Suddenly Doris pressed her foot on the gas and glared at the road. They were flying along, too fast.
“Slow down!”
“At least somebody likes you! You and your pixie eyes and cute figure,” cried Doris. “Can’t you enjoy that?”
Patrice welled up with misery.
“Why should I?” she said.
“You’d know why if the only one who liked you was Grasshopper.”
* * *
Patrice rested her head on the starched napkin that was already faintly stained with hair oil. She had chosen a seat by the window even though when she entered the train car, a couple of people had given her that look. But there were enough seats so she could have one by the window. Nobody would tell her she did not belong there. She hoped. Patrice fussed with her homemade suitcase and hung up her coat, smoothed its gleaming folds. She put her gloved hands in her lap. Her heart was still pounding. The train groaned, hissed, let out a giant sigh. Then the doors were closed and the floor beneath her feet gathered energy. The wheels began to clunk along the tracks and soon the train was moving at a smooth, delicious, rocking speed. Patrice smiled, looking at the houses, streets, people, whisking away behind her as the train rolled along at a magnificent gait. Nobody had ever, ever, described to her how freeing it felt to be riding on a train. The conductor took her ticket, gave half back to her. He stuck the tab into a little aperture at the top of her seat. So now she owned this seat. The other half of the ticket she put carefully into her purse. Then she removed it from her purse and surreptitiously tucked it into the little pocket she had sewed into the inside of her brassiere, where most of her cash was hidden. Her eyes grew heavy. The scent of the hair-oil spot was surprisingly pleasant, low and spicy. The swaying of the train was voluptuous, hypnotic, and she drifted to sleep on a sea of motion.
The Iron
They continued lifting potatoes in the afternoons. Wade had his friend Martin staying over to work. He’d get paid in potatoes sometimes. Martin lived with them these days while Rose and Thomas did the paperwork to keep him as a foster child. The sun was low in the sky by the time Thomas sent the boys to wash up. As he crossed the field, he could hear Noko scolding. Thomas stepped inside. Rose was in the other room with the ironing. There was the scent of pressed cloth above the meat in the pan. The glass kerosene lantern glowed on the table. Thomas went into the next room and kissed Rose on her neck. She smelled like the ironing, like the clean wash. Rose liked to iron right after she took the clothes off the line, when they were still slightly damp. For times when they got too dry, she had a sprinkler on the windowsill, a canning jar with holes punched in the lid. When she sprinkled, and then pressed with the iron, there was a slow hiss of fragrant steam. When other places began to get electricity, she had asked for a plug-in ironing machine. They didn’t have electricity yet. So getting the iron didn’t make sense. Still, Thomas bought her the plug-in iron. She guarded the iron jealously, shined it like a trophy. She kept it on top of the dark bedroom dresser where they all stored their clothes. She still used the old sadiron, a heavy pointed oval that fit into an iron frame. The iron also made a good bed warmer in the winter. But the bright wedge of the new steel iron, upright like a little god, reflected light from the southwest window and flashed in his eyes when he rested there.
The house was neat. Everything had its place. Nothing was torn or hanging loose. Everything was mended. Rose had fierce standards.
“Daddy, come on and eat!”
Fee and Sharlo had come home from a movie at the school gym. They still had their five-cent bags of sunflower seeds. The boys begged them away. Rose had made Thomas a plate with fried rabbit and two ash-baked potatoes. There were bits of wild onion sprinkled on the food. After supper, he and the boys listened to a ball game on the radio. Then there was coming and going, in and out, as everybody used the outhouse. Thomas pulled the two roll-aways from behind the bedroom door. The cot from beside the woodbox. He unlatched the roll-away mattresses and folded them down. The beds were already made up from the morning with sheets and blankets. There were small flat pillows on top of the wardrobe in the bedroom. Fee handed down the pillows and everybody took their own pillow. The girls liked the privacy of the kitchen. Noko slept behind the door on her canvas cot. The big boys slept head to toe on one roll-away. When everyone was settled, muttering, sighing, in the dark, Rose went into their room. He followed her and shut the door. Thomas set his alarm clock for 11:05, turned the lights out. Rose got into her worn flannel nightgown.
