The Plague of Doves - Louise Erdrich [70]
I don’t know who I married anymore. It’s like he’s supernatural. He is horribly tireless, exhausting everyone so much that we have to take shifts to keep up with him. I carry his shirts, socks, underwear, trousers, out to the clothesline to hang. They are so large now they do not require clothespins. I drape them like sheets and then I sit, worn-out, where I am hidden from his eye. He talks rain. He still talks Armageddon. The farm is made over to me now, and through me to Billy. He talks about the founding of the chosen. We are the ones, he says, who will walk through the fire. We are the Daniels. He holds our son up before the eyes of the congregation and the poor boy is small as a fish in his hands.
Finally, it is the picnic table and the iron bench that brings me to the end of this part of our life and the bigger, uncontrollable force that Billy becomes. The table is set out in the bare backyard, and it is made of sheet metal, steel pipes, and a welded cross bar, hammered into the ground. Dad made it for days it was too humid to eat indoors, and for general celebrations, of which we never had one. The whole area is laid out where the view is nice so that Mother, fond of her pretty yard and flowers, could gaze past a row of wild orange daylilies after she worked in the garden. She could pause, rest her eyes on a bit of loveliness. There is even an iron-lace bench for sitting on, maybe reading, though nobody ever opened a book there.
The August heat has let up briefly, then closed down again. Uncle Warren is chipping chicken shit off the perches, swearing in a low, grating tone at the hens that peck beside his feet. A few days ago, my mother crawled underneath a flowered sheet on the couch and now she will not rise. From her couch near the picture window, where she is quietly getting even thinner, my mother watches the picnic area, sees the sun rise and pass overhead. It is just a stubborn flu bug, she says, but there are times, watching as she simply lies still, her arms like straight boards placed to hold down the thin, puckery sheet, that I am afraid she’ll die and I want to climb in next to her.
One humid afternoon I am sitting with my mother on the couch and we are watching Billy talk beneath the green ash tree with a few of the others. The babies are sleeping on the floor on folded quilts, with fans spilling air over them back and forth. Billy rarely drinks, and then, nothing stronger than wine. He is drinking wine now, a homemade variety from elderberries, made by a congregation member from a recipe passed down through her family. I suppose that the wine has got such a friendly history that Billy feels he can drink more than usual. And then, it is hot. The jars of wine are set in an icy cooler on the metal picnic table, and from time to time Billy lifts out a jar and drains it. As he talks, the sweat pours off his brow. His dark hair is wetted black, his body is huge, mounded over the iron bench. He lifts his thick arms to wrestle with a thought, drags it out of the air, thumps it on the top of his thigh. He is holding a rain prayer meeting, and as we sit in the heat of the afternoon, with the fans going, watching the others pray in the blazing sun, we notice that clouds are massing and building into fabulous castlelike and blazing shapes.
These clouds are remarkable, pink-gold and lit within. They are beautiful things. I point them out to my mother.
“Thunderclouds,” she says, excited. “Push my couch closer to the window.”
I should be out praying with the group, or cooking up a dinner for them all, or working on the garden to bring in tomatoes in case it does rain, in case those clouds bring hail. But I do nothing other than place a chair next to my mother’s couch. Uncle Warren is sleeping with his eyes open, sitting straight in his chair. Lilith is limp and draped over a stuffed bear. I cover her with a crocheted afghan because a cool breeze has risen. My father enters the room. He has come to point out the clouds. Warren’s