The Night Watchman(88)
“You wipe a bit onto your eyes.”
Afterward, Patrice must wash her hands scrupulously, said the nurse. She must watch her family for signs. Her voice was stern. “Blindness results from lack of hygiene. Where do you live?”
“Minneapolis,” said Patrice.
Lack of hygiene, thought Patrice. The nurse might come into our house. She could make an official assessment and report all the ways our ways aren’t up to her standards. The health officials might even attempt to take the baby. This had happened to other children. Still, thank god, thank god, I will not be blind! Her neck was itching, a sign she’d better get right out of there. She thanked the nurse.
Before Patrice left, the nurse asked her to come back when the eye doctor would be in and gave her the date of the eye clinic.
“Why?” asked Patrice.
The nurse made her promise.
Outside, Wood Mountain was still waiting with Daisy Chain.
“You don’t have to walk me home,” said Patrice. “I can go down to the store and find a ride.”
“We go back the way we came,” insisted Wood Mountain. “She fixed your eyes?”
“I won’t go blind,” said Patrice.
“Blind!” said Wood Mountain. “My grandmother went blind.”
“What a terrible thing. I would lose my job. I couldn’t chop wood. I don’t know what else. I would miss all of everything.”
She couldn’t come close to saying what she meant.
“All the beauty.”
“I guess you don’t mean me,” said Wood Mountain. “All the beauty.” But it sounded like he hoped she meant him too.
“Of course I meant you too,” said Patrice, still in shock at the thought. To lose all of this. She hadn’t truly considered it before, and then to know it could have happened.
“My grandmother got around real good,” said Wood Mountain. “She said that her other senses opened up. She could hear everything, everywhere, and smell? She could smell you even if you didn’t make a sound.”
He spoke quickly to cover up the jolt of pleasure that her words had given him.
“I never knew that,” said Patrice.
Already, her eyes were less scratchy and the light was more benign. The cold fresh air stirred her. I won’t go blind, she thought. The sun was low in the sky, casting slant regal light. As they plodded along, the golden radiance intensified until it seemed to emanate from every feature of the land. Trees, brush, snow, hills. She couldn’t stop looking. The road led past frozen sloughs that bristled with scorched reeds. Clutches of red willow burned. The fans and whips of branches glowed, alive. Winter clouds formed patterns against the fierce gray sky. Scales, looped ropes, the bones of fish. The world was tender with significance.
“Onizhishin, so beautiful,” Patrice murmured. She had dismounted and was walking beside the horse. Wood Mountain leaned over and kissed her. He hadn’t meant to and was completely demoralized when she hoisted herself onto the horse, slapped its rump, and rode away. He watched the horse clomp down the road. Daisy Chain wouldn’t trot for long. Soon they were walking again, slow enough for him to catch up with little effort. He actually tried not to catch up with them, but inevitably they matched pace. For a while, neither spoke.
“Wish I could take it back,” Wood Mountain said at last.
“It’s okay,” said Patrice. “I was surprised.”
“How could you be surprised? I’m out at your place all the time. People say we’re together.”
“They even say the baby’s our baby,” said Patrice.
Disturbingly, she laughed.
“I wish he was,” said Wood Mountain in a sudden fit. “I wish you were with me.”
As soon as he said this, he felt he’d blurted out the very truth of his soul. He needed her. Wanted her. It was all over for him. She was his one and only. In a mad surge of certainty he grasped Daisy Chain’s halter, stopping them, and in a near frenzy cried out, “You’re the one for me. The one and only! I need you, oh Pixie! I mean Patrice! Please for god’s sake marry me.”
He looked crazily up. Her face floated against the clouds. She gazed down, her soft wounded eyes sending the most delicious sensations through him, although she said nothing. They resumed their slow walk home, thinking their separate thoughts, she relieved because she hadn’t promised anything, he relieved because she hadn’t said no.
True, in the moment, Patrice had wanted to say I want you too, my man! I need you too, my man! Yes! She hadn’t wanted to say I love you. He hadn’t said that. But even in the moment of crisis, when he spoke so wonderfully, from his full heart, a part of Patrice had observed. A part of her mind was thinking, even talking about herself, “She’s feeling this, her heart is going so fast she’s dizzy, look, she’s so happy, she’s so wildly happy, she’s falling, she’s falling for it, falling.” Once Patrice was home, she went straight to work on the woodpile and that voice kept talking to her. Some of the girls she’d started school with had been married for years. Some of the girls had three, four, five children. Some of the girls looked like middle-aged women. Washing clothes with snowmelt. Washing clothes for an entire family. Freezing the clothes dry. Clothes whipping in the sun. And her mother had never even made the slightest suggestion that she marry Wood Mountain. So why should Patrice marry? A disappointing thought struck. Now that he’d told her his secret feelings, Wood Mountain was sticky. She couldn’t try him out. She would be going against one of the few things her mother had said in regard to love, “Never play with a man’s heart. You never know who he is.” Zhaanat had meant he might have some sort of spiritual power that could harm her if he loved her and was rejected. And Patrice thought another thing her mother said was definitely true—you never really knew a man until you told him you didn’t love him. That’s when his true ugliness, submerged to charm you, might surface. After all, it had happened with Bucky.