“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.
The Names
Things started going wrong, as far as Zhaanat was concerned, when places everywhere were named for people—political figures, priests, explorers—and not for the real things that happened in these places—the dreaming, the eating, the death, the appearance of animals. This confusion of the chimookomaanag between the timelessness of the earth and the short span here of mortals was typical of their arrogance. But it seemed to Zhaanat that this behavior had caused a rift in the life of places. The animals didn’t come around to these locations stained by the names of humans. Plants, also, had begun to grow fitfully. The most delicate of her plant medicines were even dying out altogether, or perhaps they had torn themselves up by the roots to drag their fruits and leaves to secret spots where even Zhaanat couldn’t find them. And now even these half-ruined places that bore the names of saints and homestead people and priests, these places were going to be taken. In her experience, once these people talked of taking land it was as good as gone.
Elnath and Vernon
They were sick of each other’s company. So when Milda Hanson offered each of them a room in her farmhouse, yes, separate rooms, tears of longing boiled up behind Elnath’s eyes. His throat clenched so hard he couldn’t even speak. Vernon had to muster his voice to turn down the offer. Missionary rules and their president had insisted on a shared room, always. They could not leave each other’s company for more than bathroom breaks. For if one of them fell into the grip of temptation, the other would be there to witness, and then to write to their area president, or even call, in an emergency.
Nevertheless, one of the rooms had two beds and the house was perfect—off the reservation and only a mile from town. The Lord had provided beds that weren’t side by side but across the room from each other. Which was something. Mrs. Hanson was a widow who had leased out her fields and lived alone now. She said that she would feed them. They bowed their heads at her words. Besides thankful, they were dizzy with hunger. Pancakes landed on their plates that night and bacon beside. Mrs. Hanson, neckless, burnished to a rare glow, prideful, watched them eat. They hardly breathed. They were so hungry they nearly choked in eagerness. Her look turned to pity and she slowly shook her head. Her wispy nest of hair was pinned up in the shape of a question mark. What were they anyway? What kind of religion? She’d get an earful of that.
That night Elnath lay across the small room, at least ten feet away from Vernon. It was wonderful. Milda had allowed them two quilts each and on top of the quilts they had draped their winter topcoats. They were warm, almost too warm, but they knew by morning Milda’s well-fed woodstove would be down to ashes and embers and the cold would knife in.
In spite of his exhaustion, and even more, his tiring resentment, Elnath was awake. He was wrestling with whether or not to make that fateful call to Bishop Dean Pave. He didn’t want to tell on his brother in the Lord, but he couldn’t let the lapses continue. During a mission call to the Pipestone ranch, and there had been several, Vernon had excused himself as if to visit the privy.
Inside the house, Elnath had continued to share with Louis Pipestone the many wonderful proofs of his knowledge of scripture and the interesting benefits of his religion. He’d only quit after declaring that his was the sole religion to have originated in America. Usually, when he said this, he received an approving smile no matter whether or not they were heading toward baptism. But the bull-built man had shut his lips firmly and leaned forward, glowering from under his brow, for all the world like he was going to charge. Elnath had stuttered to a halt. After a long moment Louis had rearranged his features and given a surprising cherub’s smile.
“We got our own religion here,” he’d said. “Our own scriptures even. Only thing, they come out like stories.”
“Of course,” said Elnath. “We are aware of the grip of the Pope.”
“Everybody around here’s Catholic, but I don’t mean that,” said Louis.
“Well then . . .”
Confusion. Elnath had to wonder if some Holy Roller had got here first.
“Like I say, our own religion of our tribe,” Louis went on. “We are thankful for our place in the world, but we don’t worship nobody higher than . . .” Louis gestured out the window at the dimming sky, arrested clouds, the sun dissolving as it sank through layers of clouds. The barn was also in view and that was when Elnath saw Vernon coming out of the barn instead of the outhouse.
