The Plague Of Doves

The chapter opens with Marn at the age of 16, waiting expectantly for a coming storm. “It was a drought-dry summer when I met Billy Peace, and in the suspension of rain everything seemed to flex” (137). A thin man breaks the anticipation when he pulls up in a white car. She asks what Billy is selling, and Billy refuses to tell her, challenging her. She thinks about her father’s self-sufficiency and her parents’ refusal to divorce even though they were always fighting. Her parents care for Warren, her father’s uncle, who “flew into disorderly rages and went missing, for days sometimes” (139). Warren was not a careful farmer like Marn’s father. Billy offers them spirit, which irritates Marn’s mother. He gives Marn directions to a religious meeting later.

The storm doesn’t come, so Marn goes to the meeting after Warren harasses her, saying she’s going to Hell. At the religious gathering, Billy speaks as one of the newly saved, although he is neither the first nor most important speaker. Marn is enraptured listening to Billy preach.

Billy speaks about the stars being the eyes of God from which humans can’t hide. He speaks of Satan’s grasp falling into people like the jerk of a hangman’s noose.