The Night Watchman(58)
And now this.
What Patrice had told him was so extreme an evil that it struck at his fundamental assumptions. He had always, even in the face of hatred or drunken violence, believed that people did bad things out of ignorance or weakness or liquor. He had never known or heard of the sort of evil that Patrice had spoken about—the chains in the walls, the collars, the dog speaking of her sister’s fate. Moses Montrose was right. He was an altar boy. Biboon, who was in his way an innocent, too, had raised him. Thomas couldn’t make the leap of consciousness that would allow him to understand all that was implied by the existence of that room. His thoughts veered off whenever he tried to imagine what those rooms implied. He arrived at the jewel bearing plant, unlocked the door. He walked to his desk but did not sit down. He paced. Between rounds, he stared into the dim corners of the room.
Thomas must have been asleep, or so tired he was in a trance. A faint drumming brought him to awareness. It was the owl again, he thought, confused. The owl had returned. It was banging on the back windows, fighting its own image in the glass. He jumped straight up, instinctively punched his time card, then bolted. He was out of the building, into the whipping cold, the door drifting shut behind him. He lunged back for the door. Too late. The door slammed and the noise resounded. He had no jacket, no flashlight, and no keys except, as always in his pants pocket, the car keys on a tab of beaded leather. The wind came down out of Alberta and swooped across Manitoba, honing itself to ice. Now, it stabbed. Although hardened by his years in that wind, he began to shiver. He slapped his arms, chest, thighs. There was no owl and the pounding continued. Why had he rushed out? He had to get back into the building as quickly as possible. But of course, he had done as he did every night, checked each lock, jiggled door handles, made everything secure. There was no way in except to break in and Thomas had never in his life broken into a building.
Except the time he opened the basement window for Roderick, but that didn’t count. They had as good as killed Roderick down there. At least Thomas had managed to open a window by using a wire stolen from the Fort Totten machine shop. He’d formed the end into a hook and wiggled it through a crack to pull away a wooden latch—it wasn’t much of a barrier and he’d done it easily. Then he’d thrown down the coat and apples and bread crusts and a handkerchief knotted around a lump of oatmeal. He called down to Roderick that he’d been seen, which wasn’t true, but he had to get away. Roderick was sobbing so bad. Thomas hated that sound of sobbing in the dark.
If he had a wire now, he could poke it through a crack beneath the frosted window, about six feet up, in the women’s bathroom. He would need a ladder or, no, he could drive his car over. He could stand on top of his car. He walked toward it, beating his arms across his body. Inside the car, he rubbed his hands together, started the engine. After a long few minutes the heater roared to life. He warmed his hands for a few moments. Put his head near the fan to warm up his brain. Unfortunately, he kept the interior obsessively clean. There wasn’t a blanket. No extra jacket. But a wire? In the electrical system? No, he’d sooner spend the night in his car than yank a wire from it. The warmth was wonderful. He dreaded leaving it. He began to worry that if he were found dozing in his car outside the building he was paid to protect, Vold might think the job was too much for him. Might think that the stress of being a tribal chairman was too much to take on and still be an effective night watchman.
Outside, the drumming intensified. Thomas peered through the windshield. It seemed to be coming from somewhere far away. In a wind like this there would usually be clouds. But the sky was clear. The stars hung low and luminous. The drumming came from up there. It seemed to Thomas that the stars were drumming in the moonless deep. Having a fine old time. Wait. He suddenly sprang out, walked around to the back, opened the trunk. In the trunk, there was an old rag rug he’d picked up at the mission bundles. He pulled it around his shoulders. Beneath the rug, there was a reel of wire. A cheap thin sort of wire that he’d bought for snares last time he was in town. It was floppy and droopy, but he thought it might do. He jumped back in the car and pulled it around, right up to the side of the building. Of course he would be all right. Everything would come out fine. He blasted the heater on himself, thinking about the source of the drumming. He could still hear it, a faint thrumming, from above. The drumming made him hopeful and soon he twisted off a piece of the wire. Thinking of the way the window catch worked, he made a loop at the end of the wire. He’d catch the little knob that held the window down, tighten the loop, and lift. He got out of the car to do this.
Twenty minutes later, hands nearly frozen, he climbed down. He’d warm himself up and try again, he thought, but this time when he turned the ignition, nothing. Over and over. Nothing. He waited. Tried again. Nothing. Nothing. Nothing. And he was becoming extremely cold. So cold his brain was slowing down. Even his armpits were numb and didn’t warm his hands. He was so cold that he knew he must give up and walk toward the lights of town, not walk but run, if he wanted to live.
He stepped out of the car, into the open, off the gravel road into rough pasture gleaming with frost. He fell, went down hard, lay there stunned. It was as if he’d been dashed to earth like a toy. Without warning, they threw you down. That’s how it was to live with them. Oh it was! Thomas had studied them. He had striven in every way to be like his teachers. And every boss. He had tried to make their ways his ways. Even if he didn’t like their ways, he’d tried. He’d tried to make money, like them. He’d thought that if he worked hard enough and followed their rules this would mean he could keep his family secure, his people from the worst harms, but none of that was true. Into his brain like a foul seep came the knowledge of what men had done to Vera.