Vernon’s absence had been short. Hardly enough time to get up to the worst kind of sin, though Elnath was pretty sure that Vernon’s aim was the girl they’d seen riding the horse in the parade. He’d started laughing, partly out of surprise at Vernon, partly because he thought that Louis was making a joke about his own religion. Whatever it was that Indians believed, Elnath was pretty sure it could not be called a religion. He’d thought that Louis would start laughing too and b
e impressed that for once Elnath had caught on to his deadpan humor. But instead, Louis had taken on a somber fire and given him such a look. And the silence. Even now, Elnath got a cold feeling in his stomach. And here he’d been thinking that people on this reservation were those Lamanites of yore who had been raised into civilized Nephites, as Vernon had asserted. The silence lasted until Vernon came back.
“We’d best be going, Elder Vernon,” said Elnath.
His voice still squeaked when he was under duress.
Now, as if to torment him, he heard the scrabble of mice and a whirl, squeaking, more scrabbling. The sounds felt like a manifestation of the thoughts trapped in his brain. They rushed from side to side behind the walls of his skull. He was struggling. On the one hand he was pretty sure that if the situation were reversed, which would never happen, Vernon would turn him in. He wouldn’t think twice. He hated Elnath even worse than Elnath hated him. Though not hate—a word he was taught should not exist—not hate. It was just that he didn’t have love. An insufficiency of love. But that was the very reason he could not make up his mind. Was he, Elnath, really worried about Vernon’s soul? Or did he just want to get rid of Vernon, to receive a new companion? And would telling on Vernon benefit Vernon? His companion would be disgraced. The money Vernon’s parents had saved, and the money Vernon had saved, all to go on this mission, would be wasted. You couldn’t get over a failed mission just like that. Being sent home could seriously damage Vernon’s standing in the community, maybe for life. But if Vernon’s soul was really at risk, his standing could be damaged for eternity. Elnath’s thoughts swayed, circled, then stuck between his options. A thought, in the form of a feeling, came creeping toward him.
Elnath wanted to turn away from the crawly sensation of this thought. He didn’t want to be touched by the notion, but the touch kept coming back. This thing seemed beyond words. But finally, as he drifted toward unconsciousness, words did form. Sentences, written on a blackboard, were constantly erased. One sentence lingered.
Talk to Vernon about it.
Elnath started awake. Going to your bishop was a clear rule. No rule said “Talk to your companion.” On the other hand no rule forbade it. Yet the possibilities of what Vernon was doing were so private, so impossible to clearly address. What words would Elnath even use to approach him? To speak so directly? Nobody had ever taught him that speaking to another person about private matters was a sin, but it felt like a sin. These sensations he was having felt like symptoms of a disease called emotion. He and Vernon would have to acknowledge this humiliating condition. Elnath had given testimony but this was different. Not done, in his family life or his church life, with his few friends. You talked to the Lord in a locked room inside your soul, a deep buried light surrounded by the moat of your heart. It was a place you didn’t go with other human beings, especially one in the shape of Vernon.
Night Bird
She had been to school with Bucky since first grade, and the way he had invited her to take a ride was so nice. Summer. The backseat window rolled down. Please get in. Come on. The smile. He was always nice, nicer to her than usual, sometimes, which might have rung alarm bells. But she hadn’t been a suspicious person up until that day. Three boys were sitting on the front bench seat and only Bucky in the back. She got into the back and one of the boys, Myron Pelt, slipped into the backseat beside her. That didn’t feel good and later, she wished that she’d kicked up a ruckus right then. As soon as they pulled out, speeding up too fast, Bucky made his move. Patrice pushed him off and Bucky threw himself back on her. Myron held her arms. She twisted, tried to kick. Bucky’s hands went under her shirt and his fingernails dug into her. Then he tried to press her knees apart with his knees and fumbled with his pants. His stale breath on her. The slime from his lips. “This isn’t much fun,” she said. All the boys in the car laughed. She froze to ice. Then she said, louder this time, “This isn’t much fun for you boys.” She felt the edge of their attention. “Let’s go to the lake. We’ll go out in the bush. I know where. Then I’ll show you all a good time.” Where that came from, she never knew. But it was all they would remember. Myron let her sit back up. Someday, when she got around to it, she would kill him, too. They drove down the bumpy road to the lake. She showed them where to stop, right in front of the lake. Bucky took her shoes. “She can’t run now.” Fool. For she could run. Hell for leather she could run. And she did. And she dived in the lake. And they ran after her but maybe they had to take their shoes off or maybe they couldn’t swim but she knew how to swim because that was how they got clean in the summer. She’d loved swimming with Vera. And she thrashed her arms forward and swam hard until she was really out there. Her dress was lightweight. She didn’t take it off. Nothing could weigh her down. They were tiny on the shore and still she kept swimming. When she saw her uncle’s boat she swerved toward him.
