The Night Watchman(25)
“They’ll have some work to do on your tough old hide.”
“Yours too.”
Thomas cut the call short, remembering the tribe was broke. In fact, they were broker than he’d thought when he took the job, which supposed to pay thirty dollars a month. He hadn’t yet actually paid himself. But the senator who’d pushed this bill from his side of Congress had a name, anyway. Arthur V. Watkins.
Who?
At work the next night, he laid out the pages again.
So it comes down to this, thought Thomas, staring at the neutral strings of sentences in the termination bill. We have survived smallpox, the Winchester repeating rifle, the Hotchkiss gun, and tuberculosis. We have survived the flu epidemic of 1918, and fought in four or five deadly United States wars. But at last we will be destroyed by a collection of tedious words. For the disposition of, for the intensification of, for the termination of, to provide for, et cetera.
He was back at his desk and had just punched 2 a.m. The last good sleep he’d had was how long ago? In the old house. He put down the paper and began to write to Archie. As you know, Mama has taken over the care of a bright and beaming young fellow. Martin is a sort of altar boy to Wade. I don’t mean to be sacrilegious, but when I see Martin standing by Wade with his shoes, or alongside him with a pitchfork or shovel, whatever he might need, I can’t help but remember my old job at Holy Mass. Martin listens to Wade, too, and the other morning he said to me that Wade kept mentioning my clock and how I’m always punching it. With a sad look, Martin then observed, “With all that punching, it must be broke to a hundred pieces by now!”
Thomas propped his head up in his hands, shielding his eyes. The next thing he knew, he was jolted awake. Brain swimming, pulse scudding, he was sure that someone had tried to break into the plant. He turned off his lamp and lifted the steel flashlight, useful as a possible bludgeon. He didn’t punch the clock because the click would echo. Soundlessly he stepped across the floor of the main room and into the acid washing room. He had always thought it entirely possible that someone, imagining that the jewels were typical gemstones, might break in hoping to find treasure. He had the flashlight and his keys. He could wallop them with his flashlight and rake with his keys. But he would probably be overpowered, tied up, slung into the bathroom. He hoped his head wouldn’t hit a fixture. If he couldn’t think and reason, he would not be able to oppose this bill.
Thomas crept along and at each new checkpoint found the jewel plant empty. Humming where it should hum. Silent where it was always silent. Booming and rattling in the usual places. Then he stepped into the dark workshop and saw the great silver arc of a white owl plastered against the window, stretching its wings. It was pecking at the glass, fighting its own reflection. The sky behind the owl was black, moonless, glinting with stars. Thrilled, he felt for his keys then tiptoed outside to see the owl more clearly.
Who?
He moved slowly around the outside of the building. The snowy swiveled its head to watch him, then stretched out its down-plumed leg and flexed its black talons. The bird seemed annoyed, blinked, eyed Thomas severely, and with a last suspicious peck at its glass rival, began to preen its feathers. Thomas watched it for a long time before it flowed soundlessly upward. He stood there a moment, waiting to see where it went. But it was gone, sucked into the black sky. Thomas had no jacket and no cigar so he went back inside and punched the time clock. Beside the time, which should have been entered on the hour, he wrote, Went outside to answer Snowy Owl’s question, Who? Owl not satisfied with answer.
Indian Joke
Walter Vold adjusted his reading glasses and peered more closely at the time card. Snowy Owl! He passed the card back across the desk to Doris Lauder.
“Typical Indian joke,” said Vold.
He had noticed that she’d entirely stopped wearing perfume. That she edged away when he tried to get close. That when he had gotten close, she smelled oddly of mold.
“How so?” said Doris. “I don’t get it.”
She’d washed her hands with the mildewed rag from under the sink. She did this every day. She was willing to bear the smell so he didn’t sniff her every time she passed.
“How shall I put it.”
Vold tapped ostentatiously at his chin, hard as brass.
“The word is . . . the word is . . .”
To his relief, a word came into his head.
“Cryptic.”
“Oh. I still don’t get it.”
Doris took back the time card with her moldy fingers, and studied the words again. LaBatte dawdled outside the door with a trash bin he was emptying into a larger trash bin. Vold took the card from Doris’s hand.
“Mr. LaBatte,” called Vold, nodding and gesturing as though he was signaling an airplane, “please come into my office and clear something up.”
LaBatte came in, hard round belly leading, looking like an expert. Vold handed Thomas Wazhashk’s time card to LaBatte.
“Miss Lauder is curious about what this means,” said Vold.
LaBatte held out the card away from his face and scowled, mouthing the words. He looked up at the two of them and overassumed an air of expertise.
“It means that Thomas the Muskrat went out to smoke a cigar. He sometimes will smoke a Snowy Owl brand. I’d say he got locked out, had to get back in through a window. Or he could have gone right through the wall, like a mist.”