The Night Watchman

  Greater Joy

  “You forgot to lock your heart,” said Elnath.

  “No, I didn’t forget,” said Vernon.

  “Then what happened?”

  “Her eyes picked the lock.”

  They were standing side by side in the light, holding their elbows. There was no way they could go out into this cold, and so they had each feigned illness and after breakfast climbed the stairs back to their room. Now they stared, blinking, out the one small rectangle of window, across miles of fresh snow. The white glare jolted them even in the dim room.

  “She put her temptations before you,” said Elnath.

  “It wasn’t that, no. I can’t say she meant to.”

  “But she did,” said Elnath.

  Vernon did not speak.

  “What I want to know is whether you are quitting the sin.”

  “Quit. Oh, I’m quit.”

  “All right then.”

  “So we call and they come get us?” said Vernon, after a few moments, stinging with shame, struggling with hope. “We are quits, you and me, also?”

  “I think we should tough this out,” said Elnath.

  His voice was hateful, thought Vernon.

  “It’s too damn cold. I don’t see where it’s wrote that we should have to die.”

  “I don’t see where it isn’t.”

  Vernon opened and shut his mouth. They stood at attention, their shoulders stiff, arms locked across their chests. What they wanted to do was haul off and fight.

  Later, they hitched a ride into town with Milda. She went to the grocery store. They found a way to visit LaBatte. Vernon recalled the reasons they were sent. How the Indians were teachable, meek, open in their hearts, how they were so gentle. Willing to please, like submissive children. But not LaBatte. He’d already backslid, wasn’t willing to get baptized, or even let them in the door, and as he was their only possibility and the cold was flaying them alive, they decided to start walking back to Milda’s car. Without warning Elnath changed direction. He said that he was going to the next town. Vernon knew it was death to follow him, but had no choice about it. The wind went through his overcoat like it was paper. His hands went numb. His face burned. He stumbled because his feet were blocks of wood. When Louis Pipestone stopped on the road and picked them up, when he told them he could drop them in Grand Forks, the tears of cold in their eyes turned to heat. There was a church member in Grand Forks who would take them in. They could ask Milda to send their few possessions. As they thawed out, blood returning in surges, they prayed to bear the intolerable fire of life, and knew they had been called to a greater joy.

  The Owls

  As Barnes dampened his pillow, Louis Pipestone was driving Juggie’s car down to the Cities in order to pick up the stragglers. That’s what he called them because he couldn’t rid himself of the guilt. Mile after mile, he fought it. Through Grand Forks, through Fargo, through Fergus Falls, and onward. He came through Royalton, St. Cloud, and still it was there. Louis knew that if he’d been with the crew in Washington, things would have been different. Thomas would not have collapsed like that. On the stopover in the Cities, Louis would have gone out to fetch the cigars. He was sure that somehow he would have saved Thomas. Only when he reached the city, and with great difficulty found the hospital, only when he’d been allowed into Thomas’s presence during visiting hours, did Louis feel some relief.

  Thomas was still in the hospital bed. But he was sitting up and when he saw Louis, his face came to life with that big Thomas grin, the glint of tooth gold.

  “Your horses must have got out again!”

  “I’m down here to corral you,” said Louis.

  “Patrice said you’re bringing me back in high style.”

  “Rolling the red carpet all the way to Juggie’s automobile. Then you ride up front, in the seat of honor.”

  “You could have brought my car.”

  “Then Wade couldn’t hot-rod it all around the back roads, like he’s been doing.”

  “More like Sharlo, she’s the driver.”

  “Okay then, Sharlo. Picking up her girlfriends along with the big bag of flour I saw her wrestling into the trunk the other day.”

  “That’s my girl.”

  Millie and Patrice came into the room with the nurse who was filling out the discharge papers. Louis went back down to guard the car.

  On the way home, as they were driving through snowed-over fields, incandescent in full sun, Thomas tried to tell Louis about what had happened in the train station when he and Moses went to buy cigars.

  “I didn’t feel it when I hit the floor, but then I looked up and saw the owls. There was a flock of them, snowy owls, flying over me in a wave. I know LaBatte would say they wanted to kill me, but I know they had come to keep me safe.”

