The Guard House and Other Stories

by Ryan Christiansen

never made it past rookie league and didn’t return to the reservation, because in Fort Berthold, baseball careers still simmered on the hot stove. Pete couldn’t stand to be reminded about what could have been. Today that’s all he could think about.

  The park ranger at the entrance station smiled at Pete as he passed in his pickup. She grew somber when she saw that he had his ball cap pulled low over his face and that his bat lay across his lap. When he drove away toward the marina, she radioed the crew. “Pete’s back,” she said, “but leave him alone. He’s got his bat with him.”

  Past a cable-and-post barricade, Pete stood alone where the road ended. It fell sharply to Lake Sakakawea, where whitecaps beat the opening to Garrison Bay. Soil tumbled and slid into the water.

  A blacktail prairie dog stood on his hind legs nearby. He held his nose in the air and kept his eyes on Pete who held his wooden bat in one hand and a rock in the other. The stone fit well into Pete’s hand and he pretended to wrap his index and middle fingers across a horseshoe of seams. He remembered how his great-grandfather Wally had showed him to throw a fastball.

  “Put your fingers on top of the stitches,” Wally had said, “and your thumb on the bottom, like this.” Pete remembered the old man’s face had fallen slack from his cheekbones. Skin beneath his chin flapped as he spoke and he wore an old Fort Berthold ball cap over long, gray locks. “No, don’t choke the ball,” he said, grabbing Pete’s wrist and pulling the ball away from Pete’s palm. “When you release the ball,” he said, “use your fingers to pull down. Use your thumb to push forward.”

  Pete held his bat out and pointed, but only imagined that he knew where his great-grandfather had lived. He threw the rock into the air and said, “Arikara.”

  He swung, but felt distracted. Wally had told him stories about how his people had been led out of the ground only to be chased by a monster with horns. The monster, named Cut-Nose, rose out from a lake. He led buffalo to pursue and kill. His people had escaped with help from other animals.

  The rock hit the ground. He swatted the air and butterflies flew in off the lake. They tumbled through the breeze like Post-it Notes.

  Pete picked up the rock. He wrapped it for a fastball, but heard his great-grandfather Skip admonish, “You can’t throw only fastballs,” he said and grabbed Pete’s wrist. He pushed the ball back into Pete’s hand so that it rested against skin between thumb and index finger. “Choke the ball once in a while,” Skip said. “You need a change-up. Slow it down.”

  Pete tried to remember where Skip had lived before the flood. He threw the rock into the air, but higher this time and said, “Mandan.”

  Pete recalled that Skip believed that suffering makes men stronger. During his last days as a boy, he’d fasted, and then sluggish with hunger he abided bone needles through his chest. They hung him by leather straps from the roof of the medicine lodge. In this way, Skip became a man. The visions he experienced lived inside him for the rest of his life. Pete harbored no such visions.

  The rock struck the ground. Butterflies dropped on the prairie dog town like snowflakes in May.

  Pete knelt to the dirt and fit the rock into his palm. He turned his grip. Once again, his great-grandfather spoke, but this time it was Bernie, the fat one with puffy cheeks. He remembered Bernie had a curveball.

  “Put your fingers parallel to the seams,” he said as he held Pete’s wrist and grabbed his elbow. “Bring your arm forward,” he said, but his belly got in the way. “Snap the ball off your finger,” he said, “and spin the ball toward the plate.”

  Pete looked across the lake, but he felt dumbfounded to know where Bernie had lived. He stood up and threw the stone into the air. “Hidatsa,” he said.

  Bernie had been a smoker. He grew tobacco in a backyard garden. Pete remembered helping the old man to harvest the plants, and when Pete had rubbed his eyes, the tobacco stung. “Don’t steal any of my tobacco,” Bernie had said and then laughed through a liquid cough. “If you do,” Bernie said, “your hair will fall out.”

  The rock tumbled over the edge into the lake. Strike three. So much of Pete’s world now lay beneath water held back by the dam.

  A yellow-chested bird landed on a post nearby. He had a v-shaped, black necklace. His mouth hung open and Pete listened for his words, but the bird caught a butterfly in his beak.

  Extra innings. Pete pulled a baseball from his pocket and ran his thumb over scuffmarks, dirt, and loose threads. My great-grandfather’s ball, he thought, but it wasn’t Wally’s, Skip’s, or Bernie’s.

