The Night Watchman(65)

At work, she carefully sized up the others. Was there anyone who would possibly give up sick days, the way Valentine had given up her days? And not keep talking about it the way Valentine was now talking about her generous gesture? The one friend she might have approached, Betty Pye, had already used up her days getting her tonsils out. And she had perhaps gone a little too far with the tonsils. That day she brought them to lunch.

Betty took out her lunch box, which was an actual cardboard box covered with tinfoil. Then she put a jar beside her box. It contained some dark greenish-brown squiggles.

“Anybody besides me missing their tonsils?”

“I had mine out when I was at boarding school,” said Curly Jay.

She was down at the other end of the table. There was silence at the end of the table where Betty sat with her tonsils in a jar.

“I kept mine because they were supposed to be so unusual. Besides, they were mine!” said Betty to the group. She bit into her egg sandwich and chewed as she blandly reviewed her co-workers. They edged away from her. Doris said something and as usual Valentine laughed. Only Patrice did not look away from Betty Pye, but she also didn’t look too directly at the tonsils, though you could hardly miss them. They looked like a couple of leeches. Patrice was hungry and had a baked potato for her lunch. She’d dressed out rabbits, deer, porcupines, all sorts of wild birds, muskrat, beaver, and pretty much could not be bothered by a pair of tonsils.

“Did you use up all the toffee in the parade?” she asked Betty.

“No,” said Betty. She reached into her box and slid a wrapped piece across the table to Patrice.

Unexpected! Patrice put the toffee into her lunch pail. Zhaanat’s face would light up when she brought it home. To make Zhaanat happy, just for a second or two, was one of her main efforts these days, and Pokey’s too. Even the baby tried hard, she could tell. He made Zhaanat smile with his toothless little grin. But he never did smile when he looked at Patrice.

Mr. Vold came into the lunchroom with a self-important mug on. He informed them that higher-ups would be coming soon to inspect the premises. Everything must be perfect. Also, for the time being, there would be no more afternoon coffee breaks. He tried to make his weak eyes steely. Then he vanished. The women looked at one another, cleaned up every crumb, went back to work. After a while, they began to murmur. No coffee break in the afternoon? How would they manage? Just when you felt your body about to give, when your eyes crossed, when your neck was killing you, the thought of the coffee break was the only thing that kept you going. Without it? Collapse. Patrice still worked just beside Valentine, and when Doris wasn’t around, sometimes Valentine still talked to her. They agreed about the coffee break. Then Valentine’s tone shifted.

“You probably wonder what we have up our sleeves,” she said in a coy whisper.

“Sleeves?”

“So to speak. Well, he kissed us. Kissed the two of us.”

“At the same time?”

“Ooooh shaaaa. No.”

“Aren’t you going to ask who he was?” said Valentine after a while.

“Barnes?”

Valentine gasped. “Did he tell you?”

Something wicked in Patrice made her answer, “Yes.”

And there was silence after that.



But they talked to her on the way home, and didn’t talk anymore about “chirps” or about Barnes. It was all so very strange. Here she was, with no men on her mind, except the faceless ones who had kidnapped, or maybe did something worse, to her sister. No men but terrible men were on her mind. Patrice certainly did not think about Barnes, unless he was right in front of her. And she didn’t think about Wood Mountain either, though that was harder because he stopped by regularly to see the baby. Who smiled at him! Yes! Wood Mountain got the smiles that should have belonged to Patrice. If she was jealous of somebody, it wasn’t Valentine or Doris, it was Wood Mountain.



When she came down the grass road, she saw that he was visiting again. The pale horse he liked to ride was tied to a stump, chewing away on what Vera had always wanted to be a lawn. Patrice stopped to pat his muzzle, scratch his ears. This was better than having her father come home anyway. Miles better. Inside the house, the baby was drinking from a bottle of Zhaanat’s fortifying rose hip tea. Wood Mountain was holding the baby and the bottle. He was the only one in the house.

“That better not have sugar in it,” said Patrice.

“Why not?”

“Sugar’s not good for babies.”

“It’s just the baby tea. Don’t worry. Your mom went out to get some cedar to make a special bath, I guess.

“Cedar makes a baby stronger,” continued Wood Mountain, as if she didn’t know.

Patrice stepped behind the curtain and changed into her jeans. When she came out, she poked up the fire in the stove and put on a kettle of water.

“You want to keep holding him? While I fill the woodbox?”

Wood Mountain nodded without taking his eyes off the baby.

Patrice went out and sharpened the ax, then split some wood to work out the aches in her back and shoulders. Wood Mountain felt each blow. When she came back in, Wood Mountain had the baby over his shoulder and he was walking around with a little pump in every step. The kind of jouncing walk that put babies to sleep. He patted lightly and sang an old tune, a lullaby, one of Juggie’s. He was instantly an old hand with babies, the boxer. He could tame horses too. But that didn’t mean she had to like him, though maybe, she thought, why not, a friend.