“I’ll see you soon,” he thought. But woke the next morning, warm in his saggy bed, even though the fire had gone out in the stove. Laboriously, he coaxed it back. Wade would come soon and stoke it up for the day. Most nights, Wade also stayed to watch over him. But Biboon had so much to think about that he didn’t mind being alone. He pissed in his piss bucket. Boiled water and made his tea and oatmeal. As he ate, and sipped, he sang and thought.
When they sat together and his uncle touched Biboon’s knee, it was a sign that Biboon should remember what he said. The stars were impersonal. But they took human shapes and arranged themselves in orders that conveyed directions to the next life. There was no time where he was going. He’d always thought that inconceivable. For years now he’d understood that time was all at once, back and forth, upside down. As animals subject to the laws of earth, we think time is experience. But time is more a substance, like air, only of course not air. It is in fact a holy element. In time the golden bug, the manidoons, the little spirit being he’d cracked out of a shell not long ago, flew to him. It happened when he was a tiny boy standing at the edge of a prairie coteau. From that place, he saw the buffalo trudging out of the horizon on one side of the world. They crossed before his eyes and vanished on the other side of the world in one unbroken line of being. That was time. All things happened at once and the little golden spirit flew back and forth, up and down through the holy element.
The Cradle Board
Wood Mountain trained alone with Barnes, in secret, because he could not be seen using his hand without the fake cast. He had promised to tell no one, but felt badly about the ruse when he held the baby. It was like he was lying to Archille, and so at one point he whispered, “Don’t worry, the cast isn’t real.” Gringo had to be ridden, so he took him over the trail, staked at the edge of the yard, strapped on a blanket. Louie had been making good money putting Gringo to stud. People came down from Canada, over from Montana, to breed their mares to a horse with Gringo’s unusual coloring. Gringo had become familiar with the edge of the Paranteau yard, the beginning of the woods, and the long frozen grasses that he could pull.
Inside, Pokey was worrying his head about the match. Everyone was selling tickets, and everyone knew about Wood Mountain’s injury. Perhaps sustained while picking mud from Gringo’s hoof. Had the horse bitten him, or stepped on his hand, or cruelly managed to jam his wrist, or maybe thrown him once he got on to ride? Wood Mountain wouldn’t say—not because the supposed injury was difficult to describe, but because he knew he couldn’t use actual words to lie. His face would give him away. So he nodded at the horse or mentioned the stallion’s name and shook his head whenever someone asked. Which was always.
“How’d you hurt your hand?”
“Gringo,” he said, wincing.
“That damn horse,” said Pokey.
“Shaaah,” said Wood Mountain. “Swearing in front of your baby brother.”
Later at the barn, Wood Mountain gave Gringo a rubdown and some grain. Then he stoked up the little stove in the corner where he slept. He sat down on a milking stool and began working on the piece of wood he was going to use for the cradle board. He’d obtained a cedar board from a friend in Minnesota; he’d also split a piece of ash, and was soaking it now to use as a curved head guard. Maybe he’d fit a flat piece onto the bottom of the board. That way the laced-in baby could brace his little feet when he was older.
Grace came into the barn and saw Wood Mountain shaving down the cedar with a hand plane.
“Hey,” she said, “is your hand okay now?”
Wood Mountain looked blank, then screwed up his face.
“Ow,” he said, setting down the plane. “I shouldn’t of been doing that.”
“Looks like you didn’t mind,” said Grace, suspicious. “Is your hand really hurt? I won’t tell.”
“Are you really flirting with that Mormon? I won’t tell.”
“No,” said Grace. “He’s gone.”
“For good?”
“I think so. He was getting kind of, I don’t know.”
“Moony-eyed,” said Wood Mountain.
“Maybe.”
“What happened?”
“I wasn’t leading him on or nothing.”
“Oh, sure.”
“Really! We were just brushing the horses together, and all of a sudden he says that if his seed mingled with a Lamanite’s he would be damned to the unrelenting fire, but he would be willing to suffer. I said rest easy, no chance your seed’s mingling with nothing here. But then I get curious and ask what’s a Lamanite? He says didn’t I know and I say no. He tells me I’m a Lamanite and I say no I’m a Chippewa. He says same thing as a Lamanite. But if I would take up becoming a Mormon I will turn whiter and whiter until I am shining in the dark.”