  “Sioux,” he said. He saw a great-grandfather holding his wrist again, but this time on the reservation at Fort Totten. His mother stood at a doorway chatting with a great-grandmother he’d never met while his great-grandfather, the furtive one, showed him the knuckleball.

  “Dig your fingertips into the seams,” his great-grandfather had said, “and use a stiff wrist. When you throw that ball it will corkscrew through the air.”

  Butterflies blossomed across Pete’s bat as he pulled for a full swing. He met the ball chest-high and launched it across the bay. The baseball struck an open coal vein and ignited fuel.

  Butterflies, like treaties, left smoke trails from their burning paper wings.

  A Fish Story

  I was beginning to have my doubts about Old Samuel. For one thing, he wasn’t that old, maybe middle-fifties. For another, he kept polishing that stupid tattoo of his with sunscreen. “Dog Den” it said. When I asked him about it he only said, “Over there,” and pointed east across Lake Sakakawea. I saw nothing except a few Black Angus snuffing grass on the shore.

  “Old Samuel is the best,” they’d said back at the bar in Garrison, but nobody knew how to get in touch with him. “Wait for him here,” said the barmaid as she lifted my pilsner from the tap. She let the head swirl over the sides and threw down two napkins for a coaster.

  “Keep the change.”

  While swallowing my second glass of Miller Lite, Old Samuel sat down at the bar next to me and stared straight ahead. Out of the corner of my eye, I noticed he had long, black hair in a braid beneath a Cleveland Indians ball cap. Fishing lures stuck through the bill like piercings.

  Now sitting across from me in his old Alumacraft on the lake, he’s telling me how to fish, which is good, but I expected more. He promised the big one.

  “Because this lake is on a river, you want to use jigs that are heavy so that they stay on the bottom,” he said. He held up what looked like an eyeball with a hook. He threaded a pumpkinseed tube over the barb. “This plastic bait will keep the minnow in place,” he said and then turned the hook through a minnow. He lifted a tray from his tackle box. “I’ve got black and brown and purple tubes, too, if you prefer,” he said and smiled. Chewing tobacco stuck to his teeth. “I’ve got leeches and night crawlers,” he said. “Whatever it takes.”

  I didn’t smile back. Already we’d tried spoons, bottom-bouncers, and crank baits with no success. I looked across the bay at the boats in the marina and I wished that I’d tried waterskiing instead. The ranger at the park had promised good fishing and recommended Old Samuel, but I sat here now sizzling in his boat, because he insisted I couldn’t wear sunscreen. “The fish will smell it on your bait,” he said and so I sat beneath a floppy sombrero and felt stupid. I stretched out a tight, sunburnt arm to take the rod.

  “No casting now,” he said. “Just put the reel in freespool.”

  I raised the bale and let the jig sink down.

  “When it hits the bottom you should feel a thunk,” he said. “That’s good, because you want to kick up silt with the jig to attract walleyes.”

  I felt the jig come to a rest and so I flipped the bale to stop the line. I figured they must be at the bottom, because we’d tried everything else.

  “We’re in the flats downstream from the old river bend,” he said as if he knew what was beneath. All day long he proclaimed to know about current breaks and subtle drop-offs and about the edges where hard and soft bottoms meet,
but I had my doubts.

  “We’ll drift with the current,” he said, “and while we do that, work the jig up and down. You’ll feel the walleye strike when the jig falls, or when you rip it off the bottom.”

  Up-and-down I turned my wrist to raise the rod and let it fall. I was bored, but I’d eaten all of my snacks. I tried not to look west into the sun.

  Old Samuel fixed the sleeves on his t-shirt to stay rolled up. His “Dog Den” tattoo coiled over reddish-brown skin on his bicep.

  “Tell me more about Dog Den,” I said. “What’s the story behind it?” I was feeling ornery.

  Old Samuel frowned. He let his jigs rise and thud.

  “Sure,” he said, finally, “but only because you haven’t caught a fish.” He spit tobacco juice into the water and slouched in his chair.

  “Dog Den is a butte, about as close as you can get to a mountain around here,” he said and juggled both rods into one hand. “It’s over there,” he pointed, “east about 40 miles. The nearest town is Butte. Originally, that town was Dog Den, the name my people gave to those hills. It’s one of the highest points in the state,” he said and narrowed his eyes. “You can see a long way.” He spit more tobacco into the lake.

  “But why is it called Dog Den?” I asked and kept jigging.

  “A lot of wolves and prairie dogs used to live there,” he said, “and for my people, Dog Den is