The Night Watchman

by Louise Erdrich

  Boxing for Sovereignty

  The snow held off and the roads were clear. A secondhand popcorn machine purchased by the school for sports events was tuned up and hauled over to the community hall. The scent of hot oil and the stutter of popping kernels warmed the crowd. Sharlo bagged the popcorn and Fee took the coins. Juggie was selling tickets at the door. Moses was counting money. Thomas was giving out the event cards and glad-handing people at the doors to the big hall, where the ring was set up. Inside, the boxers were secluded near the bathrooms. Curtains had been hung so they could emerge to cheers. The ring, posts, and ropes, a platform built by Louis with donated lumber, looked good enough. The referee, Ben Fernance, who was also the county commissioner, wore armbands and carried a small white megaphone. He made announcements, welcomed the crowd, while Mr. Jarvis fiddled with the ailing loudspeaker.

  Patrice and Valentine had come early and were standing close to the ring, behind the chairs, which were for elders only. The crowd increased quickly and Mr. Jarvis appeared with a microphone and a gong. When he struck the gong, there was an exotic reverberation. He’d wanted spotlights, but that had proved impossible. His inspiration had been to use sound to direct the crowd. It worked. The buzz died down in anticipation, and then the boxers filed out to bursting cheers. Each was introduced along with his opponent. Although the majority of the crowd was Indian, picking up Sioux from Fort Totten and Devils Lake, there were plenty of neighbors from farms and towns within a hundred miles. The location of the match had shifted the balance, however, and there was little palpable animosity. Even Joe Wobble’s family and supporters were good-natured, clasping hands with the Stone Boys, cheering on Revard and also his opponent, Melvin Lauder.

  Mr. Jarvis had always wanted to narrate a fight, and felt it was his duty to make the conflicts as exciting as possible. After all, the boys were in this sport to build character, not hammer each other to a pulp. It wouldn’t hurt to exaggerate their warrior spirits.

  “Stone Boy takes the punch without flinching, just like his name. Lauder keeps pressing him, hot to trot. But Stone Boy slips around him like a ballroom dancer! Right to the bread box. Left to the jaw! Lauder has a steel chin. Lauder shrugs it off. Stone Boy circles, sizing him up. Stone Boy goes wild with a mad flurry of bouncing blows! But Lauder’s doing the hot potato! Fending him off! Aaaand the bell!”

  Still more people wedged in, packing the room tighter, as the matches between the younger fighters were won and lost. John Skinner, a fighter from St. Michael, made a good showing against Tek Tolverson. The jolly mood intensified, Jarvis making a sensation out of every match. The fights, all won on decisions or points, weren’t after all that exciting. Only once was there even a bloody nose. Jarvis narrated that like a dam had burst. Even when the grand finale was announced, the one everyone had come to see, there was a sense of goodwill. The fact that it was a benefit helped. Jarvis kept announcing that and thanking the crowd.

  “Here it is, folks! The Main Event!”

  Everyone knew by that time that Wood Mountain and Joe Wobble had each been faking their injuries. So the two decided to play that for laughs. Joe limped out leaning so hard to the left he staggered. Wood Mountain actually came out wearing the plaster cast.

  “Here they are, my friends! Let’s give them a hand as they approach the ring! Willing to go the distance even though they’re fighting through the terrible pain of their separate injuries. What? What’s this? The Wobble is straightening up! Wood is throwing his cast to the crowd! He’s dropping his handkerchief and Pixie Paranteau catches the memento! Oh, I tell you, folks, it’s a miracle. A miracle is what you’re seeing. Two battlers fighting for sovereignty restored to health before your eyes!”

  For the first two rounds, they tested each other’s range, striking and deflecting. Wood Mountain was still the more studied fighter, pressing Wobble to the inside, giving no opportunities. But Joe Wobleszynski was potentially more dangerous, with no decrease in his punching power and perhaps some realization that in the last fight he’d given away his lack of strategy. It was clear, by round three, as Wobble’s strong blows met only air, that Wood Mountain intended to wear him down and to demoralize him if he could.

