The Plague Of Doves

“She had the pale, opaque skin and slanting black eyes of the Metis or Michif women in whose honor the bishop of that diocese had written a warning to his priests, advising them to pray hard in the presence of half-breed women, and to remember that although their forms were inordinately fair their hearts were savage and permeable.” 

The racism of the white populations that made them refuse to marry the native peoples also suffused white spirituality. The white priests believe the Metis women possess an inherent sexuality that might rob them of their vows of chastity, as though the mere presence of these women remains enough to lure the priests from God. Of course, there is no mention of the priests’ culpability in the sexual objectification of the Metis women. Rather, the guilt is entirely laid upon the feet of these women, who seem to trick the priests into forsaking their vows. The author is glib here, demonstrating the irony that the very priests meant to save these women’s souls could be so easily lured to sin. 

“The story could have been true, for, as I have said, there really was a Mustache Maude Black with a husband named Ott. Only sometimes Maude was the one to claim Mooshum as her son in the story and sometimes she’d had an affair with Chief Gall. And sometimes Ott plugged the man in the gut. But if there was embellishment, it only had to do with facts.” 

Evelina interrogates the relativity of truth as presented in Seraph’s stories. She notices that sometimes her grandfather’s stories change; however, the author never calls Seraph a liar, nor does Evelina. Rather, she takes all of his stories in stride, as though the story itself is important, rather than the Anglo-Western construct of absolute truth. The listener and the storyteller interact with one another, and so truth can be subject to embellishments that do not in any way render the story untrue.

“There was something grand and awful about their mute numbers. Mooshum said that the nuns had believed they were emissaries from the unholy dead, sent up by the devil, and hell was full of them […] Joseph always woke me early when the drowning rains came, late in warm spring, and we got to school first so that we could fish the creatures out before the boys found and stomped them to death.” 

Evelina ponders the nature of the salamanders that she and Joseph find in the puddles outside. Much like the doves, they arrive in multitudes. Like many aspects of nature that religion does not understand, the nuns believe that these salamanders, which seem even less harmful than the doves, represent emissaries of the Devil. However, they are mute, so unable to deny the accusations of their immorality.Evelina and Joseph work to save the living creatures from destruction by their peers. In this way, destruction becomes a human trait, one that does not seem as readily available in nature. 

“Mooshum’s strange reluctance to tell this story was compelling. The less he wanted to tell, the more we wanted to hear.” 

Evelina and her brother are intrigued by their grandfather’s uncharacteristic reluctance to tell the story of the hanging. This story begins with a name, a simple name that makes Seraph think about the story and debate whether or not he should tell it. Being associated with stories, it seems that Seraph cannot help but communicate this one to his grandchildren, against their mother’s wishes. The author implies that the truth of the narrative becomes that much more compelling primarily because it is a story they should not hear. 

“Asiginak turned back to Cuthbert. ‘You’re not drunk, so why do you say this? We are no-goods, we are Indians, even me. If you tell the white sheriff, we will die.’” 

During Seraph’s story of the lynching, he recalls Asiginak’s portent to Cuthbert. Cuthbert wants to tell the sheriff about the living baby, Cordelia, because he feels it is the right thing to do. However, he does not take into account the white population’s racism against the Native Americans. In Asiginak’s elderly wisdom, he astutely identifies the outcome of this selfless act: in saving the life of the white baby, Cuthbert essentially condemns himself and his fellows to death.

“It wasn’t like he was talking to us, though, or even using his usual storytelling voice. He wasn’t drawing us in, or gesturing. This was different. Now it was like he was stuck in some way, on some track, like he couldn’t stop the story from forcing its way out. This was the one time he told the story whole.” 

Seraph loses control during the story of the lynching. This narrative is so ingrained within the psyche of the place that Seraph becomes possessed by it; once he begins the telling, he cannot stop. The story takes on a life of its own, becoming a living thing that Seraph must birth. 

“Cuthbert’s head was all blood now. His eyes were hidden in his bloody hair, his neck awash with blood, his dirty shirt was blood all up and down. He spoke Ojibwe from inside the bloody mask […] ‘I am going to sing my death song.’” 

When describing the scene involving the men being taken to their deaths, the author repeatedly uses the word ‘blood’ to signify the level of violence enacted upon these Native American men and the way this violence binds together those in in the town. Cuthbert becomes covered in blood as a result of the unjust racism of the white colonizers; he cannot escape their violence. Understanding his fate, he turns to the palliative power of music to give him strength in his remaining life. He turns back to the language of his ancestors, demonstrating the confluence between Ojibwe language and the healing power of music. Despite knowing that he will die, the song sung in his own language gives him the strength to face his death, something that even the white lynching party cannot take from him. 

