The Night Watchman(69)

“I’ll see you soon,” he thought. But woke the next morning, warm in his saggy bed, even though the fire had gone out in the stove. Laboriously, he coaxed it back. Wade would come soon and stoke it up for the day. Most nights, Wade also stayed to watch over him. But Biboon had so much to think about that he didn’t mind being alone. He pissed in his piss bucket. Boiled water and made his tea and oatmeal. As he ate, and sipped, he sang and thought.

When they sat together and his uncle touched Biboon’s knee, it was a sign that Biboon should remember what he said. The stars were impersonal. But they took human shapes and arranged themselves in orders that conveyed directions to the next life. There was no time where he was going. He’d always thought that inconceivable. For years now he’d understood that time was all at once, back and forth, upside down. As animals subject to the laws of earth, we think time is experience. But time is more a substance, like air, only of course not air. It is in fact a holy element. In time the golden bug, the manidoons, the little spirit being he’d cracked out of a shell not long ago, flew to him. It happened when he was a tiny boy standing at the edge of a prairie coteau. From that place, he saw the buffalo trudging out of the horizon on one side of the world. They crossed before his eyes and vanished on the other side of the world in one unbroken line of being. That was time. All things happened at once and the little golden spirit flew back and forth, up and down through the holy element.





The Cradle Board




Wood Mountain trained alone with Barnes, in secret, because he could not be seen using his hand without the fake cast. He had promised to tell no one, but felt badly about the ruse when he held the baby. It was like he was lying to Archille, and so at one point he whispered, “Don’t worry, the cast isn’t real.” Gringo had to be ridden, so he took him over the trail, staked at the edge of the yard, strapped on a blanket. Louie had been making good money putting Gringo to stud. People came down from Canada, over from Montana, to breed their mares to a horse with Gringo’s unusual coloring. Gringo had become familiar with the edge of the Paranteau yard, the beginning of the woods, and the long frozen grasses that he could pull.

Inside, Pokey was worrying his head about the match. Everyone was selling tickets, and everyone knew about Wood Mountain’s injury. Perhaps sustained while picking mud from Gringo’s hoof. Had the horse bitten him, or stepped on his hand, or cruelly managed to jam his wrist, or maybe thrown him once he got on to ride? Wood Mountain wouldn’t say—not because the supposed injury was difficult to describe, but because he knew he couldn’t use actual words to lie. His face would give him away. So he nodded at the horse or mentioned the stallion’s name and shook his head whenever someone asked. Which was always.

“How’d you hurt your hand?”

“Gringo,” he said, wincing.

“That damn horse,” said Pokey.

“Shaaah,” said Wood Mountain. “Swearing in front of your baby brother.”



Later at the barn, Wood Mountain gave Gringo a rubdown and some grain. Then he stoked up the little stove in the corner where he slept. He sat down on a milking stool and began working on the piece of wood he was going to use for the cradle board. He’d obtained a cedar board from a friend in Minnesota; he’d also split a piece of ash, and was soaking it now to use as a curved head guard. Maybe he’d fit a flat piece onto the bottom of the board. That way the laced-in baby could brace his little feet when he was older.

Grace came into the barn and saw Wood Mountain shaving down the cedar with a hand plane.

“Hey,” she said, “is your hand okay now?”

Wood Mountain looked blank, then screwed up his face.

“Ow,” he said, setting down the plane. “I shouldn’t of been doing that.”

“Looks like you didn’t mind,” said Grace, suspicious. “Is your hand really hurt? I won’t tell.”

“Are you really flirting with that Mormon? I won’t tell.”

“No,” said Grace. “He’s gone.”

“For good?”

“I think so. He was getting kind of, I don’t know.”

“Moony-eyed,” said Wood Mountain.

“Maybe.”

“What happened?”

“I wasn’t leading him on or nothing.”

“Oh, sure.”

“Really! We were just brushing the horses together, and all of a sudden he says that if his seed mingled with a Lamanite’s he would be damned to the unrelenting fire, but he would be willing to suffer. I said rest easy, no chance your seed’s mingling with nothing here. But then I get curious and ask what’s a Lamanite? He says didn’t I know and I say no. He tells me I’m a Lamanite and I say no I’m a Chippewa. He says same thing as a Lamanite. But if I would take up becoming a Mormon I will turn whiter and whiter until I am shining in the dark.”

“Hard to sneak out on your dad if you’re glowing in the dark.”

“How do you know I sneak out?”

“Sometimes when I’m too tired to go home I take a nap out here. That’s how I saw your boyfriend tiptoe out to meet you the other night. He had his shoes picked up in his hands. Lifted up his knees. Looked so foolish.”

“That’s the night he talked about his precious seed.”