The Night Watchman

by Louise Erdrich

  Thomas

  As Thomas walked among the tall ornate iron pillars with Moses, he realized that for some time he hadn’t felt right. Feeling odd had sneaked up on him. Oh, he knew that he wasn’t mentally right. Who could be, after all of this? But physically, now, too. He leaned against a pillar, catching his breath. Strength was draining from his legs. A sharp pain was sneaking up the right side of his face. Moses turned, beckoning him along. Thomas kept going, hoping he could walk it off.

  Juggie

  “Oh, let them go find their stinking cigars,” she laughed. “We’ve got a good hour here, girls. Let’s find coffee and test the city doughnuts. Ambe!”

  Thomas

  The patterned tiles of the stone floor rose. He was on all fours, then diving down, swimming through blackest blackness. He had a sense of how tiny he was. And the world, monstrous space, it swelled, greater, greater, all space and water. He knew back there, somewhere up there and all around, swirls of motion. Shouts and calls. He must ignore everything and keep swimming down, and down, even though this blackness was becoming thick and resistant. And he could barely keep moving. He must find a mote of strength, then another even smaller mote, to keep pulling toward the bottom of this blackness. He had to reach the bottom before he could come up. That was the muskrat’s task.

  “Aandi?” he said, waking. “Where am I?”

  “You are in the hospital. You had a stroke.”

  Confronting him with yellow wolf eyes was a tall white nurse, hair a tufted mane of gray. He would not have been surprised to see pointed ears on either side of her starched and blazing white cap.

  He asked, “Have you finished measuring the earth?”

  He was a fleck of dust that she might shake off her tail. Her teeth were long and stained. He saw that indeed the wolf had finished measuring and his heart tightened in his chest.

  If

  The first layer of blanket was washed every day. The next layer every week. The top layer was ornately beaded indigo trade wool. The beaded white vine was the trail of life. Maple leaves, multicolored roses, and Zhaanat’s favorite shapes branched off the vine. Wood Mountain laid Archille on the cradle board and packed cattail fluff all around the baby’s bottom and skinny thighs. Once Archille was all trussed up in his cradle board, he grew calm and sleepy. Wood Mountain carried him over to Pokey’s bed and put him down. Frustrating because he and the baby were alone in the house. This was the perfect time. The stove was throwing heat. Zhaanat had gone out to pick cedar. If Patrice were only here, he would ask her the same thing, again. Marry me. He couldn’t live this way. She’d say yes this time, she would, yes? There was even a pot of boiled tea. He heard steps outside, couldn’t see who it was. Someone was talking. Running. His heart thumped like he was going into the ring.

  A woman was at the door. Wood Mountain was breathing fast, a little dizzy, and his mouth dropped open. He didn’t know what to say at all. This was not Patrice. She was a stranger, or at least he thought so at first. Her eyes were lost in deep hollows and her face was so thin that her teeth looked huge. She was wearing a brown canvas jacket, overalls, and a brown knitted hat. He gaped at her when she said, “What are you doing here, Wood Mountain?”

  He shook his head.

  “Don’t you remember me? It’s Vera.”

  A gray-bearded man walked in behind her, ducking his head, a shy stunned look on his face. It was dark inside and he blinked as his eyes adjusted.

  “I won’t be staying for long,” he said. “My dog’s in the car.”

  Vera gave him a long look. Then she reached up, on tiptoe, and brought down the family’s rifle. She tried to give it to him, but he wouldn’t take it.

  “Please,” she said. Her face was strained. There were tears in her eyes. The man smiled, his teeth faintly glinting through his beard, his eyes unhappy. He put his hands up and said the family would need the rifle. Then he turned and went out the door.

  Archille made a tiny sound and Vera’s eyes went wide, staring into Wood Mountain’s eyes, and he knew that she was putting together him, the baby, her sister, her mother, all possibilities. He knew that she didn’t think that this was her baby. The crazy thought that he could walk out with Archille and disappear jolted through his brain. He picked up Archille in the cradle board, proud of its beauty and in love with the tender little sleeping face. Archille was wearing a small fur hood.

