The Night Watchman(71)
Who did this?
Roderick, sir.
He didn’t get as much sleep as he’d have liked; in fact, he was still tired when he woke up four hours later. Smoker barked his head off when Noko wandered away from the house, and there was a visitor looking for Rose to ask if Rose could keep her loud and furious baby for the afternoon. He tried to get a few hours in when the rest of the family went to bed, but again, his heart raced and his body was so tense he could not relax. And that baby was a howler. He’d see Roderick behind his eyelids, then worry about whether the boxing match would raise enough money, then leap forward to Washington, D.C. He worried what going to Congress would be like, what he would say, how difficult they’d make it, whether he’d choke up on his words. And he knew thinking this far ahead was useless and ridiculous, but his mind had seized its own irrational path and would not be controlled by logic. He couldn’t argue himself into sleep.
When he finally stopped tussling with his mind and got up to go to work, he dressed in the dark as usual and sneaked out into the kitchen. There at the table, in the low light of the kerosene lamp, Sharlo sat with a blanket over her shoulders. She was hunched over a book, concentrating so intensely that she barely acknowledged him. He went outside to the privy and when he came back washed his face, hands, forearms, neck with cold water, to wake himself. Sharlo barely looked up. He put on his jacket, hat, and picked up his briefcase, his lunch box, his thermos of coffee. As he turned at the door to say goodbye and tell Sharlo to turn in, she sighed, shook her pin-curled head, and closed her book. She stretched her arms, yawning.
“That was a good one.”
“Kept you awake.” Thomas touched her hair.
“Here, you should take it.”
It was a mystery book. But Thomas had too many letters to write and he was determined to investigate the book that the missionaries had left with him.
After his first rounds were finished, Thomas poured himself a cup of coffee and took out the small dark book. He thought he should read the book in order to understand Arthur V. Watkins. After all, when Biboon had sent him to boarding school, he’d said, “Study hard because we need to know the enemy.” Over the years, he’d realized the wisdom of that. Knowing the sorts of people he was dealing with, he’d been able to persuade the powers that be to locate the jewel bearing plant near the reservation. He’d been able to use their logic to get improvements in the community school. He used the education they had given him to advance his people—he’d often forgotten that was the point of his study, as Biboon had said, but it had turned out to be so. Yet, along the way the word enemy became confusing. The BIA higher-ups in the room in Fargo could have been the enemy, but they seemed more dismayed by the bill than excited to carry out its directives. John Hail, the town lawyer, was a friend. And even Vold—not exactly the enemy, not even an adversary. But Arthur V. Watkins was clearly an enemy—of the most dangerous sort: a principled enemy who thought what he was doing was for the best. But let me not call him an enemy, Thomas thought. I will think of Watkins as my adversary. An enemy has to be defeated in battle, but an adversary’s different. You must outwit an adversary. So you do have to know them very well. In Thomas’s experience, anyone who took on and tried to sweepingly solve what was always called the “plight” or the Indian “problem” had a personal reason. He wondered what that could be for Arthur V. Watkins.
The first intriguing surprise in The Book of Mormon was that Joseph Smith, their prophet, had also been visited by an extremely bright being who was semitransparent. Thomas put the book down. At first, his feelings were confused and maybe even hurt, the description was so close to his own private experience on the night he almost froze. But once he got over the feeling, he was somewhat relieved. These beings apparently appeared to others. They had come to tell Joseph Smith about some historical plates that seemed to be buried in several places. The book had its elements of suspense. For instance, the interior argument of a man named Nephi, who was not eager to murder a drunk man with his own sword, but was persuaded to complete the murder by the voice of the Lord. Nephi next impersonated the man he murdered, deceived his servant, and stole all his treasure—brass plates with histories engraved on them. Thomas’s eyes began to droop. There was wilderness, women, Jews. Mainly there was this Nephi. Would Nephi tell this whole book? Thomas paged ahead. Again, his eyes began to burn and then he felt his head tip, jerked himself awake. This was going to be a very difficult night.
He persevered for another hour and began to read about Gentiles coming to America, which surprised him because he didn’t think that things would move so quickly. But then again the book, for all of its archaic returneths and blameths, had its origins in America, so he tried to adjust. There was lots of righteous anger in the book. There was some fury about a great and abominable church, which Thomas couldn’t place. There was a lot about the filthiness of other people and the cleanliness of Nephi’s people. When he got to the downfall of the daughters of Zion, Thomas felt a pang for the women. Apparently the daughters were proud and haughty. But their punishment was excessive, Thomas thought. He liked the idea that they made tinkling sounds as they walked, like jingle dancers. But on a certain day the Lord took away the bravery of the daughters tinkling ornaments and cauls, and round tires like the moon. The Lord took everything away. The chains and the bracelets and the mufflers. The bonnets, and the ornaments of the legs, and the headbands, and the tablets and the earrings. The rings and nose jewels. The changeable suits of apparel, and the mantles and the wimples, and the crisping pins. The glasses, and the fine linen, and hoods, and the veils. And instead of a sweet smell, they got a stink. Instead of a girdle, a torn girdle. Instead of well-set hair, baldness. Baldness! Instead of a stomacher, whatever that was, they got a girding of sackcloth, and worst of all, burning instead of beauty.