A Dove of the East by Mark Helprin

had said or why.
    But Josie tightened her lips and tensed herself to stop the shaking. She was furious, and looked at the children in the corner and gathered her own with her eyes. With her head held high and the tendons in her long slim arms raised, she stepped out a pace and challenged the two young men. She threw back her black hair.
    What did they know, she said, about Truchas, about mountain country. A few years ago a man from the army had come and convinced her husband to fight, making him believe that he would be fighting for himself and for his children. “These are his children,” she said, sweeping her arm toward the now still babies stacked in the arms of older women who had taken them up. “They are there and quite alive and do not need to be fought for. Their father is dead because of men like you. You are not revolutionaries. There is nothing new about you. You are the leaders of men and the slaughterers of men. I myself have seen you pass through this village before, and I will not be fooled a second time.”
    The hunter stepped forward, but Josie waved him back. With the eyes of a lioness she looked at the two men and she was full of rage. On this the night when she began to learn how to make life whole again, they had come to tear it apart. She would not let these men take her children as they had taken her husband. She would fight all right, she would fight for herself, she said, because
she was the people.
“And it is time,” she said, “that all the people learn to fight just for themselves, and not for anyone but themselves. Truchas remains here, and you will leave. Pass on. Leave us.” The young men began to argue, saying first that they understood her feelings...
    â€œYou do
not
understand,” she said. The Mayor, a little old man with a pink face and only one good eye, said politely that Friday night was for mountain dancing, and that if the two young men wished they could come to the same place on any first day of the month and air their views at the town meeting. He asked them very cordially if they would like to dance, at which the previously silent hall exploded with laughter, and all the people of Truchas laughed for a long time. And then they ate, and when the musicians started to play they danced, and that night many would make love and some only dream of it, and on the morrow herd cattle and chop wood, and the hunter would again disappear into the mountains.
    Josie danced with tears in her eyes. Her bracelets jangled and she was happy and full of love. The two young men started the long walk down to Santa Fe.

LEAVING THE CHURCH
    â€œI HAVE never been as calm in my life,” said Father Trelew. “No, not ever.” He was speaking to Helen, his housekeeper, but she was not much in his mind, even though she had been with him for several years—he could not remember exactly how many. He looked at the sky. “Soon I will be on the plane to New York, and then to Rome.”
    â€œHave you been to Rome before, Father?”
    â€œYes, I have, in 1925 when Mussolini was in power. You know what I think of him, don’t you, don’t you, Helen.”
    â€œI most certainly do.”
    It was hot where they stood, but his clothes were clean and white and his thick hair was white, so he had no discomfort. There was a black spot of oil on the drive. A shimmering desert stretched beyond—his parish. He could smell the hot sand and see waves of heat rising from it, distorting the mountains.
    The driver put the bags in the car, and after bidding good-bye to Helen and shaking her hand Father Trelew got in the back and clicked the door shut. The car was air-conditioned. It was taking him to Phoenix for the plane. He was going to Vatican II.
    It was years since he had left his parish. In New York before his parents died, they had called him sometimes “The Indian Priest,” but he never heard them, they thought. They were ashamed of him. They