The Plague of Doves (23 page)

The screech echoed in the food court and several people raised their lips from the waxed-paper food wrappers, then lowered the wrapped food when they saw Corwin. He looked back at them, poised and frozen. It was a moment of drama—he had them. An audience. He had to act instantly or lose them. He made a flowery, low bow. His move was elegant, the bow in one hand and the instrument in the other. It just came out of him. As though he was accepting an ovation. There were a few murmurs of amusement. Someone even applauded. These sounds acted on Corwin Peace at once, more powerfully than any drug he had yet tried. A surge of zeal filled him and he took up
the instrument again, threw back his hair, and began to play a silent, swift passage of music.

His mimicry was impeccable. Where had he learned it? He didn't know. He didn't touch the bow to the strings, but he played music all the same. Music ricocheted around between his ears. He could hardly keep up with what he heard. His body spilled over with drama. He threw every move he'd ever seen and then some. When the music in his head stopped, he dipped low, did the splits, which he'd practiced not knowing why. He held the violin and bow overhead. Applause broke over him. A skein of dazzling sound.

The Fire

THEY PICKED UP
Corwin Peace pretending to play the fiddle in a Fargo mall and brought him to me. I have a great deal of latitude in sentencing. In spite of my conviction that he was probably incorrigible, I was intrigued by Corwin's unusual treatment of the instrument. I could not help thinking of his ancestors, the Peace brothers, Henri and Lafayette. Perhaps there was a dormant talent. And perhaps as they had saved my grandfather, I was meant to rescue their descendant. These sorts of complications are simply part of tribal justice. I decided to take advantage of my prerogative to use tribally based traditions in sentencing and to set precedent. First, I cleared my decision with Shamengwa. Then I sentenced Corwin to apprentice himself with the old master. Six days a week, three hours in the morning. Three hours of practice after work in the early evening. He would either learn to play the violin, or he would do time. In truth, I didn't know who was being punished, the boy or the old man. But now at least, from the house we began to hear the violin.

 

IT WAS THE
middle of September on the reservation, the mornings chill, the afternoons warm, the leaves still thick and poignant in their final sweetness. All the hay was mown. The wild rice was beaten flat. The radiators in the tribal offices went on at night but by noon we still
had to open the windows to cool off. The woodsmoke of parching fires and the spent breeze of diesel entered, then, and sometimes the squawl of Corwin's music from just down the hill. The first weeks were not promising, and I was reminded of the fact that in order to play any instrument well, a person usually must begin as a child. Perhaps, I thought, it was just too late. Then the days turned uniformly cold, we kept the windows shut, and until spring the only news of Corwin's progress came through Geraldine and from reports made by Corwin's probation officer. I didn't expect much. But Corwin showed up at Shamengwa's every day at eight
A.M.
It was not until the first hot afternoon in early May that I opened my window and actually heard Corwin playing.

“Not half bad,” I said that night when I visited Shamengwa. “I listened to your student.”

“He's clumsy as hell, but he's got the fire,” said Shamengwa, touching his chest. He had improved, physically, along with Corwin's musicianship. I could tell that he was proud of Corwin, and I allowed myself to consider the possibility that history is sometimes on our side, and an act as idealistic as putting an old man and a hard-core juvenile delinquent together had worked, or had had some effect, or hadn't ended up, anyway, a disaster.

The lessons and the relationship outlasted, in fact, the sentence and through the summer we heard further slow improvement. Fall came and we closed the windows again. In spring we opened them, and one or two times heard Corwin playing. The summer went, and we heard assurance in the music, so much so that we were reminded, sometimes, of the master. Then Shamengwa died.

His was an ideal and peaceful death, the sort of death we used to pray to Saint Joseph to give us all. Asleep, his violin next to the bed, covers pulled to his chin. Found in the morning by Geraldine. There was a large funeral with the usual viewing, at which people filed up to his body and tucked flowers and pipe tobacco and small tokens into his coffin to accompany Shamengwa into the earth. Everybody said, as they do,
Oh, he looks at peace, the old man
. Geraldine placed a monarch butterfly upon her uncle's shoulder. She said she had found it that
morning on the grille of her car. Clemence and Whitey held each other outside the church. Then I saw Clemence was holding Whitey up—he was drunk. Edward came and supported Whitey from the other side and went in and got into one pew. Shamengwa's brother, Seraph, was settled in between Evelina and Joseph. They were patting his shoulders and arms. He was speechless for once. He looked broken, or brokenhearted. He didn't even look up when Father Cassidy walked to the pulpit and solemnly, with much grinding of the gears, clearing of the throat, and springing up and down on his toes, began the eulogy.

