The Night Watchman(13)
Thomas and Zhaanat were cousins—Patrice was unclear on exactly how they were related and “cousins” was considered a general word that covered a host of relationships. Thomas was an uncle to her and so his sons were also cousins. She sped forward and took the front seat when Wade got out and gave her the honor.
“Thank you for stopping, uncle.”
“At least this time you’re hitching on dry land.”
Last summer, she had swum out to his fishing boat, surprised Thomas. She’d hitched a ride out of the lake. It tickled him to talk about it. He didn’t know exactly why she’d been swimming out there so far.
Patrice was one of the only young people who addressed him in Chippewa, or Cree, or in a combination of the two. They didn’t speak exactly alike but understood each other. If Wade was puzzled, let him absorb the language out of curiosity, thought Thomas. They chatted for a while and Thomas learned that Zhaanat had set up the special tent. Gerald had seen that Vera was alive and that she had a child beside her. Patrice got out at the mercantile, which also held the post office. He would return to pick her up. While he and Wade filled the water cans, Thomas thought about how his grandfather had consulted with someone like Gerald, long ago, when they needed to find out about Falon. So it happened they knew Falon had died well before the official message arrived.
On the way back, Patrice decided to read the letter from Betty Pye’s cousin again, out loud, to her uncle.
I saw your sister down in the Cities, and something was wrong with her. Last I knew, she was at Stevens Avenue Apartments, number 206. I know because a number of Indians live there and I was staying on that floor too. Saw her in the hallway with her baby and she wouldn’t talk to me.
Patrice told her uncle she wanted to walk back from his house. She needed to think. The road to her house ran alongside water, and the cool air smelled of rain drying off the yellow leaves. The cattails on the sloughs were soft brown clubs, the reeds still sharp and green. On the lake, wind was ruffling up blue-black waves so lacy that foam rimmed the beach. The sun beamed from between dark scudding clouds. Vera had always wanted to stay where she could see the birches and sloughs. She had worked on an old cabin up the hill from their mother’s house. Vera had camped there, trying to reclaim it. She had cleared away some trees that were trying to grow up through the floor, and she had drawn out her plans to make the cabin into her ideal house. Patrice had helped her work out a large room with a kitchen and a dining table, even two private bedrooms. Every detail of the drawing was labeled. Vera’s penmanship was squared off and even, like on a real blueprint. There was a special close-up of a mullioned window with striped curtains. Patrice still had that picture. Vera, who dressed distinctively and was elegant rather than Pixie-cute, loved home economics class and had copied that window from a book called Ideal Home. She hadn’t wanted to leave, but she’d fallen in love. It was sudden, and Zhaanat hadn’t been in favor. Zhaanat had turned away rather than say goodbye to her daughter when she left for the Cities. Patrice knew this haunted her mother.
“Stay where you are. I’ll find you,” said Patrice, out loud. She snatched a stick from the path and struck at the grasses, sending out puffs of golden seed.
Patrice was nearly home when the clouds thickened to a dark sheet. She started running. Then quit. Her shoes. She couldn’t ruin them. She bent over, took them off, bundled them beneath her coat, and kept walking in the rain. Took the grassy turnoff that led through the woods. Going barefoot was not a problem. She had done that all her life, and her feet were tough. Cold now, half numb, but tough. Her hair, shoulders, and back grew damp. But moving kept her warm. She slowed to pick her way through places where water was seeping up through the mats of dying grass. Rain tapping through the brilliant leaves the only sound. She stopped. The sense of something there, with her, all around her, swirling and seething with energy. How intimately the trees seized the earth. How exquisitely she was included. Patrice closed her eyes and felt a tug. Her spirit poured into the air like song. Wait! She opened her eyes and threw her weight into her cold feet. This must be how Gerald felt when he flew across the earth. Sometimes she frightened herself.
Before the trail gave into the clearing around her house, Patrice heard the yowl of spinning tires. She thought of Gerald’s people, although he’d left before dawn. When she reached her mother’s house and stepped around the far wall, she realized that the stuck whine was coming from the narrow, boggy grass path that led to the house. The other cars would have weakened the wet ground that morning, when Gerald and the rest of them left. Another car might have broken through. From outside the cabin, she raised the window near her bed, tossed her shoes in. She considered climbing in herself, but instead stepped around the house, across the smooth mud. She passed the wet black ashes of the cooking fire. Continued out onto the brushy track. At the entrance of the path she saw the turquoise and cream Buick that belonged to Pokey’s teacher. Mr. Barnes was heaving at the front of the car, trying to push the left tire out of a watery hole. His large head of yellow hair was like a stack of straw. Hay Stack, they called him. Pokey was behind the wheel. She stopped. Tried to ease back into the leaves.
Juggie’s Boy
On the way to Minot they decided this would be the night that Wood Mountain would beat Joe Wobleszynski. They argued how.