But when Sharlo went outside to get her mother, Noko despaired again and tried to surge out of the chair. Thomas caught her and held her hand.
“Stay still, you could fall and hurt yourself.”
“I wish I would,” said Noko. “I want to die.”
“No you don’t,” said Thomas.
She glowered at him.
“You raised my sweetheart,” said Thomas. “You did a good job.”
“Tell that to Thomas,” Noko said. “He don’t believe it.”
Thomas reached around the chair and helped Noko to her feet. She collapsed. He pulled her up and they tottered stiffly to the bed. Rose had the sheets off. She was washing them today. Noko fell onto the bare mattress face-first. Thomas rolled her over and lifted her legs onto the bed. He arranged her there, stocking feet sticking straight up.
“You can’t put her on our mattress like that,” said Rose, standing in the door. Her voice sounded almost tearful. “She needs a soft pad underneath. The mattress buttons will give her bruises. Her skin takes bruises so easy now. We should buy her a fancy mattress pad for her little cot.”
“With what money?”
“Your car money.”
Thomas stood quietly under the raking heat of anger. It was coming off her in jagged waves. But then, as he stood there, he could feel it ease and the Rose with the funny little smile came back. She caught her breath and laughed.
“Oh, Momma, look at you. Little feet sticking straight up.”
Rose and Thomas eased a folded blanket underneath the old woman. It was the only thing they could think of to do and now Noko was slowly crossing the river of sleep, floating away from them on her sinking raft.
* * *
Thomas laid down an old canvas in the trunk of his car. On weekends, he used the team and wagon to haul water for drinking. For bathing and cleaning they had the rain barrels. In winter they melted snow. He didn’t have time to hitch up now. He was very careful. A spill in the trunk could freeze all winter and then, in summer, mildew. Although his caution meant an extra trip, he never hauled cans in the backseat. Of course Wade rode along with him. Smart, like all of his children, he had skipped grades. He was now in classes with boys who had got their growth.
“I went up against that ol’ Albert, Daddy, gave him the one-two.”
“No fighting.”
“Then I gave him the ol’ three-four.”
“Wade?”
“Four words where three will do.”
“That’s my boy. Always better to talk your way out of a fight.”
“Running, too, you said running.”
“Honorable running.”
“I don’t wanta run, though. Get them callin’ me yellow-baby.”
“You don’t have to prove yourself. I don’t want you to fight, but if you did, you’d be Golden Gloves material, like Wood Mountain.”
“He has a fight on the Bottineau card next Saturday. Fighting Joe Wobble.”
“Joe Wobleszynski! That’s my night off. I’ll take you kids. Take Mama too, if she’ll go.”
Wade nodded in delight and put his dukes up. They filled the water cans. Bought the baking powder, sugar, oats, and tea on Rose’s list. Then they went home and Thomas lifted potatoes. He was fast and Wade scrambled to bag them. They raced each other until dark.
Water Earth
Rubbing the back of her aching neck, Patrice walked slowly down the grass road. She knew her mother’s people would be there, camped outside. There they were. A couple of frayed canvas tents, lean-to shelters streaked with dried mud. A cooking fire. Lake stones held up an ironwood branch from which a kettle was suspended just over tiny flames. The stumps that people would use to sit on were pulled away from the woodpile and arranged around the fire. At the edge of the clearing around the house, by the sweat-lodge frame, there was another tent with the open shape that signified that a jiisikid was among the visitors. Zhaanat had sent word to her cousin Gerald to come down across the border, and help her locate her daughter. That was one of the things the jiisikid did. Find people. Gerald, or the spirit who entered Gerald, would fly down to the Cities in a trance and see what was going on. He would find out why for the last five months Vera had not written, not reported in to the relocation program, not talked to anyone from the tribe who lived down there now.
Zhaanat kept a fresh bough of pine over the door. This morning, she had burned pine needles with cedar and bear root. The dim house was fragrant with the smoke. Gerald was sitting at the table with a few other people. They were drinking tea and laughing. In between jokes, they were discussing the ceremony with Zhaanat—how it would be run and who might show up with other questions, how long they should wait, if they should set up the sweat lodge too, what colors of cloth to tie in the branches and in what order. Who would lead on each song. They teased one another. Details. Patrice never talked about this part of her family’s life with those who would not understand. For one thing, they wouldn’t get how everything was funny. But the colors and the details reminded her of how the Catholics chose their colors and fixated on their sacraments. As if these things mattered to spirits or to the Holy Ghost.
Patrice had come to think that humans treated the concept of God, or Gizhe Manidoo, or the Holy Ghost, in a childish way. She was pretty sure that the rules and trappings of ritual had nothing to do with God, that they were ways for people to imagine they were doing things right in order to escape from punishment, or harm, like children. She had felt the movement of something vaster, impersonal yet personal, in her life. She thought that maybe people in contact with that nameless greatness had a way of catching at the edges, a way of being pulled along or even entering this thing beyond experience.
“Uncle!” She hugged Gerald, and shook hands all around. Then, with a cup of tea, she slipped behind her curtain, only to find her mother lying in her bed, fast asleep.
Patrice put her cup on the stool beside the bed, and lowered herself to sit on the edge of the mattress. She thought by sitting down she’d wake her mother, but Zhaanat slept heavily on her back, worn out by the long struggle with Patrice’s father, who had at last hopped a train or so they’d heard. Patrice glanced at the pepper can she kept on her windowsill. She had filled it with decoy money, and it looked like he’d found and taken it. A relief. Her real stash was buried underneath the linoleum floor. Her magazines and newspapers were neatly piled next to the bed. Look. Ladies’ Home Journal. Time. Juggie Blue saved whatever the teachers discarded for her niece Valentine, and when Valentine was done with them she gave the magazines to Patrice.
The window faced west and the last of the sunlight, shifting through the golden leaves of birch trees, flickered across her mother’s finely made face. Pleasant lines starred out from the corners of her eyes. Arched lines set off her slight smile. Her hair was long and the smooth braids had accidentally, comically, swept upward over her head, so that it seemed she was falling. Her arms were bent at the elbows and her powerful small hands lay still across her chest. Her unusual hands that frightened some people. Patrice shared her mother’s tilting eyes, strength, and willful energy. But not her hands. They were Zhaanat’s alone.
Zhaanat’s dress was made of midnight-green calico dotted with tiny golden leaves. The style was from the last century, but Patrice knew it was only a few months old. Her mother had sewed the old-time dress from over four yards of cloth. The sleeves were slim and ran down to her wrists. There were shell buttons in the front, and the dress had a sweeping gathered skirt. Beneath it, Zhaanat wore woolen men’s underwear, a dull red-orange color. Her moccasins were deerhide with rawhide soles, decorated with colored thread, blue and green. She often wore a brown plaid shawl. She had pulled the edges of it around her shoulders before she slept, as if for protection. Patrice smoothed her hand along the shawl’s fringes and her mother opened her eyes.