The Night Watchman(35)
Left Hook
Barnes was waiting for Wood Mountain to enter the restaurant at the Powers Hotel in downtown Fargo. Jet-black glass. Mirrors. Plenteous breakfast. A snooty lady host with a small-town accent, who might not show an Indian boxer to his seat. He worried, but Wood Mountain saw Barnes’s big haystack of hair immediately and walked over. The lady host didn’t even follow him. Barnes had read over every item on the menu, twice. He loved a good breakfast. Wood Mountain sat down across from him in the low booth.
“Let’s get the steak and eggs,” said Barnes. “On me.”
Wood Mountain was pretty sure that Barnes was buying him the fancy breakfast because the fight was off, and sure enough, it was. He crushed his fingers together, hiding his disappointment.
“All the way down here.”
“Well, you nearly made it on the card. We’ll introduce you to the guys. Now, at least, you can eat.”
Wood Mountain poured half the cream in the little pitcher into his coffee. He’d trained like the devil, got his weight perfect, had his hair cut and styled, and no fight. But on the way down, he’d sat with Pixie.
“You know that girl Pixie?”
Barnes sharpened.
“What about her?”
“Sat beside her on the way down.”
“So is she here, in town?” Barnes tried to ask casually, but Wood Mountain wasn’t fooled. He took his time answering.
“Just passing through. She’s on her way down to the Cities to look for her sister, Vera. Her husband’s off the rails. Nobody’s heard from her.”
“Does Pixie have a place to stay down there?”
“Don’t worry. She can take care of herself.”
Barnes looked critically at his boxer. Wood Mountain was feinting. It was obvious to everyone, he supposed, that he, Barnes, was moony over Pixie. Well, who wouldn’t be? Why pretend?
“You sure? Because my brother lives down there.”
“Oh, I doubt she’d go stay with your brother!”
“Somebody to call if she got in trouble.”
“Since I don’t have a fight, I might just go down and be that guy.”
Wood Mountain knew very well what he was saying, but he didn’t care. He was getting tired of Barnes dancing around Pixie Paranteau. And he knew from Pokey that she was tired of it too. Barnes hadn’t got him a fight, either, and Wood Mountain felt cheated. Yes, he’d work harder, he was no quitter, but seeing as he had some extra time on his hands now, and was carrying his field-work money, why not keep going on the train? Why not find Pixie and better, find her sister, be the hero he hadn’t been in the ring against Joe Wobble. When she’d watched him.
“Yeah, I might just take that train,” he said, sawing into his steak. He drenched it in soupy egg yolk, chewed. The hash browns were crisp on top, creamy underneath. He relented. Barnes was devoted, coached him for nothing. What was he doing? Barnes was miserable enough, seeking hopelessly after Pixie. Give him a break.
“Or maybe you should,” said Wood Mountain. “I have the addresses she is supposed to look up. You could check in on her.”
“I wish I could,” said Barnes, slowly, meaning it. “I have to teach.”
“Teaching. You can get out of teaching, can’t you?”
“Of course not,” said Barnes, putting down his fork. He was stern, affronted. “It’s the beginning of the year. We review and lay down the proper foundation for the year’s progress. It’s essential. And by the way, have you applied yet?”
“Not yet.”
“What? Boxing isn’t a real job, not a lifetime job. We’ve talked about it. You were my best student. You could be a teacher.”
Wood Mountain didn’t want to be a teacher. He didn’t want to apply to UND or to Moorhead or even to the State School of Science in Wahpeton. He wanted to keep doing field work, building up his muscles, keep boxing and keep training horses for Louis Pipestone. He loved racing those horses with Louie, trailering them to Assiniboine Downs in Winnipeg. Grace, Louis’s kid, their rookie jockey. Wood Mountain also wanted to look after his mother, even though Juggie was doing fine on her own. He didn’t say much about it, but he kept a clean house for her when she stayed in town at her cooking job. Or stayed with Louie. Wood Mountain, the boxer, son of Archille, grandson of a man who fought with Sitting Bull, wanted to stay home. Which, after all, was the same thing Sitting Bull had wanted to do.
“Oh well,” he said. “I guess I could go down there, to the Cities. Help her out. But I don’t want to.”
“You said she could take care of herself. And she has a place to stay.”
“She’s not the kind of girl to get in trouble, is she.”
“No,” said Barnes, “she is not.”
“Then I guess I’ll go back home.”
But when he returned to the station to buy his ticket back to Rugby, Wood Mountain found his words came out wrong.
“Ticket to Minneapolis.”
“Which train?”
“The next one.”
Louis Pipestone
His father had brought the good horse from Red Lake and bred it with a wild buckskin paint back in ’38. That horse could run. Made some money, which was responsible for the presence of the 1947 Chevrolet pickup truck, green as the hills, that Louis drove slowly and deliberately down the main road. He’d mapped the reservation out in his head. He would start with the more remote places past the western boundary, where many tribal members lived, their land part of the original tribal agreement broken within only a few years of its making. He saw Awan, Moves Camp, Gardipee, and his friend Titus Giizis. Right across the line he parked his truck at the entrance to Zhaanat’s place, hoping to catch her and her husband and daughter, all in one go. But old Paranteau was on another tear, and Zhaanat told him that Pixie had gone down to the Cities to look for their other daughter. Pokey was too young to sign, but he listened to what Louis said, in Chippewa, and added his mother’s name in bold script with her hand lightly touching his wrist.