The Night Watchman(110)
“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.