The Night Watchman(111)

“You fart instantly,” said Valentine, “after eating eggs. I don’t believe it.”

Betty snapped her fingers. “Like that.”

Patrice looked into her lunch pail like it would tell her fortune. She sighed. A carrot and a boiled potato. Maybe a little salt would help. She asked Betty, who handed some over in a twist of paper as she bolted down another egg.

“How come you eat them if they make you boogid so bad?” asked Curly Jay.

“What’s a little boogid?” said Betty. “I like eggs. Did you sign the petition?”

“I signed it.”

“I think Patrice should present it.”

“Valentine would be better,” said Patrice. “Or Doris Lauder.”

“Doris won’t do it,” said Valentine. “She doesn’t want . . . you know what she doesn’t want.”

“Grasshopper juice,” said Betty.

Patrice choked. How many times had grasshoppers squirted their brown juice into her hands? The thought of Vold. She put the lid back on her lunch pail.

“I’ll do it,” said Valentine. “I want my coffee break. By the time I get off work I can hardly move my hands.”

“It was supposed to be temporary and we were supposed to get it back,” said Betty. She farted again and raised her finger. “You may quote that.”



After work, as she rode in the backseat through the drizzly spring rain, Patrice thought about the money. More was called for. She was working extra hard because she planned on asking for a raise. The idea that Vera would take her job now seemed absurd—Vera was not in any shape to work in the outside world, and she wouldn’t leave her baby. Patrice was now supporting four at home instead of two. But, a surprise. Wood Mountain had taken a job driving school buses. It was a good job, a federal job. And along with the understanding that he and Patrice had reached, the job cleared the way for him to marry Vera. Not only that, but they planned to work on the cabin behind the house. They were constantly talking about how they would fix it up during the summer. Once they moved into the cabin, Patrice would only be responsible for Pokey and her mother—but there again something unexpected had developed. Millie had returned to the university and had written that she’d changed her program. She had decided to become an anthropologist, and wanted to study with Zhaanat. Millie was applying for money to pay her informant.

“It isn’t a lot of money,” she said in her letter, “but between that and what Patrice saves maybe she can go back to school.”

Doris and Valentine let Patrice off and the big car pulled away down the road. Patrice started down the path, the ground spongy. The snow was sagging into the earth. The air was wet and rich. Sap was coming up in the trees and Zhaanat would be out tapping the birches. During the winter she’d carved spiles to hammer into the veins of the trees and saved tin cans to collect the sap. The cold sap was a spring tonic. When you drank it, you shared the genius of the woods. As Patrice drew near the house, she saw that her mother was sitting on a stump near the fire, tending the kettle of sap. Patrice went inside and changed her clothes. When she came out her mother held out a jar she’d dipped from the bucket. Patrice sat beside her on another friendly stump. Zhaanat poked a stick to adjust the steadily burning logs, then lifted her jar.

“Millie’s going to make you famous,” said Patrice, lifting up her jar of sap. “Someday there will be a book.”

“I don’t care about that,” said Zhaanat, “but we can use the zhooniyaa.”

Grinning, she lifted her jar, like the Michifs lifted wine, “à ta santé.”

Patrice tapped her jar to her mother’s. “à ta santé.”

Together they drank the icy birch water, which entered them the way life entered the trees, causing buds to swell along the branches. Patrice leaned to one side and put her ear to the trunk of a birch tree. She could hear the humming rush of the tree drinking from the earth. She closed her eyes, went through the bark like water, and was sucked up off the bud tips into a cloud. She looked down at herself and her mother, sitting by a small fire in the spring woods. Zhaanat tipped her head back and smiled. She gestured at her daughter to come back, the way she had when as a child Patrice strayed.

“Ambe bi-izhaan omaa akiing miinawa,” she said, and Patrice returned.





Roderick




Again, he missed the train. But there were so many Indian ghosts in Washington that he decided to stay. For a while, Roderick eddied around the station. When he’d moped enough, he went back to see the sights, which, after all, he’d missed out on, being so attentive to the living. He saw the monuments, he saw the statues, he saw the buildings. In one of the buildings there were so many voices that he could hear them laughing and bickering from the outside. He flowed in, poked around, blustered into the storage areas. Oh my! Drawers and cabinets of his own kind of people! Indian ghosts stuck to their bones or scalp locks or pieces of skin. Some of the holy pipes were singing monotonously. Other ghosts were uproariously gambling with their own bones. There were ghostly ghost-dance shirts, buzzing war shields, gurgling baby makizinan, and sacred scrolls choked with spirits. Indians brought from the top or bottom of the world as living exhibits, then immediately turned to ghosts. For centuries, Indians had gone to Washington for the same reasons as the little party from the Turtle Mountains. They had gone in order to protect their families and their land. It was a hazard of travel for Indians to be lynched from streetlamps as a drunken joke. Ghosts with rope necklaces. It turned out the city was packed with ghosts, lively with ghosts. Roderick had never had so much company. And they were glad for somebody new. Glad he stayed behind. They argued with him. Why go back there?