The Night Watchman(84)

Someone had put up a blanket in a corner, for privacy, a place where Patrice could change her clothes. She put on long johns, overalls, and an old mission sweater. She took her fur mitts down off a shelf. She put on a knitted hat and when she came around the blanket the woman she didn’t know took in her transformation with surprise.

“Hello,” said the woman. “I’m Millie Cloud.”

She didn’t put her hand out, so Patrice put her hand out. Millie examined Patrice’s hand as if it were unusual, like Zhaanat’s hand, but then she grasped it almost with desperation. Millie’s grip was hard, like a white-person grip.

“Your hand has calluses,” Millie said.

“I like chopping wood,” said Patrice. “I’m going out there to chop wood right now.”

“I have never chopped wood,” said Millie. “When was your house built?”

“I don’t know.”

“And I see you’ve used tar paper to good advantage. Did your father work on that?”

“Him? That would be the day. He was a drunk,” said Patrice.

“You’re very forthcoming,” said Millie.

“Well, that’s my bed you’re sitting on,” said Patrice.

“I thought so. I noticed your stack of magazines. Do you mind if I’m sitting here?”

“What can I do about it?” said Patrice.

She amended her comment to say something pleasant, mumbled that Millie was welcome to read her magazines, and walked away. She would much rather have buried her father with just a few people around. Not this crowd and someone she didn’t know, but had heard of, for this was the Chippewa scholar. She should have been nicer. She remembered that she would have to get information on how to go to college. Patrice spoke to a few more people, accepted a few hugs, ate bannock and Juggie’s soup. Then she went outside. Pokey was still chopping wood.

“You can quit for a while,” said Patrice. “It looks like you’ve been chopping for a whole day.”

“Not really. I have to stop and warm my hands up all the time.”

Patrice shed her mittens and took up the ax. She ran warm. It took a long time when chopping wood for her hands to get cold. Pokey took a load of stove lengths into the house. Patrice got into her rhythm and everything else fell away. She forgot the strange woman on her bed, blending in with the pattern on her quilt. She forgot her complicated feelings, or got them out, down the ax and into the wood. She forgot the kindness of the bear and how she had betrayed it, although maybe, as Zhaanat always believed, the bear had intentionally given itself to her. It still seemed to Patrice that her fall had been an accident and that the bear had just accepted her presence in its sleep, or not noticed her, or maybe the bear dreamed of her because surely the bear smelled her in its sleep and knew she was there. What was it, to be dreamed of by a bear?

Not something that happened to most Homecoming queens, thought Patrice, or to most waterjacks. Surely it didn’t happen to many jewel bearing plant employees.

Wood Mountain was at the grave place using his pickax on the frozen ground. As she worked on the wood, they began to chop in alternating blows. Which was comforting. It gave her strength. It meant the work was getting done. Her father would soon be safe and she would be safe from him. They would all live easier. Never again would her mother have to go to sleep with a knife beneath her pillow and a hatchet at her feet. Never again would Pokey have to cringe. Never again would Patrice have to wipe her father’s piss and shit out of the corner. Or hear him weeping in the lean-to, calling for them like a lost soul. Although she did hear him one more time.





The First Night Watch


After she had worked for a while, Patrice went into the house and ate another bowl of Juggie’s soup. The sacred fire had been burning ever since her father had been found. She walked out to the fire holding a tin mug of her mother’s tea. She offered a few drops to the fire. The tea was made from aromatic cedar fronds and melted snow. It was her favorite kind of tea. There was something about the water that was swirled through the heavens, frozen, scooped up, and boiled with cedar. You couldn’t name it. But the hot tea, made of ingredients that joined earth and heaven, radiated its penetrating force through her body. The tips of her fingers stung and her stomach warmed. She could feel her blood awaken. She sat down with the men by the fire. They treated her differently when she wore her father’s boots and the big coat and overalls. She listened to them talking about her father’s basketball exploits. Pogo Paranteau. She had heard it all hundreds of times. Sometimes when, with a gesture, one of his old teammates imitated his distinctive jump shot, she even laughed.





The Second Night Watch


Thomas left to work on the grave house, hoping to finish it before morning. The other men took turns with the pickax and shovel, chipping the grave out of closely bound roots and glassine dirt. In the background there was always the sound of their effort. The blows were thin, strange, ringing out in the woods and bouncing off the trees. Gradually, as the diggers entered the earth, the sound was muffled. Finally the men left the fire and went in for food. Patrice was alone. Once, her back prickled. She looked around, but nothing. She turned back and fell into a fire-trance, staring at the way the wood whitened at the edges as the fire glowed from the center. Just at the corner of her vision, something moved again. She looked around. At the edge of the woods, at the bottom of the trail, something or somebody was slipping through the trees. She watched it flickering in and out of the branches.