The Night Watchman(93)
They waited. A shadow shifted. There was a small creak. Maybe a slight settling of the building. Then the shadow crept away, distinctly crept away, and the back of Rose’s neck prickled.
“It’s him,” she whispered.
Thomas said nothing. If it was Roderick, he wanted her to see him. But nothing else happened and eventually they relaxed. Rose told him to put his head down on the desk. He refused. They made the next round and Rose led with the flashlight. When they sat back down she gave him a sandwich out of the lunch box. It was a boiled chicken sandwich dressed with a little gravy. She had canned six chickens that fall. This was the last of them.
“Put your head down and sleep,” she ordered when he had finished.
Her voice was so strict that he relented. The moment he put his head down on his folded arms he was filled with a crushing sense of relief and comfort. In an instant, he was gone.
Roderick was sitting behind the motor, not on it, not where Rose could see him. He had his hands out in front of his face and was pretending to eat that chicken sandwich. Homemade bun. He used to work in the school bakery. Working in the bakery was how a kid could have a full belly at night. You stole whatever dough you could get and put it in your pocket. It was called fringing. You fringed the dough. Then you ate it in bed at night and it swelled up and filled your belly enough so you didn’t wake up hollow and sick. To get a job in the bakery, you had to be good and keeping that job was the only thing Roderick cared about, so for a long time he was good. Then a kid got caught and Mrs. Burton Bell checked all their pockets. He was fired. So he no longer cared and all the bad he had resisted came right out. He ran away. Again and again. He became a runner. That’s how he ended up in the cellar and got so cold. All because of bread dough. And he couldn’t taste it anymore even if he could have had some of that sandwich. He’d started coming here, to the jewel bearing plant, because it was a new place and he was tired of all the old places on the reservation. Plus, of course, he liked to be around his old pal Thomas. Sometimes Roderick found a place to sleep for a year or two. But when he woke up he was always a ghost, still a ghost, and it was getting old.
When Thomas woke up he didn’t know where he was, that’s how deeply he’d slept. He raised his head off his arms and opened his eyes and there was Rose, keeled over on the bench. Her head was pillowed on her coat and she had draped a sweater over her breast and arms. She looked so peaceful there. He made the next round but didn’t go outside to smoke his cigar; instead, he sat down at his desk and fiddled with his pen. He was so close to getting the county commissioner from the next county over to write a letter that would strenuously object to taking over federal responsibilities for his people. There was not a sufficient tax base on the reservation to care for roads, not to mention schools. Oh yes, in this case they needed all the minor officials of white townships and counties that they could scare from behind their office desks. Thomas began to write.
Missionary Feet
Although this seemingly eternal mission was enough walking for a lifetime, and although Vernon looked forward to the end of the day (especially now that there would be Mrs. Hanson’s blessed food), at night, every night, he woke to find his feet moving. They ached, they needed rest, and yet his pale narrow bony long-toed feet would not be still. It was as though they had ideas of their own. He could not control them. He was grateful that the Lord had called the two of them, Elnath and Vernon, to be transferred soon, but he was also afraid that they would have to walk down to Fargo.
Although the feet, he thought resentfully, wouldn’t mind even if they froze. It was as though they did not belong to him at all.
The only thing worse than trying to fall back asleep as they twitched and shuddered was when he found that his feet had decided to travel farther from the bed. Sometimes the feet decided to take Vernon for a stroll. A couple of times he woke to find himself in Milda Hanson’s yard. Then the driveway, as though he’d gone to fetch the mail.
He missed the family he’d been thrilled to leave behind. He missed his one-toothed grandmother and his fetching aunts and ugly uncles. Mostly he missed the fantasy that someone might love him. A someone sweet as pie who used to descend from the rafters of his childhood home and cuddle around him in his dreams. He had to be very careful not to let his mind go to meet that someone even in his sleep. And he must not, ever, ever, think of Grace. Most of his body complied, but not the feet. The sore and rebellious feet wouldn’t listen.
One night he found himself out on a lonely road in moonlight. He was wearing his overcoat but the burning cold feet were shoeless and the stones of the gravel cut into the naked soles. On the way back to Milda’s, he saw an old jalopy parked beside the road. He stopped and peered in the windows. In the backseat there was a flailing sense of motion and the noises of animals fighting in the dirt. He drifted onward and only later, his damaged feet finally stilled beneath the covers, did it occur to him what he had witnessed. He froze in keen disappointment. He was disappointed with himself for not having intervened to stop two souls from sinning. Now they were lost.
The Spirit Duplicator
“Damp off the press,” said Juggie, delivering the droopy final page of the economic survey into Millie’s hands.
Millie put the page straight to her nose. Like a child, thought Juggie.