The Plague of Doves

  “If hell was hot enough to eat the flesh, there would be no flesh left to suffer,” said Mooshum. “And if hell was meant to burn the soul, which is invisible, it would have to be imaginary fire, the flames of which you cannot feel.”

  “So either way, hell is seriously compromised.”

  “Either way.” Mooshum nodded.

  “I find that totally believable.” Dad nodded. “It really makes a great deal of sense. Scientifically speaking, of course, nothing can burn forever without an unlimited fuel source. So you have to wonder.”

  Clemence, who said that she believed in hot fires that burned forever to the bone, shook her head in pity at the men. She considered it a weakness of character not to believe in hell, a convenient mental trick to excuse slack conduct. She had noticed the failure was most pronounced and useful in those who had no expectations of heaven. But although she wished intensely to rear her children in such a way that they would surely join the kingdom of God (her legacy), she was somehow foiled in her intentions, and by her own sympathies.

  For instance, she could be persuaded to pour for Mooshum with a too liberal hand; and she took a shot herself now and then. Also, anyone could tell she did not think much of Father Cassidy. Her lack of enthusiasm in his presence, after that first visit, was obvious. She sometimes let slip a word or two behind his back. Joseph and I were certain we had heard her mutter, Fat fool, after one of his sermons on God’s plan for creating babies in the wombs of women. Father Cassidy preached against interference with this plan, but in terms so obscure that I couldn’t understand what he was talking about at all. When I asked Mama what it was Father Cassidy meant, she gave me a long stare and then said, “He means that God’s plan was for me to get pregnant again and die. However, the doctor I spoke with did not agree with God’s plan and so here I am, alive and kicking.”

  She saw the worry on my face and realized, I suppose, how her words sounded. “I’ll explain when you’re fourteen,” she said in a voice meant to sound reassuring. I wasn’t reassured at all and had to ask Joseph if he understood Father Cassidy.

  “Sure,” said Joseph, “he’s talking about birth control. Aunt Geraldine’s the one to ask if you need sex information. She’ll draw it out on paper.”

  So the next time I went to catch a horse, I came back with knowledge. Thanks to Geraldine I also understood about impure thoughts, and I realized that the miraculous feelings that were part of God’s plan for me, and which I had experienced in the bathtub with a headful of mayonnaise, were considered sins.

  “Do I have to confess those?” I had been aghast at the prospect.

  “I don’t,” said Geraldine.

  The next time Father Cassidy appeared at the door, I greeted him with a pure conscience and took his light jacket and hat and put them on the chair beside the door. Then I retreated to a corner of the room. This time, once the priest was ushered inside to the table, Mama did not leave the bottle after she’d poured the shots. She took it with her to the other room. With the bottle gone, there came a dampness of feeling among the men.

  “Ah, well,” said Mooshum, “they drank no wine in the trenches at Batoche, and the priests were halfway starved, too. Father Cassidy, are you familiar with our history?”

  “I’m a Montana boy,” said the priest. “I know how they put down the rebellion.”

  “Rebellion!” Mooshum puffed out his cheeks. He didn’t drink from his little glass yet.

  “With a Gatling gun!” Shamengwa said. “Trucked from out east. A coward’s invention, that.”

  Father Cassidy shrugged. Mooshum suddenly became very angry. His face went livid red, his mangled ear flared, his brows lowered. He grit his teeth, shivering with hatred.

  “It was an issue of rights,” he cried, slapping the table. “Getting their rights recognized when they had already proved the land—the Michifs and the whites. And old Poundmaker. They wanted the government to do something. That’s all. And the government pissed about this way and that so old Riel says, ‘We’ll do it for you!’ Ha! Ha! Howah! ‘We’ll do it for you!’” He raised his glass slightly and narrowed his eyes at Father Cassidy.

  A look of happiness had taken hold of Shamengwa. He took a tiny sip of the liquor on his tongue, and beamed. “Why,” he said, “this is sure smooth.”

  “My lease money come in last week,” said Mooshum. “Clemence, she purchased me a special bottle. My, but she’s stingy! If we had our rights, as Riel laid ’em out, Father Cassidy, you’d be working for us, not at us. And Clemence would pour a deeper glass, too.”

