The Plague Of Doves

This chapter is written as a newsletter from Cordelia to the town. As president of Pluto’s historical society, Cordelia reflects on how the number of Pluto dead now outnumber the living and how many of the local businesses have closed because they have agriculture but no highways. Like many other people, Cordelia spends a lot of her time at the 4-B’s as a repository of the town history. “My friend Neve Harp is one of the last of the original founding families” (296), whose grandfather suggested they name the town Pluto, not realizing he was the God of the underworld.

Cordelia recounts the history of the Lochren murder, the lynchings, and the idea that the murderer was supposedly a teenage neighbor boy, Tobek, in love with the daughter who escaped. She talks about how Neve Harp’s great-uncle, the owner of the local bank, tried to escape to Brazil with the town’s money, then killed himself. She speaks of the WWI memorial in which community members chipped off Tobek’s name. She speaks remotely being adopted and raised by Tobek’s older sister, Electra, before becoming the region’s first female doctor, although she refused to treat Native Americans and fell in love with a much younger Antone. She recounts her marriage to Ted and final affair with a swimming coach, who left her for a student.

Cordelia describes her friendship with Neve, the daughter of the suicidal banker’s brother. They walk around the town, orbiting like moons. Neve tells Cordelia the true story of Octave, Neve’s father, who drowned himself in two feet of water, although she refutes the general consensus that it concerned the love of a woman. Neve describes how important and valuable stamps were to Octave: so important that he kept them in the bank. She recounts how Octave acquired the rarest stamps, especially ones that were processed in the wrong color. He became interested in stamps that survived natural disasters and man-made accidents. Neve suspects that he stole the bank’s money to purchase a stamp on a letter from Pliny the Elder to the Younger when Vesuvius blew up. Neve admits that Octave’s stamp collection held him up at customs when he tried to leave, allowing Murdo to catch him. Octave suffered a breakdown and began drinking, then got a letter from the woman who owned the Pompeii letter that her son had destroyed it: “’So in a way it was a letter from a woman that broke his heart’” (304).

Cordelia reflects on how if there were a theoretical cataclysmic volcanic event at that moment, people would find her and Neve’s forms calmly lying in in the ash. Unlike Neve, Cordelia is not lonely because she has no stepchildren to miss, although both are surprised at being old. Sometimes Neve calls Cordelia and talks about Billy, who kidnapped her. Neve talks to her on the phone about how her brother, Evelina’s father, cheated her out of the inheritance by culling Octave’s valuable stamps upon his death, whereas Neve merely inherited the bank. However, she discovers that Octave was experimenting with forged disaster mail. Neve’s phone call reminds Cordelia of the valentine she carries with her, which Tobek had made for her sister and which makes her reflect on the murder. She remembers finding small, folded money in places where she or her adopted mother would find them. Cordelia believed that the lynched Native Americans were responsible until she spoke with Neve. Cordelia thinks now about how lucky she has been in her life, despite its tragic beginning. When she looks at the valentine from Tobek, she knows he did not commit the murder. She wonders why someone would kill her family.

Cordelia remembers once treating Warren after a cow had trampled his leg. The first time Warren sees her, he recoils, although eventually she works to save his leg and he dotes on her. “He’d shuck off his forbidding and strange persona just for me, they said, and sink back into an immobilizing fury once I’d left” (309). When Warren dies, Cordelia is contacted by his lawyer who gives her a box of folded bills. She asks what happened, and a nurse tells her that the music killed Warren. Cordelia recognizes the music as the tune playing during the murders.

Cordelia signs off the newsletter and declares the historical society dead. In her last act, she declares a town holiday to commemorate when she saved Warren’s life. Cordelia feels she is very close to the invisibility of death as an old woman.