The Night Watchman

by Louise Erdrich

  “Thanks.”

  “There’s a little room, off the kitchen. Back-door key. Be real quiet.”

  “He knows I’m your brother, right?”

  “Sure, I told him last time. But he don’t believe me.”

  “So I’m liable to get what, shot?”

  “He wouldn’t shoot you. He doesn’t like to make a noise.”

  “I see. Well. Guess I’ll stay somewhere else.”

  Bernadette gave him three twenties. She reached out to hug him but he stepped back, holding up his arms.

  “Okay, sis, thanks. Better go before I take a knife.”

  “In the kidneys. He likes the kidneys.”

  “Oh Jesus. Goodbye.”

  * * *

  Wood Mountain walked west until he got to Hennepin Avenue. Then he walked north until he stood on the odd side of Hennepin, opposite Log Jam 26. He studied the windows, the people who came and went, mostly normal-looking men unaccompanied by women. In the window, a sign for the Lumberjack Special. A menu outside, fixed to a music stand. Jack was serious about his front, or maybe just liked the restaurant business, thought Wood Mountain, wondering if the food was any good. The twenties were warming his pocket. After watching for a while, he walked farther down the street. Went into the Decatur Hotel. The doorman caught him. “No Indians.” So he walked back out, crossed the street, and took a room at the Josen House, next door to Log Jam 26. He paid for the night in advance, slipping a bill under a thick glass window, counting the change twice. Eat or sleep? He decided he would enjoy eating more if he was wide awake, so he went upstairs.

  His room opened like a regular room, but when he went in he saw the ceiling was wire mesh. A cage hotel. It was probably too late to get his money back at the desk. But he ran back downstairs. Made a case that the clerk should have told him. The clerk looked pained and yawned. Wood Mountain trudged back upstairs. At least the place smelled reassuringly of flea powder. He checked the mattress, sniffed at the pillow, then pinched it up in his fingers and set it carefully on the floor across the room. He balled his jacket up under his head.

  When he woke, it was late. Past dinnertime. His stomach was hollow and achingly empty. He spruced up in a bathroom so strongly disinfected it made his eyes water, and tried to hold his breath as he combed back his hair in the ravaged mirror. He went downstairs and out, entered Log Jam 26. Stared at the glowing water tank in the center of the restaurant. It was empty, except for a fake underwater pine tree. He sat down in a small booth. A wire clip on the table held a cardboard sign advertising Exotic Attraction! Woodland Beauty! Our Own World-Famous Waterjack. He studied the showtimes. He could order dessert and coffee once he finished his food, stretch his dinner hour long enough to see the waterjack. He’d find Jack and question him. Get a lead on Pixie. Plus he would track down those addresses. However. It was dark now, and showing up at a strange address as a stranger in the dark might not be a good idea. Fresh start in the morning. But also, he should not break training! He decided to skip rope in his room after dinner. And decided that he’d order a double meatloaf, no potatoes, drink one beer only. The virtue of passing on the potatoes took the edge off his guilt. The waitress, an older woman wearing a sequined hairnet, smiled at him and filled his water glass. He pretended that he needed more time to look over the menu. Finally, the second time she came around, he ordered his meal. He told her that she could take her time.

  “You want to see the waterjack, huh?”

  “It says she’s a woodland beauty.”

  “Oh, she’s a dear! But she’s number three. They do use ’em up fast.”

  Wood Mountain nodded, thinking of talent and good looks.

  “I suppose they go on to higher things?”

  The waitress looked startled.

  “That’s one way of saying it. One died. Number two’s on her last legs. Us who work in the restaurant think it’s a scandal. But management couldn’t care less. Just hired this one straight off the train.”

  “Weird,” murmured Wood Mountain. He took a drink of the iced water. She moved off. He listened to a young couple bicker in the booth behind him. The woman wanted to go somewhere else and her boyfriend wanted to stay. They didn’t raise their voices or twist their words. She said the waterjack attraction was stupid. He said it was educational. She called him a dimwit. He called her a killjoy. And it went on from there. While they were dully arguing, the waitress brought him a relish tray.

  “Thanks,” he said, happy. “Didn’t know the special came with relish!”