  “That’s a pretty good story,” said Louis. “We should call you Owl Man now.”

  “I wouldn’t mind it,” said Thomas. “But I’m just a lowly muskrat.”

  “Speaking of LaBatte and owls, he was taking your night shifts?”

  “He still is, far as I know.”

  “What I heard is he quit because an owl kept trying to get in.”

  “That’s my owl. He must live around there, keeps attacking himself in the window. Must think this other window owl is poaching in his territory.”

  “Well, he sent LaBatte flying. Says he wouldn’t go back for anything.”

  “Maybe it was Roderick, too.”

  “Old Roderick? From school?”

  “He comes around. Not in a bad way. But he puts the fear of god in LaBatte.”

  “So that’s why he’s all holy. Juggie says LaBatte’s at Mass every single day now, always taking communion. He’s trying to get a job in maintenance, working on the church road and shoveling snow up there.”

  “Gee, I’ll miss LaBatte coming around with his dire predictions.”

  “Don’t worry,” said Louis, “you’ll see him around, and he’ll always have a dire prediction for you.”

  “I miss my little owl,” said Thomas. “The one I had as a pet. He nested in the barn bones of the roof.”

  Louis glanced sharply over at him.

  “The barn poles,” said Thomas. For a while he was silent. “Rafters,” he said in a low voice.

  The Bear Skull in the Tree Was Painted Red and Faced East

  Wood Mountain walked past the bear skull and knew it was Zhaanat’s way of saying thank you. Patrice wasn’t home yet, and he wanted to visit Archille. As he neared the house, he heard them crying inside, or was it laughing, or was it both? He called out and then entered. Vera and Zhaanat were watching Archille stand, fall, pull himself up, sway, and balance for a moment again on the bearskin rug. Every time he tried to take a step, he plopped down and a laugh gurgled out. When he saw Wood Mountain, he threw out his arms and gave a baby roar of love. Vera, blurred and muted, stared at Wood Mountain when she saw the baby’s reaction.

  “Archille,” said Wood Mountain, scooping him up, eyes only for him. “Archille, my boy.”

  Zhaanat said to Vera, “See, what I told you.”

  Vera got up and put water on the stove to boil.

  “His name is Thomas,” she said in Wood Mountain’s direction.

  Wood Mountain did not acknowledge her, kept playing his little games with the baby. Vera brought tea over to Wood Mountain and scooped up the baby to play with her on the bed in the corner. The baby fought his way past her arms to try to get back to Wood Mountain. As the baby barreled across the rug, Vera’s mouth twitched. The baby’s intense determination was comical, but it was not that simple.

  “I told you,” said Zhaanat again.

  “I see now,” said Vera. “He loves the man more than he loves me.”

  “Or me,” said Zhaanat. She didn’t mind.

  “It will change,” said Wood Mountain, holding him. “Pretty soon he won’t remember you were gone at all.”

  In his heart, he did not believe what he was saying.

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nbsp; He brought out a piece of bacon for Archille to exercise his first teeth on. The baby gnawed the fat with the relish of a wolf pup. Again, Vera laughed. It was not a normal laugh. There was a sob in the laugh, and it trailed into a dark rasp. Wood Mountain looked over at her and noticed that a newly whitening scar divided one eyebrow. Another ran across her chin. Her hair was chopped short, like a woman in fresh mourning. Her fingers had trembled when she handed him the cup. When he accepted the cup, he felt a spark of lightning. In spite of this damage, he found her compelling. They used to say “those Paranteau beauties,” meaning Vera and Pixie.

  “You named him Thomas, for your uncle,” he said.

  She nodded and warmed her palms at the stove.

  “You named him Archille, for your father,” she answered after a while.

  Wood Mountain came to visit day after day. Once Patrice returned and went back to her job, he usually came during the times she was at work. Each time he visited, he noticed something about Vera. One earlobe was ragged, as though it had been bitten. One finger was crooked, as though it had been broken. One eye sometimes looked sideways, as though it had been knocked that way. One tooth was missing, but you couldn’t see it unless she laughed with her whole body. And she did laugh. That finally happened. The same tooth was missing from Wood Mountain’s jaw. All of the places that she was hurt, he was also hurt. As the days passed her features healed and she went outside more and more, tramped along the traplines, gathered reeds for mats, made baskets to sell like her mother did, sewed small garments for Thomas Archille. Or was it the other way around? Sometimes even Vera called him Archille now.

