The Night Watchman(99)

“It won’t be a tourist trip.”

“That’s plain. But I am ready to read your statement if you get sick on the city water.”

“That won’t happen,” said Thomas, waving his hand. “I’m on the wagon.”

“You better all be on the wagon when you’re there,” said Moses.

“You best come and ride herd on us,” said Juggie. “There’s no telling what a bunch of crazy Chippewas might get up to.”

“Quit trying to trick me into it. I’m an old man.”

“This here’s your one chance at the big time before you die, akiwenzi.”



After the meeting was over, with everyone still rattled, Thomas gave Patrice and Millie a ride. As often happened now, Millie came home with Patrice. When she got there, she sat down at the table by Zhaanat’s stove and took out her pencil and notebook. She was drawing one of the plants that Zhaanat regularly collected. She was trying to puzzle out the desiccated leaves.

“I have to come back in the summer,” said Millie. “I can’t identify these plants when they’re all dried out like this.”

“That’s miskomin,” said Patrice. “Mama uses it for everything. It’s a woman plant. Helps with cramps, strengthens the womb, makes the milk flow. But she uses it for general things too. That’s why she’s got so much of it. And this here, gaagigebag, is a woman plant too.”

“Indeed,” said Millie.

Patrice had taken advantage of a canning lesson at the farm agent’s and brought home a crate of jars for her mother. Pokey had made a sturdy rack of sapling sticks and fixed it to the wall. The rows of jars filled with crushed leaves and stripped roots had intrigued Millie. Other medicines were strung up in the corner or braided with long tails, like the wild onions Zhaanat cherished.

Millie sharpened her pencil with a pocketknife and kept writing in her notebook. It looked familiar.

“That’s a school notebook,” said Patrice.

“Government issue. I met the math teacher and let him know that I needed a few of these.”

“You met Hay Stack? I mean, Barnes?”

“I did. Grace and me went over to pick up Wood Mountain where he was training. Barnes told me to come over and see his classroom.”

“So did you go?”

“Sure. He said he liked my checked blouse. Said it gave him ideas.”

“Well, that’s fresh,” said Patrice.

“Fresh,” said Millie. “Fresh ideas, yes.”

“No, I mean . . . oh, you know.”

“Oh! Not those kinds of ideas. How to teach math by blacking out certain squares on a grid. I saw what he meant.”

“Getting back to the survey, they might ask how you got the information.”

Millie told how the idea for the survey came about after she’d visited her father, and then told her adventures in getting the interviews, all in great detail. She told about the academic program that she was in and how she obtained the scholarship money. She listed her other papers, her slim credentials, her references, her grades. Now it was Patrice taking notes with a sharp pencil. Millie would have to tell all of this in case one of the senators tried to discredit her information.





Scrawny




Sometimes when Valentine looked at Barnes sideways, through half-lidded eyes, he felt like the soft rabbit he had imagined

in her jaws. Of course, he’d hoped she would be sweet underneath it all, like a Valentine’s Day candy. Be Mine. He’d gotten

to second base, almost. She was an expert in swatting off his hands or even slashing at his privates. Fear increasingly left

him boneless. Limp! Hay Stack! It was clear to him that if she were to become more welcoming to him, there must first be a

proposal of marriage. Talk about strict Catholic. Of course, Barnes respected this. On the other hand, a man was a man. As

a result he was getting so fast on the speed bag and blurring the jump rope so regularly that he’d lost pounds, actual pounds.

He’d trimmed down on Valentine’s watch.

“You’re getting scrawny,” she’d observed.

Now plus clumsy, he was scrawny. He’d certainly never been called that before. He was a bulky man, he knew it, and oh could

he prove it, if only she’d be a bit more like her soft heart-shaped name.





The Journey




They slept in their coach seats. Caught the next train in Minneapolis. Slept in their seats another night. Thomas read his testimony obsessively, trying not to make too many marks on the papers he had to read out loud. Patrice checked her watch, then checked it again. She couldn’t wait to wind it every night. She had also bought the expensive mercantile suitcase. Plaid. Two shades of green with red lines. A latch that sprang open with a loud businesslike click. Juggie had hauled onboard a beat-up overnight bag stuffed with sandwiches, cookies, dried apples, whole carrots, raisins. They didn’t want to spend their money in the dining car. They slept in their seats a third night and woke in Washington. Hauling their suitcases down the platform, they tried not to stumble with fatigue. They took deep breaths and lugged themselves and their baggage up a broad flight of stairs. Then, hearts pounding, eyes burning, they found themselves standing in a vast series of soaring vaults.