The Night Watchman(42)

Meanwhile they had a problem. They had only one copy of the bill, and in spite of his great care, it was getting stained and tattered. Juggie was busy typing a copy onto mimeograph paper so that it could be printed. Others could type faster, but she was most accurate, proofreading as she went along. She was also putting together a tribal newsletter. This was a new idea that Thomas had thought up—a way of getting out the doings of the advisory committee so that people would start relying on something other than the moccasin telegraph for news.

Juggie was typing up the newsletter one night when Thomas stopped by. He had a key to the school’s front office.

“How does it look?”

Juggie showed him the first page, each short announcement set off by a row of stars.

“We should have some jokes,” she said.

“Jokes.”

She held her fingers poised above the keys.

“I need a joke.”

She was grinning at him. Her blunt face and her sharp eyes.

“You always have a joke.”

But he didn’t have a joke. He opened his mouth, shut his mouth, frowned at the floor. Stared at the edge of the desk as if he’d find a joke there.

“Just hold on,” he said.

It was true. He always had a joke. People relied on him for jokes. After a moment or two of talking, Thomas always pulled out a joke, one he’d heard or one that just came to him. There would be a spurt of laughter. Then the conversation could proceed. But now he realized that he hadn’t exchanged jokes or thought up jokes for . . . he couldn’t remember how long.

“I’m out of jokes!”

“Very funny,” said Juggie. “Give me one line.”

He almost turned to go, then he thought about Wade, his little man, baking with Ajax, and he thought of himself, his first drink in years, and he thought of Rose.

“The average man is proof the average woman can take a joke,” he said.

“Wait, say it again,” said Juggie, already typing.

*

It was one of those nights. Fee had put a piece of blackberry candy in the earflap. It got stuck to his head. Carefully he pulled it off, moved that she’d given him a piece of candy, which was rare at their house. He decided to save it to keep himself awake on the way home. Thomas was writing a desperate letter to Senator Milton R. Young, trying to disguise panic with cordiality. Around 2 a.m. Thomas’s head hit the desk. He pulled himself up. Damned if he’d knock himself out falling asleep on the job. He slapped himself but he didn’t slap himself awake. The slap sent him into a type of sleep he’d never experienced. He did his round, but most of his brain was closed away—he could feel it. Part of his brain had rebelled and was asleep. The tiny sliver of his waking self did the job. Locked and unlocked doors. Examined corners with the flashlight. Ate the night lunch. Folded half his sandwich in the clean bandanna Rose had wrapped it in. Made another round. Had a long talk with Roderick.

“How’d you do that, Roderick?”

“Change from a motor?”

“Yes.”

“I had a talk with your brain. The part that’s sleeping.”

“Oh, that’s funny. Why do you want to come around and bug me, Roderick?”

“I’m not here for you. It’s LaBatte. I saved him before, remember?”

“Oh, I remember. You took on his jail time.”

“First time they locked me up. Down in the cellar. They threw me in there. I owned up to what LaBatte did.”

“Didn’t I throw you down a coat?”

“You passed me a coat but it was so cold anyway.”

“LaBatte thinks it got you then.”

“No, it didn’t get me the first time, not much. The second time maybe. I sure come out of there coughing like heck. Fever. But it wasn’t nothing.”

“They said you had to go to Sac and Fox.”

“Who told you! The sanatorium. I went there.”

“You were supposed to get better.”

“I wasn’t sick, dumbhead.”

“Lots of boys had it.”

“Let’s face it.”

“Let’s face it.”

“Fed me butter on everything, dumbhead. Butter on the oatmeal. Cream on the cream potatoes. Fattened me up. Six died but not me. I wasn’t coming home in no coffin.”

“Wait. No. Roderick.”

Thomas spoke gently, breaking the news.

“You died. They did send you home in a coffin. On the train.”

Roderick shook his head, puffed out his cheeks in exasperation.

“They put me in that coffin, sure! Put me on the train. But I was in there laughing. Told myself they’d sure be surprised when I jumped out on them.”

“Your mom and dad go to meet you?”

“Nobody picked me up down there! No! Why? They knew I wasn’t dead in that coffin. I was just kidding.”

“I heard different, Roderick.”

“Had to get outta the sanatorium.”

“Why’d you want out if they fed you so good?”

“They sawed my lung out, dumbhead! Had to collapse it.”

“You took LaBatte’s punishment. He never wanted you to die for it. He felt bad all his life.”

“What for? No skin off my nose. Wild Indian, me!”