“Hard to sneak out on your dad if you’re glowing in the dark.”
“How do you know I sneak out?”
“Sometimes when I’m too tired to go home I take a nap out here. That’s how I saw your boyfriend tiptoe out to meet you the other night. He had his shoes picked up in his hands. Lifted up his knees. Looked so foolish.”
“That’s the night he talked about his precious seed.”
“He was outta line. Think I’ll smash him for that.”
“With your broken hand? That hand you’re using right now to unscrew the wood oil?”
“Ow.”
“You’re faking!”
“You won’t tell! Not one single soul. I am trying to fake out Joe Wobble.”
Grace started laughing so hard she had to sit down.
“C’mon.”
“Don’t you know?” she finally said. “He’s trying to fake you out too. Walking around all crooked. Sometimes he forgets which side he’s crooked on. All the girls know.”
Wood Mountain gaped. “How’d you? What?”
“I thought you knew it. Everybody knows it.”
“Does he know I’m faking?”
“Not that I know of. You’re pretty good. Even I believed it up until I saw you working on the wood.”
“I’m making a cradle board.”
Grace stepped back, frowning.
“Something your mom should know about?”
“No, not that. It’s for Vera’s baby.”
“Well, you should be careful. People are saying things.”
“Like what?”
“Like that baby isn’t from the Cities. Like that baby belongs to you and Pixie. Like you’re trying to hide it from the priest.”
“What would I care? No, this baby’s Vera’s.”
“Why you out there all the time then?”
“Can’t a man like a baby?”
“Sure. But usually it’s his own baby.”
“I never see Pixie. Almost never,” said Wood Mountain.
“Oh, sure,” said Grace.
“She don’t care for me.”
“And your hand’s really broken. Men are so dumb.”
She walked off, swinging her hair, slapping at the cribs. She stopped to scratch Teacher’s Pet.
“Now don’t you tell!” he called.
“About your hand or about Pixie Paranteau?”
“Quit that,” said Wood Mountain.
He threw down the cloth he was using to wipe oil into the wood. He began planing the cedar board again, too hard, scraping off the oiled surface in curled strips. Grace looked back and was about to start laughing again. But something about his violent concentration and the way he blinked his eyes and squinted down at the board made her feel sorry for him. Then even sorrier for herself. She leaned close to Teacher’s Pet and rubbed her horse’s soft ears, gazed into her black liquid eye, whispered, “He’s got it bad but he don’t know it.”
Pixie will split his hide, thought Grace as she walked across the yard. She pictured Gringo’s belly, his pinkish skin laid open, garish before her father stitched him shut. They knew it was Teacher’s Pet because there was a strip of Gringo’s hide stuck on her hoof. But who
cared. Let Wood Mountain find out how it felt. The air was hard and cold. She smelled snow and looked up. The moon was lopsided, like Joe Wobble. There was no wind on the ground but over west she saw clouds tossing up, erasing stars, coming on like sixty. She thought of going back to tell Wood Mountain about the storm. No, let the horses tell him. Let him sleep in the barn. She’d always known he was too old for her. She was done with him. He could go straight to Pixie.
Battle Royale
What was it to be? A Battle Royale, a Friday Night Fracas, a Slugfest Saturday? Thomas mulled the problem over as he prepared the boxing card for the printer. Excitement Galore. Did that sound ridiculous? He and Barnes had matched up the oldest boys in the area boxing clubs, plus of course Wood Mountain vs. Joe Wobleszynski, the main attraction. Thomas was putting his own money toward some flyers that could be tacked up everywhere—the tiny bush stores, the schools, the off-reservation bars, the cafes and gas stations. At the bottom, he’d set the cover charge at “suggested 2 dollars” but knew they’d take whatever the crowd—he hoped for a crowd—could give. He finally decided on Battle Royale Benefit. At the bottom, he wrote, “Come one come all. Enjoy a fun night. Excitement Galore! Do your best to bring your representatives to Washington.” Sharlo had drawn a puffy pair of boxing gloves in front of an American flag. He’d had her draw them over again to look more menacing. He pasted everything together at his desk, finished around 3 a.m., and dropped the flyer off after work the next morning.