“Soft as silk,” he said, touching her sleeve.
“Paah.”
Thomas took off his shirt and trousers, hung them with the creases pinched, beside his bed next to his briefcase, jacket, hat.
“Is my lunch box in the car?”
“You always ask that.”
“If I didn’t have your lunch to eat, I’d never make it.”
“It’s there.”
“Then I don’t have to get you up.”
“That alarm will get me up.”
“You’ll go back to sleep, won’t you?”
“Yes,” she said grudgingly.
Rose turned away. In seconds, she was asleep. Thomas lay awake. He put his hand out, whispered, “My old girl.” The heat from her body radiated gently toward him under the blanket and warmed his right side. His left side was cool. The warmth from the stove didn’t reach into the bedroom. On very cold nights, Rose put an extra quilt on the bed and let him curl around her back. She slept hot just the way her words sometimes blew hot. She could warm him right up. He drifted a little as the dark sifted down. Smoker barked, twice, to let him know that he had returned from eating his evening mush at Biboon’s house. He came home for his second supper left outside in a dented pan. If anyone came up the steps in the night, Smoker would merely growl from under foot if he knew the person, a way of saying, Hello, I’m here. He would leap out in a protective frenzy if a stranger approached. Smoker had a very strong feeling about the front steps.
Thomas woke, at 11:04, and shut off the alarm before it sounded. Before this job he’d sing out the old hobo wake-up call, “Roll out, snakes, it’s daylight in the swamp.” He thought it now, anyway. He stepped into his pants, tied on his work boots, and grabbed his briefcase. He threaded his way in the dark through the sleeping children and opened the front door slowly. Before he stepped out, he said, “Ooh yay! Bizaan! Mii eta go niin omaa ayaayaan. Ninga-maajiibiz endazhi-anokiiyaan.” The dog understood Chippewa, and his tail beat on the dirt as Thomas trod down the steps. In the beginning, Thomas had set out a circular driveway so he didn’t have to back the car out. He didn’t use headlamps until he was well on his way. The Indian Service road was pitch-black. The moon behind clouds. The only yard lamp was in the big farm and the light gleamed off the silver silo. He passed through town and then left the reservation. On this stretch of highway he was afflicted. It felt as if his heart was being pierced by long sharp needles. He flashed on his father, the two of them sitting in late sunshine, gathering its fugitive warmth.
You can never get enough of the ones you love, thought Thomas, rubbing his chest slowly, to vanquish the pains. “Here I have Biboon with me to this great old age, but I am greedy. I want him longer.”
His chest relaxed as he drove along. But an even sharper sensation dogged him. It made him want to stop the car, get out, and then what? He glanced over at his briefcase, which held the papers Moses had given him. For days, he’d tried to make sense of the papers, to absorb their meaning. To define their unbelievable intent. Unbelievable because the unthinkable was couched in such innocuous dry language. Unbelievable because the intent was, finally, to unmake, to unrecognize. To erase as Indians him, Biboon, Rose, his children, his people, all of us invisible and as if we never were here, from the beginning, here.
The case sat heavy on the passenger seat. The itch of dread intensified. Thomas pulled into the parking lot. The solid slam of the car door never ceased to satisfy. He walked a few steps without th
e briefcase, then turned back, leaned into the car, yanked it out, and hauled it along. But he didn’t open it until well into the night, when he cracked his lunch box and unwrapped his sandwich from a clean old red bandanna. He poured black medicine water into the cap of the thermos. He needed to sip at coffee, to nibble at a browned and salty crust of bannock, as he read the papers again. These little comforts gave him strength.
