Louise Erdrich - The Plague of Doves

It was a low and drizzly summer day. Joseph and I had caught a number of salamanders after a rain and were busy restocking the back pond from a galvanized tin bucket, when Father Cassidy appeared in the yard and skipped his bulk along the grass to inspect our work. We looked up from beneath his vast belly, and were surprised to see him crossing himself double time.

“What’s wrong?” asked Joseph.

“There are some who believe those creatures represent the devil,” said the priest. “I, of course, do not hold with superstitions.”

But perhaps there was something to it, as we later found.

By the time Joseph and I had finished releasing the salamanders and come back in the house, the conversation was in full swing and the bottle, too, was out because Mama was out. The three men nodded happily at us. They were drinking not from shot glasses, but from hard plastic coffee cups, Mama’s favorite new set, harvest gold.

“We better stay here and watch over them,” said Joseph to me, low, and I dipped out cold water for us to drink. We sat down on the couch. There was no doubt things were preceding swiftly. Father Cassidy had asked of Mooshum a particular question, one he never answered the same way twice. The question was this: What had happened to Mooshum’s ear? The ear had not actually, he’d tell us later, been pecked away by doves.

Mooshum squinted, curled his lip out, and asked Father Cassidy if he’d ever heard of Liver-Eating Johnson.

Father Cassidy smiled indulgently and tried a weak joke: “He must have been from Montana!”

“Tawpway,” said Mooshum.

“Paint the picture in words, mon frère!” said Shamengwa.

Mooshum made himself into a hulking beast and clawed at his chin to show the man’s scraggly blood-soaked beard. He then related the horrifying story of Liver-Eating Johnson’s hatred of the Indian and how in lawless days this evil trapper and coward jumped his prey and was said to cut the liver from his living victim and devour that organ right before their eyes. He liked to run them down, too, over great distances.

Father Cassidy gulped and laughed weakly. “That’s enough!” But Mooshum drank from the coffee cup and barged ahead.

“Me, I was a young boy, not yet a man, alone on the prairie hunting for some scrap to eat. Turned out of my family, eh? Away across in the distances I see a someone running, a hairy and desperate man. But me, I have no fear of anything.”

Shamengwa glanced at us, tapped his head, and winked.

“I kept to my own pace, as I was searching for something to eat. A rabbit, maybe, a grouse, even a rattlesnake would have set me up good. I myself was very hungry.”

“Boys get hungry,” said Shamengwa.

“I glance around in hopes that maybe this stranger has some food to spare. He’s coming at me, still running. He’s covered with ragged skins and he has a scrawly beard and that beard, eh? I suddenly see, when he gets close enough, how that beard is all crusted with old blood. And I know it’s him.”

“Liver Eater,” said Shamengwa.

“I see that light in his eyes. He’s very hungry, too! And I begin to spring, I’ll tell you, I take off like a rabbit, quick. I’ve got speed, but I know Liver Eater’s got endurance. He’ll outrun me if we go all day, he’ll exhaust me. And sure enough, the minute I slow my pace, he’s on me. I speed up. It’s cat and mouse, lynx and rabbit. Then he puts a burst on and he jumps me!”

Father Cassidy looked aghast, forgot to drink. Mooshum slowly touched what was left of his ear.

“Yes, he got that. His teeth were sharp. But he must have lost his hunting knife, for he did not stab me. I struggled out of his grip.” Mooshum struggled out of his own arms, burst free of his own clutching hands. “I hopped out, running once again, just ahead of him, but as I charge along, blood from my ear flying in the wind, I get to thinking. Riel, if he’d won there would be some justice! This devil would not dare to chase an Indian. Hey, I think, I’m hungry too! Let’s give Liver Eater some of his own medicine, anyway. I’ve got sharp teeth. So I stop, quick.”

Mooshum jolted in his chair.

“The hairy white man flips over me, and as he does, I bite off one of his fingers.”

“Which one?” said Shamengwa.

“I just got the pinkie,” said Mooshum. “But now he’s foaming mad, so I let him come at me again. This time, I strike like a weasel. Snap, a thumb comes off!”

“Did you eat it?” said Joseph.

“I had to swallow it down whole, no chewing. It tasted foul,” said Mooshum. “I needed it for strength, my boy. We blasted out again. The next time I slowed he went for my liver — but only ripped a chunk out of my left cheek here.” Mooshum pointed at the baggy seat of his pants. “I tore a bite from his hindquarters, too, and wrestled him down and got a piece of thigh, next. I kept after him. I was young. We must of ran for twenty, thirty miles! And over those miles I whittled him down.”

“Howah!” cried Shamengwa.

“By the time he dropped from blood loss, he was down six fingers. I got one of his ears, the whole thing. I took a couple of his toes just to slow him down. Those, I spit right out. And I got his nose.”

“Yuck,” I said.

“It’s my lucky piece,” said Mooshum. “Want to see it, Father?”

“No, I do not!”

But Mooshum had already drawn his handkerchief from his pocket, and with an air of reverence he unwrapped it to show a blackened piece of leatherlike gunk.

“A bit of Thamnophis radix ,” said Joseph, peering at it over Mooshum’s shoulder. “Why’d you keep it?”

“It’s his love charm,” Shamengwa said.

“That is…positively pagan!” Father Cassidy spluttered the words out and Mooshum’s eye lighted.

“In what way, dear priest?” he asked with an air of curious innocence, pouring whiskey into the coffee cup that Father Cassidy gripped in his shuddering fingers.

“A nose!” cried Father Cassidy.

“And what piece of good Saint Joseph is lodged in our church’s altar?” asked Mooshum. He spoke in a nunlike voice, gentle and reproving.

Father Cassidy’s mouth shut hard. He frowned. “To compare , even to compare …”

“I was told,” said Joseph readily, “as he is my name saint of course, I was told that our altar contains a bit of Saint Joseph’s spinal material.”

Father Cassidy drank the whole cup back.

“Sacrilege.” He shook his head. Wagged his empty cup, which Mooshum promptly filled again.

“It saddens and outrages me,” Father Cassidy said, sipping moodily off the brim. “Saddens and outrages me,” he repeated in a fainter voice. Then he got all stirred up, as if some thought pierced the fog. It was the same thought he’d had already.

“To compare …” he blurted out, almost tearful.

“Compare, though, I must,” said Mooshum. “When you stop to consider how the body of Christ, the blood of Christ, is eaten at every Mass.”

Father Cassidy’s tears vanished in a wash of rage. He blew up at this — his cheeks puffed out and he swayed monumentally to his feet.

“That is the transubstantiation , which is to say you speak of the most sacred aspect of our Mother the Church as represented in the Holy Mass.”

Father Cassidy was building up more and more gas, and soon a froth of fresh bubbles dotted the corners of his mouth. Mooshum leaned forward, questioning.

“Then do you mean to tell me that the body and the blood is just, eh, in your head, like? The bread stands in for the real thing? Then I could see your point. Otherwise, the Eucharist is a cannibal meal.”

Father Cassidy’s lips turned purple and he tried to roar, though it came out a gurgle. “Heresy! What you describe. Heresy. The bread does indeed become the body. The wine does indeed become the blood. Yet it does not compare in any way to the eating of another human.” Father Cassidy wagged a finger. “I fear you’ve gone too far now! I fear you have stepped over the edge with this talk! I fear you will be required to make a very special, and grave, confession for us to allow you back into the church.”