After another meeting with Moses Montrose, he went straight home and staggered into the sleeping room, took off his shoes, and as usual put his creased pants and carefully folded shirt on the small bed beside theirs. He slipped beneath the covers in his undershirt and boxer shorts, draped another undershirt over his eyes, and began taking deep slow breaths. But his heartbeat filled his ears. His thoughts jaggedly sped the moment he rested his head on the old flattened pillow he jealously guarded for himself. Pictures as clear as though they’d happened yesterday flashed on. The look of Roderick when he was brought up the stairs, blinking, terrified, shaking, coughing, haunted. Half dead already. A few weeks later, he’d come to wake Roderick in the dormitory. His friend was still and his skin gray; he was barely breathing in the bloody sheets. Oh, Roderick. Would these electric shocks of memory ever quit? Worst, he remembered teasing Roderick, daring him, even getting him in trouble, and LaBatte pointing his finger.
Who did this?
Roderick, sir.
He didn’t get as much sleep as he’d have liked; in fact, he was still tired when he woke up four hours later. Smoker barked his head off when Noko wandered away from the house, and there was a visitor looking for Rose to ask if Rose could keep her loud and furious baby for the afternoon. He tried to get a few hours in when the rest of the family went to bed, but again, his heart raced and his body was so tense he could not relax. And that baby was a howler. He’d see Roderick behind his eyelids, then worry about whether the boxing match would raise enough money, then leap forward to Washington, D.C. He worried what going to Congress would be like, what he would say, how difficult they’d make it, whether he’d choke up on his words. And he knew thinking this far ahead was useless and ridiculous, but his mind had seized its own irrational path and would not be controlled by logic. He couldn’t argue himself into sleep.
When he finally stopped tussling with his mind and got up to go to work, he dressed in the dark as usual and sneaked out into the kitchen. There at the table, in the low light of the kerosene lamp, Sharlo sat with a blanket over her shoulders. She was hunched over a book, concentrating so intensely that she barely acknowledged him. He went outside to the privy and when he came back washed his face, hands, forearms, neck with cold water, to wake himself. Sharlo barely looked up. He put on his jacket, hat, and picked up his briefcase, his lunch box, his thermos of coffee. As he turned at the door to say goodbye and tell Sharlo to turn in, she sighed, shook her pin-curled head, and closed her book. She stretched her arms, yawning.
“That was a good one.”
“Kept you awake.” Thomas touched her hair.
“Here, you should take it.”
It was a mystery book. But Thomas had too many letters to write and he was determined to investigate the book that the missionaries had left with him.
After his first rounds were finished, Thomas poured himself a cup of coffee and took out the small dark book. He thought he should read the book in order to understand Arthur V. Watkins. After all, when Biboon had sent him to boarding school, he’d said, “Study hard because we need to know the enemy.” Over the years, he’d realized the wisdom of that. Knowing the sorts of people he was dealing with, he’d been able to persuade the powers that be to locate the jewel bearing plant near the reservation. He’d been able to use their logic to get improvements in the community school. He used the education they had given him to advance his people—he’d often forgotten that was the point of his study, as Biboon had said, but it had turned out to be so. Yet, along the way the word enemy became confusing. The BIA higher-ups in the room in Fargo could have been the enemy, but they seemed more dismayed by the bill than excited to carry out its directives. John Hail, the town lawyer, was a friend. And even Vold—not exactly the enemy, not even an adversary. But Arthur V. Watkins was clearly an enemy—of the most dangerous sort: a principled enemy who thought what he was doing was for the best. But let me not call him an enemy, Thomas thought. I will think of Watkins as my adversary. An enemy has to be defeated in battle, but an adversary’s different. You must outwit an adversary. So you do have to know them very well. In Thomas’s experience, anyone who took on and tried to sweepingly solve what was always called the “plight” or the Indian “problem” had a personal reason. He wondered what that could be for Arthur V. Watkins.