He had been night watchman for seven months. In the beginning, his post as chairman of the Turtle Mountain Advisory Committee could be dealt with in the late afternoons and evenings. He’d been able to sleep most mornings after his shift. When lucky, like tonight, he even grabbed an additional catnap before driving to work. But every so often the government remembered about Indians. And when they did, they always tried to solve Indians, thought Thomas. They solve us by getting rid of us. And do they tell us when they plan to get rid of us? Ha and ha. He had received no word from the government. By reading the Minot Daily News, he’d found out something was up. Then Moses had to pry the papers out of his contact down in Aberdeen. It had taken precious time to even get confirmation, or see the actual House Resolution stating, as its author said, that the Turtle Mountain Band of Chippewa was targeted by the United States Congress for emancipation. E-man-ci-pation. Eman-cipation. This word would not stop banging around in his head. Emancipated. But they were not enslaved. Freed from being Indians was the idea. Emancipated from their land. Freed from the treaties that Thomas’s father and grandfather had signed and that were promised to last forever. So as usual, by getting rid of us, the Indian problem would be solved.
Overnight the tribal chairman job had turned into a struggle to remain a problem. To not be solved.
The Fruit Crate
Barnes had seen her fade back into the leaves. She was barefoot. He found that charming. And so appropriate for a darling Indian girl. Ever since he was a child, there had been pictures. Advertisements. Luscious illustrations on fruit crates and dairy cartons. A lovely Indian maiden in flowing buckskin. She would be holding squash, apples, peaches, cucumbers. She would be offering a little box of butter. Perhaps the memory of these pictures swirled vaguely around his decision to come to the reservation, leaving his parents’ print shop in Des Moines. Also, after high school, it had entered his head that he would not really like to continue on with the print shop. He liked math. Long division had won his heart from early on. Barnes had craved each new level of knowledge. Even now, if he wasn’t boxing, he puttered around with polynomials. Numbers befriended him throughout the day. He noticed connections, repetitions. Out of license plates and telephone numbers he made equations. Even boxing was based on numbers of minutes, rounds, penalties, points. Numbers also attached to people. He saw Pixie as a 26, though she was just 19 years old. But he loved the swoop of the 2 and the snail of the 6. It went with her. He had a feeling for 2 to the 6th power. It didn’t go further than that. He had only spoken to her in passing, and was waiting for the right moment to present himself.
He thought that he might go to her house. Would that be strange? Possibly. Probably. But he’d waited to run into her, even to the point of placing himself in spots she might linger on the way home from work. The dime store. The mercantile. Henry’s Cafe. But no luck. One evening when the wind had dried the roads, hopefully the path to their house, he brought Pokey home. When Pokey got out, Barnes did too.
“I’m going to say hello to your parents. Haven’t met them yet.”
Pokey turned, gaped at Barnes. He shut his mouth, started forward, but said nothing.
Pokey hoped that his father wasn’t passed out in the yard. He knew that Patrice was on the train.
“That’s just fine.” Barnes hid his disappointment. “I can tell her about the progress you’re making.”
Pokey was silent, but his thought was “You mean the progress you’re making. Or trying to make.”
Pokey pushed the door open. When Barnes ducked through, he was shocked. He hadn’t understood that he was entering a house. The outside of the place looked to Barnes like a rude shelter for animals, the stacked poles plastered with pale yellow mud. But then, even in the dim light, he saw that there were signs of care taken. The table was scrubbed clean. Upon it, a lighted glass lantern glowed. Behind the lantern, a woman sat before what he thought at first was a heavy roll of paper, then realized was birchbark. Behind the table there was a small wood-burning range and an iron stew pot, steaming. Barnes recognized a peppery venison stew cooked with cedar berries and wild turnips. Because it was a specialty of Juggie’s, his mouth watered. Without a word, the woman rose and dished out two tin bowls of stew. Beside them she placed a hunk of light bannock and between the bowls a small pan of grease. She laid two spoons beside the bowls.
Barnes sat down to eat beside Pokey. The woman didn’t smile. She began to speak to Pokey in her language, and then to move her hands in a slow articulate way. Barnes was fascinated by her hands—maybe it was numbers. She was missing the pinkie finger on one hand. On the other hand there was a small extra finger, a perfect thumb. Her fingers were wrong, but still added up to ten. This unnerved Barnes to the point of extreme discomfort, and after the stew, he asked Pokey to thank his mother. He wanted her to understand he thought the stew delicious and almost rubbed his stomach—but caught himself.
