The Night Watchman(26)

LaBatte walked off, laughing. Vold and Doris began laughing too.

“Very funny! Walked through the wall like a mist. Typical Indian joke right there!”



LaBatte stopped laughing as soon as he was out the door, rumbling down the hall. His eyes popped as he wheeled the cart ever faster. The mention of the owl was too disturbing. If Thomas had seen an owl, it meant a death. Soon. LaBatte was whisking through mental lists of people who might die. People he wouldn’t mind if they died. People he would mind very much if they died. People he would be terrified and sick at heart if they died. And then himself, very close to Thomas, in a way, as they went to school together and sometimes overlapped at work. Yes, he was close enough to Thomas for the victim to be himself. Plus, he was guilty and in danger of being punished.

Very low, to the empty hallway, he muttered, “Help me, Roderick.”





Who?




Thomas was of the after-the-buffalo-who-are-we-now generation. He was born on the reservation, grew up on the reservation, assumed he would die there also. Thomas owned a watch. He had no memory of time according only to the sun and moon. He spoke the old language first, and also spoke English with a soft grain and almost imperceptible accent. This accent would only belong to those of his generation. This indefinably soft but firm way of speaking would be lost. His generation would have to define themselves. Who was an Indian? What? Who, who, who? And how? How should being an Indian relate to this country that had conquered and was trying in every way possible to absorb them? Sometimes the country still actively hated Indians, true. But more often now, a powerfully glorious sensation poured forth. Wars. Citizenship. Flags. This termination bill. Arthur V. Watkins believed it was for the best. To uplift them. Even open the gates of heaven. How could Indians hold themselves apart, when the vanquishers sometimes held their arms out, to crush them to their hearts, with something like love?





Flags




That year, his father was gaunt, his cheekbones jutting out. Thomas was always hungry. They were down to desperation food then—a bit of bannock smeared with deer fat. The day schools on the reservation gave out just one meal. The government boarding school would feed three meals. The government boarding school was a day’s wagon ride if you started well before dawn. Thomas’s mother, Julia, or Awan, wept and hid her face as he went away. She had been torn—whether to cut his hair herself. They would cut his hair off at the school. And to cut hair meant someone had died. It was a way of grieving. Just before they left, she took a knife to his braid. She would hang it in the woods so the government would not be able to keep him. So that he would come home. And he had come home.



The first thing Thomas noticed about the school was the repetition of striped cloth—red and white. Also blue parts. Flags.

They were everywhere, dangling or hanging off poles, pinned onto collars, surrounding the blackboards, draped over doors.

At first, he thought they were pleasing decorations. The teacher showed him that he must place his hand on his heart and repeat words the other children already knew. All while staring at the flag. Thomas copied the teacher’s words though he did not know what she was saying. Gradually, the sounds took shape in his mind. And still later, bits and pieces were added to the design. He had been there a few months when he heard the phrase a flag worth dying for, and a slow chill prickled.





Log Jam 26




As the train pulled into Fargo, Wood Mountain wanted Patrice to write down the two addresses.

“Why?”

“Because you’re a baby. I mean, not streetwise. This way I have a trail in case you get lost.”

“I can find my way.”

“In the bush, sure. You and your cramp bark.”

“I have been in town.”

“A city, Pixie.”

“What do you know about it?”

“More than you. Once, I visited my sister. And I’ve had fights down there.”

“Did you win any?”

“No.”

“Well. You should have. Okay, here is where I’m going.”

Pixie—Patrice—wrote the addresses on a scrap of newspaper. She didn’t tell him about the emergency address. Bernadette was his half sister. Wood Mountain pocketed the bit of paper. As he rose, he looked down at her. Without thinking, like it was natural, he tried out the smile he practiced in the shaving mirror. Oh, and she responded, didn’t she? Looked at him wonderingly. He felt her eyes on him as he turned around. Watching as he walked down the aisle of the train and out the door. . . .

And she was thinking, What was that? That smile? Like he saw it on some cheap movie poster. A smile like the dough in her lunch bucket—sad and raw. Not even half baked. Patrice settled back into her seat and took out the syrup bucket. She ate several pinches of the pemmican, looking out the window into downtown Fargo. The Empire Tavern. She saw Wood Mountain walking along. Swinging his duffel bag. If he walked into the bar she’d never speak to him again. He walked past.

Okay, maybe sometime, she thought as the train pulled out.



She slept so hard the pattern on the seat’s upholstery bit into her cheek. When she woke, and put her fingers to her face, she could feel the dimples from the harsh cloth. They had come a long way and were passing through St. Cloud. In no time at all now they would be in Minneapolis. The wiry lady had claimed the seat beside Patrice. Now she was using narrow silver needles to knit a white froth of yarn into a weblike blanket for a baby. The delicate folds streamed down and puddled in her lap. Patrice looked away from her, but the lady noticed that her seatmate was awake and introduced herself.