The Night Watchman(101)
“Do you have identification?”
Patrice handed over her pass from Senator Young and a small cardboard card that she’d been given when she started her job at the jewel bearing plant. There was a Defense Department seal on the card. The guard handed them back and gave her a tight, grim smile.
“Did you see anything?” he asked.
“I was sitting by her, the woman.”
“Let me take your information down.”
“She shot her gun into the air. She didn’t shoot any member of Congress.”
“Oh really? Good for her.” His voice was sarcastic.
Patrice walked outside, down the longest steps she’d ever seen, and looked around for her tribal members. There were squad cars, whooping sirens, swarms of police officers. Tourists and reporters were clustered along the streets. Patrice was directed away from the Capitol, and easily found Thomas and Juggie, waiting for her. Moses had gone back to the hotel. She hadn’t been frightened of the woman. In fact, although it was terrible, she knew, Patrice had been thrilled when the woman stood up and yelled. What made her do such a thing? What was Puerto Rico?
“Did you see it happen?” asked Juggie.
When Patrice couldn’t answer, she realized that here in Washington she’d seen people shot, a thing she’d never seen before, even on the reservation, a place considered savage by the rest of the country. She had no emotion. The men below her had crumpled, fallen, maybe cried out, and she hadn’t even reacted. It was the woman in the pale brown suit she’d watched, her falcon eyes, her fearless cries, how she held the gun with both hands, how she had tried to unfurl a piece of cloth, red, white and blue, to snap it out. And how awkward while holding the gun. How Patrice’s impulse had been to say “Here, let me help you.” To shake out the cloth for her. A flag, certainly a flag of her country. And why?
Everything was suddenly overwhelmingly massive: the Capitol, the monuments, the insides of the buildings, the stairs down, the blood—there had certainly been blood on the polished wood and cushions of the chairs. Patrice staggered a little and said she needed to go back to her room and curl up in the bed. She was trembling. Juggie held her elbow.
“I saw it all. Yes, I did,” said Patrice. “There was a woman.”
Termination of Federal Contracts and Promises Made with Certain Tribes of Indians
Joint Hearing
before the
Subcommittees of the
Committees on
Interior and Insular Affairs
Congress of the United States
Eighty-third Congress
second session
Part 12
turtle mountain indians, north dakota
march 2 and 3, 1954
Statement of Thomas Wazhashk,
Chairman of the Advisory Committee,
Turtle Mountain Band of Chippewa Indians,
North Dakota,
as well as statements by
other committee members,
jewel bearing plant employees,
a ghost, a PhD candidate,
and a stenographer.
Remarks by Senator Arthur V. Watkins
are direct quotes from
the Congressional Record.
They walked into a large room lined with honey-colored panels. An imposing semicircular bank of ornamented wood, divided into desklike seating, took up one end of the room. Muted light poured upon the structure through a vast window. A long rectangular table was placed in the forward center of the room, facing the great desk. They all shook hands with Senator Milton R. Young, mild and thoughtful, with a boxer’s granite chin. All the way from Fort Berthold, Martin Cross, friendly, craggy, astute, chatted with the senator. Thomas stayed by the table talking with them while the rest of the party sat down in the chairs directly behind the table. Moses and Juggie muttered to each other. Patrice tucked her hands in her lap. Beside her, Millie sat gazing straight ahead, in a trance of terror.
Millie was looking at a recessed panel behind the places where the senators would be seated. Perhaps it was a doorway. It was decorated with sharp vertical angles. Congruence is lucky, she thought. Lucky, lucky, lucky. And I’m not superstitious. As she did when in distress, she was also assessing the way objects lined up in the room. The doorway, if it was a doorway, was perfectly centered, which was reassuring. But the heavy drapes, pushing aside the flood of radiance coming through the window, hung slightly crooked. This made Millie want to cry. And she did not ever cry. She steeled herself and took comfort from the great bronze sconces to either side—they defied geometry. The fixtures looked like outsize flashlights. Each admitted a glow that seemed feeble in the already light-flooded room. The flashlights diverted Millie, but now her blood fizzed in alarm as she rose. She took her oath with the others and seated herself at the desk to the left of Thomas. With rustles and low talk, the senators conferred. Millie calmed herself by checking and rechecking the page order of her statement. Senator Watkins began to speak. Millie panicked until she looked up at him and saw that he was yet another man who didn’t know how to type.
To one side, below the giant desk, sat a woman in a severe suit. She posed her fingers over the keys of her stenotype, and began. Aha. There was no excuse for this sort of thing. It occurred to Millie, then, that the woman, the stenographer with the handsome machine, would also be taking down and typing up her words. Millie allowed this idea to slowly fill her with a secret confidence.