  “It doesn’t, except for special people,” said the waitress. She winked. Her sequins twinkled.

  “I love a good relish plate,” Wood Mountain said sincerely. The waitress beamed. It was true. Nothing said fine dining like a relish plate. Coming back down from Winnipeg, they would stop at a supper club if they had won. Wood Mountain regarded the arrangement. Ice-cold radishes carved into rosettes, carrot sticks, celery. Two kinds of olives, pimento loaf, sliced summer sausage. Miniature pickles, sweet and dill. Wood Mountain ate all of it and watched Jack, skinny and yellow, work the crowd. He wore a beautifully cut lightweight pin-striped suit in dark blue. Cut an elegant figure until he smiled. Wood Mountain could see his dark jagged grin all the way across the room. Wore his thin black hair swept straight back. Had an off-center widow’s peak. A golden ring sparked on Jack’s right-hand middle finger. A watch glinted expensively at his cuff. As the crowd increased he tended more assiduously. Wood Mountain tried to catch his eye but Jack seemed in a kind of trance. Several times the featured performer was announced. Doris Barnes. It was a common name. Wood Mountain would have to tell Barnes about it, though, tease him maybe. Although the teacher was not much fun to tease. By now Wood Mountain’s main course steamed on the table, a dense block of highly peppered meat draped with tomato sauce. The vegetables were wax beans topped with green beans topped with onion rings. An enormous heap. He speared each bean meditatively and planned, as he chewed, how to go about finding Pixie.

  He didn’t focus on the waterjack when at last her show started and she began swimming around in the tank. He ordered another beer instead of coffee. He glanced at the tank and dismissed the spectacle. What a letdown. A girl in a blue suit with little horns. So what. Shaking her stuff. Oh well. Then maybe. There was something about her. But oh well. Then he started to think maybe there was, really, something. Second or third dive, you couldn’t stop watching her odd moves. Then. Then. He looked through the water-tank glass and locked eyes with Pixie. He jumped up. As he strode to the tank he realized that from her side the glass was probably distorted. But yes, the waterjack, bubbles streaming from her lips and nose, was without question Pixie. She swarmed to the hidden surface of the tank. Pixie Paranteau. Doris Barnes. He got it. Maybe. Maybe she had married Barnes. But that was impossible. Married to Barnes. Swimming in a water tank. Then she came down again and someone with a tank-side table tried to push Wood Mountain away, but he was gesturing at Pixie, jumping around and yelling her name. He raised his fist to pound on the glass and was seized. Yanked away by men who bore him backward, shouting Pixie! Twice, he escaped and punched like a hero, fought them off. But the freckly hulking fellow and his helper, a wiry determined little weasel, finally tied him up with their arms and dragged him out the door.

  From inside the tank, Patrice lassoed a creamy blob with her tail. She saw the shadow of dark fish behind her and pirouetted with hooves twirling for effect. There was stirring about and commotion in the blurred world beyond the glass, but nothing affected her. She finished out the necessary roster of shows, and was hauled into the ceiling. After she had peeled off the waterjack suit, the night waitress brought her tray up and said, “You’ve got an admirer, honey, and let me tell you, he’s kind of passionate. I’d be careful.”

  “I like your hairnet, the sparkles,” said Patrice.

  The waitress looked down the hall both ways before she slipped a folded note from her pocket.

  “And say?” The waitress bent dow
n and whispered urgently. “Waterjacks don’t last. You better quit while you still can.”

  “What happens?”

  Freckle Face boomed up the stairs and the waitress yelled, “Put the tray outside your door when you’re done. I’ll pop back up here.”

  “What happens?” hissed Patrice. “And what admirer? Why be careful?”

  Freckle Face blundered along the hall carrying a small chair from the restaurant.

  “The waterjacks, they up and die,” muttered the waitress, grabbing a napkin from her pocket and twisting it into Patrice’s hand.

  “Get going,” said Freckle Face.

  “We were just chatting,” said the waitress.

  “Jack wants the staff to respect the waterjack’s privacy,” said Freckle Face. “I am supposed to keep an eye out for intruders, fans, and such like that.”