  Patrice came home one day, saw them together, and recognized it. She saw Wood Mountain bend over her sister, who was holding Archille. The baby sneezed and they marveled together. It was just a sneeze. She couldn’t understand it, but as they doted over Archille together, her sensations of confusion and desire and possible love sank away. Her feelings became muddy and heavy. At last, she didn’t recognize the feelings at all. One day she happened to come home while Wood Mountain was leaving the house. He came down the road just as Doris was dropping her off. He didn’t have a horse so he was always walking now. He stopped when he saw her coming toward him.

  “Patrice,” he said, not meeting her eyes. “I gotta talk to you.”

  “I know all about it,” she said.

  He lifted his gaze to hers and she did not look away.

  “I’m in love with both of you.” He tried that out.

  “No you’re not,” she said. But she wasn’t angry. Or if she was, it was just an instinct that she had no time for. The feelings were like icy muck. She had to drop them.

  “You don’t sound mad.” He was relieved. He rubbed his eyebrow. “I just don’t want you to think . . .”

  “It was good,” she said. “It was good out there.” She pursed her lips and glanced toward the tangle of trees where they had made love. An arrow thin as a reed shot through her. “But when I was walking back to the house it didn’t seem right.”

  “It didn’t?” His voice was eager.

  “When I looked at the house, I just knew she’d be back. I thought of how you love Archille. Maybe I knew that when you saw Vera, her ways would be your ways with the baby.”

  “Yes. Her ways are my ways.”

  He seemed satisfied and she felt lighter, like maybe she had dropped the heavy strangeness and could go on. They walked back into the house together and Vera looked up at them when they entered. She was finishing off a basket. Wood Mountain made the split ash frames and Vera wove red whips of fresh-cut willow in and out. The scent of the willow was sharp and secret. To move past her own feelings was the only way, thought Patrice. She would embrace anyone and anything that could help put together Vera’s demolished heart.

  The Duplicator Spirits

  Millie worked late, preparing a master of the chairman’s report, which would be distributed to the tribe. She was going against her principles by typing for a man. But in this instance, she’d interviewed Thomas and added her own details about the trip to Washington, so she felt it was reportorial. It was a cold spring night and in an hour Juggie would come and fetch her. When the master was finished, she immediately fixed the first page onto the drum of the spirit duplicator and began turning the crank.

  This time, along with each duplicate, a spirit came off the press. In 1892, these people had signed the first Turtle Mountain census. Mikwan, Kasinicut, Wazhashk, Awanikwe, Kakigido-asin, Kananatowakachin, Anakwadok, Omakakiins, Mashkiigokwe, Swampy Woman, Kissna, Cold, Ice, Dressed in Stone, Foggy Day Woman, Speaking Stone, Mirage, Cloud, Little Frog, Yellow Day, Thunder. For some reason, tonight they traveled down the star road to wander around their old homeland, before flooding back into the other existence. They kept flying off the duplicator. Coming Voice, Stops the Day, Cross Lightning, Skinner, Hole in the Sky, Between the Sky, Lying Down Grass, Center of the Sky, Rabbit, Prairie Chicken, Day Light, and Master of the White Man. They were the original people who mingled with the Michifs who came down from Canada and over from Pembina, French-Cree-Chippewas who swirled across the earth, first hunting buffalo. All were cast together onto allotments, to break apart the earth, to learn the value of a dollar, and then how to make one dollar into many dollars and cultivate the dollars into a way of life.

  Millie didn’t know about it because to tell the truth she was a little tipsy on the smell of duplicating fluid. She thought there might be something strange going on, because she kept hearing voices as she turned the crank. Surprised whees and awkward thumps, as if children were jumping on the floor. And the room filled with whispers. Perhaps the wind was up outside. When Juggie appeared, Millie quickly shut down the duplicator and collected the pages without collating them. Outside, the fresh cold air made her head pound so badly she squeezed her temples with her bare icy hands. Once she was in the warm car, her headache went away. But over the growl of the motor she thought she heard singing and drumming. It was even louder at the Pipestone ranch as they walked toward the house.

