The Night Watchman(104)

Each of them bought newspapers to keep as souvenirs. They read about what had happened in the House of Representatives. None of the representatives were killed but one was in serious condition. It was surprising, now, to think that the hearings had not been canceled. And that they had only been lightly searched on the way in the next day, though there were plenty of extra guards looking fierce and vigilant.





Patrice


Now I know. I know how Wood Mountain felt after that fight, she thought. Not on the outside, of course, but on the inside. All of the adrenaline gone, all the fight out of her, but each moment clear and emphatic, the faces of the senators in every detail. Especially Senator Watkins. The word supercilious. That was the word for every detail. Watkins’s coin-purse mouth. His self-righteous ease. The way he held himself, giving off that vibration. Filling the air with sanctimony. Another word that flung itself into her mind.



In the newspapers, there was quite a bit about Puerto Rico so Patrice had her answer. And there was a large picture of the woman who had jumped to her feet and shot the pistol. Her luminous hot eyes, her slash of lipsticked mouth, blurred in the newsprint. Patrice ran her hand over the grainy photographs and carefully stashed the newspapers in her bag. She leaned back and saw the woman’s eyes. Lolita Lebrón. Viva Puerto Rico. She wanted her country to live so badly she’d been willing to kill. Was there something wrong with her? Or was there something wrong with Patrice? If this opposing testimony didn’t work, if they lost their scrap of universe, if her mother was forced to live in a city, which would kill her, if Vera was never found, if, if, if she had Senator Arthur V. Watkins on his knees before her and his life in her hands. What if that. What if that? Mr. Smug Mouth. Mr. Sanctimony.

He’d be in danger, she thought. I do things perfectly when enraged.



Patrice had trouble sleeping on the train that ride. Every time she was about to drift off, an image intervened. She saw her hands as her mother’s hands. She saw her mother’s fingers, strong and supernatural, clenched around Freckle Face’s neck, Bernie’s neck, the senator’s neck. Patrice tried to stop the pictures but they returned. She was inhabited by a vengeful, roiling, even murderous spirit. That same spirit had hatched the bird that pecked Bucky’s face. When she got home, she’d clean up the sweat lodge and ask her mother to help her get rid of these thoughts.





Moses


He missed his wife. She was a small, orderly, kind woman with an impertinent smile. They’d been together since they were children. There wasn’t a time without her. This was the longest. He had taken one of her knitted scarves with him, a red one, and at night he’d slept with it next to his face, even on the train. Their children called them “the old-timers” because their love was like that—old-time. They held hands. They kissed. Called each other niinimoshehn. Good morning, my little sweetheart, he said to her every morning. He was in a terror that something might happen to her while he was gone. Maybe he could call her cousin, who lived in town, from a phone? Maybe it was less expensive now? If something had happened, they would have sent a telegram, said Juggie, several times. He was worrying for nothing. But the feeling that something was going to happen wouldn’t let him go and he got out with Thomas hoping to distract himself. During their layover in the Minneapolis train station, they planned to find a tobacco shop and buy themselves, and Louis, a few cigars.





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.