The Night Watchman

by Louise Erdrich

  “You in the parade?” Juggie asked Thomas.

  “Not this time. The old man is going to sit in the car and watch. I’m going to sit right there with him.”

  “And Rose?”

  “She’s working on Sharlo’s dress.”

  “Oh! What’s the dress like?”

  Juggie lighted up. She loved dresses, though overalls were her mainstay.

  “Long, I think. Maybe . . . blue?”

  Juggie narrowed her eyes.

  “Long and maybe blue? That’s all you can come up with?”

  “There’s a ruffle somewhere on it.”

  “You’re useless!”

  Thomas watched Juggie closely as they talked. As he walked away, he was reassured by her exasperation. She didn’t seem to be treating him as if there were something wrong with him. He had also watched Rose closely. Was he changed after the visitation in the frosty field? Had he been acting strangely before it? How could a person tell whether he himself was acting strangely? Thomas hadn’t told anyone about his experience, hadn’t said a word about the shining people. He would tell Biboon, when the time was right, but dared tell no one else. What exactly would he say to someone who was not his own father? I was at a star powwow? I met Jesus Christ and he was a good fellow? They would laugh, think he’d fallen off the wagon, worry that his mind was giving out from the strain. And also, maybe most important, he didn’t want anyone to interfere with the peace he had experienced since that visit. Although he was still tired and anxious, he wasn’t filled with dread. His visitors had left something of their comforting presence.

  Every night, checking twice that he had his keys, he went outside and looked up into the heavens. He sang, low, trying to remember the song they danced to. As for Jesus Christ, he thought he’d better go to Holy Mass.

  The rain let up and Saturday morning was clear and chilly. Everyone in the parade assembled just below the church, then set off in a straggling march to wind through town and end at the high school steps. Sharlo wore a bunch of yellow velvet flowers pinned to her coat, sat with her friends on the top of the backseat of the English teacher’s convertible. Fee was in the parade as a trumpet player. Pokey was in the parade too. He hopped around in a pickup bed made to look like a boxing ring. He scowled, pretending to spar with the other boys. The junior boxers had wanted to go shirtless, but Barnes made them wear their jackets. He did allow them to wear the new Everlast boxing gloves, and they had a rounds bell to ding, borrowed from the post office window. Three old traditional dancers in beaded black velvet regalia rode in the bed of Louie’s pickup. The young dancers followed. Wade had borrowed a dance outfit from his grandfather and he bobbed and hunted the ground with his eyes. A few of the women wore brown cotton dresses, imitating buckskin with cut cotton fringes. The women with the shorter bobs wore false braids made of nylon stockings stuffed with horsehair. They wore loom-beaded headbands and brilliant medallions. Two fancy dancers wore suits of red long underwear under their beaded breechcloths and feather bustles. They dipped and whirled, walked and laughed, waved and joked with the crowd. They were handing out pencils, one to every few children, drawing each yellow stick reverently from a cloth bag.

  Grace Pipestone, in a cowboy hat, fringed circle skirt, and tooled leather cowboy boots, rode the new filly, Teacher’s Pet. The horse was a dramatically pretty blue roan. Her eyes were outlined in midnight swoops and her dark socks made her quick trot look sharp and precise. There were others riding horses in the parade, but none were dressed as flashily as Superintendent Tosk, who wore a real fringed buckskin jacket and an eagle-feather headdress. This headdress always came out for special events and photos. Magnificently, it bristled off his head and trailed down his back. He rode one of Louie’s most valuable horses, Gringo, who’d lost his formidable racing edge to love, and been set to stud. Gringo was a pale roan, almost a cremello, with gentle rabbity ears and a pinkish pie face. His mane, laboriously combed out, wetted, and braided the night before, had been unbraided and now rippled whitely along the curve of his neck. Grace had treated his tail the same way and its gleaming crinkles nearly brushed the gravel road. He was a glamorous horse who really deserved a better name. Wood Mountain had often said so. He was driving Juggie’s green and white DeSoto, hauling a little trailer with bales of hay where Juggie and Deanna sat, dressed like hoboes. Juggie carried a sign that said Busted by Termination. Mr. Vold drove a large brown station wagon, draped with gold crepe paper, held at intervals by painted cardboard jewels. Fixed to the top of the car were a large watch and a rocket constructed by Betty Pye.