  “Do you hear it too?” she asked Juggie.

  They stopped and drew their coats tight around them. Juggie pointed at the sky. Millie looked up into the moving atmosphere. The lights were green and pink, bleeding radiance and dancing flames. She could hear a faint crackling, though no more singing and drumming.

  “They’re looking after us,” said Juggie. “Those dancing spirits. I’m frozen. Going in.”

  Millie stayed outside watching until cold pinched her feet and she got a crick in her neck. She’d had that funny feeling about the duplicator, but thought that if the northern lights had anything to do with it they would have chosen an electrostatic copier, as the lights were themselves electrical impulses born of powerful conflicting charges between the sun and the magnetic poles of the earth. What Juggie said, “They’re looking after us,” echoed what Zhaanat had said about these lights being the spirits of the dead, joyous, free, benevolent. Even cold to the bone, Millie watched them for a while longer, deciding one explanation did not rule out the other, that charged electrons could be spirits, that nothing ruled out anything else, that mathematics was a rigorous form of madness, that she would go out on a regular date with Barnes, that she had to because he’d asked her with an equation, and who could say no to that?

  À Ta Santé

  Patrice still had perfect reading-distance vision, and her speed and precision with setting the jewels for drilling had returned. She could feel herself working with the utmost efficiency, the way she did when she was in a rage. But she wasn’t angry. She was out to make money. Her shoulders began to ache and her fingers were going stiff by the time lunch rolled around. She flexed and rubbed her hands. She still had her dented syrup pail.

  Betty Pye strolled into the lunchroom.

  “Now you’ve been to Washington, D.C., are you too good to talk to me?”

  “Yes,” said Patrice. “Have a chair.”

  Betty plumped down next to her and pulled
a boiled egg out of her pocket. She shelled it in a greedy motion and ate it in two bites. Out came a boogid. Across from her, Valentine rolled her eyes. Out came another fart from Betty, just for emphasis.

  “Excuse me please,” she said in a fake prissy voice. “Eggs always make me flatulate.”

  She patted the shining lumps of hair perched over her ears. Smoothed the rickrack bodice of her flowery green dress.

  “You fart instantly,” said Valentine, “after eating eggs. I don’t believe it.”

  Betty snapped her fingers. “Like that.”

  Patrice looked into her lunch pail like it would tell her fortune. She sighed. A carrot and a boiled potato. Maybe a little salt would help. She asked Betty, who handed some over in a twist of paper as she bolted down another egg.

  “How come you eat them if they make you boogid so bad?” asked Curly Jay.

  “What’s a little boogid?” said Betty. “I like eggs. Did you sign the petition?”

  “I signed it.”

  “I think Patrice should present it.”

  “Valentine would be better,” said Patrice. “Or Doris Lauder.”

  “Doris won’t do it,” said Valentine. “She doesn’t want . . . you know what she doesn’t want.”

  “Grasshopper juice,” said Betty.

  Patrice choked. How many times had grasshoppers squirted their brown juice into her hands? The thought of Vold. She put the lid back on her lunch pail.

  “I’ll do it,” said Valentine. “I want my coffee break. By the time I get off work I can hardly move my hands.”

  “It was supposed to be temporary and we were supposed to get it back,” said Betty. She farted again and raised her finger. “You may quote that.”

  After work, as she rode in the backseat through the drizzly spring rain, Patrice thought about the money. More was called for. She was working extra hard because she planned on asking for a raise. The idea that Vera would take her job now seemed absurd—Vera was not in any shape to work in the outside world, and she wouldn’t leave her baby. Patrice was now supporting four at home instead of two. But, a surprise. Wood Mountain had taken a job driving school buses. It was a good job, a federal job. And along with the understanding that he and Patrice had reached, the job cleared the way for him to marry Vera. Not only that, but they planned to work on the cabin behind the house. They were constantly talking about how they would fix it up during the summer. Once they moved into the cabin, Patrice would only be responsible for Pokey and her mother—but there again something unexpected had developed. Millie had returned to the university and had written that she’d changed her program. She had decided to become an anthropologist, and wanted to study with Zhaanat. Millie was applying for money to pay her informant.