  “Well, I doubt that,” said Shamengwa, “but there are so many other things.” Shamengwa’s joy had stirred him to sudden life. “I’ve thought about this, brother. If Riel had won, our parents would have stayed in Canada, whole people. Not broken. We would have been properly raised up. My arm would work.”

  “So many things,” said Mooshum, faintly. “So many…But there is no question about one word, my brother.”

  “What is that word?”

  “Respect.”

  “Respect is as respect does,” Father Cassidy commented. “Have you respected Our Lord’s wishes this week?”

  “Did Our Lord make us?” Mooshum asked belligerently.

  “Why, yes,” said Father Cassidy.

  “As we are, in our bodies,” said Mooshum.

  “Of course.”

  “Down to the details? Down to the male parts?”

  “What are you getting at?” asked Father Cassidy.

  “If Our Lord made our bodies down to the male parts, then He also made the male part’s wishes. This week, I have respected these wishes, I will tell you that much.”

  Before Father Cassidy could open his mouth, Shamengwa jumped in. “Respect,” said Shamengwa, “is a much larger subject than your male parts, my brother. You referred to political respect for our people. And in that you were correct, all too correct, for it is beyond a doubt. If Riel had carried through, we would have had respect.”

  “To our nation! To our people!” Mooshum drained his glass.

  “Land,” said Shamengwa, brooding.

  “Women,” said Mooshum, dizzy.

  “Not even the great Riel could have helped you there.”

  “But our people would not have been hanged…”

  “Ah, yes,” said Father Cassidy, eyeing the bottom of his glass. “The hangings! A local historian—”

  “Don’t speak ill of her, Father. I am in love with her!”

  “I wasn’t…”

  “Let us not speak of the hanging,” said Shamengwa firmly. “Let us speak instead of requesting another glass of this stuff from Clemence. Oh niece, favorite niece!”

  “Don’t favorite me.” Mama came back into the room and poured the men a round. She swept out with the bottle, again, so quickly that she didn’t see me. I had sunk down behind the couch because I didn’t feel like being stuck with weeding the beans right then. That she wasn’t more hospitable with the priest confirmed her low opinion of him, but then I realized he’d also come to see her.

  “Could we have a little word?” Father Cassidy tried to loop his voice around her swift ankles, to drag her out of the kitchen, but she had passed through the back door out into the garden.

  MOOSHUM WAS, INDEED, in love with Mrs. Neve Harp, an annoying aunt of ours, a Pluto lady who called herself the town historian. She often “popped in,” as she called it. We were never free of that threat. She was what people called “fixy,” always made-up and overdressed. She was rich and spoiled, but a little crazy, too—she sometimes gave a panicky laugh that went on too long and seemed out of her control. Mama said she felt sorry for her, but would not tell me why. Neve Harp seemed proud of having beaten down two husbands—one she had even put in prison. She was working on a third, bragging of stepchildren, but had already started using her maiden name in bylines to reduce confusion. As he was not allowed to visit Neve Harp often enough to suit his desires, Mooshum wrote letters to her. Some evenings, when the televi
sion worked, Joseph and I watched while Mooshum sat at the table composing letters in his flowing nun-taught script. He prodded our father for information.

  “Is your sister fond of flowers? What is her favorite?”

  “Stinging nettles.”

  “Would you say she favors a certain color?”

  “Fish-belly white.”

  “What were her charming habits when she was young?”

  “She could fart the national anthem.”

  “The whole thing?”

  “Yes.”

  “Howah! Did she always have such pretty hair?”

  “She dyes it.”

  “How did she come to have so many husbands?”

  “Obscene talents.”

  “What does she think? What is her mind like?”

  Our dad would just laugh wearily. “Mind?” he’d say. “Thoughts?”

  “She’s got her teeth, no? All of them?”

  “Except the ones she left in her husbands.”

  “I wonder if she would be interested in memories of my horse-racing days here on the reservation. Those could be considered historical.”

  “You only quit two years ago.”

