The Night Watchman(17)
“No,” said Valentine, “it’s me. Blowing hot and cold. Naughty and nice.”
“My goodness.”
“But never stingy. Always generous,” said Patrice.
On the way home she told the two of them about the trip to Minneapolis. She had never taken a trip before, so she was making it up as she went along.
*
Her family did not own a traveling bag. There was a handsome plaid suitcase for sale at the mercantile. Expensive. Patrice bought a yard and a half of canvas. She cut short lengths of popple, stripped off the bark. She hemmed the canvas, sewed the sides together, sewed the ends around the short poles, then used sinew and brass tacks to fasten two pieces of leather onto the poles to act as handles. The canvas suitcase looked like a workman’s bag but so what? She didn’t need to be fashionable, just get herself to Minneapolis. At the Relocation Office there was a train timetable. Once she found a ride to Rugby, she could purchase her ticket down at the station.
Curly Jay’s sister, Deanna, worked in the small room that served as an office. Patrice sat at a table covered with papers, flipping through a stack, looking for any new information on Vera. Behind her a poster was taped to the wall. Come to Minneapolis. The Chance of Your Lifetime. Good Jobs in Retail Trade, Manufacturing, Government Federal, State, Local, Exciting Community Life, Convenient Stores. Beautiful Minnesota. 10,000 Lakes. Zoo, Museum, Drives, Picnic Areas, Parks, Amusement, Movie Theaters. Happy Homes, Beautiful Homes, Many Churches, Exciting Community Life, Convenient Stores.
Besides love, Patrice thought that Vera had probably gone to Minneapolis for Exciting Community Life and Beautiful Homes. Those drawings of the windows with the ruler-straight muntins.
“Do you want to put in an application?”
“To move to Beautiful Minnesota?”
“You get help with a job, the training, help finding a place to live and all that.”
“Did Vera get all that?”
“Oh, well, yeah.”
“You should really pay me to do your job for you. Going down to find her. Don’t you keep track of where people go?”
“Not after a while.”
“A short while.”
“We have last known address on Bloomington Avenue.”
“I have it too. I’m going to start there.”
“Where you staying?”
“I don’t have a place.”
“Look up my friend.”
Deanna wrote the name Bernadette Blue on a card along with her address and a phone number.
“I don’t know if she’s still at this number. It was for work.”
“What kind of work?”
“Secretarial.”
“Juggie Blue’s daughter.”
“The bad one,” said Deanna.
Patrice lifted her eyebrows. Deanna said, “Kidding.” But she wasn’t. She kept flipping through the stack of papers. “And here’s another name. Father Hartigan.”
“I’m not going all the way there to see a priest.”
“For an emergency.”
“I’m not going to have an emergency.”
“Vera said something like that.”
“I still think you should pay me.”
That Saturday, Patrice waited until Pokey was gone and Zhaanat out in the woods. Although she trusted them not to take her money, she didn’t quite trust them not to suddenly need to get rid of her father. Her money was buried underneath the eighth green square from the right in the linoleum’s design. That part of the pattern was underneath her bed. She pulled the flimsy bed frame aside. Careful not to crack the linoleum, she pulled it up slowly. She had buried her money box, a dented pink cookie tin painted with dancing cookies, and made certain it was smoothly covered. Now she pushed the dirt away and tugged off the cover. It was all there. One hundred and six dollars. She removed the money, reburied the box, and left eight of the dollars underneath her mother’s sugar can. Doris was driving down to Rugby and would pick her up in half an hour. Patrice had kept the clock wound and figured out how many minutes it had lost overnight. The time displayed was fairly accurate. All she had to do was get on the train. What she had to go on was the unreliable address, and Juggie Blue’s daughter, Bernadette, the bad one.
Zhaanat came back with a basket of pine tips. They stood together, arms around each other, just outside the door.
“He’s down in Fargo, right?” Patrice said of her father.
“He won’t come here now, not for a while.”
Patrice could feel, in her mother’s grip, that her father would not return. Her fear was of letting her go. “Don’t you go disappear on me too,” Zhaanat whispered and clutched her harder. Fear for Pixie. Fear of what she might find. Fear for Vera. But when she stood back, Zhaanat smiled as she took in her daughter’s shined shoes, her bright coat, pin-curl-waved hair, red lipstick. Valentine had even lent her gloves.
“You look like a white woman,” said Zhaanat, in Chippewa.
Patrice laughed. They were both pleased at her disguise.
Pukkons
Thomas carried his rifle on the trail to his father’s house. Maybe he would flush up a partridge. Or surprise a deer. But there was only sere grass, rose hips, seed heads of black-eyed Susans, red willow. Under the stands of oak, heaps of acorns lay in the grass. With a lot of boiling, you could eat them. He thought of picking them up. But along the edges of the grass road there were bushes loaded with pukkons. He filled his hat, then his jacket, with the prickly green nuts. His father saw him coming along the edge of the field and stepped out of his doorway, stooped, leaning on his stick. Biboon, Winter, bone thin. With age, his skin had lightened in patches. Laughing, he sometimes called himself an old pinto. He wore a creamy long-john shirt, brown work pants, moccasins so worn they looked like part of his feet. He could still keep the fire going, and insisted on living alone. Biboon trembled and smiled when he saw the pukkons. They were a favorite food of his, reminding him of early days.