The Night Watchman(48)
“The renegade speaks,” said Thomas.
“That’s for damn sure right. I am a wild rooster back here with these two lovely hens. Don’t you turn around, Moses. You’ll see something will shock your mind, boy.”
Joyce and Mary began to bat him around, laughing, but soon they were playacting with such violence that the back end of the car began to sway.
“Whoa!” Thomas shouted.
“Leave off!” Moses ordered.
“We’re the last hope of the great Chippewa Nation,” howled Eddy. “Don’t wanna wreck us.”
“Oh shut up, fool.” Joyce laughed and laughed.
“Fool? I got some wisdom for you. Listen up. Government is more like sex than people think. When you are having good sex, you don’t appreciate it enough. When you are having bad sex, it is all you can think about.”
“You got a point there, Rooster,” said Moses from the front.
They crawled along and then the road was dry and they made it all in one piece. There was no money to put them up, so Thomas delivered them to addresses near the heart of the city. He was staying with Moses’s cousin Nancy and her husband, George. They lived in a small apartment with a convertible couch and a cot in the kitchenette. In the morning, Nancy, round and cute as a bear, surprised Thomas. He’d fallen asleep like he’d been dumped into a hole. Woke all fogged up. He didn’t have his pants on so Nancy gave him coffee in bed. He drank it propped up on one elbow while she made oatmeal. Claimed he felt like a king.
“Rose never give you coffee in bed?”
“No!”
“Well, if you try it out on her first, you might get lucky.”
“Oh, criminy.”
“Not lucky that way. You have a bad mind!”
“I was called an altar boy last night.”
Nancy laughed. “I known some wicked altar boys.”
“Can I have a refill?”
“Get your pants on. Maybe then.”
Arthur V. Watkins
If Arthur V. Watkins had been a boxer, which he definitely wasn’t, he would have been a brawler. You wouldn’t think it of such an ideal-looking, respectable fellow. Classic preacher looks, semibald with a virtuous halo of whitish hair, spectacles.
An aggressive air of cleanliness and godliness—that was Watkins. Dark tie. Pale suit. He was born in 1886, when Utah was still a territory, and he was baptized by Isaac Jacobs. In 1906, his father, also Arthur V. Watkins, wrote to Joseph F. Smith, “We have filed on land on the reservation for us a home.” This happened during the allotment era, when the Ute people and the Uintah and Ouray Reservation, where the Watkins land was located, were relieved of 13.8 million acres of land that had been guaranteed by the executive orders of first President Abraham Lincoln and, later, Chester A. Arthur.
Arthur V. Watkins grew up on some of this land, which had been stolen by his father. In 1907 he was set apart. From Vernal, in Uintah County, Utah, he was called. He completed a mission in the eastern United States, and then returned to Utah. Eventually, he ran for office, working his way through state office to become a United States senator. During the hearings on termination he was said to “convey an air of rectitude that was almost terrifying.” When expounding on termination he “howled in his reedy voice.” Joseph Smith and the early Mormons had tried their best to murder all Indians in their path across the country, but in the end did not quite succeed. Arthur V. Watkins decided to use the power of his office to finish what the prophet had started. He didn’t even have to get his hands bloody.
Cool Fine
After the train there was the bus and when the bus let them off on the highway near town it was a cool but fine autumn afternoon. Leaves were falling now in gusts. They began to walk. There were few people on the road and none going in their direction. Wood Mountain walked alongside Patrice, carrying her bag and his own. She lugged the baby. As she walked, she prayed, Don’t let him be home. If her father was there, snarling and puking, she might run away. Back down to the Cities. She had the money! Wood Mountain’s thoughts were very different. He had a name in mind for the baby. Archille, for his own father. That was that. He couldn’t help it. He was being thrown around by these things—emotions—still sensations without name and only evidenced by his actions and sudden decisions.
“I thought of a name for him,” said Wood Mountain after they had walked a couple of miles. He rubbed his face with his free hand to muffle his voice, doubting he should speak, unable not to speak. Sneaked a glance at her face. Said, “Temporary name, of course.”
Still, no response.
“Archille.” He could have kicked himself for saying it.
“Archille.”
She kept walking. With every step, she lightly patted the baby’s back. She’d tied the stretchy white blanket onto herself in an ingenious way so that the baby hung in a pouch, held fast against her breast. Her breast! He batted his head as if he were slapping at an insect.
“When my sister comes back,” said Patrice, “we’ll tell her you named the baby, nicknamed the baby, for your father. My uncle’s told me how they rode the rails in their young days. Your dad was a good man.”
She was not without compassion. But here he was, walking her home. Totally out of his way. She told him again that she could make it to her house just fine. But he said no, no, he would not leave her to walk alone with the baby. The satchel and the baby would be heavier by the mile, he said, and she was wearing her good shoes. They didn’t look like the best for walking. He said, however, they were nice shoes.