  “But they go way back…”

  And so it would continue until Mooshum was satisfied with his letter. He folded the paper, setting each crease with his thumb, fit it into an envelope, and carefully tore a stamp from a sheet of commemoratives. He would keep the letter in his breast pocket until Mama went to the store, then he’d go along with her and put it directly into the hands of the post lady, Mrs. Bannock. He knew that his pursuit of Neve Harp was frowned upon, and he believed that Clemence would throw his letters in the garbage.

  I PROBABLY DID not fully realize or appreciate our family’s relative comfort on the reservation. Although everyone in the family except my father was some degree of Chippewa mixed with some degree of French, and although Shamengwa’s wife had been a traditional full-blood and Mooshum abandoned the church later to pursue pagan ways, the fact is, we lived in Bureau of Indian Affairs housing. In town, there was electricity and plumbing, as I’ve mentioned, even an intermittent television signal. Aunt Geraldine still lived in the old house, out on the land, and hauled her water. Her horses were the descendants of Mooshum’s racers. We also had shelves of books, some of which were permanent, others changed every week. But because we lived in town we were visited more often by the priest. There was, in fact, one final visit from Father Cassidy, a drama that had far-reaching effects in our family. For one, our mother blamed the argument on liquor and banned Mooshum from drinking it as best she could. For another, the grip of the church on our family was weakened as Mooshum thrillingly broke away.

  It was a low and drizzly summer day. Joseph and I had caught a number of salamanders after a rain and were busy restocking the back pond from a galvanized tin bucket, when Father Cassidy appeared in the yard and skipped his bulk along the grass to inspect our work. We looked up from beneath his vast belly, and were surprised to see him crossing himself double time.

  “What’s wrong?” asked Joseph.

  “There are some who believe those creatures represent the devil,” said the priest. “I, of course, do not hold with superstitions.”

  But perhaps there was something to it, as we later found.

  By the time Joseph and I had finished releasing the salamanders and come back in the house, the conversation was in full swing and the bottle, too, was out because Mama was out. The three men nodded happily at us. They were drinking not from shot glasses, but from hard plastic coffee cups, Mama’s favorite new set, harvest gold.

  “We better stay here and watch over them,” said Joseph to me, low, and I dipped out cold water for us to drink. We sat down on the couch. There was no doubt things were preceding swiftly. Father Cassidy had asked of Mooshum a particular question, one he never answered the same way twice. The question was this: What had happened to Mooshum’s ear? The ear had not actually, he’d tell us later, been pecked away by doves.

  Mooshum squinted, curled his lip out, and asked Father Cassidy if he’d ever heard of Liver-Eating Johnson.

  Father Cassidy smiled indulgently and tried a weak joke: “He must have been from Montana!”

  “Tawpway,” said Mooshum.

  “Paint the picture in words, mon frère!” said Shamengwa.

  Mooshum made himself into a hulking beast and clawed at his chin to show the man’s scraggly blood-soaked beard. He then related the horrifying story of Liver-Eating Johnson’s hatred of the Indian and how in lawless days this evil trapper and coward jumped his prey and was said to cut the liver from his living victim and devour that organ right before their eyes. He liked to run them down, too, over great distances.

  Father Cassidy gulped and laughed weakly. “That’s enough!” But Mooshum drank from the coffee cup and barged ahead.

  “Me, I was a young boy, not yet a man, alone on the prairie hunting for some scrap to eat. Turned out of my family, eh? Away across in the distances I see a someone running, a hairy and desperate man. But me, I have no fear of anything.”

  Shamengwa glanced at us, tapped his head, and winked.

  “I kept to my own pace, as I was searching for something to eat. A rabbit, maybe, a grouse, even a rattlesnake would have set me up good. I myself was very hungry.”

  “Boys get hungry,” said Shamengwa.

  “I glance around in hopes that maybe this stranger has some food to spare. He’s coming at me, still running. He’s covered with ragged skins and he has a scrawly beard and that beard, eh? I suddenly see, when he gets close enough, how that beard is all crusted with old blood. And I know it’s him.”

  “Liver Eater,” said Shamengwa.

  “I see that light in his eyes. He’s very hungry, too! And I begin to spring, I’ll tell you, I take off like a rabbit, quick. I’ve got speed, but I know Liver Eater’s got endurance. He’ll outrun me if we go all day, he’ll exhaust me. And sure enough, the minute I slow my pace, he’s on me. I speed up. It’s cat and mouse, lynx and rabbit. Then he puts a burst on and he jumps me!”

