“You can’t get us! You can’t get us now!” she shrieked.
Someone had come up behind her and her throat shut. But she slowly dared to look. It was her mother, staring at the place where her father was climbing down into his grave. For a moment, Zhaanat’s face was exalted by ferocity, but then she slowly shifted her gaze to her daughter, and Patrice thought she was seeing her own face, lighted from below by a reflecting mirror of clouds and water. Yet it was only a bowl of soup that her mother was holding out to her, strong with bear meat and steaming hot.
Daylight
Wood Mountain brought the grave house. Thomas would sleep and then they would conduct the burial. Zhaanat and Pokey had tied Paranteau into a blanket and covered him with bark thawed and rolled back around his shape. Gerald had arrived in the night and his people were arranged on the floor of the house in a puzzle of blanketed forms. Three women slept on Patrice’s bed with their children, so she folded herself into a corner, underneath her heavy coat. Millie was already sleeping there, head covered with a scarf, feet sticking out in fur-trimmed galoshes, odd and touching, like a child’s.
Other people began to arrive. Whole families. Some brought food, some came because they needed to eat. The LaBattes showed up, everyone with their own bowls to carry home leftover food. LaBatte wept. He’d been drinking with Paranteau and Eddy a few nights before, but he said nothing, though he’d reported, for Patrice, to Mr. Vold so that she could take off work for the funeral. It was still deeply cold. Bucky came, wearing a coat and a blanket over the coat. Patrice saw him from where she stood. His hair was matted around his head, caked like the pelt of a dead animal. When he entered Zhaanat’s house, dragging his leg, everyone fell silent. Bucky walked effortfully up to Zhaanat and pointed at his face, the cheek and flesh drooping down on one side. His mouth was disarranged, unable to fully close, drool frozen down his neck, one eye crossed.
Bucky bent over, took from his pockets the pair of shoes he’d stolen from Patrice. He went on his knees and pushed them along the floor. He gave a moaning mumble that sounded like “Take this off me.”
Zhaanat looked at the shoes, observed him closely, not unkindly.
“Your actions put that on you. I had nothing to do with it,” she said.
Bucky collapsed on the floor.
“Then doctor me, please doctor me.”
In the incoherent jumble of his words there was none of the old Bucky left.
He is helpless, thought Patrice. As helpless as I was. But if he gets his strength back, he will hurt us.
Later, as Gerald talked to Paranteau’s body and told him what to look for and what to do when he arrived on the other side, Millie came up to stand with Patrice. When Gerald paused, Millie asked what he had said, nodding when Patrice told her in a low voice. There was a dazed, rapt look on Millie’s face. At last the men used ropes to lower Paranteau into the ground.
Two Months
Thomas
The date was set. The hearings were scheduled for the first week in March. That gave the Turtle Mountain Advisory Committee about two months to save the tribe from ceasing to exist.
Millie
Millie Cloud sat on the floor wearing her winter coat. She was hunched over a notebook held tight against her thighs, and she was writing rapid notes on her visit to the Paranteau funeral. She had never been to an event like the funeral, had never heard the strangely agreeable off-key and repetitive songs, nor had she heard more than a few words of the Chippewa language uttered in the Pipestone house. When she had conducted her survey, she was nearly always addressed in English. Now she understood that the English was for her benefit and that most of the people around her, including Louis and Grace, spoke the traditional language. All of this was fascinating to Millie, and while she could hardly take notes during the ceremony, she had closely observed the proceedings. She had taken up her notebook as soon as possible and was sitting in the corner of the bedroom she shared with Grace Pipestone. She was freezing cold, while Grace slept on the bed beneath two heavy blankets. As soon as every detail that she could remember was written out, Millie took off her coat. Wearing her warmest socks and the long johns that, incredibly, she had almost decided not to bring, she tiptoed across the room and slid under the blankets, next to Grace.
