Louise Erdrich - The Plague of Doves

I stopped and flung my arms wide and I turned in six circles. Sky over me, sky under me, sky to my north and south. Sky to my west. One person underneath it all alive and wondering, soaked in the great surround. When I wheeled and bucked dust from my feet I was running for the pure joy of moving in the air, in this life, in this goodness soaking up through the dirt.

That, I brought back to my discipline.

The first two hours of schedule were the worst. The standing motionless seemed impossible. Every muscle that would ache hurt and every bone protested and the heart, bored with so much reverse direction and taut stillness, beat sullenly in my chest. I could hear it and the feeling of that bird moving in the cage of my ribs was a whir of sickness. The third hour, that was better, and the fourth was nothing. It passed like a hand on my forehead, for I was lost in what I was seeing. A warm curtain of pain billowed in, out with each breath, and then parted. Through the jammed sensation a door opened and my serpents slid out to speak with me. My prince of diamonds, my queen of red dust. They talked to me in low, protective whispers, and told me what to do.

I listened and questioned and made certain that I understood each step. Then I bowed to them for my freedom. I thanked them for my life. I saw how I’d hold my prince rattler’s head to the cloth, and how I’d carefully milk the venom from his fangs into the small spice jar I’d cleaned and washed. I’d use three snakes more that way until I had enough venom to fill the syringe I’d taken out of Bliss’s medical cabinet — she had a whole box in there. I’d let the snakes go. I’d break their aquarium to pieces and grind the glass up and pour it down the well. I’d stick the tip of the loaded syringe into an apple and I’d roll it in a piece of coloring paper. I’d carry it. Anguish would demand to see what kind of picture Lilith had drawn, but I would paste on a great glittering grin and tell her that I couldn’t, that it was a surprise for her father, which was true.

IT’S ON YOU, I can see it.

What’s on me? What?

It’s on you, I can see it, you’re gonna kill.

I WAS DOWN, I’d collapsed, and the only way I could possibly get out of my situation was to have professed a vision, which I did. I’d learned from Billy about telling what I was going to do in advance. I whispered in his ear. I saw how I was going to fuck you. The hatred was an animal so big I wanted to let it take Billy in its jaw. But I couldn’t, not yet. There would be days and there would be days. There would be a time to run and a time to halt, a time to kill and a time to harvest. There would be a time to assemble and dissemble, a time to understand my vision and a time to carry it out. A time to hold myself away and hold myself away and a time very finally to give.

That time finally came.

I climbed my husband hotly and set my two thumbs at the pulse beneath his jawbone and I pressed and stroked until I had him cornered and weak and then like a cat I stole his breath. All that night I robbed him with my greed, making him hard with my mouth and drawing from him with all the rest of me, furious and careful, instructive when he waned, and punishing. Then good to him. Ironing. He lay still under me as under a warm iron. I drew myself over and over the sheet of his back and across and down his legs, molding to every part of him, soothing the evil twin away, unwrinkling that bad one who’d crumpled himself into Billy like an igniting wad and me the kerosene. I tied his hands to the sides of the bed and I measured his face with my own faceless hunger. Kissed him with my speechless lips. Set him task after task and then, when he’d finished, as the light increased, I decided that I hated him so much that I would not let him breathe until I’d soldered myself inside of him. Until I ruled him so that he could hurt no one. Until I entered his bowels like a stream of lead and hardened in his guts and drove him even crazier. No, I would not let him go until I sank through his bones like a wasting disease. Ate him from the inside, devouring his futility, filling him with a beautiful craving.

I took the needle filled with the venom of the snake and tipped with the apple of good and evil from beneath the child’s drawing paper, and popped off the apple. Then I pushed the needle quickly, gently, like an expert, for I’d seen this many times in my pictures, right into the loud muscle of his heart.

There , I said, stroking his skin where I withdrew the needle, there , as his eyes opened, there it will be scorched .

And as he bucked and sank away I got the picture. I’d tie a loud necktie around his throat, winch him up into the rafters. Got Bliss cutting him down. Got the sight of him lying still in the eyes of others, got the power of it and the sorrow. I got my children’s old gaze, got them holding me with quiet hands, and got them not weeping but staring out calmly over the hills. I got Bliss running mad, foaming, blowing her guts, laughing and then retrieving Billy’s spirit from its path crawling slowly toward heaven, got the understanding she would organize the others and take over from Billy, but that before they could pin me down in the Manual of Discipline we’d have scooped up the money already and run.

Oh yes, I got us eating those eggs at the 4-B’s, me and my children, and the land deed in my name.

I WAS PULLING a double shift and it was that slow time in the afternoon between the lunch and early supper crowd. To keep busy, because you never knew when Earl the manager would poke his fat head out the door of his office, I was filling ketchup bottles. Earl called it consolidating. We had a hollow plastic ring with threads on both ends. You put the ring on a half-full ketchup bottle, then upended another bottle on top and let it drain into the first bottle. We had only two of these rings, so it took a while to fill all thirty-five ketchup bottles at the restaurant. Sometimes, if everything was very dull, like on that afternoon, I’d balance half the bottles on the others, mouth to mouth, without the rings. The arrangement was precarious. After filling each bottle I’d wipe it clean and set it on the booth, make sure the salt, pepper, and napkin dispensers were filled up too. Then I’d either study French in my Berlitz Self-Teacher or sneak-read the paperback I had in my pocket (a little black and purple copy of The Fall by Camus) or I’d stare out the window.

That afternoon, I was doing all three things. The ketchup bottles were balanced in the back booth. I had just put down Camus and was now muttering, Je vais Paris, je vais Paris. Je n’ai jamais visit la belle capitale de la France. I was also staring out the window. So I saw Marn Peace arrive with her two children — I guessed they were hers, though I’d never seen her with children before. I knew Marn from the summer before, when she’d worked at the 4-B’s. I also knew she had married Corwin’s uncle, Billy Peace. I was just about to graduate and was working at the 4-B’s, saving money up for college.

Marn parked across the street, got out of the car, an old beat-up Chevy, and she and her children walked across the street to the 4-B’s front door. There was a stiff, spring wind and they pushed into it, hair flying, as they crossed. Marn’s hands were white and knotted and she was gripping her kids, hard, but the kids didn’t look like they minded it. They weren’t pulling away. They didn’t look punished or grim or sad, like you might expect knowing where they came from. They looked amazed, that’s what I thought. They looked like they were walking out of the funnel of a tornado. Like they couldn’t believe the things they’d seen whirling around in there. After a few moments, I went to let them in, because they were standing in front of the old wood and glass double doors, stuck, as if the sidewalk had reached up and hardened around their ankles.