  Joe Wobble was slightly leaner than in the last fight, while Wood Mountain had put on a couple of pounds without giving up a hint of speed. Barnes and his uncle had made sure of that. He had drilled on speed and more speed. He had a natural sense of cunning. Jarvis himself had coached him on a trick, which he employed in the fourth round. Wood Mountain used a fake sag, as if he’d misstepped, to draw Wobble’s most fearsome hard right. With a lightning fade Wood Mountain countered the missed punch with a left to the place where Wobble’s outcrop of chin met the smooth line of his jaw. He was able to strike precisely there, with force, and get out of the way when Joe retaliated, managing only by chasing Wood Mountain into the corner to land several surface blows that didn’t resonate but looked brutal and drew gasps. Again, with Jarvis’s coaching, Wood Mountain remembered to cringe under the onslaught and Wobble went to his corner feeling he was in a surge.

  “Be patient. Play the music when the time is right,” said Barnes, packing handfuls of snow along Wood Mountain’s left cheekbone. The music was a speeded-up version of the cancan, to which Wood Mountain had rehearsed a blur of punches that he could switch up to fit the situation. The flurry at one speed then switched to a higher speed and changed him from a boxer to a swarmer. It was how Jake LaMotta had beaten the French fighter Laurent Dauthuille in the ultimate round of the world heavyweight championship back in ’50. It looked to all observers, except the Music, like the switch-up came out of nowhere, some reservoir of heart, but the brilliant shift in momentum had been coming all along and was choreographed, he was sure of it.

  “They’re circling like panthers! No cat’s paws though, folks. Wobble swipes like a grizzly bear! The Mountain swipes back! It’s all brute strength. And now they’re sizing each other up again. Look at that fancy fadoodle footwork!”

  So far, the boxers looked undamaged. In fact, they looked magnificent. Joe, a milk-skinned prize bull, Wood Mountain, ropey and gleaming, glancing out under a shining swoop of hair. That was to change. In the sixth round Joe Wobble got tired of chasing Wood Mountain around and landed a solid punch that shifted Wood’s nose across his face.

  “And the Mountain takes it on the beak!”

  Patrice heard the crack and her knees gave. Valentine went gray as a ghost. They clutched each other as the match stopped. Barnes worked on Wood Mountain, who reentered the ring, nostrils askew and stuffed with cotton. No sooner had the bell rung than Wood Mountain proceeded, with startling cool, to borrow Wobble’s right hook to knock Joe to his knees. He got up, but now it was clear that the fight had begun, not in anger, but in dutiful violence, and the next two rounds were blurs of punishment. Still, the two were nearly even. Wood Mountain slightly ahead on points, nothing definitive.

  “Stop the fight!” yelled Patrice. But there was pandemonium because one elder had accidentally struck another with a diamond willow cane and their families were trying to sort this out. Plus Joe’s family was not sure what to do so they just yelled. And Wood Mountain’s supporters weren’t sure whether to stop the fight, so they raised the roof. Jarvis had to strike the gong again.

  “Folks, folks, calm down. The fighters say they refuse to quit. They want to give it their all. The referee has accepted this. They say they feel good, feel fine, want to go the distance.”

  So the round began, but the crowd was muted. Joe opened a deep gash on Wood Mountain’s eyebrow. Wood Mountain dealt a body blow that made Joe stumble across the ring. By the final moments, they were merely clubbing each other, moving in an earnest fog, and Jarvis was silent. There was no strategy, no design.

  “It’s just ugly,” said Patrice, looking away.

  When the gong sounded, people cried out in relief. They clapped in distress and left in disordered clumps. Wood Mountain did win on points but winning was beside the point
. Joe Wobleszynski sat dumb in a chair. Their eyes were swollen shut, lips split, eyebrows taped, ears ringing, noses snapped, brains swelling in their skulls, and every bone and muscle ached. It was wonderful, it was terrible, it was the ultimate. It was the last time either of them fought.

  The Promotion

  Unfair, it was so unfair. Valentine promoted to the acid washing room, where she got to wear goggles, gloves, a white hair wrap, and a protective rubber apron. So unfair because Patrice was faster, more precise, more focused, and produced a clean card every time. She was that good. Not that Valentine was bad at her job, not at all, but she wasn’t as good at her job as Patrice. That was just a known fact. But apparently to Mr. Vold not good enough for a promotion.