I come now before you in the holy spirit of forgiveness to bless the soul of Seraph Milk

“What?” hissed Geraldine, “he's got the wrong brother!” She tried to signal the priest with a wave of her hand. But Father Cassidy was on his own track now, and Seraph had perked up a little.

Seraph Milk who died unhouseled, refusing Extreme Unction or the anointment of holy oils. Though his soul may be in hell we have no way of knowing for sure as he was always good at getting out of sticky situations, his family tells me, and moreover, sometimes the saints intercede for sinners on a whim. The Virgin Mary could be looking after him, although in my very presence Seraph Milk expressed doubt upon two specific foundations of our Catholic faith—the Immaculate Conception and the Virgin Birth. His own words were and I quote: I think she pulled a fast one!

The old reprobate improved remarkably. His lip drooped open in a smile. He motioned those around us ready to stand up and protest that he was happy to listen. And anyway, the priest was gathering power, his voice boomed and nobody could have stopped him.

Seraph Milk is now discovering whether or not his other hero, Louis Riel, was right when he proposed the belief that hell was neither infinite nor very hot. We have argued this many times! The Metis believed in a merciful God, you see, but it is my sorry duty to report that God is also just and although His Almighty Compassion may war with his sense of righteousness, he must consider whether we on earth would take him seriously were he not to punish sinners, heretics, liars, fornicators, drunkards, and those who celebrate the Feast of the Ass, as Seraph Milk informed me he did regularly with his brother, who may be greeting him one day in the future, playing a fiddle that spouts the
devil's flames and wringing holy torment from its bow. But all of this is not to say that Seraph Milk necessarily deserves the hell he does not anticipate.

A few people got up from their pews and made furious motions but were pulled back down by others.

Nay!
Father Cassidy raised his fingers.
There was much good in this man, too, much virtue. Seraph Milk was a true patriarch and was said to love and indulge his children. Though heavily addicted to drink in his youth, he gave it up to some degree, perhaps too late in life to really matter to his wife, but all the same he cut back. From time to time he'd even taper off. Fortunately his young grandchildren, Joseph and Evelina, were not unduly influenced and have turned out as well as can be expected. Their mother is of course a regular communicant in this church, and the Church in its mercy decided to bury her father. No, it is really not for me to say that Seraph Milk belongs in hell, as I am but a servant of God the Father, the Son, and Holy Ghost. Seraph spoke of doves, so I ask that upon his soul there may rest the most generous spirit of blessing by the Holy Spirit, which is represented by the person of a pure white dove. I ask this blessing in spite of Seraph Milk's expressed wish that I “keep my trap shut about the pagans.” In spite of his secret tippling and his open disregard for the laws and dispensation of our mother the Holy Catholic Church I ask that in His mercy God the Father excuse the sins and degradations of Seraph Milk and allow him to join his long suffering wife, Junesse, who has surely earned her way through her own gentle guidance of Seraph.

It was Clemence who couldn't take it anymore. She shook Whitey and Mooshum's hands off her and strode to the front. She actually opened the coffin and plucked the violin from where it had been tucked up close to Shamengwa. Father Cassidy fell silent as she brandished the instrument at him. He then saw Seraph/Mooshum waving from the second pew, and his jaw fell slack. Clemence looked like she might take a swing at the priest, but instead she gave the violin to Geraldine, who rose and stood before the parish, motioning to the paralyzed Father Cassidy that it was now her turn to speak.

“A few months ago, Uncle told me that when he died, I was to give this violin to Corwin Peace,” Geraldine told everyone, “and so I'm offering it to him now. And I've already asked will he play us one of Shamengwa's favorites today?”