  “Okay, I’m going,” said the waitress. “You did real good tonight.”

  Her eyebrows went up and she stared spookily at Patrice.

  Freckle Face set his chair down outside the door and parked himself, flipping open the Minneapolis Star. Patrice shut the door. Her waterjack suit was off and she had dusted it with the necessary powder. It was nearly dry now, but she kept the big fan going. What now?

  “I don’t care if it’s poisoned!” she said, uncovering her meal. As she gobbled meatloaf, she opened the note.

  It’s me. Wood. Tried to get your attention but the goons ejected me. I am next door at the Grand Fleabag. Find me. 328.

  She thought back to the swirl of motion outside the tank. Her admirer? And Jack’s greeting, shrill and angry, but relieved, when he found her in her dressing room getting ready for the show. It was like he was keeping her a prisoner. No. It was exactly that he was keeping her a prisoner. Freckle Face was outside her door. But the money? She had it. One hundred thirty-six dollars. If she worked two more nights, she’d have over two hundred. And she was packing them in. But maybe she should leave. Yes, she had already decided to leave, hadn’t she? Because of what? Something. What the dog had said. What Bernadette had said. Almost said. No, the words were not out of her mouth, so it could be just that Patrice had thought she heard something that she definitely had not heard. And she wasn’t going to hear it. Though she thought she should pay some attention to . . . what was it the waitress had said? Waterjacks tended to . . . but she was quitting anyway. She’d find out from Wood Mountain. She’d slip away in an hour or so, she decided, wearing all of her clothes and with her money stuffed in her underwear. “Now or never,” she murmured, rolling an olive around in her mouth. Now or never. The olives dripped oil. Grease the hinges. Though it stung to leave behind good money. And she was so tired. So sleepy that it took the sudden pop of clarity, an image, to bring back her memory.

  She was back in one of the rooms with the chains. The empty dog collar. It was not a regular dog collar. It didn’t buckle. It had been sliced apart. The chain that the collar was locked onto—you’d need pliers to remove it. And the dried shit in the corner was human.

  The Average Woman and the Empty Tank

  Louis Pipestone tended the petition like a garden. He kept it with him at all times. In town, his eyes sharpened when he noticed a tribal member who hadn’t yet signed. Wherever they were—at the gas pump, mercantile, at Henry’s, on the road, or outside the clinic and hospital—Louis cornered them. If they were waiting for a baby to be born, he’d have them sign. If they were laughing, if they were arguing. If they were taking a child home from school, they signed. If it looked like someone was bargaining with the bootlegger, he got both to sign. His smile would appear. He knew the power of it. “Cheeks.” Arms hard as fence posts. A homely buffalo head on bandy legs.

  Meanwhile they had a problem. They had only one copy of the bill, and in spite of his great care, it was getting stained and tattered. Juggie was busy typing a copy onto mimeograph paper so that it could be printed. Others could type faster, but she was most accurate, proofreading as she went along. She was also putting together a tribal newsletter. This was a new idea that Thomas had thought up—a way of getting out the doings of the advisory committee so that people would start relying on something other than the moccasin telegraph for news.

  Juggie was typing up the newsletter one night when Thomas stopped by. He had a key to the school’s front office.

  “How does it look?”

  Juggie showed him the first page, each short announcement set off by a row of stars.

  “We should have some jokes,” she said.

  “Jokes.”

  She held her fingers poised above the keys.

  “I need a joke.”

  She was grinning at him. Her blunt face and her sharp eyes.

  “You always have a joke.”

  But he didn’t have a joke. He opened his mouth, shut his mouth, frowned at the floor. Stared at the edge of the desk as if he’d find a joke there.

  “Just hold on,” he said.

  It was true. He always had a joke. People relied on him for jokes. After a moment or two of talking, Thomas always pulled out a joke, one he’d heard or one that just came to him. There would be a spurt of laughter. Then the conversation could proceed. But now he realized that he hadn’t exchanged jokes or thought up jokes for . . . he couldn’t remember how long.

  “I’m out of jokes!”

  “Very funny,” said Juggie. “Give me one line.”

