The Plague Of Doves

Antone describes C. as a wrestler—larger than him but with grace and quick sexual movements. They would frequently eat in bed, and Antone would return to his mother’s house smelling strongly. When questioned, he told his mother that he got a job at a creamery, but she misheard cemetery, which he doesn’t correct. Instead, he gets a job at the Pluto cemetery. Antone notes his family’s gravestones, including his still-living mother’s next to his deceased father’s. The man who works there explains that Antone’s grandfather bought a big enough plot for Antone to have himself, a wife, and children buried there as well. At 17, Antone works as a gravedigger, getting used to the peace and quiet. His ideas about going away to school evaporate once his affair with C. begins. His boss dies and he takes over. Antone frequents strip clubs and dates strippers to make C. jealous. C. moves into a house close to Antone’s cemetery office so that Antone can enter without being seen.

Antone and C. continue their affair for five years. Antone takes care of his sick mother, who talks of him digging a grave for her soon. She tries to die by starving herself and not wearing her oxygen mask while she sleeps instead of going into a nursing home. “Her natural toughness was not fooled by these tricks” (278). Antone plays poker with his mother, who argues he needs a wife and children. She tries to get him to give up C., even though she believes C. cured his cancer as a boy, which had manifested in strange lumps on Antone’s head.

Antone enjoys working in the summer because few people die. He takes flowers over to C., who explains she’s getting married to a general contractor, Ted, whose wife recently died. Antone asks her to marry him, but C. says she’s too old. Antone refuses to let her go and is beside himself when she marries Ted, so he begins taking law classes and finds he enjoys them. For a year, Antone and C. stay away from each other, until one evening, he walks over into her backyard and finds she’s been waiting for him on the porch every night. They have sex while Ted is away, and Antone believes that even if Ted found out, he wouldn’t have cared. Antone reflects on Ted’s destruction of the beautiful old buildings that Ted tears down to make way for cheap apartments buildings. This disgusts Antone.

Antone and C. continue their affair, although more often they just eat and talk about everything except the future. “The present was enough, though my work at the cemetery told me every day what happens when you let and unsatisfactory present go on long enough: it becomes your entire history” (282). Antone watches C. age, loving her even more, noticing that everything besides her bones changes. When they have sex with each other, they feel at home.

Antone goes back to his home to find his mother has fallen. He takes her to the hospital, deciding to sell the house and put her in a nursing home so she’ll recover, even though she wants to die. Antone’s mother is furious to be put in a home but begins to thrive with more social interactions. Antone can’t sell his mother’s house even though it’s in pristine condition and could be a museum, except the back wall which Antone has let the bees take over. The only person who is offering to buy is Ted. Antone daydreams about living with C. in the house, but he eventually realizes he has wasted his life on her and sells the house to Ted.

Antone packs up all of the family’s belongings and puts them in storage, moving to a motel. He can’t concentrate on his studies because he is so consumed with the idea of Ted tearing apart the house Antone has spent years keeping up. He goes to C.’s home office, ignoring her receptionist, and informs C. that Ted bought his house. C. says she’ll stop Ted, and Antone tells her not to worry about it but that she needs to pack. He argues that she could buy the house and he’d pay her back, and they’d live there. C. and Antone go over to the house, and Antone realizes that their relationship is over.

The air is full of bees as Ted tears down the porch columns. C. talks to Ted, and Antone realizes Ted knows subconsciously about the affair. Ted tears down the back wall, and bees swarm C. and Ted. Antone saves C. and watches Ted fall unconscious under the cloud. Instead of helping him, he eats some honey, a cold-blooded act which horrifies C. Ted recovers and tears down the rest of the house but dies a year later from a single bee sting before he can build on the property.

Antone passes the bar and practices Indian law, gaining land back for one tribe. He moves to the reservation, although his mother stays in the Pluto nursing home. He walks past the empty lot where his old house once stood. One day, he runs into C., who looks very old. She mocks his surprise, then stomps off. Antone imagines the house and pictures himself walking to the graveyard, which he believes is now full of bees: “they were busy in the graveyard right now, filling the skulls with white combs and the coffins with sweet black honey” (291).

A month after their wedding, Antone and Geraldine talk and C.’s name comes up. By now, the reader understands that C. is Cordelia Lochren, the only surviving member of the slaughter that opened the book. Geraldine comments on how C., now a doctor in Pluto, refuses to treat Native Americans, which astounds Antone because she treated him. Geraldine asserts that he must have known, but Antone denies it, admitting she treated him. Geraldine says, “’They always need an exception’” (291) because C. turned down Native Americans even in crisis because of her familial history. Antone realizes that he was C.’s absolution for her bigotry.