A solid and much fatigued woman sleeping on the floor of the tribal office begins to talk in her sleep. Too much salt, she says.
A young woman with soft, bright eyes, often referred to by her teachers as “elfin,” is filling out an order from the Montgomery Ward catalog and purchasing a wristwatch.
The cursed man is crawling toward his parents’ house, where every single person is sleeping hard. He feels like he has been punished enough for something he did just because he wanted to. If his brain worked he could name grown men right and left who had done the same and were walking around in good shape, smiling with their whole mouth, opening and shutting both their eyes. Yes, he’d cuffed her around. Yes, he’d almost nailed her. But nothing happened! It’s not that he shouldn’t have tried. Just that he picked the wrong girl.
Several miles away, a worried man with a flowing pen is doing Palmer exercises at the jewel bearing plant. He revolves his wrists, flexes his fingers, turns from side to side in his chair. Once he is finished, he faces forward and writes yet another letter to Senator Milton R. Young, a letter laying out strategy and signing off with polite desperation. Next, with no hope, he writes a courteous missive, full of jokes, to the other North Dakota senator, William “Wild Bill” Langer, who is in favor of termination. There is nothing to lose and Thomas can’t help liking Wild Bill, who once barricaded himself in the governor’s mansion and refused to be removed from office. If the isolationist Langer had had his way, maybe Falon would not have died in a distant war. The world would almost certainly be much worse off, but Thomas would have his brother, Falon, in reality, not just walking through the wall now and then. And speaking of lonesome spirits . . .
Roderick didn’t seem to be around tonight but there was such a strange feeling. As if the pen held everything balanced on the reservation as Thomas wrote. And wrote.
You Can’t Assimilate Indian Ghosts
Even as a ghost, Roderick was never going to be assimilated. You can’t assimilate Indian ghosts. It’s too late! He didn’t go to their white hell and didn’t go to their white heaven. But he died in Sac and Fox country, too far away to meet the deadline for Chippewa heaven. So he followed his coffin home and just hung around. He listened in on things. It was after his death that he found out the term. What they were up to. Assimilation. Their ways become your ways. He took stock. When they shaved his head and it grew out all fuzzy and spiky, Roderick sort of liked it. Like fur, he ran his hand over it. There were certain things he really went for. Canned peaches. But not the hard shoes. The trumpet. But not before sunrise. A warm woolen jacket. Wool socks. But then again, if they hadn’t killed them off he could have had a curly buffalo jacket. And curly buffalo socks. Tuberculosis. For sure, he didn’t like that. Did they have illness in the old days? He hadn’t heard of any and he had to wonder. What did Indians use to die of? Animals, accidents, cold, other Indians. He had heard back then there were so many animals, animals everywhere, so nobody starved. You could be kicked by a horse or gored by a raging buffalo. He was obsessed by how he might have died. Anything would be better. Battle, for instance, staked to a spear and fending off his enemies. No, the horror and agony he had been through, he’d not forgotten all these many years. Of course, the years were like an instant to him as a ghost. He had gone to old Paranteau’s funeral thinking maybe he could sneak along or follow him on the journey to the afterlife. He was ready for somewhere new. But old Paranteau had died drunk and veered off the holy road. And Roderick had turned back because he smelled the boiling-hot bear meat that Zhaanat had cooked in three changes of water, like his mother. He could smell anyway. And he also liked to hear Zhaanat talking. No to assimilation! There were no swear words in Chippewa but lots of words for sex and Roderick liked to hear about sex. He regretted that he hadn’t had it, but of course he knew all about it now. He knew too much. Long ago, he’d stopped haunting people when they started acting sexy. But when Zhaanat and the old people talked about sex it was funny. He laughed a ghost laugh. Which sounded like water off an icicle, or like twigs in the woods rubbing together, way up high. But sex in general? It was a farce. Which was what it was to act assimilated. So he didn’t. Except it was very hard to not be assimilated all alone, and he wished he could go home.
Clark Kent
The eye clinic was set up in a corner of the hospital, with a line outside the small room where the visiting eye doctor conducted his tests. Patrice stood in line for an hour. The eye test consisted of charts and lights and cards with black lines. After the doctor wrote down all of the results, he lowered a large set of lenses before her face and switched magnifications on each eye until the shapes in front of her resolved. When she was finished, he took a few more notations and then informed her that her prescription was not uncommon and that he could fit her with eyeglasses that very day.
“Eyeglasses? But I don’t need eyeglasses.”
It hadn’t occurred to her that the tests led to eyeglasses because she had no trouble seeing things.
“Your reading-distance vision is better than 20/20,” he said. “You need glasses to see things far away.”
“I do see things far away.”
“You will see them more clearly.”
He left the room and came back with a cardboard box. From the box, he removed a set of eyeglasses. They were the same kind of Indian Health eyeglasses everybody wore. The frames were black and square. He put them on Patrice’s face and made sure the bows fit behind her ears.
