Louise Erdrich - The Plague of Doves

“And you,” I said, “how did you live? Can you live after being hung?”

“They were never going to hang him to death ,” said Shamengwa.

“Why not?”

But Mooshum began to argue with his brother, saying things that made no sense to me. I saw the same thing as Holy Track, the doves are still up there . Their annoyance with each other grew, so I went away and turned all that I had heard over in my mind. Later on, someone drove up to the house, and I went out to see who it was. When I saw her, I ducked back in the door.

Aunt Harp had came over from Pluto to interview the two brothers for the local historical society’s newsletter. My mother usually arranged to be out whenever Aunt Harp visited. But if she couldn’t get away, Mama endured Neve because our father was still fond of his sister, even though she had kept their inheritance to herself with my other grandfather’s blessing. Old Murdo never forgave my father for not becoming a banker. My father thought about getting a lawyer and making his sister divide what was left, but he never did. He insisted that he just wanted a few old stamp albums that had belonged to Uncle Octave.

Still, it wasn’t that greed we held against Aunt Neve. She irritated and exhausted everyone around her with continual nave questions that she would ask, and without waiting, answer herself.

“What did the Indians use for firewood?” she asked that afternoon. It became one of her more famous questions. “I can’t believe I asked that!” She dissolved in self-appreciation.

Shamengwa wearily humored her, but Mooshum was delighted to have her near to work his charms on. He flirted with her outrageously, asking if she’d like to sit on his lap.

“You ever sit on a horse, in a saddle? Then you know there’s a horn you got to grab on to. I got one too…”

Mooshum’s brother turned his face away in distaste and I said, “What horn, Mooshum? Where is it?”

Mama came out the door and stood watching her father with a very quiet look on her face. I shut up. She was wearing a blue checked apron trimmed with yellow rickrack and had her arms folded over her breasts. Mooshum noticed her, straightened up, cleared his throat, and asked Mrs. Neve Harp if she had ever received his notes. She said yes, and that she’d come because she wanted material for her newsletter. Mooshum said eagerly that he would answer her questions. Shamengwa folded his hands. But when Neve Harp said that she was going back to the beginning of things and wanted to talk about how the town of Pluto came to be and why it was inside the original reservation boundaries, even though hardly any Indians lived in Pluto, well, both of the old men’s faces became like Mama’s — quiet, with an elaborate reserve, and something else that has stuck in my heart ever since. I saw that the loss of their land was lodged inside of them forever. This loss would enter me, too. Over time, I came to know that the sorrow was a thing that each of them covered up according to their character — my old uncle through his passionate discipline, my mother through strict kindness and cleanly order. As for my grandfather, he used the patient art of ridicule.

“What you are asking,” said Mooshum that afternoon, opening his hands and his mouth into a muddy, gaping grin, “is how was it stolen? How has this great thievery become acceptable? How do we live right here beside you, knowing what we lost and how you took it?”

Neve Harp thought she might like some tea.

“I’ll make it,” I said, and went inside the house. I filled the kettle with water and lit the front burner. Over the sink, there was a little window, and I stood there waiting for the water to boil. I was just able to see over the sill. I watched Aunt Neve waggle her tiny fingers at the two old men and squeeze smiles out of her face. Mama came in the door and stood beside me. She hardly ever touched me, so when she put her hand on my back I might have shaken it off, in surprise, and then regretted I had done so. I think I moved a step closer to her so that my shoulder lightly touched her arm. We stood there together, and for maybe the first time ever I understood that we were thinking roughly the same thing about what we were seeing.

“It’s not her fault,” said Mama, not talking to me. She was reminding herself to think charitable thoughts, so that she could stand having Mrs. Neve Harp in her yard.

“I think it is her fault,” I said.

“Oh? Maybe you’re thinking about the money,” said Mama. “I know you know about that. We don’t need it.”

“There were no Harps at the lynching,” I said without thinking. “But there was a Wildstrand. She married one.”

It surprised me that Mama didn’t question the fact that I knew what she had warned Mooshum not to tell us. She just took a little breath.

“Well,” she said, “and Buckendorfs. That was a long time ago. And look how Mary Anita has come back to help the young children of the parish.” Her voice took on that overcareful pious quality that always made me step away from her. I stepped away.

“Oh, her,” I pretended, and we were quiet for a little while. Just before the tea boiled, Mama shook herself.

“Evelina, you know that your grandma, Junesse, was not all Chippewa.”

“Yes,” I said.

“Her father left her and of course she was raised by her aunt. Her father’s name was Eugene Wildstrand.”

I just kept looking out the window, as if I hadn’t heard what she said. But inside I thought I now understood the reason that they hadn’t hanged Mooshum to death , as his brother put it. Behind me, I heard her take the kettle off the stove. The handle rattled a bit as she set it down. She scooped the tea leaves out of a tin with her fingers, then dropped them in the teapot and tapped the lid back onto the tea can. I heard the pour of steaming water as she filled the brown teapot and then she came back to stand beside me. This time, when she put her hand on my back, I did not shrug it off. We waited, together, for the tea to brew the way the two old brothers liked it, dark and bitter. Neve Harp could add a pound of sugar and she’d never get it sweet enough.

“Oh, anyway,” said Mama, “I might as well tell you everything. You’ll hear it anyway. Your aunt Geraldine and Judge Coutts are having…” But she couldn’t say it. She just gave a great, cracking sigh and put her hand on her chest.

“A baby?” I said.

Mama looked at me in surprise, then realized I didn’t really know what I was saying.

“Your aunt can’t have babies,” she said, in a somber way.

“Oh?” I said. “Then what? What are they having?”

But Mama regretted her moment, I could tell, and sent me outside with the teacups.

Lines

THE STORY MOOSHUM told us had its repercussions — the first being that I could not look at anyone in quite the same way anymore. I became obsessed with lineage. As I came to the end of my small leopard-print diary (its key useless as my brother had broken the clasp), I wrote down as much of Mooshum’s story as I could remember, and then the relatives of everyone I knew — parents, grandparents, way on back in time. I traced the blood history of the murders through my classmates and friends until I could draw out elaborate spider webs of lines and intersecting circles. I drew in pencil. There were a few people, one of them being Corwin Peace, whose chart was so complicated that I erased parts of it until I wore right through the paper. Still, I could not erase the questions underneath, and Mooshum was no help. He bore interrogation with a vexed wince and silence. I persisted, kept on asking for details, but he answered in evasions, to get rid of me. He never spoke with the direct fluidity of that first telling. His medicine bottle, confiscated by our mother, had held whiskey. No one knew from what source. She’d never get him to stop. I still loved Mooshum, of course, but with this tale something in my regard of him was disturbed, as if I’d stepped into a clear stream and silt had billowed up around my feet.