  “He’s yours,” he said to Vera, but he didn’t look at her, just at Archille.

  She collapsed like snow. By the time he got her back up and put the baby in her arms, Zhaanat was home and the two were clutching each other with the baby between them. Wood Mountain walked outside and went over to Daisy Chain. His legs were shaking and his arms so weak he couldn’t pull himself onto her back, so he took her halter and led her down the road. Somehow he hadn’t imagined what would happen . . . if. If. Now if had happened and he couldn’t imagine not belonging to Archille.

  Tosca

  It was a case of mutual exasperation, thank god. During an episode of agonized light petting she sat up and said, “Take me home.” Which Barnes gladly did. As she got out of the car she said, “Goodbye, and I mean that.” Barnes leaned out of the car as she walked past the snowy hulks of cars in her father’s yard.

  “Do you mean goodbye as in goodbye for good?” he called.

  The cutting breeze stung his cheeks and forehead. It was March, goddammit! He’d never known the sort of cold they had way up here.

  She turned around and by the look on her face she did mean that. He sank back into the car, behind the wheel, relieved as all hell.

  He drove straight past the gym. Was he going to work out on a Saturday night? No. He was going back to his room in a state of mysterious elation. Plus dejection. A guy could have feelings, and contradictory ones. Why not? He’d just received another present from his uncle. It was an opera recording. Although Barnes did not suppose opera was considered a manly taste, he secretly thought the recording was pretty good. In fact, it made him weep. Luxuriantly weep. He played it only when he was alone. After weeping, he often fell into the sweetest dreams.

  The Salisbury

  Millie had been the one to call an ambulance and to insist that Thomas be taken to the University of Minnesota Hospital. He’d been admitted right away, and now he was bundled up in a hospital bed, high on a quiet floor. As a relative, Patrice was the only one allowed into the room. She sat beside the bed on a metal chair and rested her eyes on his face. He was not fully unconscious, but he was more than just asleep. Although his expression was calm, gentle, untroubled, Patrice was flooded by fear. She could feel him hovering around outside his body.

  A nurse came in and took his vital signs. Patrice was afraid that the brusque woman had shooed away his spirit, but when quiet fell once more, she could feel the soul of Thomas swaying above the bed. Thomas was the closest thing she had to a father. She put her hand out, near his hand, and closed her eyes. After a time, she began to speak in her mother’s language and the words came that her mother used in the beginning of every ceremony. These words invoked the spirits of the winds that sat in the four directions and the spirits of the animals that came from the four directions. She invited all of these representatives and spirits to enter the room. Time fell away. The window glass vibrated as the wind rose. People passed in the hallway, talking.

  Later on, when the nurse assured Patrice that her uncle’s signs were stable, she left with Millie and walked to her rented room. It was cold inside the little studio, and Millie told Patrice to keep her coat on and sit in the chair. She drew up a stool, next to Patrice, and turned on a small heater. The Salisbury’s coil bloomed red and a comfortable heat flowed toward their legs.

  “This is a nice place,” said Patrice, nodding at the table. “What’s that?”

  “It’s a plug-in teakettle. There’s no kitchen sink, but I have a full bathroom and that hot plate. I bought some meat pies. My mom calls them shepherd’s pies and over by Michigan they call them mea
t pasties. There’s this little grocery where they make them fresh or you can buy them frozen. Also, I did buy two apples.”

  “We’ve got a meal,” Patrice said.

  Millie got up and made the tea, stirring the sugar in with a ceremonial flourish. She had dusted and straightened up her little room. Her pleasure in having Patrice here was so extreme that she found it hard to breathe. Something kept catching in her chest. She handed the teacup to Patrice and also gave her a saucer, matching.

  “This hits the spot,” said Patrice.

  Millie sat back down on the stool and blew across the surface of the tea.