  The other car representing the jewel plant was Doris Lauder’s family car. Painted signs hung out the windows. Valentine rode in the front seat, of course. She chatted away with Doris about how to match plaids cut on the bias for a circle skirt. Patrice rode in the backseat with Betty Pye. The two held small sacks of homemade toffee, each square wrapped in waxed paper. Every so often they tossed a few toffees to the avid children who stood watching the parade. Two years before, Patrice had been in the parade with Valentine, both in the Homecoming court. They had made popcorn balls to throw, but too many had lost their waxed paper flying through the air, or shattered in the road.

  Halfway along the route, Vernon and Elnath stood awkwardly beside the road. They had been strangers wearing black suits, now black overcoats as well, but now everybody knew they were the Mormons.

  Patrice tossed a couple of pieces of candy toward them. Vernon bent over, picked them up, and popped one into his mouth. Elnath folded his arms and scowled, his eyes outraged and glittering.

  “Did you see those two fellows?” Patrice asked Betty.

  Betty turned. “Oh, they’re the missionaries. But Grace Pipestone is converting one.”

  “What?”

  “Louie let them sleep in his barn. And that one with his mouth full, he’s sweet on Grace. But she said she won’t look at him unless he turns Catholic. He’s praying on it.”

  “I wouldn’t bet on Grace,” said Valentine, suddenly, from the front seat. “She’s got bigger fish to fry. I happen to know Wood Mountain’s got his eye on her.”

  “She’s not even sixteen,” said Patrice, indignant.

  “Green eyes show, green eyes glow,” said Valentine in a smug voice.

  “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  Valentine turned to Doris Lauder and they both began to laugh.

  The parade moved slowly but then was over quickly. The vehicles, walkers, and dancers arrived in the high school parking lot. The Homecoming royalty climbed out of the cars and walked up the front steps to arrange themselves on the wide concrete landing before the double doors. Thomas had already parked his Nash close by, so Biboon could get out, sit on the hood, and watch the crowning of the king and queen. Now the frail old man sat expectantly in the weak sunlight, wrapped in an army blanket and enjoying the excitement. The crowd gradually fell silent.

  To one side of the nervous royals, Mrs. Edges, the home economics teacher, stood with Mr. Jarvis. Each held a crown made of wire, tin, and silver sparkle paint. Other teachers held the red capes and scepters that would be presented to each monarch. First Mr. Jarvis paced forward and quickly crowned Calbert St. Pierre, one of Barnes’s most tentative boxers. There was applause and a bit of cheering or good-hearted jeering when the cape was put on Calbert. Then the crowd quieted again. The horses cropping shoots of grass at the edge of the road nickered and huffed. Mrs. Edges walked forward, held the crown over each of the girls’ heads, teasingly, before she finally lowered it onto Sharlo’s brown pin curls, which were brushed into a fluffy halo all around her gleaming face. The crowd gasped. Sharlo’s eyes widened in surprise, then her features twisted, raw with sudden emotion. Before she recovered and began to smile, some of the people in the audience were startled by memory.

  Thomas saw his daughter at four years old, calling from a high haystack before she launched herself into the air. He whirled in the nick of time and lunged for her. The pitchfork he’d ca
relessly abandoned on the stack fell as she fell. It struck into the ground alongside her as they tumbled to one side. As he looked at it, quivering there, his chest expanded in a sob of horror. Sharlo patted his face. She was wearing the same mysterious expression of arrested flight that she wore, now, as she was crowned.

  Rose saw her gleaming iron standing proudly on the dresser.

  Patrice was jolted back to the time she was crowned Homecoming queen on the very same steps. How, wearing the red cape and holding the fake scepter, she looked down into the crowd and they seemed so far away. Her heart swelled, a stone in her chest. And she remembered. How every single one of them had made fun of her when she was little, when she had been so poor she came to school in shoes cut so her toes could poke out, coatless until the teacher scrounged one up, underwear sewed from a flour sack, hair in long traditional braids. They had called her squaw. Even the other girls. They had called her dirty. But then once Vera was old enough to scavenge or make their clothing, and once Patrice had her breasts, and once her face changed from ravenous and elfin to enchanting, they saw her differently. Now she was queen. But she had not forgotten. She would never forget. And suddenly, yes, as she felt the weight of the crown, suddenly she wanted them, all of them, to bow to her. She wanted the boys who’d called her squaw, especially them, to go down on their knees as in church. As if before the statue of the perfect shining blessed smirking virgin. Yes, kneel! Oh, she wanted them to bow their heads in fear, as if her little tin scepter were a sword. She wanted to see the teachers bow, and then maybe glance up at her in awe. She wanted their heads to press down quickly, afraid she’d see that they dared to take a peek.

