The Night Watchman(43)

“So you’re visiting around?”

“Like I said. I’m here for LaBatte. He was my brother down there. Fort Totten. You too. Couldn’t break us apart. Cousins. I’m here to save him.”

“What from?”

“His own dumbhead self.”

“What’s he doing?”

“Dumbhead things.”

“For instance?”

Roderick nodded his head, sly. He looked from side to side.

“Wouldn’t you like to know. You tell on us?”

“Never.”

“LaBatte’s stealing.”

“Stealing what?”

“Anything can fit in his pockets. Whatever they don’t count. Paper clips. Staples. Writing paper. Rolls of butt-wiping paper. Coffee. Sugar. Spoons it out of the bag. Little at a time. He’s taking soap. He’s taking crankcase oil. Just dribbling it into a jar. He’s taking scraps of metal. He’s working up to taking jewels.”

“They’re in a safe. He can’t get in.”

“Why you think not?”

“It’s locked up, always. No key. A combination safe bolted into the wall.”

“The combination’s wrote down, dumbhead. He’ll find it. Grasshopper knows it. But doesn’t know it by heart.”

“Anyway, LaBatte’s no thief. You’re making all of this up, Roderick. Saying these things.”

“Sure I’m the dumbhead? Don’t think so. You don’t know everything, Thomas. Why else would I be here? Ask yourself that question.”

“But you’re not here,” said Thomas, looking at the crust of a sandwich in his hand, a sandwich he did not remember eating.

*

How could it be that someone who was a fiction of his own brain told him something that was true? Because Thomas just knew Roderick was right. He had to confront LaBatte before he got himself in jail and ruined a good job for other Indians. He stuck around that morning, knowing that LaBatte was supposed to show up to solder some buckets. As his old school friend walked across the parking lot, Thomas stepped toward him. He was too annoyed to beat around the bush.

“Saw Roderick last night.”

LaBatte’s eyes popped. His crew-cut hair seemed to bristle with fear. He set his lunch box down next to Thomas, on the hood of his car.

“Roderick told me he was there to save you. Told me you were stealing from the plant. Working up to stealing the jewels.”

LaBatte didn’t even make a pretense of denying it. Who can argue with a ghost? He broke down, wiped at his face, told Thomas that he’d had a string of bad luck. And that was even before the owl.

“What owl?”

“Your owl.”

“Owls are good luck for me. Especially the white ones.”

“Nothing is going good for me, Thomas.”

“What’s wrong?”

“Broke again.”

“But you have a job.”

“Don’t feed twenty. Or thirty.”

LaBatte’s family was a sprawling tangle of need and he was the only one with regular work. Thomas took out his soft old billfold, handed over what money he had to LaBatte, who took it and said, “Merci, cousin. I was going down a bad path, me. But I knew Roderick would help me. I saw what you wrote about the owl and thought I was a goner.”

LaBatte began to sob like his heart was breaking through his chest. Thomas put his hand on his old friend’s shoulder.

“Quit stealing. Ever seen the eyes on a grasshopper?”

LaBatte choked back a moan. “Grasshopper. Probably can see around corners. Don’t know what made me such a dumbhead.”

“That’s what Roderick said.”

Thomas shrugged off the chill LaBatte’s word gave him.

“You better make a good confession and move forward.”

“Yes,” said LaBatte. “I been confessing my theft every week. Father’s getting tuned up at me. ‘Here,’ I said last time, ‘a little sack of sugar for you.’ He roared out, ‘Stolen?’ Oh man alive, he kicked me out the confessional.”

“I have to go,” said Thomas. “I’m late for another one of those meetings.” He picked up his lunch box.

He didn’t want to hear the details of why LaBatte needed the money so badly. It would be the same as every story, including his own, though with the jewel bearing paycheck things had eased up considerably. There weren’t enough jobs. There wasn’t enough land. There wasn’t enough farmable land. There weren’t enough deer in the woods or ducks in the sloughs and a game warden caught you if you fished too many fish. There just wasn’t enough of anything and if he didn’t save what little there was from disappearing there was no imagining how anyone would get along. He couldn’t have it. He wouldn’t have it. Halfway back to town the car coughed and began to coast. He steered onto the shoulder. The gas tank was empty. He’d given LaBatte the money he was going to use to fill it.

For a long while, Thomas sat there with his empty tank, on the empty road, looking over the empty field, at the empty sky. Not a cloud in it. Blue as heaven. Then of all things LaBatte tore right by him in his old clunker and didn’t stop.

Thomas watched the disappearing mismatched back bumpers of LaBatte’s car. It seemed to lift off the road and drift into the trees. He reached over to his lunch box. Maybe he’d left that crust. It was LaBatte’s lunch box, full. A meat sandwich with real butter. More bread, this time with butter and sugar. A baked potato, still warm. Apples.