“My mother wants to know why you’ve come,” said Pokey.
“Just to visit. To tell her that you are doing B+ work in math. That is very good.”
Barnes nodded and smiled as he spoke, trying to catch the mother’s eye. Frustratingly, she shifted her gaze or looked past him, down at the floor. She seemed to be listening, but he couldn’t tell how much she understood. After he’d said all that he could think of, he waited. Nothing. She sipped her tea. After a while, she nodded at Pokey and said something. Pokey refilled Barnes’s tin bowl. Barnes ate the stew. Then they sat together in the flicker of lamp. At last she spoke again to her son. Pokey frowned at the table.
“What is it?” said Barnes.
“She says thank you. But she knows that’s not why you came.”
Barnes was having trouble not staring at the mother’s hands, and having trouble not making conversation. This situation was very different from the pictures on the fruit crates, and he hoped he was doing all right. It was as though he had entered another time, a time he hadn’t known existed, an uncomfortable time where Indians were not at all like white people.
“Maybe I should go,” he said.
“Okay,” said Pokey.
The mother spoke.
“Pokey? What did she say?”
“Nothing.”
“Please. What?”
“Well, okay then. She said that Pixie don’t like you.”
“What? How does she know? How come? Ask her.”
Pokey spoke to his mother. Again, he seemed reluctant to translate, but finally relented.
“She says Pixie don’t like you because you smell bad.”
Barnes was utterly shocked. He stood, reeling beneath the low roof.
“Tell your mother thanks for the stew,” he said.
“Okay,” said Pokey.
Barnes left the house and walked the dark trail to his car.
“Gee, Mama,” Pokey said when the door shut. “You insulted a teacher.”
“I had to,” said Zhaanat, in English. “She told me she doesn’t like him. Not really because he smells. She wants him to leave her alone.”
“Why didn’t you tell him that? Now he’ll just wash and think the problem is solved.”
“Even if he washes, he’ll still smell like they do. He can never wash that off. Their sweat is sharp.”
“Oh, so you think he’ll understand he has no chance to smell good? So then he’ll give up?”
Zhaanat nodded as though it was obvious.
“Ma. Jeez! He don’t think that way. He thinks we smell bad.”
“Gawiin geget! Surely not!” said Zhaanat in a scandalized voice.
A Seat on the Train
Other people entered the car at every stop. Nobody sat next to Patrice, but soon nearly every seat was taken. A blond-haired blond-eyelashed man who reminded her of Barnes (a lot of men on the train or in the station reminded her of Barnes) walked down the aisle. He glanced at the seat beside her and Patrice shut her eyes. She was leaning against the window. The glass was cool on her temple. She felt the man’s weight settle into the seat and heard him talking to a woman, who moved off. The man beside Patrice was still for a few moments, then he swatted lightly at her arm. Startled to stillness, she did not react.
“Hey, my wife’s on board. She’ll change seats with you.”
Patrice did not open her eyes. Maybe if he’d not swiped at her arm, if he’d asked in a polite way, or apologized for supposedly waking her, she would have changed seats. But instead she decided to sink herself into a cold and closed state from which she would not be roused. He jostled her arm again.
“Hey,” he said more loudly. “I said my wife will change seats.”
Patrice frowned as if a dream was being fractured, then turned her shoulder on him and ground her hips more deeply into the padding. The conductor came down the aisle. He had already punched her ticket so he didn’t wake her. As the conductor took the straw-haired man’s ticket, the arm jostler said, “I would like my wife to sit with me. She’ll change seats with this woman.”
“Miss,” said the conductor. “Oh, miss.”
“I’ll trade,” said a man somewhere, quietly.
Patrice had willed herself into a stubborn torpor.
The first man rose.
“Yeah. You two belong together,” he said.
Another man took his place in the seat. Patrice was drifting strangely down some cold walls. Exhausted, she dropped into a short fit of sleep. Before she opened her eyes, she felt someone watching her. When she sat up and looked around, she saw it was Wood Mountain.
The Night Watchman Page 7