  “You’re the first person who ever visited me.”

  “You probably haven’t been here long,” said Patrice.

  “Oh yes I have. I just never invited anybody. Not that anybody asked, but that’s how it worked out. You are the first.”

  “Well, I like it here,” said Patrice. “I like the bare walls.”

  “You like the bare walls?”

  It was hard for Millie to contain her elation. “I keep thinking I should put something up,” she said. “Pictures. But then I wonder, of what?”

  “People put too much stuff on their walls.”

  Millie took a sip of hot, sweet, tea. It was delicious. Soon she would fry up the pies and they would eat the apples. Then they would go back to the hospital and visit Thomas. And after that they would return and go to bed.

  “I’m sorry I have only the one bed.”

  “We can double up again. You’re a nice calm sleeper. Sometimes when it’s cold I get Pokey and Mom and the baby all of us under the blankets. Pokey kicks, but it’s the only way to stay alive.”

  “I leave the window open a crack because of the gas burner. Sometimes when I wake up in here I can see my breath.”

  “Sometimes our blanket is covered by frost from our breathing. We have to crack it off in the morning.”

  “Sometimes I wonder why I like it so much here alone. Why I’m so happy.”

  “You don’t have a boyfriend?”

  “Nobody appeals.”

  “Same for me. I’m thinking of Wood Mountain, though.”

  “He’s handsome, so I hear. I can never tell.”

  “Handsome even busted up.”

  “Well, you, you’re beautiful,” said Millie. Her voice thickened, clogging her throat. She opened her mouth to blurt out words of love. She hadn’t really known these words were in her, but all of a sudden they were forcing themselves out of a hidden aperture in her heart. She made a sound, but Patrice spoke first.

  “You know, I was thinking, Millie, after Vera comes home I was thinking I want to adopt you. I was thinking that you could be my sister.”

  “Sisters. Oh.”

  “Could you be my sister?”

  “Well, sure.”

  Millie knew enough from her interviews to understand that being adopted by a Chippewa was a special mark of friendship and honor. But for some reason what Patrice said didn’t make her feel all one way. She was both happy and for some reason disappointed. And her feelings ran on this way in the silence. Companionable though it was, she felt unsettled and was left wanting by what Patrice had offered. It was as if a marvelous design had flashed before her, and disintegrated, before she could grasp the figures it conveyed.

  The Lake, the Well, the Crickets Singing in the Grass

  Thomas was ranging far and skimming back and forth in time. He was out fishing on the lake when Pixie got the jump on him. She surprised him by swimming up to his boat. He helped her flop over the side into the bottom. She lay there, gasping. No, he was gasping. He was in a hospital, and he was surprised about still being in the boat. She’d never said why she swam out to him, but he saw the boys back on shore and even from a distance they looked ripping mad. Not long after, Bucky was hit by a twisted mouth. People said that only the most powerful medicine people could fling that twisted mouth. What happened to Bucky scared the other boys, who let out the truth of what happened in the car. So Thomas knew. If that young fool’s face had not sagged, Thomas would have taken him out and thrashed him like a field.

  Thomas drifted in the white bed for a while, then found himself back in the boat. Yet again. Pixie wasn’t with him this time. Over to the west, the sky was rolling up a storm. So far no lightning. He started up the little 75 putt putt and sped toward the place he’d parked his car. Too late—in a rush the storm was on him, whirling him from the boat and tossing him high. When he splashed down, shock drove the air from his lungs. Infinitely heavy, he sank. This time, like in the train station. He went down all the way to the bottom, but it wasn’t the bottom of the lake.

  No, he was back in the bottom of the well.

  The WPA had given out money for well-digging equipment on the reservation, and he and Biboon had set to work using a windlass and a pile of stones that they had been picking from their fields for years. They started in dry September, so they would be sure to dig the well deep enough to always have water. The government had also issued an iron well ring. They dug out the interior of the ring and mortared the stones together on top. As the ring sank deeper, they kept setting stones into the sides of the earth. Thomas took turns with Biboon, until together they had dug below the surface. Whoever was digging filled the bucket tied onto the windlass with dirt, and the top man cranked it up to the surface. The top man, who was now almost always Biboon, sent rocks down in the bucket to shore up the sides.

