Louise Erdrich - The Plague of Doves

“Sure,” said Joseph, “he’s talking about birth control. Aunt Geraldine’s the one to ask if you need sex information. She’ll draw it out on paper.”

So the next time I went to catch a horse, I came back with knowledge. Thanks to Geraldine I also understood about impure thoughts, and I realized that the miraculous feelings that were part of God’s plan for me, and which I had experienced in the bathtub with a headful of mayonnaise, were considered sins.

“Do I have to confess those?” I had been aghast at the prospect.

“I don’t,” said Geraldine.

The next time Father Cassidy appeared at the door, I greeted him with a pure conscience and took his light jacket and hat and put them on the chair beside the door. Then I retreated to a corner of the room. This time, once the priest was ushered inside to the table, Mama did not leave the bottle after she’d poured the shots. She took it with her to the other room. With the bottle gone, there came a dampness of feeling among the men.

“Ah, well,” said Mooshum, “they drank no wine in the trenches at Batoche, and the priests were halfway starved, too. Father Cassidy, are you familiar with our history?”

“I’m a Montana boy,” said the priest. “I know how they put down the rebellion.”

“Rebellion!” Mooshum puffed out his cheeks. He didn’t drink from his little glass yet.

“With a Gatling gun!” Shamengwa said. “Trucked from out east. A coward’s invention, that.”

Father Cassidy shrugged. Mooshum suddenly became very angry. His face went livid red, his mangled ear flared, his brows lowered. He grit his teeth, shivering with hatred.

“It was an issue of rights,” he cried, slapping the table. “Getting their rights recognized when they had already proved the land — the Michifs and the whites. And old Poundmaker. They wanted the government to do something. That’s all. And the government pissed about this way and that so old Riel says, ‘We’ll do it for you!’ Ha! Ha! Howah! ‘We’ll do it for you!’” He raised his glass slightly and narrowed his eyes at Father Cassidy.

A look of happiness had taken hold of Shamengwa. He took a tiny sip of the liquor on his tongue, and beamed. “Why,” he said, “this is sure smooth.”

“My lease money come in last week,” said Mooshum. “Clemence, she purchased me a special bottle. My, but she’s stingy! If we had our rights, as Riel laid ’em out, Father Cassidy, you’d be working for us, not at us. And Clemence would pour a deeper glass, too.”

“Well, I doubt that,” said Shamengwa, “but there are so many other things.” Shamengwa’s joy had stirred him to sudden life. “I’ve thought about this, brother. If Riel had won, our parents would have stayed in Canada, whole people. Not broken. We would have been properly raised up. My arm would work.”

“So many things,” said Mooshum, faintly. “So many…But there is no question about one word, my brother.”

“What is that word?”

“Respect.”

“Respect is as respect does,” Father Cassidy commented. “Have you respected Our Lord’s wishes this week?”

“Did Our Lord make us?” Mooshum asked belligerently.

“Why, yes,” said Father Cassidy.

“As we are, in our bodies,” said Mooshum.

“Of course.”

“Down to the details? Down to the male parts?”

“What are you getting at?” asked Father Cassidy.

“If Our Lord made our bodies down to the male parts, then He also made the male part’s wishes. This week, I have respected these wishes, I will tell you that much.”

Before Father Cassidy could open his mouth, Shamengwa jumped in. “Respect,” said Shamengwa, “is a much larger subject than your male parts, my brother. You referred to political respect for our people. And in that you were correct, all too correct, for it is beyond a doubt. If Riel had carried through, we would have had respect.”

“To our nation! To our people!” Mooshum drained his glass.

“Land,” said Shamengwa, brooding.

“Women,” said Mooshum, dizzy.

“Not even the great Riel could have helped you there.”

“But our people would not have been hanged…”

“Ah, yes,” said Father Cassidy, eyeing the bottom of his glass. “The hangings! A local historian—”

“Don’t speak ill of her, Father. I am in love with her!”

“I wasn’t…”

“Let us not speak of the hanging,” said Shamengwa firmly. “Let us speak instead of requesting another glass of this stuff from Clemence. Oh niece, favorite niece!”

“Don’t favorite me.” Mama came back into the room and poured the men a round. She swept out with the bottle, again, so quickly that she didn’t see me. I had sunk down behind the couch because I didn’t feel like being stuck with weeding the beans right then. That she wasn’t more hospitable with the priest confirmed her low opinion of him, but then I realized he’d also come to see her.

“Could we have a little word?” Father Cassidy tried to loop his voice around her swift ankles, to drag her out of the kitchen, but she had passed through the back door out into the garden.

MOOSHUM WAS, INDEED, in love with Mrs. Neve Harp, an annoying aunt of ours, a Pluto lady who called herself the town historian. She often “popped in,” as she called it. We were never free of that threat. She was what people called “fixy,” always made-up and overdressed. She was rich and spoiled, but a little crazy, too — she sometimes gave a panicky laugh that went on too long and seemed out of her control. Mama said she felt sorry for her, but would not tell me why. Neve Harp seemed proud of having beaten down two husbands — one she had even put in prison. She was working on a third, bragging of stepchildren, but had already started using her maiden name in bylines to reduce confusion. As he was not allowed to visit Neve Harp often enough to suit his desires, Mooshum wrote letters to her. Some evenings, when the television worked, Joseph and I watched while Mooshum sat at the table composing letters in his flowing nun-taught script. He prodded our father for information.

“Is your sister fond of flowers? What is her favorite?”

“Stinging nettles.”

“Would you say she favors a certain color?”

“Fish-belly white.”

“What were her charming habits when she was young?”

“She could fart the national anthem.”

“The whole thing?”

“Yes.”

“Howah! Did she always have such pretty hair?”

“She dyes it.”

“How did she come to have so many husbands?”

“Obscene talents.”

“What does she think? What is her mind like?”

Our dad would just laugh wearily. “Mind?” he’d say. “Thoughts?”

“She’s got her teeth, no? All of them?”

“Except the ones she left in her husbands.”

“I wonder if she would be interested in memories of my horse-racing days here on the reservation. Those could be considered historical.”

“You only quit two years ago.”

“But they go way back…”

And so it would continue until Mooshum was satisfied with his letter. He folded the paper, setting each crease with his thumb, fit it into an envelope, and carefully tore a stamp from a sheet of commemoratives. He would keep the letter in his breast pocket until Mama went to the store, then he’d go along with her and put it directly into the hands of the post lady, Mrs. Bannock. He knew that his pursuit of Neve Harp was frowned upon, and he believed that Clemence would throw his letters in the garbage.

I PROBABLY DID not fully realize or appreciate our family’s relative comfort on the reservation. Although everyone in the family except my father was some degree of Chippewa mixed with some degree of French, and although Shamengwa’s wife had been a traditional full-blood and Mooshum abandoned the church later to pursue pagan ways, the fact is, we lived in Bureau of Indian Affairs housing. In town, there was electricity and plumbing, as I’ve mentioned, even an intermittent television signal. Aunt Geraldine still lived in the old house, out on the land, and hauled her water. Her horses were the descendants of Mooshum’s racers. We also had shelves of books, some of which were permanent, others changed every week. But because we lived in town we were visited more often by the priest. There was, in fact, one final visit from Father Cassidy, a drama that had far-reaching effects in our family. For one, our mother blamed the argument on liquor and banned Mooshum from drinking it as best she could. For another, the grip of the church on our family was weakened as Mooshum thrillingly broke away.