  “Fine work, fine work,” he said, behind Patrice now. Today, tuna wiggle was on his breath. Patrice longed to punch him, the way Wood Mountain had laid Joe Wobble right down in the ring. The left jab and then the right cross. Classic. Not that it mattered. She pictured Mr. Vold’s eyes rolling as he staggered in confusion down the hall. But of course, that would get her fired. She tried to concentrate. Misery was good for that.

  No, she would not be miserable. It was Valentine’s first day in the acid washing room and yes, Patrice was jealous, but she also missed Valentine sitting right there by her elbow, missed the shorthand communication they had developed. It made the hours pass by more swiftly. Today, how they dragged. And no coffee break. Vold really had taken it away in preparation for visits from Bulova and General Omar Bradley, and he’d never reinstated coffee breaks. Her neck hurt, the strain. She focused. She entered the hum of concentration. Then it was lunchtime. Patrice went to the ladies’ room first, because she dreaded listening to Valentine talk about how great her job was. And her raise. Valentine would say she wouldn’t tell, then give in to telling, the amount.

  “Buck up,” Patrice told herself. “It’s not like she’s queen.”

  She walked into the lunchroom and sat down next to Betty Pye, even though there was a space next to Valentine. Anyway, her friend was absorbed in telling everybody at the table how heavy the rubber apron was and how weird it felt to wear rubber gloves all morning.

  “My hands are puckered! Just look!”

  I could tell her a few things about wearing rubber outfits, getting puckery, also about turning blue, thought Patrice. She put away the thought. Her lunch was a cake of oatmeal fried in deer fat, and some raisins. She ate slowly, to make every morsel last. She was so hungry, and when she’d finished her stomach still felt painfully empty. Or maybe Valentine was giving her a stomachache by talking about her raise. Still, it turned out to be less than Patrice had imagined, 90 cents instead of 85 an hour, and far less than Patrice had made as a waterjack. A Main Attraction. Everybody’s eyes had been on her as she swanned and dived in the tank. True, the people were smudges, but their eyes were fixed on her. She was being admired, wasn’t she? Or maybe not. She put that thought away too. Kicked it to the back of her mind. Valentine was asking her something. Everybody had turned to her, waiting for an answer.

  “I said, Pixie—”

  “Patrice.”

  “I said, penny for your thoughts!”

  “My thoughts are worth a lot more than a penny,” she said.

  “Ooooooh,” said a couple of women.

  “How much?” Valentine persisted. “Here.”

  She pushed a dollar bill across the table.

  Patrice picked up the dollar bill, flapped it in the air, set it down, and pushed it back. “Still not enough.”

  “Oh well,” said Doris. “Guess we’ll never know who Pixie likes.”

  “It’s Patrice. And I don’t like either one of them. You can have them both.”

  “I might get one of them,” said Doris. “I’m going out with Barnes to the movies.”

  “That’s nice. When are you going?” asked Patrice.

  “Sometime,” said Doris.

  “What does that mean?” Now Valentine was questioning her.

  “It means that I said yes when he said we should go out to the movies sometime.”

  “He said or you said you should go out to the movies?” Valentine persisted.

  “Okay,” said Doris. “It was the other way around. But he did say yes.”

  “I’m happy for you. Tell me when it happens,” said Patrice.

  Valentine said, “Some nerve, Doris,” and got up to don her special protective clothing.

  “You three should stop squabbling,” said Betty Pye comfortably. “It’s so much nicer to be on good terms.”

  “I know,” said Patrice. “And the stupid thing is, all of this is over men. Valentine and Doris won’t be happy until I’m locked up in a tower with a ring on my finger.”

  “You’re funny. Try and find a tower around here.”

  “Maybe a grain elevator?”

  “I’m lucky I have good old Norbert,” said Betty. “We just bumble along.”

  “Are you going to marry him?”

  “Oh, we’ll elope if I get pregnant,” said Betty Pye.