Barnes
There was a square wooden table in what he’d taken to thinking of as his monk’s cell. Upon this table, Barnes placed the early Christmas gift from his uncle. It looked like a small suitcase made of bleached alligator skin. But the skin was plastic and he opened the case to reveal a turntable, arm, needle, dials. He plugged the electric cord into the one outlet in the room. He took a record from its sleeve and set it going, then lay on his saggy bed and closed his eyes. The immortal voice of Slim Whitman filled the air. Three women were his fortune. How would his life unfold? Barnes turned over, cradled his head in the pillow. Each woman whirled through his head, trailing scent and smile. Barnes flipped back and hugged his other pillow. He needed two for comfort. One for his head, one to hug all night. Which one was made for me? Oh gee, my heart is broken in three.
Juggie
Couldn’t the boy see? His face was all banged up and would never be the same. Nobody else seemed to notice. It was for a mother to compare before and after. Her heart pinched. The perfect human she’d created had been tampered with by those stupid fights. What was the point? For a moment in life, anyway, he’d been handsome like his father. And smart. Now he seemed to have lost even the small amount of common sense most young men possess. He had brought her the cradle board to admire! Made her touch the wood.
Smooth as silk, he said.
Oh, was it.
What the hell was she supposed to say?
Betty Pye
Norbert, Norb, oh, Norbie! The door handle dug into her back and her neck was sore from holding her head steady. Otherwise banging the back of her head against the backseat window—that would hurt. The beginning had been, as always, like flying right out of her body. But this part she could take or leave. When, oh, oh, oh, Norbert, Norb, when, Norbie, oh, was he going to quit? Over his shoulder she could see the opposite window. A face appeared in the heavy glass, blurred and hungry. Betty opened her mouth. Her scream was trapped by a gobbling kiss. Norbert put his head back down, and she decided not to scream. The door was locked. If she interrupted Norb, he would have to start all over. Anyway, the face had disappeared. Who could it be, these miles from anywhere, so far out on the section road that she could see only one dim and lonesome light? Who would be walking alone out here at night? Oh, oh, oh. Norbie! Finally. Cold was knifing up her back. She knew the face. She smoothed down her clothes, fixed her hair, used a dainty tissue to pluck up the biinda’oojigan and another couple of tissues to roll it up and place it in the side pocket of her purse. Somehow, yes, she knew the face. She used a few more dainty tissues and climbed into the front seat. Aww honey, aww honey, Norbert was saying. Niinimoshenh. Aww honey, aww niinimoshenh, she said back to him. She put her plush hands to his cheeks and cradled his face. A soft kiss. Let’s go home now. Get the car back to your uncle. It’s all cleaned up? It’s all cleaned up. Mii’iw. She had to think. Who was it? She knew that face.
Louis
It became a sacred mission—to obtain the signature of every person who lived on the reservation. There were others, who lived elsewhere, but it was beyond his power to track them down. His green pickup truck was up on blocks. Juggie needed the DeSoto to ride in to work. What? Should he saddle up one of his horses and ride the back roads? The sun was out and he could walk. Snowshoe along the paths. Millie walked out of the little room where she slept next to Grace. Of course Grace was with the horses. Millie had certainly not dressed for the cold in those little ankle boots. He had given her a pair of his socks. Astonishingly, she asked if she could ride a horse. Millie wanted to get over to Zhaanat’s place. And here she was scared of horses ever since her bad ride. He said that he would go with her and then continue on to get some signatures. H
e put his mind to which horse was placid enough for Millie. None of them was placid at all. They were touchy from being cooped up or anxious to get out of the wind and back into their barn. Even old Daisy Chain was skittish, and besides, she was retired. But Millie asked again, determined, and he had learned that when she was determined he’d best give in immediately and save butting heads with a version of himself.
Thomas
Two months and a few days to save themselves as a homeland and a people. So why, when he had no time, did Thomas find himself staring blindly into space at work or writing long discursive letters not to individuals important to their case, but to friends and family? Why did he doodle and why did he now read Sharlo’s mystery books, which easily kept him awake? Why couldn’t he bear down and concentrate? Because he was scared, that’s why. What on earth would a person do in Washington? How would they get there? Where would they stay? What if Arthur V. Watkins took him apart? The word was out on Watkins. He raked Indians to pieces with his words and his ways. What if Thomas failed? If he couldn’t speak up? If he couldn’t argue the case? If they got terminated and everyone lost their land and had to move to the Cities and he had to leave his home behind? What of his family? What of Biboon?
