Louise Erdrich - The Plague of Doves

One night, consulting written instructions from the doctor, he prepared a solution of Batner’s Powders for each of the men. Joseph took his ten drops like the others and crawled into bed. The effect upon them all was nothing short of magical. They slept like babes, dreamed lusciously, woke in the morning refreshed, pleasant, and actually did some surveying. Using a hand compass, a tape and chain, they completed the main lines, which would be filled in back in St. Paul. Joseph had dreamed a banquet so detailed that he thought for part of the morning he’d really eaten it. That night they boiled ox and hog meat with the last of the flour into a thick mush that Henri called booyeh. They ate as well as they could and eagerly accepted their treatment. Over the next weeks, the food dwindled. Lafayette killed a lynx and the guides replaced the broken strings of the fiddle with its entrails, but the rank meat sat hard in their scoured guts. At last they killed the final ox, and were glad the medicine helped also with hunger pains. Joseph noticed how loose his clothes were and how tightly his flesh now seemed strapped to his bones.

“We’re nothing but gristle,” he said one night to Lafayette, who grinned and took his laudanum. That night they all dreamed, fantastically, the same dream. Where they slept they saw lights twinkling on a great upraised wheel and giant cups, whirling in the dark, accompanied by an unearthly flow of music. Hundreds of people lived around them and walked, floated, emerged, and dove back into the shadows. There were towers and buildings and an array of lights that would rival the greatest cities in Europe. They all agreed, the next morning as they drank their tea and munched the hot corn- and cob-meal cakes they’d patted together for themselves with the last of the heated hog fat, that this was a great and wondrous sign. That day, too, Henri and Lafayette killed two buffalo calves and a cow. They hauled the carcasses to a brushy lean-to in the empty cattle enclosure, covered the meat with ice and snow, and stuck flags all around to keep away the wolves. That night they ate wonderfully, and all the next week there was clear weather. Believing that they now had food to last until the time when B. J. Bolt, the reprovisioner, was meant to appear, they worked with good cheer and roughed out a cabin of hewn log. They even set up a raised platform for their bed at one side and built a large fireplace. Soon, they meant to have a real door. Bull was using a ripsaw to work out a plank and casings for a door and even a window to let in a little light.

The Emissary

THE MOST DEVOUT among the men were Henri and Lafayette Peace, who wore, it was revealed once the men had stripped down to only two shirts during a warm February day, a crucifix each next to their skin. They had an interesting way of doing things, thought Joseph. For instance, to get the buffalo, they’d slipped in amid the small herd that had ventured near, wearing wolfskins draped over their heads and shoulders. As there were always wolves scouting the herds, the bulls stepped near the men and smelled their caps, which must have made them think that the guides were dead wolves. The buffalo turned away and lowered their great muzzles into the snow to forage for grass. Once close to the animal they’d chosen, one of the two brothers rose slightly and killed it, a single shot at close range, then instantly sank down. Keeping their gun locks dry under the wolfskin, the guides kept still until the animals, who shifted uneasily at the noise but never panicked, went back to stirring through the snow. Joseph was close enough to see that beneath the wolfskins both men made the papist sign of the cross, kissed their crucifixes, and in their stillness he could ascertain that they were giving thanks and praise to God. They loved their fiddle, and called her their sweetheart, their lover. But on Sundays she was the Virgin Mary to the bois brls ; they played only sacred music. And no matter what the circumstances they always fished out their rosaries, first thing in the morning, and muttered as they moved their fingers along the beads.

English Bill had treated their religious practices with skepticism and even made a few jokes at their expense. He also thought it a good prank to hide the mirror Lafayette used every morning to conduct his scrupulous toilette. But one day a wolf surprised English Bill’s terrier at the edge of camp, snatched it up, and bounded away in one fluid leap. Lafayette happened to be near and in a motion just as lyrical as the wolf ’s he prepared and raised his gun and in one blast brought the wolf down, although it had attained a good distance. The terrier jumped from the wolf ’s jaws unscratched, sniffed the carcass, and ran back to camp, behaving as though nothing had happened. After that, English Bill could not do enough for the two guides. And as it turned out it was a good thing Lafayette had saved the dog’s life for, in turn, the bold little terrier was to save the men.

The weather stayed warm and then grew warmer, until the meat rotted and they were again reduced to beans. The meat had seemed to regulate the men’s bowels. Meat or laudanum. Again, they began the drug regimen. Alarmingly thin by now, they tried all methods of snaring game, but even the Peace brothers had no luck and one night Bull declared the unspoken and said that they were all bound to die. He was leaving the next day, he said, making a last desperate effort for his life. He was walking back to St. Anthony. Back to his love.

“You’ll not make it,” Joseph said. He’d grown fond of Bull, and he was grateful to him for bringing along the laudanum, which was all that kept them from dying in the snow with their pants around their ankles, he was sure. “Don’t go,” he begged. “Don’t let him,” he entreated Henri. But the guides only nodded and looked away. They understood that the doctor’s housekeeper was the only reason Bull was living yet. Like most men of large muscled stature, Bull had suffered the pangs of starvation more cruelly than the others. He had even gazed hungrily at English Bill’s dog and so, that night, English Bill and the guides were the only of the men who did not try to dissuade Bull from making his attempt.

The ice broke and by morning the river was outside the door of the cabin. By noon that day, as Bull got ready to leave, the water had entered. The men gave him half of the cornmeal they had left, and he took a butcher knife. All of the men shook hands before he walked off, and nobody expected to see him again. The melt was grave — not only had they built too close to the river, they now realized, but the prairie between them and St. Anthony would be swimming. There would be no crossing. Bull would die in the mud. There would be no B. J. Bolt with a wagonload of food. Perhaps an Indian pony could get through, said Joseph, but the guides said no and Henri calmly sliced apart the extra pair of moccasins he’d brought and stewed them up. Joseph added the lacings and tops of his elkhide overboots. They had sent Bull off with more than his share of the laudanum and the dose they took that night, as it was the last, inflicted them with melancholy.

When they woke the next day the water had risen to just below their platform bed, and they resolved with their remaining strength to build a higher temporary shelter on a rise behind the cabin. As they were slowly attempting to build, Joseph had a sudden bolt of fear that he’d left the Meditations within reach of the water and he ran back to the cabin to retrieve the book. He had his gun with him because he was keeping that dry. As he entered the cabin, he saw a watery slur of movement. In the light from the open door an otter popped his head up and regarded him with the curious and trusting gaze of a young child. Slowly, not taking his eyes off the creature, Joseph aimed and shot. The otter died in a bloody swirl and Joseph found, when he fished it out, that his eyes had filled with tears. In a moment he was weeping helplessly over the gleaming and sinuous body of the creature.