The first intriguing surprise in The Book of Mormon was that Joseph Smith, their prophet, had also been visited by an extremely bright being who was semitransparent. Thomas put the book down. At first, his feelings were confused and maybe even hurt, the description was so close to his own private experience on the night he almost froze. But once he got over the feeling, he was somewhat relieved. These beings apparently appeared to others. They had come to tell Joseph Smith about some historical plates that seemed to be buried in several places. The book had its elements of suspense. For instance, the interior argument of a man named Nephi, who was not eager to murder a drunk man with his own sword, but was persuaded to complete the murder by the voice of the Lord. Nephi next impersonated the man he murdered, deceived his servant, and stole all his treasure—brass plates with histories engraved on them. Thomas’s eyes began to droop. There was wilderness, women, Jews. Mainly there was this Nephi. Would Nephi tell this whole book? Thomas paged ahead. Again, his eyes began to burn and then he felt his head tip, jerked himself awake. This was going to be a very difficult night.
He persevered for another hour and began to read about Gentiles coming to America, which surprised him because he didn’t think that things would move so quickly. But then again the book, for all of its archaic returneths and blameths, had its origins in America, so he tried to adjust. There was lots of righteous anger in the book. There was some fury about a great and abominable church, which Thomas couldn’t place. There was a lot about the filthiness of other people and the cleanliness of Nephi’s people. When he got to the downfall of the daughters of Zion, Thomas felt a pang for the women. Apparently the daughters were proud and haughty. But their punishment was excessive, Thomas thought. He liked the idea that they made tinkling sounds as they walked, like jingle dancers. But on a certain day the Lord took away the bravery of the daughters tinkling ornaments and cauls, and round tires like the moon. The Lord took everything away. The chains and the bracelets and the mufflers. The bonnets, and the ornaments of the legs, and the headbands, and the tablets and the earrings. The rings and nose jewels. The changeable suits of apparel, and the mantles and the wimples, and the crisping pins. The glasses, and the fine linen, and hoods, and
the veils. And instead of a sweet smell, they got a stink. Instead of a girdle, a torn girdle. Instead of well-set hair, baldness. Baldness! Instead of a stomacher, whatever that was, they got a girding of sackcloth, and worst of all, burning instead of beauty.
Thomas, who searched out nice clothes and loved it when Rose let her hair flow long, wore her flame-colored dress and the strapped black shoes with curved heels, closed the book, depressed.
The first thing he wrote down about Arthur V. Watkins was he probably liked plain dress in a woman and probably dressed himself simply and inconspicuously. No ankle bells for him. No flashy tie or two-tone shoes or broad-brimmed fedora. He definitely was a righteous fellow. How do you fight one of those?
After writing responses to several newspaper articles and filling out an order to request a mimeograph machine solely for the use of the tribal council, Thomas remembered something from his boarding-school days. There, he’d strategized. The only way to fight the righteous was to present an argument that would make giving him what he wanted seem the only righteous thing to do.
Two-Day Journey
Vera found that she was walking. She was wearing a warm overcoat, a hat, and boots on her feet. She was on a road. She knew, as everybody around her knew, that the soul after death sets off on a journey to the next life. Sets out walking on a road like the one she was on now, dark and lonely, but clearly marked in the moonlight. To be dead was perhaps a relief. As she walked, Vera tried to remember the way instructions for the road went—she would be tested several times. She would hear the voices of the living, calling her back, but she must not turn around. She must continue on west. There would be certain foods she should not eat, but certain foods she could eat. There might be, she could not fully recall, a bridge or a snake, maybe a bridge with a troll underneath, or had she heard that somewhere else back there during her life? If she got far enough, she would hear the dead calling to her, encouraging her because after three days she would be weary. She was afraid that she might hear the sound of her baby crying from the town of the dead. She didn’t want him to die, but she would run to him, wherever he was. At least he wouldn’t be alone. After a while the air turned pale gray and she saw a sign, Highway 2. Then another sign, painted in black strokes, Firewood for Sale. She began to doubt that she was on the right road. She began to wonder whether she was even dead. Although she had been dead way back when she’d been alive. Maybe for a long time. Of that she was sure.
The Night Watchman Page 22