The Night Watchman(9)
“We need Mr. Jarvis to show you,” he finally said.
Pokey was always the last to be dropped off. His house was farthest, and off the road, but Barnes insisted on driving down the path even though he’d have to back out. At first it was because he knew about Paranteau, wanted to make sure Pokey was okay. Then he saw Pixie. Now Barnes drove down the road because there was always a chance he’d see Pixie chopping wood. Pixie. Those eyes!
Barnes made it back to the teachers’ dining hall just after the food was cleared away. He lived in “bachelor’s quarters,” a small white bungalow beneath a cottonwood tree. The female teachers, and other government employees, lived in a two-story brick building with four generously proportioned rooms on the second floor, two on the first floor, plus a communal kitchen, and a recreation area in the substantial basement with a small room for the caretaker/cook, Juggie Blue. She was washing dishes and getting ready to mop her way out of the kitchen, which she always did at 7 p.m. Juggie was a stocky, well-muscled, shrewd-looking woman in her forties. She was on the tribal advisory council with Thomas. Like Barnes, she was always trying to give up cigarettes, which meant that when they slipped, they slipped together. But not tonight. Or probably not. He was working with Wood Mountain later.
Juggie always kept a heaped plate of dinner warm for him. Now she slid a pie plate out of the warming oven in her beloved six-burner cooking range. The range had not one, not two, but three ovens with black speckled enamel interiors and stainless-steel racks. It had been hauled up from Devils Lake at Juggie’s insistence. She had clout with Superintendent Tosk. The expensive range allowed her to bake several items at the same time, and even slow-cook one of her famous beef stews. She made the stew in an ancient Dutch oven, brought overland by an ox team in the last century, using an entire bottle of her own chokecherry wine, and carrots bought from Thomas, who buried them for the winter in his cellar, deep in a bin of sand. She coaxed things from everyone on the reservation. Which was odd, because she was entirely lacking in charm.
“Potpie,” she said, and went back to fill her mop bucket.
Oh god. Barnes was hungry. He was always hungry. And potpie was his favorite, or second or third favorite, of her reliables. She used lard from St. John in the rich crust, and got her chickens over the border from a Hutterite colony. The Pembina potatoes, which she picked every year herself, and hoarded, were small and new because it was September. The carrots were perfectly cooked through but not mushy. The lightly salted golden gravy. The soft tiles of onions, browned first. She had sprinkled in a liberal amount of Zanzibar pepper. When he finished, he bowed his head. Juggie was the reason that some of the teachers renewed their contracts, and it wasn’t hard to see the source of her power over Superintendent Tosk.
Barnes sighed and brought the pie plate over to the counter.
“You outdid yourself.”
“Huh. Got a smoke?”
“No. I really quit this time.”
“Me too.”
They both paused, in case . . .
“Let me finish my floor,” said Juggie. Then she stood straight up, narrowed her eyes, glanced around, and plucked a wrapped parcel from under the counter. Supper, for her son. She shoved it toward Barnes.
Wood Mountain was already at the gym. Barnes found him at the sawdust bag. Little puffs of dust popped from the burlap when Wood Mountain struck with his left. He had more power in his left, though he was right-handed. Barnes put the package down by the neat roll of clothing that Wood Mountain had brought with him. He was Juggie’s son with Archille Iron Bear, a Sioux man whose grandfather had traveled north with Sitting Bull, on the run after Little Big Horn. A few families had stayed in Canada, some at a sheltered spot on the plains called Wood Mountain. Most people had forgotten the actual name of Juggie’s son and called him by the place his father had come from.
“Looking good,” said Barnes, shedding his jacket.
Barnes picked up a pad he’d sewed together from old horse blankets, more sawdust inside. He held it up and danced it around for Wood Mountain to hit. There was a ragged circle of red cloth stitched onto it. Barnes changed the location of the circle every few days.
“You’re clenching up before the strike. Relax,” he said.
Wood Mountain stopped and bounced, his arms dangling loose. Then he started again. Barnes’s forearms began to ache, absorbing shock after shock behind the pad. It was good he’d stepped out of the ring before Wood Mountain got there. Barnes was taller, but the two of them fought the same weight class. Both middleweights, topping out at 170, usually, though now Barnes weighed more. He blamed Juggie.
Noko
Thomas drifted to the surface of his sleep. He heard the mice, skittering pleasantly behind the plaster and reed insulation against the roof. He heard a car drive up, then the buggy his father still kept. Rose and the girls were hooting and laughing. The babies shrieking. He was too buoyant. He tried to weight himself, to sink back under the surface of the noises. He pulled the pillow over his head, and was gone. The next time he came to, the sun was paler, the light half spent, and his body had relaxed into such a pleasant torpor that he was pinned to the thin mattress. He finally loosened himself and left the old house, walked to the little house, into the kitchen.
Sharlo, his daughter, was a sharp, lively senior in high school, dark hair pin-curled every night, jeans rolled up her ankles, checkered blouse, sweater, saddle shoes. Fee was quieter, just eleven, dreaming as she worked the pedal on the butter churn. Rose was frying onions and potatoes. Wade was in and out, popping air punches, supposedly filling the woodbox.