The Night Watchman(7)
*
Most people built close to the main road, but the Wazhashk farm was set at the end of a long curved drive, just over a grassy rise. The old house was two stories high and made of hand-adzed oak timbers, weathered gray. The new house was a snug government cottage. Wazhashk had bought the old house along with the allotment back in 1880, before the reservation was pared down. He’d been able to buy it because the land needed a well. Another story, that well. Ten years ago, the family had qualified for the government house, which had thrilled them when it appeared, pulled on a heavy-duty trailer. In winter, Thomas, Rose, her mother, Noko, and a changing array of children besides their own who were still at home slept in the snug new house. Today was warm enough for Thomas to take his rest in the old house. He parked the Nash and emerged, craving the moment he would lie down beneath the heavy wool quilt.
“Don’t you go sneaking out on me again!”
Rose and her mother were arguing, and he considered slipping into the old house right then. But Rose leaned out the door and said, “You’re home, old man!” She had a delicate smile. She slammed her way back into the house, but even so, Thomas knew her weather was good. He always checked the weather of Rose before he made a move. Today was blustery but cheerful, so he came in the door. The toddlers Rose was taking care of were babbling in the big crib. There were two iced cinnamon rolls for him on the table. A bowl of oatmeal. Someone’s chickens were still laying and there was an egg. Rose was toasting two slices of bread in lard and as he sat down she dropped them on his plate. He dipped water from the last full can.
“I’ll fetch water when I wake up,” he said.
“We need it right now.”
“I am beat. Right down to the ground.”
“Then I’ll wait the washing.”
This was a big concession. Rose used a tub with a crank paddle, and liked to do her washing early so that she could take full advantage of the sun’s drying power. Thomas squeezed love for himself out of her sacrifice, and ate with emotion.
“My sweetheart,” he said.
“Sweetheart this, sweetheart that,” she grumbled.
He got himself out the door before she reconsidered the washing.
Sun flooded the sleeping floor of the old house. A few late flies banged against the window glass, or died buzzing around in circles on the floor. The top of the quilt was warm. Thomas removed his trousers and folded them along the creases to renew their sharpness. He kept a pair of long underwear pants under the pillow. He slipped them on, hung his shirt over a chair, and rolled under the heavy blanket. It was a quilt of patches left over from the woolen coats that had passed through the family. Here was his mother’s navy blue. It had been made from a trade wool blanket and to a blanket it had returned. Here were the boys’ padded plaid wool jackets, ripped and worn. These jackets had surged through fields, down icy hills, wrestled with dogs, and been left behind when they took city work. Here was Rose’s coat from the early days of their marriage, blue-gray and thin now, but still bearing the fateful shape of her as she walked away from him, then stopped, turned, and smiled, looking at him from under the brim of a midnight-blue cloche hat, daring him to love her. They’d been so young. Sixteen. Now married thirty-three years. Rose got most of the coats from the Benedictine Sisters for working in their charity garage. But his own double-breasted camel coat was bought with money he’d earned on the harvest crews. The older boys had worn it out, but he still had the matching fedora. Where was that hat? Last seen in its box atop the highboy dresser. His review of the coats with their yarn ties, all pressing down on him in a comforting way, always put him to sleep as long as he rushed past Falon’s army greatcoat. That coat would keep him awake if he thought too long about it.
Thomas left his last conscious thoughts on his father’s old coat, brown and quiet. Down the hill, across the slough, over the picked-bare furrows of the fields, through the birch and oak woods, there was the narrow grass road that passed between their lands and led to the door of his father’s house. His father was so very old now that he slept most of the day. He was ninety-four. When Thomas thought of his father, peace stole across his chest and covered him like sunlight.
The Boxing Coach
Lloyd Barnes’s brightest math student fought under the name Wood Mountain. He had graduated last year, but still trained at the gym Barnes had set up in the community center garage. It was said the young man would be famous if he could keep away from spirits. Barnes himself, a big man with thick, strawlike blond hair, trained alongside his boxing club of students. They went three and three—skipping rope for three minutes, rest, three minutes, rest, three more. That’s how Barnes had set up all of the exercises. Intervals, like the rounds they would fight. He sparred with the boys himself, so he could coach them on skills. Barnes had learned to box in Iowa from his uncle, Gene “the Music” Barnes, an unusual presence in the ring. Barnes had never been sure whether his uncle, a bandleader, got the nickname because of his day job, from his habit of humming while he danced at his opponents, or because he was an excellent boxer and the sports pages invariably declared that so-and-so was slated to “face the Music.” Barnes had never gone as far as his uncle, and after a serious knockout had decided teachers’ training school in Moorhead was his destiny. He’d gone to school on the G.I. Bill and what loans he’d had to take out were forgiven once he signed up to work on the reservation. He’d transferred three times, from Grand Portage to Red Lake, from Red Lake to Rocky Boy, and had been in the Turtle Mountains now for two years. He liked the place. Plus he had an eye on a Turtle Mountain woman and was hoping she would notice him.