“I saw that the loss of their land was lodged inside of them forever. This loss would enter me, too. Over time, I came to know that the sorrow was a thing that each of them covered up according to their character—my old uncle through his passionate discipline, my mother through strict kindness and cleanly order. As for my grandfather, he used the patient art of ridicule.” 

When the town historian and Evelina’s aunt, Neve, references the land in her conversation with the Milk brothers, they are overcome with sadness. Their grief stems from the loss of their land at the hands of the white settlers, who include Neve’s relatives. This loss presents a conflict for Evelina, who is related to both the Milk brothers and to Neve Harp. As such, Evelina feels the grief of her relatives, understanding that their actions represent their own private rebellion against this thievery. The audience sees the conflict between Neve and the old men, understanding that Evelina internalizes and even embodies this conflict between native and white.

“The story Mooshum told us had repercussions—the first being that I could not look at anyone in quite the same way anymore. I became obsessed with lineage […] I traced the blood history of the murders through my classmates and friends until I could draw out elaborate spider webs of lines and intersecting circles […] There were a few people, one of them being Corwin Peace, whose chart was so complicated that I erased parts of it until I wore right through the paper. Still I could not erase the questions underneath, and Mooshum was no help […] He answered in evasions.” 

After Seraph’s story about the lynching, Evelina looks at her community with new eyes. Evelina now understands the interconnectivity inherent within her community, seeing how everyone is connected through both murders and relationships, and Eros balances Thanatos. Some characters, such as Corwin, have so many intersecting lines and addendums that Evelina can’t seem to get them quite right. Evelina also presents the idea of history as being uneraseable, namely that she cannot erase the questions that come to light as a result of this new knowledge. While Evelina can erase the physical lines linking characters to one another, she cannot erase the history and ramifications therein. 

“He’d seen the blizzard sweep out of nothing and descend in fury upon them and then return to the nothingness it came from, so like all men. There was something powerful in store for him. He must be ready for it.” 

Joseph reflects after the first bad blizzard during the failed expedition, where almost all the men die. He thinks about the nothingness of nature, how her fury seems to come out of the air or the land itself. This fury, this capacity for death, is all around them; it is not something that they can escape. Joseph likens this blizzard to the idea that all men are made from and must return to dust. In this way, the blizzard becomes yet another force of death that men can neither control nor understand. 

“As I look at the town now, dwindling without grace, I think how strange that lives were lost in its formation. It is the same with all desperate enterprises that involve boundaries we place upon the earth. By drawing a line and defending it, we seem to think we have mastered something. What? The earth swallows and absorbs even those who manage to form a country, a reservation […] I think of my grandfather’s phrase for the land disease, town fever, and how he nearly died of greed, its main symptom.

Antone reflects on the nature of the dying town and the irony that so many people died to try to lay claim to it. He likens the land to a disease, a symptom of a larger problem. That problem, Antone suggests, lies in the human desire to carve boundaries into nature. Antone alludes to the elusive nature of boundaries, that is, the fact that they do not exist within the natural world. Rather, boundaries and other categorizations solely exist within the human imagination. They are not an absolute truth, no matter how humans may attempt to construe them as such. 

“I was looking at them just to figure, for pure survival, the way a girl does. It is like a farmer, which my dad is, gets to know the lay of the land. He loves his land so he has got to figure out how to cultivate it. What it needs in each season, how much abuse it will sustain, what in the end it will yield to him. And I, too, in order to increase my yield and use myself right was taking my lessons.” 

Marn Wolde reflects on puberty when she first lays eyes on Billy Peace, effectively turning the male gaze on its head. The surveyor becomes the surveyed as Marn objectifies the male body, albeit within a relatively innocent perspective. The male body becomes a landscape, tying the bodies of the characters to the land itself. If the land comprises the characters’ bodies, then any trauma inflicted onto those bodies is similarly inflicted upon the land itself. Such violence becomes a crime against nature. The author also uses this perspective to foreshadow Billy’s abuse of Marn, which then is also inherently tied to his abuse of the land.