  Thomas was down past the heavy black topsoil and well into the clay. It was fine, thick stuff, extraordinarily dense. Biboon kept trying to get Julia to bring a wheelbarrow and make pots out of it. She wasn’t interested. By day four Thomas was sick of clay. He hated clay. Overnight it would sour in the well hole and when he dug, the taste coated his tongue. His nose was lined with fine clay slime. His lungs ached and his chest tightened. He began to wonder if some sort of gas was filling up the hole, which smelled increasingly of sulphur. However, here in the hospital bed, at night especially, he began to find a certain comfort in the well. The smell was intense, but maybe it was rubbing alcohol. And the earth was exuding warmth. It was almost cozy. He was not afraid, which surprised him, because he had been afraid while digging.

  In fact, to his shame, sometimes he panicked. Sometimes he could feel his throat closing, in fear. He’d had to stop himself from imagining the earth could give way beneath him and swallow him up.

  Sometimes he’d almost wanted to die rather than go down that hole again.

  Now, it didn’t matter. Nothing could harm him. In the boat, in the well, in the bed, he was safe because there was nothing he could do now and he didn’t have to go back to Washington. In spite of the dreadful possibility of losing his life or mind, this was a vacation. Or would have been if Rose was with him. If only they were lying on the fold-down backseats that made into a bed, together in the Nash, on their second honeymoon, and the crickets singing in the grass.

  The Ceiling

  The two women lay in bed talking up into the fuzzy gray air. After visiting Thomas, and finding him much better, they’d bought oatmeal. Each had eaten a bowl with butter, sugar, and cinnamon. Their stomachs were warm and full. The cold had diminished. How contented they were. Millie was talking about the classes she would take next semester. Patrice was listening to the titles of the classes.

  “What do I have to do to become a lawyer?” asked Patrice.

  Millie told her.

  Lulls fell between their words as they drifted. Sometimes it seemed like they were talking in their sleep. Finally, Patrice was sure of it, Millie was out, breathing slow and deep. She could drop off now too. As she was floating away, the darkness of sleep resolved into the face of Wood Mountain. Patrice came to consciousness with a jolt. After that half-awake moment in Washington, she’d managed not to think about him, and yet they had made love, and looked into each other’s eyes. They’d played at being children and washed each other’s faces with snow. She loved him. Didn’t she? How was she supposed to know?


  If Betty Pye had been beside her, she could have asked. But not Millie. She couldn’t ask Millie. So Patrice continued to ponder her feelings. She wasn’t, as she’d heard in a movie, swept away. But she didn’t want to live her life by movie examples. She wanted to know for certain who she was supposed to marry. Shouldn’t it be obvious? Perhaps, she thought, when Vera came home it would be obvious. She couldn’t leave until that happened. She was depending on it to happen. Yes, Vera would resolve everything.

  She drifted off again, then startled awake again. Her eyes flew open and she looked into the gray. Patrice had never allowed herself to imagine a situation where Vera did not return. She knew, as Zhaanat knew, that Vera was alive and that she would make it back to them. Somewhere below, a car passed, and the reflections of its headlights revolved across the ceiling, which Patrice saw now was not smooth and pale like the walls of Millie’s room, but cracked, peeling, and ominous with gloom. Oh, why did it have to look like that? It made her think she might be wrong. That Vera might not come home. Grief crept up.

  Damn ceiling, thought Patrice, all I need is for a big ugly spider to walk across you. I need to look at something twinkling with lights.

  She slipped out of bed and walked over to the window, half covered with surging ferns of frost. Another car turned a corner and the patterns leapt out with green and golden fire. Alive, they seemed to say to her, alive!