  And the ladies who gossiped about her or made fun of her mother’s hands, she wanted them to fear her. And the men, arrogant and looking her up and down, giving her a wink. Those men. They would turn their heads as though she’d slapped them. And Bucky. He could drop like he was shot.

  Patrice had begun her walk down the front steps of the school in a trance. Nobody bowed. None of that happened. People yelled and clapped and everyone was nice. Except Valentine. Who from that day forward was unreliable as a friend. Yes, Patrice thought, she should have made Valentine bow down, and stay down, and stop trying to embarrass her.

  As the royalty made its way into the crowd and people turned toward one another to make plans, Gringo, the horse Superintendent Tosk sat upon looking splendid, gave a loud trumpet blare and lunged toward Teacher’s Pet. Tosk grappled for the reins. The horse beneath Grace Pipestone nickered, enticingly. They were on the other side of the crowd, surrounded by people and cars.

  Teacher’s Pet craned backward, tried to stall, gave Gringo the come-hither. Grace kicked her filly, made a quick evasive maneuver, and trotted to the other side of Juggie’s DeSoto. Juggie, still in hobo tatters, jumped over and snatched at Gringo’s halter, but missed. Teacher’s Pet wheeled around and Juggie saw that the mare was in heat, her vulva popped out, flaring and shutting.

  Barnes, passing behind the horse, stopped and stood rooted in fear. He’d never seen anything like it. He waved his arms and ran for Wood Mountain. Juggie ran toward the horse, the rider, and yelled.

  “Grace, get off! She’s winking!”

  Maybe Grace didn’t hear, or maybe she did and wanted to get the horse away from people. Grace made a break out of the crowd, toward the schoolyard, or tried to. Teacher’s Pet wouldn’t go. She sashayed. Winked her vulva at Gringo. Wouldn’t run until Grace used the decorative wheels of her spurs. Then Teacher’s Pet charged away and Gringo’s ears went up. Superintendent Tosk tugged Gringo’s reins, eyes round with alarm, but the stallion tossed his head, gave an outraged squawk, and lighted out after Teacher’s Pet, who was now running full on toward the schoolyard swings—thick wooden planks gently drifting on steel chains hung from a fifteen-foot-high iron crossbar. Grace steered her mare straight between the swings, but Tosk, sawing and shrieking, ran his stallion straight into a swing. It caught Gringo like a snare at the base of his noble throat. The horse reared, twisting the chain around him, folding Superintendent Tosk into the package, breaking the spines of eagle feathers, nearly hanging himself. Louis flung a blanket over Gringo’s head and quickly untangled the superintendent. Grace slid off Teacher’s Pet. As soon as the chains were gone, Gringo jumped up, cleared the teeter-totter in a bound, and galloped along the margin of the running track after Teacher’s Pet, who ambled into the scruff of woods that divided the school grounds from a field of hay.

  Later, that night, there was a Homecoming promenade and dance. All of the couples, as dressed up as possible, stood in line to take a turn around the darkened gym. Each couple was plucked from the gloom by Mr. Jarvis’s spotlight. Anybody could come to the dance, it wasn’t just for high school students. People came to sit at the back tables and eat juneberry pies, table buns and jelly, squares of Juggie Blue’s caramel sheet cake. They drank from bowls of punch set up alongside the desserts and watched the parade of couples.

  Thomas and Rose stood against the wall, sipping on a mixture of juices sparked up with ginger ale. The Homecoming king and queen led off, two fiddlers playing a catchy Michif march. The spotlight cast a wavering patch where Sharlo appeared. Her crown, topped by a silver star, caught what light there was and she seemed to float along as she advanced. Perhaps she wasn’t even touching the floor. That’s what Thomas thought, disoriented, watching her move magically along through the gloom. She was one of the star beings, given, for her time on earth, human shape and form.