  He almost turned to go, then he thought about Wade, his little man, baking with Ajax, and he thought of himself, his first drink in years, and he thought of Rose.

  “The average man is proof the average woman can take a joke,” he said.

  “Wait, say it again,” said Juggie, already typing.

  * * *

  It was one of those nights. Fee had put a piece of blackberry candy in the earflap. It got stuck to his head. Carefully he pulled it off, moved that she’d given him a piece of candy, which was rare at their house. He decided to save it to keep himself awake on the way home. Thomas was writing a desperate letter to Senator Milton R. Young, trying to disguise panic with cordiality. Around 2 a.m. Thomas’s head hit the desk. He pulled himself up. Damned if he’d knock himself out falling asleep on the job. He slapped himself but he didn’t slap himself awake. The slap sent him into a type of sleep he’d never experienced. He did his round, but most of his brain was closed away—he could feel it. Part of his brain had rebelled and was asleep. The tiny sliver of his waking self did the job. Locked and unlocked doors. Examined corners with the flashlight. Ate the night lunch. Folded half his sandwich in the clean bandanna Rose had wrapped it in. Made another round. Had a long talk with Roderick.

  “How’d you do that, Roderick?”

  “Change from a motor?”

  “Yes.”

  “I had a talk with your brain. The part that’s sleeping.”

  “Oh, that’s funny. Why do you want to come around and bug me, Roderick?”

  “I’m not here for you. It’s LaBatte. I saved him before, remember?”

  “Oh, I remember. You took on his jail time.”

  “First time they locked me up. Down in the cellar. They threw me in there. I owned up to what LaBatte did.”

  “Didn’t I throw you down a coat?”

  “You passed me a coat but it was so cold anyway.”

  “LaBatte thinks it got you then.”

  “No, it didn’t get me the first time, not much. The second time maybe. I sure come out of there coughing like heck. Fever. But it wasn’t nothing.”

  “They said you had to go to Sac and Fox.”

  “Who told you! The sanatorium. I went there.”

  “You were supposed to get better.”

  “I wasn’t sick, dumbhead.”

  “Lots of boys had it.”

  “Let’s face it.”

  “Let’s face it.”

  “Fed me butter on everything, dumbhead. Butter on the oatmeal. Cream on the cream potatoes. Fattened me up. Six died but not me. I wasn’t coming home in no c
offin.”

  “Wait. No. Roderick.”

  Thomas spoke gently, breaking the news.

  “You died. They did send you home in a coffin. On the train.”

  Roderick shook his head, puffed out his cheeks in exasperation.

  “They put me in that coffin, sure! Put me on the train. But I was in there laughing. Told myself they’d sure be surprised when I jumped out on them.”

  “Your mom and dad go to meet you?”

  “Nobody picked me up down there! No! Why? They knew I wasn’t dead in that coffin. I was just kidding.”

  “I heard different, Roderick.”

  “Had to get outta the sanatorium.”

  “Why’d you want out if they fed you so good?”

  “They sawed my lung out, dumbhead! Had to collapse it.”

  “You took LaBatte’s punishment. He never wanted you to die for it. He felt bad all his life.”

  “What for? No skin off my nose. Wild Indian, me!”

  “So you’re visiting around?”

  “Like I said. I’m here for LaBatte. He was my brother down there. Fort Totten. You too. Couldn’t break us apart. Cousins. I’m here to save him.”

  “What from?”

  “His own dumbhead self.”

  “What’s he doing?”

  “Dumbhead things.”

  “For instance?”

  Roderick nodded his head, sly. He looked from side to side.

  “Wouldn’t you like to know. You tell on us?”

  “Never.”

  “LaBatte’s stealing.”

  “Stealing what?”

  “Anything can fit in his pockets. Whatever they don’t count. Paper clips. Staples. Writing paper. Rolls of butt-wiping paper. Coffee. Sugar. Spoons it out of the bag. Little at a time. He’s taking soap. He’s taking crankcase oil. Just dribbling it into a jar. He’s taking scraps of metal. He’s working up to taking jewels.”

  “They’re in a safe. He can’t get in.”

  “Why you think not?”

  “It’s locked up, always. No key. A combination safe bolted into the wall.”