Mooshum was still waving and smiling at Father Cassidy, who'd staggered backwards and sat down against the nave wall, wiping his head.

Corwin had been sitting in the rear of the church and now he walked up to the front, his shoulders hunched, hands shoved in his pockets. He was extremely sad. The sorrow in his face surprised me. It made me uneasy to see such a direct show of emotion from one who had been so volatile. But Corwin's feelings seemed directed once he took up the fiddle and began to play a chanson everyone knew, a song typical of our people because it began tender and slow, then broke into a wild strangeness that pricked our pulses and strained our breath. Corwin played with passion, if imprecision, and there was enough of the old man's energy in his music and stance so that by the time he finished everybody was in tears.

Then came the shock. Amid the rustling of Kleenex, the dabbing of eyes and discreet nose blowing, Corwin stood, gazing into the coffin at his teacher, the violin dangling from one hand down at his side. Beside the coffin there was an ornate communion rail. Corwin raised the violin high and smashed it on the rail, once, twice, three times to do the job right. Father Cassidy squeezed his eyes shut. His lips moved in prayer. I was in the front pew and suddenly I found myself standing next to Corwin. I'd jumped from my seat as though I'd been prepared for this type of thing. I grasped Corwin's arm as he laid the violin carefully back into the coffin beside Shamengwa, but then I let him go, for I recognized that his gesture was spent. He walked to his place at the back. My focus changed from Corwin to the violin itself because I saw, sticking from its smashed wood, a small roll of paper. I drew the paper out. The stuff was old and covered with an antique, stiff flow of writing. Wholly shaken, Father Cassidy began the service all over again. People sat still, dazzled by the entertainment of it all. I fit the roll of paper into my jacket pocket and returned to my seat. I didn't exactly forget to read the paper—there was just so much happening directly after the funeral, what with the windy burial and then the six-kinds-of-frybread supper in the Knights of Columbus hall, that I didn't get the chance to sit still and concentrate. It was evening and I was at home,
finally sitting in my chair with a bright lamp turned on behind me, so the radiance fell across my shoulder, before I finally read what had been hidden in the violin all these years.

Letter

I, HENRI BAPTISTE
Parentheau, also known as Henri Peace, leave to my brother, Lafayette, this message, being a history of the violin which on this day of Our Lord August 20, 1888, I send out onto the waters to find him.

A recapitulation to begin with: Having read of LaFountaine's mission to the Iroquois, during which that priest avoided having his liver plucked out before his eyes by nimbly playing the flute, our own Father Jasprine thought it wise to learn to play a musical instrument before he ventured forth into the wastelands past Lac du Bois. Therefore, he set off with music his protection. He studied and brought along his violin, a noble instrument, which he played less than adequately. If the truth were told, he'd have done better not to impose his slight talents on the Ojibwe. Yet, as he died young and left the violin to his altar boy, my father, I should say nothing against good Jasprine. I should, instead, be grateful for the joys his violin afforded my family. I should be happy in the happy hours that my father spent tuning and then playing our beauty, our darling, and in the devotion that my brother and I eagerly gave to her. Yet, as things ended so hard between my brother and myself because of the instrument, I find myself wishing we never knew the violin, that she never had been brought before us, that I'd never played its music or understood her voice. For when my father died, he left the fiddle to both my brother Lafayette and me, with the stipulation that were we unable to decide which should have it, then we were to race for it as true sons of the great waters, by paddling our canoes.

When my brother and I heard this declaration read, we said nothing. There was nothing to say, for as much as it was true we loved each other, we both wanted that violin. Each of us had given years of practice, each of us had whispered into her hollow our despairs and taken hold of her joys. That violin had soothed our wild hours, courted
our wives. But now we were done with the passing of it back and forth. And if she had to belong to one of us two brothers, I determined it would be myself.

Two nights before we took our canoes out, I conceived of a sure plan. When the moon slipped behind clouds and the world was dark, I went out to the shore with a pannikin of heated pitch. I decided to interfere with Lafayette's balance. Our canoes were so carefully constructed that each side matched ounce for ounce. By thickening the seams on only one side with a heavy application of pitch, I'd throw off my brother's paddle stroke—enough, I was sure, to give me a telling advantage.