  Patrice couldn’t speak, she so marveled at Betty’s answer. They were walking back to the main room, putting on their smocks. Patrice wished that Betty was working next to her. She wanted to know more about “if I get pregnant” and hoped that Betty would tell her.

  When Patrice stepped out of Doris’s car, she saw Thomas Wazhashk was visiting her mother. His car was neatly parked along the main road. He was, as all men seemed destined to do, holding Gwiiwizens when she walked into the house.

  “Have you found out something about Vera?” asked Patrice.

  “Yes and no.”

  “And?”

  “We don’t know where she is, but she was seen. In Duluth. She was taken in for vagrancy and released.”

  “She gave her name and disappeared,” said Zhaanat. “But she is living. I knew she was living. She has been trying to call us.”

  “Call you?” Thomas knew there wasn’t a telephone for miles.

  “In her dreams, remember? In our dreams.”

  “Of course. I’m just tired. What’s she doing now?” asked Thomas.

  “I don’t know,” said Zhaanat. “For a while she was wearing green high heels. Then she was wearing men’s clothes. She was walking along a road. But my dreams have quit.”

  “Mine too,” said Patrice. “Last night I dreamed . . .”

  She mumbled something, looked away. Last night she had actually dreamed about being kissed by a man from a magazine ad. He had stepped off the page, put down his cigarette, leaned across, and . . .

  “How much money did you raise?” she quickly asked.

  “More than halfway. Almost there if we find a person who can put us up in Washington. The hotels there are heap big expensive.”

  “Heap big,” said Patrice. She laughed.

  Thomas had carefully explained the bill to Zhaanat, and she was worried because if it meant she would have to pay taxes on her land she would have to let it go. They would have nowhere to live. Just like Juggie said, they’d be walking the road looking for a place to light. Although of course, thought Patrice, with her job she could probably afford to rent a place for them to live, somewhere. They’d have a better place if Valentine hadn’t stolen her promotion. She had jokingly accused her friend of just that on the way home and Valentine just said, “All purple with envy, you!” But now Thomas was trying to outline his strategy.

  “I have an ace card now. Louie Pipestone’s daughter with that girl he never married. Well, it was the other way around. Her parents weren’t happy that she was engaged to Louie. Said he was too much of an Indian. They squashed things.”

  “That’s sad!”

  “Yes, Louie was so blue over it. Way back when. Now that girl’s grown up and got herself to college. She’s working on a higher degree, even. We’re going to see if we can use all she found out. The Congress thinks we are so advanced, rolling in cash, but we know we aren’t. We don’t have a way to prove it. We can’t just go comp
lain. We need the hard facts. We need a study.”

  “A study!”

  It sounded so professional to Patrice. A woman from her own tribe doing a study. It sounded like something that she herself would like to do. Go to college. Do a study. She was smart enough, good at math, and her writing was always best in class. But she thought of herself as that little hide tent, stretched so thin. Without her, the family would collapse. You could not send money home when you were off in school. The baby needed a rug to play on. The floor was freezing cold. But even this floor, this small patch of ground, would be gone if they had to sell their land. They wouldn’t make it. They would be like before. You don’t forget.

  Patrice went behind the blanket, into her room. She didn’t dare raid her stash under the linoleum, but she did open up the spice tin. There was five dollars inside, all in change. She counted four of the dollars out onto the bed and brought the money to her mother. Put the coins in her hands. Zhaanat put the money on the table.

  “That’s for Washington,” she said.

  Thomas, visibly moved, said, “Thank you, cousin.”

  The next day, it happened. Mr. Vold sent Betty Pye to the workstation next to Patrice. He gave the direction at lunch, and Betty brought her things there right after. Such a relief. For a while they worked quietly. Patrice had promised herself that she wouldn’t talk unless Betty talked. She didn’t want to risk getting Betty in trouble, in case Betty wanted to stay clear of Mr. Vold. But within the hour, Betty asked what she was doing that weekend and Patrice murmured that she didn’t know. Then she asked Betty what Betty would be doing that weekend and Betty said that she would leave the place and time up to Norbert, but after that she had a pretty good idea of what would happen.