  Father Cassidy looked aghast, forgot to drink. Mooshum slowly touched what was left of his ear.

  “Yes, he got that. His teeth were sharp. But he must have lost his hunting knife, for he did not stab me. I struggled out of his grip.” Mooshum struggled out of his own arms, burst free of his own clutching hands. “I hopped out, running once again, just ahead of him, but as I charge along, blood from my ear flying in the wind, I get to thinking. Riel, if he’d won there would be some justice! This devil would not dare to chase an Indian. Hey, I think, I’m hungry too! Let’s give Liver Eater some of his own medicine, anyway. I’ve got sharp teeth. So I stop, quick.”

  Mooshum jolted in his chair.

  “The hairy white man flips over me, and as he does, I bite off one of his fingers.”

  “Which one?” said Shamengwa.

  “I just got the pinkie,” said Mooshum. “But now he’s foaming mad, so I let him come at me again. This time, I strike like a weasel. Snap, a thumb comes off!”

  “Did you eat it?” said Joseph.

  “I had to swallow it down whole, no chewing. It tasted foul,” said Mooshum. “I needed it for strength, my boy. We blasted out again. The next time I slowed he went for my liver—but only ripped a chunk out of my left cheek here.” Mooshum pointed at the baggy seat of his pants. “I tore a bite from his hindquarters, too, and wrestled him down and got a piece of thigh, next. I kept after him. I was young. We must of ran for twenty, thirty miles! And over those miles I whittled him down.”

  “Howah!” cried Shamengwa.

  “By the time he dropped from blood loss, he was down six fingers. I got one of his ears, the whole thing. I took a couple of his toes just to slow him down. Those, I spit right out. And I got his nose.”

  “Yuck,” I said.

  “It’s my lucky piece,” said Mooshum. “Want to see it, Father?”

  “No, I do not!”

  But Moo
shum had already drawn his handkerchief from his pocket, and with an air of reverence he unwrapped it to show a blackened piece of leatherlike gunk.

  “A bit of Thamnophis radix,” said Joseph, peering at it over Mooshum’s shoulder. “Why’d you keep it?”

  “It’s his love charm,” Shamengwa said.

  “That is…positively pagan!” Father Cassidy spluttered the words out and Mooshum’s eye lighted.

  “In what way, dear priest?” he asked with an air of curious innocence, pouring whiskey into the coffee cup that Father Cassidy gripped in his shuddering fingers.

  “A nose!” cried Father Cassidy.

  “And what piece of good Saint Joseph is lodged in our church’s altar?” asked Mooshum. He spoke in a nunlike voice, gentle and reproving.

  Father Cassidy’s mouth shut hard. He frowned. “To compare, even to compare…”

  “I was told,” said Joseph readily, “as he is my name saint of course, I was told that our altar contains a bit of Saint Joseph’s spinal material.”

  Father Cassidy drank the whole cup back.

  “Sacrilege.” He shook his head. Wagged his empty cup, which Mooshum promptly filled again.

  “It saddens and outrages me,” Father Cassidy said, sipping moodily off the brim. “Saddens and outrages me,” he repeated in a fainter voice. Then he got all stirred up, as if some thought pierced the fog. It was the same thought he’d had already.

  “To compare…” he blurted out, almost tearful.

  “Compare, though, I must,” said Mooshum. “When you stop to consider how the body of Christ, the blood of Christ, is eaten at every Mass.”

  Father Cassidy’s tears vanished in a wash of rage. He blew up at this—his cheeks puffed out and he swayed monumentally to his feet.

  “That is the transubstantiation, which is to say you speak of the most sacred aspect of our Mother the Church as represented in the Holy Mass.”

  Father Cassidy was building up more and more gas, and soon a froth of fresh bubbles dotted the corners of his mouth. Mooshum leaned forward, questioning.

  “Then do you mean to tell me that the body and the blood is just, eh, in your head, like? The bread stands in for the real thing? Then I could see your point. Otherwise, the Eucharist is a cannibal meal.”