The Plague of Doves by Louise Erdrich Page B

their knees and mumble a whine of melody beneath their breaths again. They did not address a single word to Mooshum. He gazed out over the fields, which were newly plowed and planted, the furrows straight and just sprouting a faint green fuzz. The sky was the sweetest color of blue. The horizon was dusty with a hint of green, just like the egg of a robin, and the clouds were delicate, no more than tiny white breast feathers way up high.
    They came to a tree that looked all right, but the white men thought the limbs were too slanted and thin. They came to another tree and the men argued underneath it and measured with their arms and hands. Apparently, that tree wasn’t good, either.
    “They are giving us time to practice our song, anyway,” saidCuthbert. He wiped his face. It looked as though his nose-lump had been shorn away smoothly.
    “Now that I look at you closely,” said Asiginak, “I think you would have been handsome, my friend.”
    “Thank you,” Cuthbert said.
    “That tree over there will do,” said Emil Buckendorf.
    Mooshum heard someone begin to sob and he thought at first it was himself—it sounded just like himself—but then he realized that it was Johann Vogeli. The boy was riding next to him, his hands clutching the mane of his horse. His tears rushed down and wet the leather of the saddle. Frederic Vogeli rode up beside his son and swung his arm back, then smashed his knuckles and forearm across his son’s face. Johann nearly fell off the back of his horse, but he caught himself. As he gained his balance, he changed, grew broader, bigger, and something in him could be seen to light. This thing took fire, and blew him right up. It propelled him off his horse: he lunged into an embrace with his father, who flew sideways out of his saddle and was still underneath his son when the two men landed and skidded—Frederic’s back the sled. Johann sat on his father’s chest and began to hit his face with the side of his fist like he was pounding on a table. He pounded with all his arm’s strength, like he would strike through the wood, or the flesh. His other hand had closed around his father’s throat. The wagon lurched on and the other men traveled with it, leaving the two rolling and kicking, then standing, then swinging and punching. Down again, then up, their battle looked more comical as they receded into the distance. Finally they were two black toy figures popping up and down against an endless horizon and beneath a boundless sky.
    “The boy’s heart was good, anyway,” said Cuthbert.
    “I hope he doesn’t kill his father, yet,” said Asiginak. “He could carry that hard.”
    Cuthbert agreed.
     
    “So you talked to Cuthbert, too,” said Joseph, his voice strained. “And Holy Track? Asiginak? They lived to be old men, right?”
    “No,” said Mooshum. “Oh,” said Joseph.
    The Clatter of Wings
    THE OAK TREE had a generous spread. It had probably grown there quietly for a hundred years.
    “I can show you that tree to this day, on the edge of Wolde’s land,” said Mooshum. “There’s tobacco put down there. Prayer flags in its branches.”
    The men rode up to it and got down and walked around the base, peering up into the branches and pointing at one particular limb that ran straight on both sides of the tree and then bent upward, as if in a gesture of praise. They decided that it was the tree they had been looking for and drew the wagon up beneath it. Five or six ropes were neatly coiled underneath the straw on the wagon bed. Enery Mantle and the Buckendorfs took the ropes out and argued over which ones to use. Then they tried and repaired the knots, clumsily, several times, still arguing, and threw the ropes over the limb. They tested the slip of the rope and discussed who would hit the horses, and when.
    “They don’t know how to snare a rabbit,” said Cuthbert, “or drop a man. This will not go easy.”
    Holy Track was sick and wild. Asiginak did not answer. Mooshum was