“I gathered up my red-black beauty. She wore time itself in those hourglasses and I felt the sand rush through them as I let her flow back into the case. Then I lay down. I let the poison bloom into me. Let the sickness boil up, and the questions, and the fruit of the tree of power. I let the knowing take hold of me. The understanding of serpents. My heart went black and rock hard […] When the life flowed back in I knew I was stronger […] I knew that I was the poison and I was the power.” 

Marn inspects her snakes, which become more important to her than all other animals. They begin to embody human constructs of time and chronology as well. Realizing that her snakes supersede humans in their semi-divinity, Marn allows the poison from the copperhead to flow into her. She believes that if she accepts her snakes’ gift of poison, she will grow stronger. However, there is the implication that if she were to fight the poison, she would die, as Billy later does. This episode with the snakes foreshadows Marn’s decision to murder her husband as she realizes what she must do in order to free herself and her children. It is this knowledge that makes Marn powerful. The author flips the Judeo-Christian idea of the evil associated with knowledge on its head, suggesting that the snake bite makes Marn possess the ability to stand up to her husband. This action of Marn’s is neither evil nor good; rather, it is constructed as survival. Through her association with nature, Marn slips into an amoral positionality wherein she is no longer constrained by human constructs but can fight to survive.

“My husband’s voice was perfect, as he was perfect. Made in God. My husband’s voice was redemption, a rope to hold in a whiteout. My husband’s voice would change my mind as it had before, when I got back and entered into the mellow gold light surrounding him. I would sink in, go under, resistless in the dream that he dreamed with me in it. I would be a shadow, once more, a light thrown lovingly against a wall.” 

Marn reflects on the perfection associated with her husband. Of course, the readers know that Billy is far from perfect, but has the ability to twist words and manipulate other people into believing that he speaks with the voice of God. Marn imbues this divine language with the Judeo-Christian symbolism of light, suggesting that Billy is a kind of savior. Of course, the author then turns this symbolism on its head with the very last sentence, wherein the audience witnesses the violence associated with this symbolism. If Billy is indeed the light and Marn the shadow, then she is both literally and metaphorically thrown against the wall by her husband.

“’The Mormons have come around the house again with their genealogy charts and they’re trying to suck Mooshum into their religion by telling him that he’s got kingly ancestors.’” 

Evelina explains that her grandfather has been listening to the stories of the Mormons. Even though the audience knows that Seraph cares very little for religion, he still listens to their stories, which Evelina mistakenly takes for a desire to justify one’s royal bloodline. Indeed, Seraph does listen to these stories; however, it is important to think of this within the context of Seraph’s relativity concerning truth. Seraph believes that stories are meant to be heard, and so he hears the stories of the Mormon proselytizers despite having no intention of joining their religion. Rather, he seeks to demonstrate the vast interconnectivity of humanity through learning more about his ancestral past, the exact same thing that Evelina does when she listens to Seraph’s stories that she knows he has embellished.

“Owehzhee is one of the words used for the way men get themselves up—neaten, scrub, pluck stray hairs, brush each tooth, make precise parts in our hair, and, these days, press a sharp crease down the front of our blue jeans—in order to show that although the government has tried in every possible way to destroy our manhood, we are undefeatable195.” 

Antone reflects on the care that Shamengwa takes when grooming himself, much like the care with which he attends to his violin. Antone believes this importance placed on hygiene represents an integral part of manhood and one that the US government has attempted to eradicate throughout the Native American population. Shamengwa’s emphasis on hygiene, then, acts as civil disobedience, a rebellion through which he demonstrates that his spirit cannot be broken. Antone greatly respects Shamengwa for this action, believing that no rebellion is too small 

“On campus I watched the well-fed, sane, secure, shining-haired and leather-belted ribbons of students pass me by. I would never be one of them.” 

When Evelina goes away to college, she watches the other students mill around and feels a keen sense of displacement and alienation. Throughout the novel, Evelina struggles with the belief that she does not seem to belong. This alienation comes to a head when she encounters a large population whom she feels she has nothing in common with, primarily because she sees herself as their opposite. This marks the beginning of Evelina’s identity crisis wherein she dives into herself to figure out who she truly is. However, it is only through the pain of displacement and the keen sense of not belonging that Evelina understands her identity. 

“There was nothing in the many stories of reversal and romance among my aunts and uncles to guide me here. A kiss from another girl set me outside the narrative. None of the family stories could touch me. I was in Anaïs’s story now. A dangerous love that could destroy.” 

