The Night Watchman(54)
“Huh.”
“Okay.”
“So.”
“So.”
“So you think I have a chance?” Barnes dropped his voice. Then his voice stuck in his craw, a sobbing hiccup.
“What the hell’s wrong with me,” he croaked, punching at the bag.
Wood Mountain opened his hands, as if to help. His stomach gave a little. Finally, he spoke.
“Nothing wrong with you. She’s—”
“I know,” Barnes lashed out. “Pretty.”
“No,” said Wood Mountain, recovering himself. “Hell on wheels sharp. That’s what she is.”
*
Later, as he tried to help his beginning algebra students track down the identity of the mysterious x, as in x + 12 = 23, his mind veered off into the construction of a whole other equation. Call it a love equation. He tried to regard himself dispassionately and assign numbers to his pros and cons. He thought out his chances in life, totaled up how good-looking and pleasant Wood Mountain was against his good-looking pleasantness and paying job and other attributes tangible and intangible. The thing that surprised him in constructing the equation was he couldn’t decide whether his not being an Indian was a plus or a negative in her mind. Thus the equation kept shifting around, refusing to stay equal on both sides, popping up with more x’s and multiple unknowns to solve.
He squeaked out ahead when he posited being Indian as a negative, and gave his hair the same numerical advantage as Wood Mountain’s hair. Then he woke the next morning and found quite a bit of hair on his pillow. Horrified, he pictured his father’s horseshoe of remnant hair and restructured the equation to narrow his window of opportunity and widen Wood Mountain’s. How could he have forgotten age? Hair loss? Or did that matter? Did not being an Indian gain him, or lose him, say, half a decade and half a head of hair? He revised the problem again. And while trying to solve it wondered if the baby figured into it. He dropped his pencil and rested his chin on the top of one fist. He was also wondering whether he had actually heard Wood Mountain say that Pixie had been dressed as an ox.
“This way lies madness,” said Jarvis, when he came into Barnes’s classroom and found the straw-haired teacher staring into an invisible shifting plane of numbers that looked like space.
*
Wood Mountain watched Picasso. A flashy brown and white with a map of North America spread across her back and withers. Although he planned on mentioning this clever observation to Pixie (he could not think of her as Patrice, sorry), it wasn’t his but Grace’s. Wiry, tough, unrelenting Grace. She was studying geography. She loved this horse even more than the new filly. Riding him was like riding the top of the world, she said. The paint’s father was part Thoroughbred from down south in bluegrass country, maybe. How the paint markings had come through was a wonder, when the horse was so much else. Along with his boxing, along with the valuable pale horse Gringo, the paint had become Wood Mountain’s stake in the future. Since riding the train alongside Pixie and watching the baby, Archille, sleep in her arms, he’d started thinking about his future. Grace riding the paint had given him an idea. He’d started training as a boxer twice as hard.
During the practice, he talked to Pokey. After the practice, Pokey jumped on Wood Mountain’s back and the boxer took off like a racehorse. Barnes didn’t like it, but he would not have liked it worse had he known that Wood Mountain had decided to run Pokey all the way home. In order to see Pixie, or the baby, or both. To be honest, he had woken up that morning anxious to see how the baby was doing.
He’d had to let Pokey off twice, and it was dark by the time he jogged into the yard with the boy on his back. He tried to keep Pokey there until Pixie came out the door. He’d wanted to see her face when she realized he’d run home with her brother on his back. But Pokey slid off, ran to the door, and only Zhaanat came out anyway. He tried not to ask after Pixie, but of course the words popped out.
“Fell asleep after work,” said Zhaanat, jiggling the baby, who looked startled to see Wood Mountain. The baby’s sudden light of recognition stopped his breath.
Wood Mountain went to the baby and spoke to him in Dakota, which made Zhaanat’s eyes flash because in her traditions there were lingering scores to settle. He switched to Chippewa, and she relaxed. She even smiled at his infatuation with the baby. Wood became animated, popping his eyes, waving his hands, and the baby’s eyes followed him until, startled, he gave a gurgling laugh. Wood Mountain did the same goofball move. The baby laughed again. The laugh made Wood Mountain so giddy that it bumped Pixie to one side of his heart. The baby held the center, and laughed again. By the time Pixie, rubbing her eyes, was up and around, Wood Mountain was inside the house sitting at the table. The baby in his arms was sucking away at the bottle of oatmeal juice. While he drew effortfully on the nipple, the baby swiped and snatched at Wood Mountain’s face. When the baby got hold of his nose, Wood Mountain gave a soft honk, which made the baby shriek with happiness. This went on until the baby burbled and nodded off. Wood Mountain rose to leave, but Zhaanat made him sit down and eat potatoes fried in deer fat, soaked in gravy. He looked at the ancient rifle over the door.
“Did Pokey bring the deer down with that old gun?”
It looked like his grandfather’s Sitting Bull–era rifle.
“Pokey?” Zhaanat smiled, pointed with her lips at Patrice. “It was her got that buck this summer. Fat. I dried that meat.”