“There,” he said. “Perfect fit. You may take them off to read.”
The eyeglasses felt heavy on her nose and she didn’t think she would get used to seeing everything framed by black plastic. She was very conscious of the way the bows sat behind her ears. Patrice walked down the hospital steps and it didn’t seem there was a big difference. Everything seemed absolutely normal. Except that when she looked at Wood Mountain waiting at the bottom of the steps, she could see every detail of his battle-marred face. She could see the expectant hope, the love she didn’t want him to utter again. As she walked down the steps toward him, she realized that she’d never been able to read people’s faces at a distance; she had never seen their expressions. She hadn’t even realized that, from a distance, he looked different now. You wouldn’t call him handsome now that his nose was so smashed. She stopped on the stairs and looked past Wood Mountain, toward the cars and houses, the trees and the water tower. The precision of the world took her breath away. The crisp lines of brick. The legibility of signs on doors. The needles of pines standing out sharp against more needles and the darkly figured back of the trunk.
When she looked in amazement at Wood Mountain, she could tell he was going to laugh.
“What’s so funny?”
But she felt there was something very funny too. Here she was in another disguise.
“You look like Superman’s girlfriend.”
“No I don’t. I look like Clark Kent.”
“Oh, waa, you do!”
Wood Mountain held his arm out for her and she took it, like in the movies, but she needed him for balance. The glasses made her feel like her feet were very far away.
“Which way home, Clark Kent? The long way or the short way?”
A chinook wind had blown through the night before. The world was dazzling with snow and dripping with light. The road was sparkling with water and the air was warm and soft. And the birds, the birds were out, singing their spring songs in the middle of the winter.
“It’s all the same way,” said Patrice.
Halfway home, on the road, Wood Mountain stopped her. He cradled her face in his hands. He didn’t kiss her. He kissed the corners of her eyeglasses, then held her hand as they resumed walking.
“What was that?”
“I couldn’t help it. Those eyeglasses.”
“I look like a boy,” Patrice laughed.
“No you don’t,” said Wood Mountain. “But you do look brainy. I pity a guy who bothers you.”
As they continued
on, the brilliant snowdrifts threw so much radiance their eyes could not drink it in. Their eyes had to shut some of it out. They could feel the darkness around the edges. Someone had taken a stoneboat through the woods and a trail was packed, so they went down that trail. The blue light enveloped them, a gentler light.
“Bother me,” said Patrice.
“Bother you. I never thought I’d put the moves on Clark Kent.”
“Well, do it anyway,” said Patrice.
Wood Mountain held her with her back against his chest. His hands clasped around her padded waist. They were dressed very warmly but they’d both have snow down their neck and pants if they did it the old-fashioned way. She turned and kissed him until his head swam. She had a skirt on, but wool stockings underneath it.
“Let’s find a log to sit on,” he said. “I’ll sit on the bottom. You can sit on top of me.”
She didn’t know what he was saying until they found a place to sit. He put his hands on her breasts, under her coat, and she blanked out a little. Oh, so good. He adjusted their clothing when she lowered herself on top of him and soon she remembered what Betty had said and asked him. He took a packet from his inside jacket pocket.
“I been keeping this handy every time I see you,” he shyly said, and put it on. Then he was inside of her, too eagerly. Tears started into her eyes, blurred her eyeglasses, and he edged away. She adjusted her eyeglasses, and gasped to start again. So they did, and it got better. Although it wasn’t the best thing of all, like Betty had said, Patrice wondered if she would become obsessed, as Betty had also said. If so, she would think of nothing else. As it was happening she really didn’t care. However, once Wood Mountain became helpless and deranged, and once he called out and then was still, she did care. She cared very much. She held his head against her heart, still wearing the orange mittens that Millie had given her. From the branches, all through the woods, snow dropped in clumps. Beneath the snow, melting runnels of water murmured. A woodpecker drummed into a tree so hard the wood rang like a bell. Their breathing slowed until they were breathing in perfect time. It seemed like maybe they were thinking one thought, too, but she didn’t want to test that out, and so she didn’t speak. They restored their clothing to its old arrangement and stayed on the path. They were purified. That’s how they felt. Their desire was gone for now and they felt like children. She laughed at nothing and threatened to wash his face with snow for him, and he said to do it, so she took a handful but only touched his cheeks and fed him snow when he opened his mouth. The taste of the snow was eternal to Wood Mountain. He fed the snow to Pixie and it melted on her tongue. Her eyeglasses fogged. She was beginning to come down. She was beginning to touch the earth. But it was only when they got within sight of the cabin that she felt her chest squeeze shut. She could hardly catch her breath. She said goodbye to him and wouldn’t let him in the door.
Checks
There was a problem. Millie was running out of patterns. She went to the mission bundles with Grace, but found only florals. Millie detested flowers on fabric.
“Picky,” said Grace.
“I know what I like to wear.”
“How about this?”
