The Night Watchman(50)
“I’m going nuts,” she said and flung it into the brush.
She heard the growl of a motor, then gravel crunching underneath the tires of Doris’s car, and closed her eyes in relief. The car pulled alongside her. For five days she had been another person, on another planet, in a different time.
“Gracious good morning!” she said, opening the car’s back door.
“We stop for hoboes,” cried Valentine. “Get in!”
“Did you find Vera?”
“No, she didn’t turn up yet. I brought her baby boy home.”
“A baby boy!”
They talked of nothing else the entire way. By the end of the day she had promises, so many promises. More bottles. Weeks worth of diapers. A diaper bucket with lid. Baby clothes and a blanket. Everything a baby needed, except a mother.
“I know somebody with leftover baby formula,” said Betty Pye. “She wanted money but when she hears I’ll bet she give it to you for free.”
“I can pay,” said Patrice, the waterjack. “I can pay her whatever she wants.”
But that was for show because she was pretty sure Zhaanat’s pipe bags would come through.
*
If you revolve a circle around a pole, the surface of the revolution would be a torus. An inner tube. You can have a hollow torus or a solid torus, which is the torus plus the volume inside the torus—a doughnut, a jewel bearing. A metal spindle turns in a jewel-lined pivot hole. The hole is shaped like a torus, and the mechanism makes possible the ideal of frictionless eternal motion.
You cannot feel time grind against you. Time is nothing but everything, not the seconds, minutes, hours, days, years. Yet this substanceless substance, this bending and shaping, this warping, this is the way we understand our world.
Zhaanat was lying on her daughter’s bed, in a slat of cool fall sunshine, the exhausted baby in her arms. They were drifting in frictionless eternal motion when Patrice entered, slipped out of her shoes. She took her hat off, lay down beside them, and opened her blue coat like a wing.
Metal Blinds
The big meeting in Fargo was held at the judicial building, an imposing pillared structure made of pale smooth limestone. The halls with their brass sconces and polished oak wainscoting opened into majestic paneled courtrooms, judges’ chambers, deliberation rooms for juries, and many other small apertures and offices. The room that Thomas and his fellow tribal members entered also had the beautiful wooden wainscoting. The upper portion of the wall had recently been painted a dull chalky white. Through the north-facing windows a bland gray light seeped. A small woman in a black skirt and heels opened a set of flexible metal blinds.
The hushed light fell in bars on a polished table beneath the window. Four men sitting behind the table rose as Thomas and the other tribal members came into the room. Each was dressed in a suit and tie, all in various shades and patterns of brown and gray. They were from the BIA office in Aberdeen, South Dakota. Each man came forward to shake hands with Thomas, the other members of the committee, and the tribe’s attorney, John Hail. Then each man retreated back behind the table.
Thomas put his briefcase down on a chair in the front row of chairs, between John Hail and Moses Montrose. The others filled seats to the right and left and in back, more than forty-five tribal members in all. Thomas passed his hand across his eyes, and looked down to hide that he was moved that so many had made the difficult trip.
“Welcome,” said the area director, John Cooper. “Let it be noted that this meeting is taking place on October 19, 1953, and the time is one p.m.”
The secretary’s fingers began to rapidly tap the keys of her machine.
“Thank you,” said Thomas. “We are here to discuss the purpose of the proposed legislation in connection with House Concurrent Resolution 108, which will terminate all federal recognition and support at the Turtle Mountain Agency.”
He took a deep breath to try to loosen the grip of tension in his stomach. He hadn’t eaten enough for breakfast, out of nerves. He asked if John Cooper would read the legislation for the benefit of his fellow tribal members, and then he sat down. Mr. Cooper passed a sheaf of papers to the lawyer for the BIA, Gary Holmes, who began to read each section.
After the first few pages, Thomas could feel the air leave the room. Brief phrases caught his attention and then the next packed sentence pulled it away. His voice was calm and scratchy. He paused often to clear his throat or utter a prolonged ummmmm.
disposition of federally owned property
with to such Indians may be discontinued as no longer necessary
cause such lands to be sold and deposit the proceeds of sale
trust relationship to the affairs of the Band and its members has
terminated
termination
terminating
Worse than listening to the reading of the bill himself was the silent consternation behind him. Thomas could not turn around without seeming rude to the speaker, yet he longed to exchange glances with Juggie and Louis, with Joyce and Mary, with the others who’d shown up from here in Fargo and from Grand Forks. They’d heard about the situation and trickled to this obscure office. Martin Cross had driven all the way across the state to support them. About twelve of the people there did not speak English, or understood it very poorly, and yet they had gone to great effort and expense to come to this meeting. As the words tapped like dry little hammers, Thomas thought about the places where his people lived. John Summer, old Giizis, Clothilde Fleury, Angus Watch, Buggy Morrissey, Anakwad, lived in pole-and-mud dwellings tucked into swales and hills, sheltered against the wind. They drew their water from sloughs or tiny springs, lighted their homes with kerosene. Yet here they were, each person, presenting themselves in worn immaculate clothing. As Indians had for generation after generation, they were attempting to understand a white man reading endlessly from a sheaf of papers.