The Night Watchman(107)
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!
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.