Grace held up a circle skirt with broken lines, but they were broken in a random sort of way that made Millie faintly ill when Grace whirled it around with an inviting smile.
“It’s got your name on it, Checks.”
“I don’t like it.”
“Picky!”
Millie was having that feeling that came over her when she was around too many old things—a kind of panic. She’d diagnosed herself with several forms of claustrophobia. Also, she was pretty sure she could not testify in Washington, not in any clothing she possessed.
“Let’s get out of here.”
“Wait!”
Grace held up a black and yellow checked shirt, the perfect size for her. It had a pointed collar, three-quarter sleeves, and darts. Then, while Millie was admiring the shirt, Grace reached deep into a pile and teased out a remarkable garment. It was a long heavy dress made of six different fabrics, and each of the fabrics was a different geometric pattern. The colors were the same—blue, green, gold—but each combination differed in an intricate way. It was made of twill and the patterns were woven into, not stamped onto, the fabric. Millie held her arms out. Her heart swelled. She paid the nun for the blouse and the dress, then walked out to the entryway, where she sat looking at each panel of the print. Each was intricate and mysterious as the manifold signs on Persian rugs. When she stared at the patterns they took her inward and down, beyond the store and the town, into the foundations of meaning, and then beyond meaning, into a place where the structure of the world had nothing to do with the human mind and nothing to do with the patterns on a dress. A place simple, savage, ineffable, and exquisite. It was the place she went to every night.
The Lamanites
“Their hatred was fixed, and they were led by their evil nature that they became wild and ferocious, and a blood-thirsty people, full of idolatry and filthiness, feeding upon beasts of prey, dwelling in tents, and wandering about in the wilderness with a short skin girdle about their loins.”
“What do you think, Rosey?” said Thomas. “It’s us.”
He read the description again.
“No,” said Rose, “that’s more like Eddy Mink.”
Thomas closed The Book of Mormon and went back to studying the text of the bill. He had also written to Joe Garry, president of the National Congress of American Indians, for more information about Watkins.
“The fact of it is,” Garry had replied, “Watkins has no sense of humor.”
That was even more frightening than the Mormon bible.
Watkins had also refused to appropriate sufficient money to relieve the Navajo, who were in a desperate situation down there in the desert. Watkins said that the Navajo “were used to poverty.” But his remark was widely circulated and perhaps he felt the sting. Thomas decided to hit the economic plight hard. It seemed that Watkins wanted Indians both to disappear and to love him for making them disappear. And now that Thomas had read as much of The Book of Mormon as he could stay awake for, he understood why this man was completely dismissive of treaty law. In Watkins’s religion, the Mormon people had been divinely gifted all of the land they wanted. Indians weren’t white and delightsome, but cursed with dark skin, so they had no right to live on the land. That they had signed legal treaties with the highest governmental bodies in the United States was also nothing to Watkins. Legality was second to personal revelation. Everything was second to personal revelation. And Joseph Smith’s personal revelation, all written down in The Book of Mormon, was that his people alone were the best and should possess the earth.
“Who would ever believe that cockeyed story about the peep stone, the vision in the bottom of the hat, the golden tablets? This whole book was an excuse to get rid of Indians,” said Thomas.
Rose heard him and started to laugh.
“All the stories are crazy, if you think about it,” she said.
Which got Thomas thinking. What religious book was any better? The Holy Bible, full of power and poetry, was also filled with tall tales. Thomas had found them enthralling, but in the end they were all just stories, less important than the Sky Woman story, the manidoog at creation, the Nanabozho stories. To them all, especially the humorless book Elnath and Vernon had left, Thomas preferred their supernatural figure Nanabozho, who fooled ducks, got angry at his own butt and burnt it off, created a shit mountain to climb down when stuck high in a tree, had a wolf for his nephew, and no conscience at any time, who painted the kingfisher lovely colors and by trickery fed his children when they starved, who threw his penis over his shoulder and his balls to the west, who changed himself to a stump and made his penis look like a branch where the kingfisher perched, who killed a god by shooting its shadow, and created everything useful and much that was essential, like laughter.
The Lord’s Plan
It was gett
ing so Norbert stopped pretending that they were going to do anything else. He didn’t warm her up. No candy for Betty. No love talk, no pretense. They didn’t go to the soda fountain or for a scenic drive or to a movie on the days it changed and they didn’t even listen to the radio once he stopped the car. He just got down to business. And this was not all right with Betty, although she was fine about jumping into the backseat with him. One night, she managed to slow him down, it was going well, and in fact she was becoming very hot and happy, when the car door opened and Norbert shot right out. He had been squeezed up against the door, his head pressed to the window as he labored away above. The door had unfortunately opened as he withdrew from her and thrust himself up between her breasts. He skidded off her body and flailed his way belly down onto the slick road. Betty thought the latch had popped by itself until someone outside said, “Could I have a minute of your time to tell you about the Lord’s plan for your soul?”
The Night Watchman Page 30