That night she took a lamp behind the blanket and looked at the scratches, the bruises. There was even a bite mark on her shoulder. She’d felt none of it. But she could still feel where his hands went. She was shaking, squeezed her eyes shut, crawled under the blanket. The next day, more bruises had surfaced from under her skin. There was that phrase “they got under my skin.” She’d showed these marks to her mother and told Zhaanat everything that the boys had done. And they had her only pair of shoes. Her mother had let her breath out, sharply, two times. Then she put her hand on her daughter’s hand. Neither one of them said a word; it was the same thing with both of them and they knew it. Later, when Patrice heard about Bucky’s twisted mouth and how it was spreading down his side, she looked at her mother’s face, serene and severe, for a clue. But Patrice knew that she herself had done it. Her hatred was so malignant it had lifted out of her like a night bird. It had flown straight to Bucky and sank its beak into the side of his face.
U.S.I.S.
“What kind you got?”
“Lucky Strikes.”
“Oh, good. I mean, damn.”
Juggie handed a cigarette to Barnes and they sat in the kitchen, at the white enamel-topped table she used to knead bread dough right after dinner. Early in the evening, she’d popped the yeast-risen dough through the round of her thumb and first finger, all the while humming along to the radio. Now the pans of rolls were all nicely baked, resting under clean dish towels on her baking rack. The air was fragrant with new bread and crispy tobacco smoke. She’d turned down the radio but could still hear Johnnie Ray.
“This is the life,” she said, contented.
“This is the life,” said Barnes, sad.
“What’s wrong with you?”
“It’s no secret.”
The corners of his mouth drooped.
Goddamn everything about this man was probably drooping, thought Juggie. Glad my fellow doesn’t have this problem. Then she felt bad for thinking such a thing. And she wished how he wished her to feel: she felt sorry for him.
“Just give up,” she said.
“Easy for you to say. It’s your son who took Pixie from me.”
“Hay Stack, you have to listen now. Nobody steals the heart of a lady, especially one like Pixie. She decided on the man she wanted to give her heart to, and that’s that. Just give up.”
“You’re no help.”
“Look around you. Turtle Mountains is famous for beautiful women.”
“So I have been told.”
“Oh, don’t give me that crap, so I been told! It’s true and you know it. Just let your eye wander. You’re starting to look like a damn fool.”
“I don’t care.”
“Did you go out with Valentine?”
“I’m scared of her. She bites. Plus she’s laughed at me a couple times since the bush dance.”
“She’s my half niece.”
“What?”
“Never mind. Just go out with her.”
“She’s too sharp for me. She’d turn me down.”
“I’ll ask her for you.”
“Tell her not to bite me.”
/>
“Big man like you? What a chicken.”
“I’ll get rabies.” He smiled. Maybe the biting was not so bad. Barnes put his cigarette out in the government-issue ashtray. Juggie picked up a heavy steel spoon labeled U.S.I.S. United States Indian Service. She stirred her tea with the giant spoon, waiting for his answer. He said nothing more, so she took that as a yes.
Valentine lived out on the main road. Her family had a little business fixing cars so the cars were scattered all around, available for parts. Juggie drove up and parked by a gallant old Model T that was sitting on a couple of logs. Her half brother, Lemon, came out the door of the pleasant paint-peeled house.
“Nice herd of cars you got,” said Juggie.
“At least they stay put,” said Lemon. “Not like Gringo last fall.”
Juggie laughed. “Old Gringo’s never been the same. Where’s Valentine?”
“How come you want Valentine? She’s due home.”
“I got something to ask her. I’ll wait.”
As they were walking across the beaten-down gray snow of the yard, there was the sound of an engine and Doris Lauder turned into the driveway. Valentine got out of the car, laughing, and waved her friend away.
“Is it woman business?” asked Lemon.
The Night Watchman Page 28
