s shapeshifting from men with animal characteristics to something less than human.

“Power travels in the bloodlines, handed out before birth.”

After both Fleur and Pauline have moved back to Lake Turcot, Pauline describes what she thinks the source of Fleur’s power is: her ancestry. She describes Fleur as being a member of the bear clan and implies that she gets her power from that lineage while also implying Fleur’s child will have similar power. However, by extension, Pauline also seems to imply that the source of her own power similarly comes from her elders as all power is handed out before birth.