Patrice
Just before Christmas her eyes began to smart. Maybe she’d snow-burned them checking her trapline on a too sunny day. Maybe the close work was beginning to tell. It wasn’t bad at first, as long as she resisted the need to rub them. She could still—blinking, squinting—focus on the card. She could pluck up the jewel bearings, glue them correctly, and complete her work. But too slowly. The Grasshopper rasped his legs. The pain began to sharpen. Pus glued her eyes shut when she slept. When she got home from work, exhausted, she lay on her bed covered in quilts, while Zhaanat bathed her eyes in balsam tea.
That helped, and she was always able to go back to work, but the burning kept coming back. Zhaanat boiled down the tea and Patrice carried a small medicine bottle of it. Every day, during lunch, she bathed her eyes in the medicine. She did it in a women’s bathroom stall, so that nobody could see and tell on her. She was afraid that she might lose her job.
Words
The word used for ejaculation—baashkizige—is also used for shooting off a gun. The word used for condom—biinda’oojigan—means gun case. Millie entered these words into her notebook. Fascinating.
Vera
One afternoon, with Edith looking on, good old Harry knelt beside the couch with a ring. He asked her to marry him. She closed her eyes. She had just awakened but she was still tired. Before she could answer him she fell asleep again. Later, in the evening, he was on his knees again. This time, she let her eyes open. He looked like a way out of her mess. She took the ring and put it on her finger. Then she hid her face. He said he wouldn’t even kiss her. He said that there would be no hanky-panky for a long time. Never, she thought. A few nights later he stood in the doorway making with himself. The vibrations woke her up. The slickering sound.
“Holy Jesus,” she shouted, sitting up. “What the damn hell do you think you’re doing?”
Harry flipped the lights on. He was holding a bottle of milk. He’d been shaking the milk because the top was frozen. He couldn’t sleep and was going to heat it up. Did she want some?
LaBatte
No sooner had he stopped than it began to get around. Francis Boyd asked him on the hush-hush to get him a little coffee. Just a cup from the can. He’d use those grounds four times, he said. Lilia Snow asked for toilet paper. She was tired of the Sears catalog. It was scratching up her little peach. Junior Bizhiki wanted a glass beaker like she’d seen in her friend’s kitchen. “I don’t do that no more,” he said to her, alarmed. “I never did that anyway. I mean, what are you talking about?” Gordon Fleury said he would appreciate it if LaBatte could get him tools. Any kind of tools. LaBatte this time was outraged. He was insulted. He slammed the door of his ramshackle house, nearly busting it off. Well, you didn’t slam doors on this reservation. You didn’t slam doors in a person’s face. That got around. He got the nickname Slammer. Which wasn’t such a bad nickname. He took it with good grace. It was a better nickname than several others he had lived down. And a better nickname than Fingers or Pockets or Father Christmas or the other name he was afraid of getting, Jinx. He was in danger of getting that name because he used the word so much. But he used it because he knew what he knew. For instance, he knew that Pixie had a jinx on her. He could tell from her eyes.
New Year’s Soup
Oh, it was good. Filled your belly. Made you smile. Cured your hangover. Kept you moving in the cold. It was made with onions, balls of meat the Michifs called boulettes, potatoes peeled and boiled just right. You stirred in flour and got the broth. Pepper and salt. That’s all it was. Sometimes you just cut the meat up. That was good too. There wasn’t a way to go wrong, as long as it was hot. And you made bread if you had the flour, fried if you had the grease, in bannocks the Michifs called gullet, in little raised squares or beignets that people called bangs. It was food you could stretch way out. Zhaanat made it with bear meat. Cured the common cold. Cured the uncommon. Didn’t cure trachoma. You couldn’t put soup in your eye.
“You should go to the nurse,” Wood Mountain said. “Hey, I’ll take you into town. You can ride Daisy Chain and I’ll run beside you. I am still in training but my mother told me not to fight no more.”
