Louise Erdrich - The Plague of Doves

“Are you sure,” said Father Cassidy, eyeing the bottle. His hand clutched his empty water glass. He lifted the glass toward the bottle. “Great sins are not required. Have you not, perhaps, taken the name of the Lord in vain?”

“Mon Dieu! Never!” The brothers looked quite shocked and displeased at the notion, and hastily poured the priest a double shot and refreshed their own glasses.

Father Cassidy looked thoughtful, and perhaps a little downcast to find the two old brothers sinless. But then he sipped deeply and brightened. “There are so many ways of sinning not readily apparent! You may for instance share in the guilt of another’s sin without actually committing it yourself, via the Sin of Silence. Has anyone you know sinned?”

The brothers shook their heads in blank surprise. The priest cast about, waving a plump hand for inspiration. “You may have sinned against the Holy Ghost by resisting known truth — the worth for instance of Holy Mass — thus hardening your soul to the penetrations of grace!”

Father Cassidy looked extremely pleased with himself, but the brothers seemed most offended that he should imagine their souls hardening and they put their hands protectively upon their pulsing hearts. The priest did not give up, however, and quickly rattled off a list of venial sins: “a stab of envy or pride or…, no? Bad temper or even a minor untruth, no? Or even, I hesitate to say…” The priest’s soft hand wobbled a bit as he closed it around the glass, and he smiled in tender delight at its contents, swirling the golden liquid gently as he spoke. He was now a bit dreamy. “Impure thoughts,” he whispered. “Very common.”

At this, Mooshum gave his brother a look of wounded puzzlement, and raised his eye questingly to the ceiling. Shamengwa made the sign of the cross with his good arm, and then took a small sip of his drink.

“We should know what he is talking about,” said Mooshum, touching his poor maimed ear, “but we must admit, we are completely ignorant of these…”

“Impure thoughts,” said Joseph, from the doorway, frowning at the cards in his hand.

“Gin,” I said.

“Aw.”

“Impure thoughts,” said Shamengwa. “Dear priest, could you explain to us — exactly what are these impure thoughts you mention? As you say, if they are common, we must have experienced them, and yet we haven’t noticed somehow.”

“Perhaps we sin unknowingly,” said Mooshum, his eyes sincere as he gazed at the priest over his poised shot glass. He tried for dignity, but his chewed-up ear always made him look ridiculous. “Which would be something…”

“Tragic!” said Joseph. He tried to cover a snorting laugh with several quick card shuffles.

“Tragic…as we’d end up in the bad place without warning, were we to die!”

“Could these impure thoughts send us to hell?”

Paralyzed with alarm, both men sat bolt upright. The priest frowned cross-eyed into his empty glass and Mooshum neatly filled it.

“Concupiscence,” said Father Cassidy, raising one finger beside the glass, which he held slightly out at the level of his clerical collar. With his other hand, he tugged at the collar itself, as though it was tightening. “From the Latin, concu piss erry , I believe, meaning, ah, to dwell upon unclean emissions in one’s past or to anticipate such as…any act of imaginary or ejaculatory fornication. Bluntly speaking!”

“Ah, fornication!” The brothers grew animated and tipped their glasses to each other, then to Father Cassidy, who inadvertently tipped his in automatic fellowship and then stared confusedly down, mumbling, “from the Latin…”

“From the Latin forn , as in foreign , for relations with foreigners,” cried Joseph.

“Ho, ho!” exclaimed the brothers, toasting again as Joseph set his cards down and skimmed out the door.

I quickly followed, but Father Cassidy and Mama were out the door right behind us and Mama said, “Now you two stop right there, and apologize to Father.” But Father Cassidy, perhaps to prove what a horse-savvy Montanan he was, strode up behind us with his great chin of dough bulging over his collar and said, “No need, no need, yours, eh? Nice little docile scrub ponies, awful conformation, of course, positively knock-kneed and they do need the currycomb something worse.” A nasty light sparked in the long-necked pinto’s eye. Father Cassidy stepped up to her face and put his hand out. Quick as a rattlesnake, she struck and crushed his fleshy bicep in her teeth. Father Cassidy screamed and began to skip in place. But the mare held on firmly, like a mother might grip a naughty boy. Father Cassidy tried to swat her nose with his open hand. Her eye rolled back, she gave some coughing grunts that sounded like sobs of laughter, and bit down harder before she finally released his arm. There was hot shock in Father Cassidy’s eyes.

“Oh,” said Mama, “I am so sorry, Father. Please come back in and let me ice that little nip.”

“Little nip!” cried Father Cassidy. He clapped his hand over his upper arm as if to keep the meat of it in place and was edging backwards now, heading for his automobile, which was parked in the road before our house. “Good-bye, Clemence, much gratified, the drop did no harm. Aghhh. Who knew I’d need the anesthetic!”

“From the Latin anesthed , meaning numskull,” said Joseph to me.

Father Cassidy got into the car. “Tell your father and his brother that they flirt with damnation by resisting Mass!”

“I’ll tell them, Father, yes, don’t you worry.”

Mama stepped forward to wave politely to Father Cassidy, and by the time she’d turned around to come at us full steam we’d mounted up and sped away. So I believe on that day she walked into the house and poured her frustration out on her father and her uncle, even though she was normally gentle with the two old men, whom she loved as greatly as she loved us. They were chastened and quiet when we returned for supper. Shamengwa stayed on because she had not allowed him to “slink off,” as she put it. The television blared out and the picture scrolled slowly along, edging up the screen and sticking halfway so that a woman’s legs would be on top of her talking head. Then her head would rise and the legs would tremble for one moment beneath her, until her head disappeared and popped up below. The two old men leaned back and closed their eyes, unable to bear the disorienting sight. They fell asleep. They were snoring lightly in profound innocence.

THAT WAS NOT the end of it. Mooshum and his brother attended Holy Mass and then lapsed intentionally in order to provoke a visit from Father Cassidy. His hopes had been raised by seeing the two old men, so close to eternity, in the pew before him, and he wished to secure their souls. This second visit was as ridiculous as the first. Mooshum promised to make an heroic attempt to sin, so he would have something to confess. Joseph watched all of this with a teenager’s long suffering omniscience.

Life as a boy was hard on my brother. To be the son of a science teacher in a reservation school cast him under suspicion, while it was to my advantage. It is always good for a girl to have a visible father. Worse for Joseph, he loved science and actually was teaching himself the Latin names of things. To make up for this, he rode one or the other of Aunt Geraldine’s pintos all over, way back into the bush, and got drunk on bootlegger wine whenever he could. We both had friends, as well as eight or nine Peace cousins first to third, about sixteen others that we could count, and Corwin. I had girlfriends and I did not mind going to school, but somehow the closeness of my family was enough for me outside the classroom. We were not social. Plus Joseph and our father were somewhat isolated by their fascinations — collecting stamps, of course, which was a way of traveling without leaving, but also stars and heavenly phenomena, grasses, trees, birds, reptiles and happenstance insects, which they collected methodically, pinned to white squares of cardboard, and labeled.