The Plague of Doves - Louise Erdrich [16]
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.
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,