“Do it,” said Zhaanat. “My medicine doesn’t fix this, just holds it off.”
Patrice rode into town on the tough old horse. It was a plodder and Wood Mountain ran half a mile out, ran back, walked beside her for a while, ran out front again. The hospital was made of brick. The waiting room was stark, the chairs hard. Patrice had been vaccinated against smallpox at school. Even Zhaanat had been vaccinated. “White-man diseases need white-man cures,” she said. But for all else, Patrice turned to Zhaanat’s medicines. This was the first time her mother’s cures hadn’t worked. She’d never seen the doctor or the nurse. Or waited in this ominous little room.
The nurse was thin and gray, hair pulled into a bun. She wore a long gray dress with a starched white collar, and had the bearing of a no-nonsense nun.
“What are you here for, young miss?” she said. Her voice was thin and dry. Patrice blinked at her.
The nurse asked Patrice to stand close to a bright lamp, told her to open her mouth and used a thin wooden stick to clamp down her tongue.
“You have good teeth,” she said.
She peeked into Patrice’s ears, took her pulse. At last she stared into Patrice’s eyes, focusing on one, then the other. Then she put her clean cool fingers below and above Patrice’s watering eyes. Up close the skin of the nurse’s face was fine as paper, creased in tiny lines, almost transparent. Even through her tears Patrice could see this. The nurse pulled down on the lower lids and up on the upper lids.
“Good we caught this in time. You might have gone blind,” she said.
She left Patrice sitting in the tiny room painted a peculiar green, the shelves holding glass jars full of cotton balls and thin wooden sticks. Blind! Blind! Patrice kept hearing what the nurse had said. When she returned, the nurse gave Patrice a small jar of medicinal ointment.
“You wipe a bit onto your eyes.”
Afterward, Patrice must wash her hands scrupulously, said the nurse. She must watch her family for signs. Her voice was stern. “Blindness results from lack of hygiene. Where do you live?”
“Minneapolis,” said Patrice.
Lack of hygiene, thought Patrice. The nurse might come into our house. She could make an official assessment and report all the ways our ways aren’t up to her standards. The health officials might even attempt to take the baby. This had happened to other children. Still, thank god, thank god, I will not be blind! Her neck was itching, a sign she’d better get right out of there. She thanked the nurse.
Before Patrice left, the nurse asked her to come back when the eye doctor would be in and gave her the date of the ey
e clinic.
“Why?” asked Patrice.
The nurse made her promise.
Outside, Wood Mountain was still waiting with Daisy Chain.
“You don’t have to walk me home,” said Patrice. “I can go down to the store and find a ride.”
“We go back the way we came,” insisted Wood Mountain. “She fixed your eyes?”
“I won’t go blind,” said Patrice.
“Blind!” said Wood Mountain. “My grandmother went blind.”
“What a terrible thing. I would lose my job. I couldn’t chop wood. I don’t know what else. I would miss all of everything.”
She couldn’t come close to saying what she meant.
“All the beauty.”
“I guess you don’t mean me,” said Wood Mountain. “All the beauty.” But it sounded like he hoped she meant him too.
“Of course I meant you too,” said Patrice, still in shock at the thought. To lose all of this. She hadn’t truly considered it before, and then to know it could have happened.
“My grandmother got around real good,” said Wood Mountain. “She said that her other senses opened up. She could hear everything, everywhere, and smell? She could smell you even if you didn’t make a sound.”
He spoke quickly to cover up the jolt of pleasure that her words had given him.
“I never knew that,” said Patrice.
Already, her eyes were less scratchy and the light was more benign. The cold fresh air stirred her. I won’t go blind, she thought. The sun was low in the sky, casting slant regal light. As they plodded along, the golden radiance intensified until it seemed to emanate from every feature of the land. Trees, brush, snow, hills. She couldn’t stop looking. The road led past frozen sloughs that bristled with scorched reeds. Clutches of red willow burned. The fans and whips of branches glowed, alive. Winter clouds formed patterns against the fierce gray sky. Scales, looped ropes, the bones of fish. The world was tender with significance.
The Night Watchman Page 27