The Night Watchman(57)
On more than one morning she was the waterjack, naked in the tank. Wavery customers drifted outside. One was Vera, curiously pressing her face to the glass. These weren’t dreams, but vivid scenarios that flooded her mind. It was as though all that had happened to her in the city had to happen over and over, only with Vera always there, not found but somehow finding her.
“Mama, I have these dreams,” said Patrice one morning, still jangled.
They were eating oatmeal, the baby sleeping in Zhaanat’s lap. There were a few raisins sprinkled in the oatmeal, so they were taking their time, making sure that only one raisin came in every other spoonful, so they could last the entire bowl.
“Wiindamawish gaa-pawaadaman.”
So Patrice told her mother about her dreams. Then she watched her mother’s face grow stiff and still.
“It would be good if Gerald came down here, but he will be tied up with his ceremonies now,” Zhaanat said. “We will have to handle this.”
“Handle the dreams?”
Zhaanat stared at the table, smoothing the edge of the wood with her extraordinary hand, which fell, suddenly limp, into her lap. Before her eyes, her mother seemed to be draining of life.
“Are your dreams about Vera?” asked Patrice.
“They are the exact same dreams.”
“The exact same dreams as my dreams?”
Zhaanat nodded heavily, frowning into her daughter’s eyes. Patrice knew. The trembling started in a place behind her heart, but soon the shaking worked its way to just beneath her skin. Her body was quivering like an arrow that has just struck its mark. Her mother spoke.
“She is trying to reach us.”
The Star Powwow
Nobody saw them coming, and instead of giving his usual warning bark Smoker went out on the road to meet them. Zhaanat carried the baby, not laced onto a cradle board, but folded into the web of silvery knitting, hanging in the folds of the baby blanket like a sack of sugar. Patrice walked alongside her, wearing cuffed jeans, saddle shoes, and a green sweater. Zhaanat wore green too, the dark calico dress with tiny golden flowers. They knocked on Thomas’s door and Rose opened it.
“Oh, you!”
Rose’s face relaxed in pleasure. She was fond of them both, especially close to Zhaanat, and she wanted to see the baby. She disengaged him from the froth of yarn and held him, examining his face minutely and coaxing him to smile at her. Thomas was sitting at the kitchen table while the children passed in and out and Noko railed at her daughter. He capped his pen. He had written to Milton Young again, and two other congressmen. He was setting up a meeting between Arnold Zeff, leader of the local chapter of the American Legion, and Louis Pipestone. Louis was going to set before Arnold Zeff the prospect of Indians who had faithfully served their country abandoned to beg in the streets of Zeff’s off-reservation community. He was hoping the Legion would sign on against the bill. Thomas had a morning meeting with the superintendent of the school district. He would propose that they take on the funding of the reservation school once the federal government relinquished support. These ideas were the result of Biboon’s and Eddy Mink’s remarks about how the surrounding communities could be affected by termination.
Patrice and Zhaanat sat down at the kitchen table. Sharlo cleared away her arithmetic papers and Fee took her book into the other room. From her corner, Noko glared. She was wearing a gray wool shawl bristling with stiff white stray threads, and had her arms folded tightly against her chest, holding in her rage. The baby stirred hungrily. Without a trace of self-consciousness, Zhaanat took him back and began to nurse him. Rose made coffee. Noko’s head reared back, a swatch of hair flipped up, her eyes bugged so she looked like a maddened egret. Thomas showed no surprise at all and Rose set down heavy scratched mugs full of scalding coffee, then sat down next to Thomas.
“We need your advice,” said Patrice, giving Thomas a pinch of tobacco.
Then she told about the dog, what the dog said, the empty rooms with the chains fixed to the walls and the slashed leather collars on the floor. She told them only what pertained to Vera. Maybe she would never tell anybody at all about her brief employment as a waterjack. She ended with the train ride back, then fell silent. Finally, Thomas spoke. Tears of shock had swelled up behind his eyes, but he’d not allowed them to spill out. This thing was nowhere in his understanding.
“We have to go to the police,” he said.
His voice was leaden with emotion but what he said was both unthinkable and disappointing to Patrice and Zhaanat. To seek police assistance for an Indian woman was almost sure to put her in the wrong. No matter what happened, she would be the one blamed and punished. It was for that reason unthinkable to approach the police, and it was disappointing because Thomas trusted their enemies.
“The policeman will never help us,” Zhaanat said at last.
“We’ll have to find another way,” said Patrice.
“Let me sleep on this,” said Thomas, although he knew he would never sleep. And they struggled to talk of other things, of work at the jewel bearing plant, of neutral things that could allow the mysterious horror to sink below their thoughts.
When Thomas went to work that night, he didn’t take his briefcase along. He knew he would not be able to concentrate on the many letters of request and explanation that pressed upon him. Nor would he be able to plan the information meetings to be held in the community hall. He wanted to get the interpretation of the bill right for the meetings. But he knew he would not be able to find those words after what Patrice had told him. Driving to work had become ever more filled with dread. Dread that he would not be able to stay awake. Dread that on the other hand, he might never sleep again. Dread of the situation, ungraspable in its magnitude. Loneliness. The forces he was up against were implacable and distant. But from their distance they could reach out and sweep away an entire people.