The Committee
Louis didn’t want to leave his horses. Moses was laid up with a bum leg. They needed coaxing. Otherwise, the committee for Washington would consist of Juggie Blue, Millie Cloud, and Thomas Wazhashk. They had received an offer to stay at Ruth Muskrat Bronson’s house. She was the executive secretary of the National Congress of American Indians and ran the whole shebang out of her house because they didn’t have funds for a Washington office yet. Shortly after they accepted, she said she couldn’t take them in after all. Consternation. They found a cheap hotel.
“I don’t think I can do this,” said Millie to Juggie. “I can’t sit in front of a bunch of senators. I don’t trust my voice.”
“Have you ever before lost your voice?”
“No. But I say things.”
“Everybody says things.”
“My things come out wrong.”
Juggie went silent. Millie did say things that offended people or set them off. What if she did this to a senator and wrecked the testimony?
“Can’t you testify about the study?” asked Millie.
“Hell no,” said Juggie. “I’m already there to read Thomas’s statement if he croaks. I’d be a mess if I had to think about yours too.”
“Let’s get Patrice to take my place.”
“Are you crazy?”
“You seen her new glasses? She looks serious. Patrice is the only one who will study my study until she knows it backward and forward. And she’s good at talking.”
Juggie and Millie drove to the jewel bearing plant and waited for Patrice to get off work. When she walked into the parking lot they waylaid her.
“Can I give you a lift home? Millie and me have something to ask you,” asked Juggie.
“No thanks,” said Patrice, but they insisted until she waved Doris and Valentine off.
“So?’’ she said as she got into the backseat of the DeSoto. Millie turned around and stared through her disconcerting eyeglasses. Patrice stared back at her through her equally disconcerting eyeglasses.
“See what I mean about the eyeglasses?” said Millie as they pulled out onto the main road. “They hide Pixie’s eyes. She’s much less cute, but that would be a good thing.”
“For what?”
Patrice felt disconcerted in general, as if this had happened before. Oh yes, she remembered. There had been Bucky, and then the last time she’d been coerced into an automobile she’d ended up wearing a poisonous waterjack suit and swimming in a glass tank.
“Good thing for what?” she said again.
“Good thing for giving testimony in Washington, D.C.,” said Millie. “I can’t do it. I have to write things out before I know what I should say. You can think on your feet.”
“Why would you have to think on your feet? Don’t you just read the study?”
“They want to question me.”
“Oh no. I can’t answer questions. I don’t know everything about your study. I can’t do it.”
“Yes, you can,” said Millie. “You’re not that stupid.”
Patrice was used to Millie’s way of talking.
“I’m not stupid at all, Millie. But I have to stay home and work.”
“The tribal council will talk to your boss. I’ll help out with your family.”
“You’re there a lot anyway,” said Patrice.
“Taking notes,” said Millie. “I might change from economics to anthropology.”
“Whatever that is,” said Juggie.
“I won’t do it,” said Patrice. “But I’ll practice with you, Millie, so you won’t go off the rails.”
“You should come with us,” said Millie. “In case I do go off the rails.”
“I wouldn’t mind that at all,” said Patrice.
“The meeting will come to order.”
Thomas commenced with the formalities and since Millie was there, and said she knew personal shorthand, she was the one who took notes, including notes on the notes Juggie had taken at the last meeting. The real business of the council was to decide who would go to Washington, D.C.
“Moses?”
“My leg has been acting up. I believe that I will pass.”
“Louis?”
“A bad time of year for the horses.”
Louis had got county and state officials to sign a letter of support. He was still working on the local chapters of the American Legion. He could go up to anyone and get their signature with his bull body and cute smile. He could even get people to donate cash money. But he didn’t want to go to Washington.
“You just need to be there, so they see we have a delegation.”
“I wouldn’t be no good. All I’d think of is they wrecked my son,” said Louis.
Thomas looked down at his sheaf of papers and passed his hand over his forehead. He was extra tired that day and fighting dizziness.
“We know that Millie doesn’t want to go,” said Thomas. “But Patrice can back her up if we raise a little more money. Plus, she can testify on the jewel bearing plant. What about you, Juggie? Don’t let me down.”
“I’m not missing this. Doesn’t come by every day.”
“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 g
reat 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.
The size of the place stunned them. There was a low ceiling of cigarette smoke, and over that sheer light. The air was hushed near the floor, but the space encompassed and was surrounded by a roar so loud it seemed a single physical presence, although it was composed of revving and moving motors, horns, honks, bells, sirens, whistles, blares, beeps, growling brakes, and howling tires, and below those sounds even smaller ones, the whispers of footsteps, the rustling of papers, the murmuring of conversation, the clinking of spoons and forks and the settling of cups, the eating sounds, the rustle of coats put on and taken off, the beating of tin gongs, and the ticks of clocks and squeaks of motion or rubber overboots or pleasure. They stood inside their own quiet like a pocket.
For Thomas and Moses, the city noise was so disorienting that they couldn’t move. Juggie treated the noise like weather. She didn’t sort sound from sound or mind the details. Millie had lived near the university campus on University Avenue, so she was more accustomed to noise. Patrice had prepared herself. They finally organized themselves, squeezed into a cab, and were taken to the Moroccan Hotel. It was a small place, clean but shabby. Their rooms were on the street side of the building and only on the second floor. Even with the windows closed, the noise pounded in. Thomas and Moses shared one room, and the three women shared the other room. Juggie had asked for one of the beds to be a double bed, but the two beds were each single.