As Evelina and Nonette’s relationship develops, Evelina realizes that she is striking into unknown territory. None of Evelina’s kin have any stories about lesbian relationships, leaving Evelina feeling unguided and adrift. Evelina uses the stories of her relatives in order to guide her life, recreating the lives themselves as narratives. But because of this newly discovered attraction to Nonette, Evelina feels her narrative diverge from those of her family. She feels alienated from others around her, reflected both in her physical removal away from the reservation as well as her inability to accurately communicate her feelings to other people. 

“I knew where the tree was. Everybody knew where the tree was. The tree still grew on Marn’s land, where Billy Peace’s kindred used to stay. People had stopped going there for a while, but come back now that the kindred had disappeared. The tree […] was always full of birds […] the tree had grown its branches out like the graceful arms of a candelabra.” 

Evelina and Seraph venture out to the hanging tree, which weaves together discrete aspects of Seraph’s history. The tree becomes the final hanging place of Holy Track’s boots as a memento for the terribly unjust murder that occurred there decades before, for which Seraph himself was partially responsible. The omnipresence of birds within the tree also references the plague of doves. Similarly, the author mentions that its limbs resemble a candelabra, further linking the tree to Seraph by associating it with the candelabra he carried to ward off said plague of doves. Lastly, the tree resides on the edge of Marn’s land, indicating the tie between Warren, the Lochren murders, and the lynching. The audience understands the irony in that the Native Americans who were unjustly killed for the Lochren massacre were lynched on the property of the man who actually committed these murders, perpetuating the cycle of traumatic atrocities. The author uses this irony in order to suggest the inextricability of these characters’ lives.

“When we are young, the words are scattered all around us. As they are assembled by experience, so also are we, sentence by sentence until the story takes shape.” 

After Antone and Cordelia’s wedding, Evelina reflects on her future. Evelina conceives of her life and the lives of those she cares about as stories, built word by word until sentences start to form. However, stories mean little without an audience. In this way, Evelina suggests that communication becomes an integral part of the human experience, particularly concerning the language that evolves, shapes, and is shaped by this experience. 

“The only problem with those old philosophers, I thought as I was walking back through the graves, was that they didn’t give enough due to the unbearable weight of human sexual love. It was something they correctly saw, though, as hindering deliberation, at war with reason, and apt to stain a man’s honor, which of course I accepted.” 

After Cordelia and Antone restart their love affair, Antone thinks about the ideologies of Anglo-Western philosophers. While he respects philosophers such as Marcus Aurelius, he believes that they lack an understanding of love, primarily because they are obsessed with reason. In contrast, Antone finds himself driven in many of his endeavors by love. The author presents this interrogation of love within the context of Antone walking back through the graveyard. This contemplation of Eros in the midst of Thanatos demonstrates the interconnectivity of love and death as the two continuously balance each other out throughout the novel. 

“Ted bought up older properties […] stripped them of their oak trim or carved doors or stained glass windows, and sold all that salvage to people in the cities. He tore down the shells and put up apartment buildings that were really so hideous, aluminum-sided or fake-bricked […] it was a wonder the town council couldn’t see it. But they wouldn’t. Pluto has no sense of character. New is always best no matter how ugly or cheap.” 

Antone describes the business of Cordelia’s husband after he learns they are to be married. Not only does Antone dislike Ted because of his relationship with Cordelia, he also finds Ted’s chosen profession an affront to the concept of home. Antone feels as though Ted has no integrity regarding his career; rather, he simply looks for ways in which he can turn a profit. Antone therefore believes that Ted has fallen prey — as has most of Pluto — to the town fever described by his grandfather. Through the metaphor of the home, Antone uses Ted’s buildings as examples of what happens when people stray from tradition. Antone himself values tradition immensely as well as the history that comes with it. Part of Antone’s problem with Ted, then, lies in Ted’s desire to erase the past in order to make way for the future. However, as the audience is well aware, the future merely builds upon its past, and the past itself can never truly be erased.

“I asked Neve to wait until we finished our walk and sat down at the café, so that I could take notes, but she was too excited by the story beating its wings inside of her, alive and insistent that morning for some reason, and she had to talk as we made our way along.” 

Neve’s story about her uncle’s stamps takes on a life of its own, just as Seraph Milk’s story of the lynching did. The author repeatedly uses the imagery of the story as a living being in order to demonstrate the malleability of truth. Truth is not static within this novel; rather, it is dynamic, perhaps as a result of its propensity to be oral as opposed to written. It appears as though the author creates this orality within the narrative in order to create stories that mimic the dynamism of human life.