Louise Erdrich - The Plague of Doves

Asiginak set down his baskets. One of the cows screamed like a woman in pain, and everything went abruptly quiet. After a moment the frogs started up again, trilling and sawing in the slough.

“Let’s not go any closer,” said Asiginak. “The devil has this place.”

And then they heard the baby crying. It was a scratchy cry, a thin, exhausted wail from inside the house.

Asiginak picked up his baskets and turned to leave.

“That’s a baby,” said Cuthbert, and he grabbed Mooshum’s shirt and stood rooted, staring, his stained jaw working.

The baby continued to cry as if it knew they were out there, but they did not move and soon the little sound died away. The wind struck up in the leggy young cottonwoods. Bits of fluff whirled high above them. There was the clatter of stiff, new leaves. As Asiginak started to walk away, the cows started up even louder. Maybe the baby did, too, but now they couldn’t hear it over the vast moans from the barn.

“I feel the devil,” Asiginak cried. “Look there!”

But Cuthbert had gone through the door marked with blood. He vanished into the house. When he came out, he was carrying the baby and his eyes were bugging out — that’s how Mooshum put it, his eyes were bugging out. Cuthbert staggered to the barn with the baby. It wore a tiny white dress and a reeking diaper. The others followed. On the way there, they saw two boys curled on their sides, in the weeds, like they were sleeping, and then a man, his fingers clutched in the green black grass, his head up and still staring at the boys when he died crawling. His back was blasted out.

“Don’t look in that direction,” Asiginak told Holy Track.

The men cracked the barn doors wide and entered the mad wall of sound.

There were ten cows, one dead. Mooshum helped Holy Track put down the baskets somewhere in the dark, and blinked until he could see the nearest cow. He began on that one, then found another. Soon there was just the hiss of milk and a few last cows. The milked ones sounded like they were weeping, softly, in relief. Cuthbert cradled the baby in one arm and squeezed a teat to its lips — the bud of its mouth was hardly big enough, but he squirted the milk in deftly. At last the baby relaxed and its head lolled back. A smile played around its chapped scarlet lips. Mooshum turned the cows out to pasture and the men fled outside, rubbing their eyes, dazzled.

“I’ll carry this baby back,” said Cuthbert, peering anxiously into its face.

“Back where?” said Asiginak.

“To the sheriff.”

“The white sheriff?”

Asiginak saw that his nephew was gaping at the yard. He gently pushed the boy’s face so that Holy Track was facing not the sleeping forms but the watery blue line of the horizon.

Asiginak turned back to Cuthbert. “You’re not drunk, so why do you say this? We are no-goods, we are Indians, even me. If you tell the white sheriff, we will die.”

“They will hang us for sure,” said Mooshum. He picked up Holy Track’s baskets.

“It’s all right,” said Holy Track. “I know what to do. I will tell the priest.”

The other men looked at him.

“Do not tell the priest,” said Mooshum.

Cuthbert held the baby tight. “We cannot put this little one back. If we go, we take it with us.”

“We cannot,” said Asiginak.

“I will not go in that house again,” said Cuthbert.

“You know how to write,” said Asiginak to the boy. “You will write this down: One lives yet on Lochren. Tonight, I will place your message in the sheriff ’s box where he receives his papers. They will come for the baby in the morning.”

Cuthbert nodded slowly and gave the baby to Asiginak, who went back into the house. When he came out, he was looking at the ground. He noticed the tracks.

“We must brush your tracks out wherever we find them,” he said, in a serious, distracted voice. “Take your shoes off.”

The men walked around the yard brushing out marks of the cross in the loose dirt. When they were satisfied, they left, melting down along the edge of the cow pasture, off into the woods, then down paths that raveled out for miles.

A Little Medicine

MOOSHUM QUIT. WE thought he’d had enough of talking, and as this was such a strange and awful thing that he was telling us, we just sat there. I twisted my hair around and around my finger and Joseph frowned at the rock-hard ground.

The door creaked open, and Mama leaned out to look at the sky. The blazing balls of clouds were getting sucked back into the dark, though the rain seemed far away yet. The wind had started up in the box elder grove and the laundry flapped on the line. She bent her head like she was shouldering a yoke, and let the door slam behind her. She strode over to the line to feel whether the clothing was dry enough. Something was definitely bothering her that day, but we did not find out until later what that was. Maybe if she hadn’t been so absorbed in her irritation she would have stopped Mooshum from telling us the whole story, or from sipping at the brown medicine bottle under his green zippered Sears work jacket. He drew the bottle out, swirled its contents round and round, and popped a small slug back into his throat. We caught a whiff of bitter, wild leaves. His eyes watered as he replaced the bottle.

Mama took down a couple of flat sheets, leaving some of her own nylon underwear on the line. I’d never seen her underwear right out there on the line. The pale blue and tissuey pink panties puffed with air and stayed true to her rounded shape. She walked past and said to Mooshum, “Geraldine’s coming and I know what she’s going to tell me already.” She went up the steps and shouted back down to Mooshum. “And I don’t like it.”

Mooshum popped his eyes out comically as the door slammed, and made an oooh, she’s mad ducking gesture.

“What happened to the baby?” Joseph asked.

“A man named Hoag came and got that baby,” said Mooshum. I thought the story was over and got up to follow Mama — she was going to want me to help her fold the clothing, or roll it for ironing. She was so perturbed already that I didn’t want to test her patience. But then Mooshum took another toot from his medicine bottle and said, “They came for Asiginak at night.”

“They?” I turned back.

“They who?” said Joseph.

“The town men,” said Mooshum. “That’s why I’m telling this to you. Wildstrand, the Buckendorfs…”

“The Buckendorfs?” I said.

“Oh yai! They’re the ones! They came for Asiginak at night, but he heard them first and bolted. Me, I had come to warn them and I dragged the boy out just in time.”

Confessional

THE LITTLE CABIN had a tiny window out back covered with a flap of hide. Holy Track and Mooshum were out that window in an iced second — blown by terror into the woods. They landed like leaves, sprang into the trees, and crept into a tangle of chokecherry and willow. Then they floundered into a slough and sank down among the reeds. There were dogs with the men, but they were cow dogs, not trained hounds, and they barked at everything. They smelled an animal or maybe Asiginak and started off in another direction. The men’s torches played over the surface of the water. There was more trampling, shuffling, the dogs’ mad barking, and they were gone. The noise got smaller and smaller. The two pulled themselves through the muck until they were on solid ground. There was no choice now but to run to Father Severine. Though he was unreliable and didn’t like Mooshum anymore, he very much loved Holy Track.

As the two made their way down the trail that led around the hills, along pastures, the birds started up singing in the alder and wild raspberry. Mooshum asked the little birds for help, and Holy Track said Hail Marys. As they walked along, they talked about the priest’s habits — how he took forever to fraction the Host and drawled his prayers out so it was nearly impossible to keep one’s eyes open and not pitch forward on the floor. How soft the floor looked while listening to Severine’s sermons and how dreadful it was when a louse or flea began to bite, or when a piss was necessary. They agreed that the most agonizing itches always developed while serving Mass. They revealed that both of their butt ends knew a sharp corner attached to the kneeler that afforded a merciful, secret scratch.