“We’re not even going to flip a coin,” said Juggie. “My bones hurt and I kick. You two can share.”
They’d eaten at a diner in a state of mad exhaustion, and now they took turns slipping into tepid baths. Then it was time to sleep. Millie was wearing a pair of pajamas covered with eye-numbing diamonds and dots. Juggie wore one of Louie’s soft old ragged shirts. Patrice was wearing a nightgown made of limp blue cotton, from the free pile at the mission. She rolled in next to Millie, back-to-back. They pulled the covers up around their necks, though the room was warm. Juggie and Millie fell directly asleep. Patrice alone was left awake, buzzing. People seemed to be talking only inches from her head, although they were a story below. At first she listened to each intriguing fragment, and then with no transition into sleep she began to feel conscious again, though she kept her eyes closed. She could feel Juggie and Millie moving around the room and thought that it must be morning. But when she opened her eyes, the light was long. It was still only very late in the afternoon. Her eyes fell shut.
Something stole into her then. In a new place, with different sounds and different air, that which she had been resisting found purchase. There was a tearing sensation. As if she were being split through the center. And there was a wracking wild beating of her heart. She couldn’t breathe. Her arms lifted—if only he were there, to hold her. Her face softened. If only his face would brush her, to kiss her. The snow melted on her tongue.
“Wake up,” said Juggie, nudging her. “We’re hungry.”
“Let’s go,” said Millie. “There’s a diner down the street.”
“It looked decent,” said Juggie, and she pulled on Patrice’s foot. “Get a move on.”
Falcon Eyes
Patrice walked into the gallery overlooking the floor of the House of Representatives. Her scarf and jacket were still damp with rain. It was the day before their testimony was to take place and they were trying to get oriented in the Capitol. She sat down. Glanced warily at the people around her. Noticed an extraordinary-looking woman in bold lipstick. This woman was so striking that it was hard for Patrice not to stare at her. She glanced briefly at Patrice, then focused downward on the view of the House floor. Her dark hair was pulled back in waves that curled handsomely at the nape of her neck. She had strong queenly features and wore a pale brown suit with a short slim-fitting jacket and a midcalf skirt. Motionless, eyes fixed, clutching the black purse in her lap, she stared with raptor intensity at the semicircle of seated and standing representatives. Talk on the House floor began regarding the economy of Mexico, and although Patrice had difficulty following the speakers, the gravity of being in the halls of governmental power seemed to cast a spell over the observers.
“Viva Puerto Rico libre!”
Patrice didn’t recognize the sounds as shots until she turned her head and saw the pistol in the woman’s hand. She was on her feet, a tall woman. Again, she cried out, “Viva Puerto Rico!” The pistol looked like a war trophy that Patrice had once seen in Louis Pipestone’s house, a Luger. That’s what she had. The woman aimed high, over the crowd, but someone else was shooting downward. Too shocked to duck or even move, Patrice saw men fall on the floor below, others scrambling behind desks and podium. Then it was over. The guards crashed into the gallery and seized the woman’s gun, then her. They dragged a small man out of the aisle, another man, how many? And then everyone in the visitors’ gallery stumbled around in horror and confusion, before they were told that they would be questioned before they were allowed to leave.
Patrice stood in line for an hour. The guard who finally questioned her frowned suspiciously and motioned her to the side. It occurred to Patrice then that the woman with the dark hair could have been her sister.
“Where are you from?”
“North Dakota,” said Patrice.
“Are you a tourist?”
“Yes,” said Patrice, fearing she would be detained over any complication she might name.
“Do you have identification?”
Patrice handed over her pass from Senator Young and a small cardboard card that she’d been given when she started her job at the jewel bearing plant. There was a Defense Department seal on the card. The guard handed them back and gave her a tight, grim smile.
“Did you see anything?” he asked.
“I was sitting by her, the woman.”
“Let me take your information down.”
“She shot her gun into the air. She didn’t shoot any member of Congress.”
“Oh really? Good for her.” His voice was sarcastic.
Patrice walked outside, down the longest steps she’d ever seen, and looked around for her tribal members. There were squad cars, whooping sirens, swarms of police officers. Tourists and reporters were clustered along the streets. Patrice was directed away from the Capitol, and easily found Thomas and Juggie, waiting for her. Moses had gone back to the hotel. She hadn’t been frightened of the woman. In fact, although it was terrible, she knew, Patrice had been thrilled when the woman stood up and yelled. What made her do such a thing? What was Puerto Rico?
“Did you see it happen?” asked Juggie.
When Patrice couldn’t answer, she realized that here in Washington she’d seen people shot, a thing she’d never seen before, even on the reservation, a place considered savage by the rest of the country. She had no emotion. The men below her had crumpled, fallen, maybe cried out, and she hadn’t even reacted. It was the woman in the pale brown suit she’d watched, her falcon eyes, her fearless cries, how she held the gun with both hands, how she had tried to unfurl a piece of cloth, red, white and blue, to snap it out. And how awkward while holding the gun. How Patrice’s impulse had been to say “Here, let me help you.” To shake out the cloth for her. A flag, certainly a flag of her country. And why?
Everything was suddenly overwhelmingly massive: the Capitol, the monuments, the insides of the buildings, the stairs down, the blood—there had certainly been blood on the polished wood and cushions of the chairs. Patrice staggered a little and said she needed to go back to her room and curl up in the bed. She was trembling. Juggie held her elbow.
The Night Watchman Page 31