  Then Angus and Eddy began to play in earnest and the couples broke off, swinging their arms and legs, shifting left and right, swapping hands and sometimes cuddling in a cha-cha, for a moment, right there on the floor. Between dances, Grace Pipestone took up the guitar, as did Wood Mountain. The old people sat watching at the back tables, nibbling from the pie table and drinking coffee. The music shifted between wild reels and bop. At last, to the shock of the old people, Mr. Jarvis announced that he would use a loudspeaker system to play some records loud enough to dance to, and for the first time a scratchy version of “Night Train,” by Jimmy Forrest, was broadcast around the gym. It was wildly popular, played over and over, and Angus and Eddy soon took it up, live, with variations. Nobody wanted to dance to anything else for the rest of the night.

  When the dance was over, Mr. Jarvis wiped his record off and stored it in its cardboard envelope. He reverently blew on his record needle, secured it, unplugged and latched his record player case gently shut. He picked it up and carried it out. He’d paid his own money for the spotlight and it went home with him.

  Barnes was the last one out of the school. He lingered for no reason, still a bit crushed that Patrice hadn’t come to the dance. Tears had burned behind his eyes earlier on, when he realized she wouldn’t show up. Tears again! What was happening to him as a man? Barnes had quickly walked over to Patrice’s friend Valentine and asked her to dance. She had a slim waist and agreed with everything he said.

  Valentine was still there when he came through the front door.

  “Why don’t we give you a ride?” she cried out, taking his arm. She smelled a bit like whiskey. They walked jauntily down the steps. He glanced around, but there was no one to see. She got into the front seat of Doris Lauder’s car.

  “I only live across the road,” he said. “Thanks. I can walk from here.”

  “No, you can’t!” cried Valentine. “C’mon. We’re on our way to a bush dance!”

  He’d always wanted to go to one of those—fast music, wild dancing, homemade beer, wine, and maybe Pixie. So he got into the car’s backseat and sat in the middle. After a moment, he stretched his arms across the backrest. He wasn’t used to being driven somewhere by a woman, and it seemed that he should make himself as big as possible.

  The Bush Dance

  After the sex was over, they were bored and irritated. And also there was nothing to eat. They didn’t exactly break up, but they did manage to ignore each other as they plodded around looki
ng for some juicy grass. There was the hayfield, but that was cut and the stubble dry. So they turned back and walked through the woods. Teacher’s Pet heard the voice of her rider, calling, but it didn’t affect her the way it had an hour ago. She just kept walking beside Gringo, who had entirely blocked out human sounds and was still enjoying the perfection of his sensations. They passed through oak savanna, then birch woods, then another unsatisfactory hayfield, then an abandoned yard where they grazed in luxury and pooped out all the stress of the parade.

  They drank from a slough, rolled in the mud, and gradually the world grew dark. They could have rested, but the wind was cold and they began to wish themselves into the place of warmth near the tiresome beings, who also sometimes offered a delight or two. A gnarled apple, a block of carrot, a crust of bannock. Oh, that! Gringo trotted toward the scent that came out on the air before the crust, a carrot, an apple, might be brought to him. They were near somebody’s house.

  From the house came the noises of others, maybe of their own kind, or close to their own kind, or the other kind, too, neighs and chuckles, gasps and whinnies, shrill toots and bursts of air. They drew near, crossed gravel, crossed earth, then stood on a trampled tasteless scurf of weed waiting to be fed some real food. Grain would go down easy. But the stamping and squealing continued inside that familiar warmth and it didn’t let up. Sometimes a human or two came out shouting or twinned up in the backseats of the stinking cars. Nobody with the right smell. Nobody with food. At last, heads hanging, they straggled over to the road and walked a few miles before joining the grass track that led to their own field. They felt too sorry for themselves to jump over their fence, and stood outside waiting to be let in. A gust of wind blew the gate wide. Gringo knocked rudely against Teacher’s Pet as she went through the gate and suddenly she had the utmost repugnance for him. Out flashed her pretty little hoof and she opened a vicious gash in his pinky gold underbelly. It was his only imperfection.