The Plague of Doves - Louise Erdrich [17]
“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