The Night Watchman

Wood Mountain trains with Barnes in secret, feeling guilty about lying about his hand. He tells the baby, who he refers to still as “Archille.” He tells Pokey that it’s because of Gringo.

Later, he begins working on the cradle board in the barn, and Grace comes in, asking if his hand is okay now since she saw him using a hand plane. He tries to lie, asking her about the Mormon. She says that he left, and Wood Mountain tells her that he’s seen him sneaking out. She points out his hand again, and he makes her promise not to tell anyone.

Grace also points out that everyone knows that Joe is pretending, though no one seems to know that Wood Mountain is, too. She also tells him that people suspect that the baby is his and Patrice’s and they’re trying to hide it by insisting that it’s Vera’s.

She leaves, thinking about how he’s in love with Patrice but says nothing once she notices his concentration when working on the cradle board.

Thomas ponders the name for the fight between Joe and Wood Mountain to put on the flyer, ultimately deciding on “Battle Royale Benefit” (273).

When he comes home from work, he lays down to sleep but memories of Roderick, ill, “[h]alf dead already” (274). When he next tries to sleep, he sees Roderick again, then worries over whether they will have enough money for the journey and what he’ll say when he arrives in Washington. Eventually, he gets ready for work, finding his daughter reading.

Thomas brings the Book of Mormon from the missionaries to learn more about why Arthur V. Watkins wanted to solve the “Indian problem.” He remembers what Biboon told him before he left for boarding school: “Study hard because we need to know the enemy” (275). He used his knowledge of people to convince them to put the jewel bearing plant near the reservation and to improve the community school.

As he reads, he is immediately surprised by Joseph Smith’s encounter with a bright being like his own. Eventually, feeling depressed by the treatment of women in the book, he closes it, expecting Watkins to be a righteous fellow and feeling unsure how to fight him. Then, he remembered something from boarding school about how the way to fight the righteous is by arguing that listening was the only righteous thing to do.

Vera walks, unsure if she is alive or on the road to the afterlife.

The community hall is set up for the boxing match. Patrice and Valentine had arrived early, though the crowd, made up mostly of Indigenous people but also of neighboring farms and townspeople, quickly grows. The event begins, first with other fights before Joe and Wood Mountain take the stage. Everyone knows each is faking his injury.

During the first two rounds, the fighters get a sense of each other. In the sixth round, Joe hits Wood Mountain squarely in the nose, drawing blood. Wood Mountain returns, and the fight devolves into chaos. Wood Mountain ends up winning, but “winning was beside the point” after all the violence and injuries (284). It is the last time either of them will ever fight.

Patrice is jealous that Valentine was promoted to the acid washing room. At lunch, she opts to sit next to Betty Pye instead of Valentine. She zones out as Valentine talks about her new job until Valentine asks what she is thinking. Valentine teases Patrice about who she likes, while Doris talks about Barnes and makes Valentine jealous.

When Patrice arrives home, Thomas reports that Vera was spotted in Duluth. She was arrested, gave her name, and then disappeared again. Zhaanat and Patrice have both stopped dreaming of her.

Thomas also says that they raised half of the money for the trip to Washington. He also tells them about Millie Cloud, believing that her study can provide information that contradicts Congress’s belief that the tribe has plenty of money. Patrice thinks of what it would be like to go to college but knows that without her, her family couldn’t survive. If the bill passed and they had to sell their land, they would have nowhere to go. At this thought, she grabs four dollars from her stash, giving it to her mother, who gives it to Thomas.

The next day, Mr. Vold moves Betty next to Patrice at work. Before long, Betty mentions sex with her partner. Patrice says that she wishes someone would explain how it worked to her, and Betty volunteers.

On Saturday, they meet at Henry’s. Patrice tries not to think about her encounter with Bucky and his friends as Betty explains different elements of sex. She also tells Patrice how not to get pregnant. Then, she wonders who Patrice will do it with, and Patrice says she doesn’t have a plan. Betty says that she can always leave a man afterwards if she doesn’t enjoy it.

Soon, Barnes appears, and Patrice feels uncomfortable, hoping he didn’t hear their conversation.

After he leaves, Betty also mentions that men will pay for sex, sometimes coming down and promising to marry the woman down in the Cities before selling them to a pimp. Patrice thinks of Jack and what could have happened to her.

Retired army medic Harry Roy finds Vera on the side of the road. He brings her home, where he lives with a dog named Edith, and “[a]s it happens when one person lives with one dog, the dog became psychic” (298). Edith guards Vera.

Vera slowly wakes and can tell a man is near. Harry says he is a medic, but she still doesn’t open her eyes. However, she allows him to feed her some soup. She falls back to sleep, waking periodically but keeping her eyes closed. Harry eventually draws her a bath and helps her find her way around without her looking. He shows her how to lock the door, and she does after he leaves. Then, she opens her eyes.

Edith continues to follow Vera, understanding that awful things have happened to her and that Harry scares her. Harry tries to sooth her with calm music and by giving her space.

Millie wakes knowing that snow has fallen. She packs and then leaves for the train station. She has one of two copies of her study in her suitcase and is worried something will happen to it. She is meeting her father and Thomas in Rugby, and they are late picking her up because of the snow. Stranded, they sleep in the train station. Fearing that her suitcase will be stolen, Thomas ties a rope to it and then to each of their wrists. The next morning, they eat breakfast and begin to talk about her study while they wait for the roads to clear.

Thomas considers the findings of the report, which demonstrates their poverty. This is both good news, as it undermines the government’s reasoning for the bill, and bad news because it proves their difficult situation. 

At work, Patrice thinks about the weather’s turn for the worse and how she won’t be able to have sex with either Wood Mountain or Barnes, though she was leading toward the former since the latter is too “sticky.” She misses Valentine and coffee breaks.

On the way home, Patrice thinks about Wood Mountain, which leads her to think of Bernie. She wonders how Bernie made enough money to buy Juggie a car and wonders if it had anything to do with Vera.

The next day, Patrice is off from work, and she goes to set traps for rabbits. She looks at the cabin that Vera was working on before she disappeared. On her way home, she falls into a bear’s den. The bear is hibernating, and Patrice too falls asleep. When she wakes, she feels fearless after having slept so close to the bear.

Zhaanat thinks that Patrice’s father is going to return soon. Patrice agrees to watch for him.

Patrice takes Pokey to check the snares. Pokey looks inside Vera’s cabin, despite Patrice telling him not to. He sees someone in there, and Patrice knows that there have been no tracks to or from the cabin, meaning that whoever is underneath the bundle of blankets is probably dead.

Eventually, Patrice makes her way back with Thomas and Wood Mountain. Inside the cabin, they find Patrice’s father, who likely died in his sleep. She is grateful that it is not Vera. They start to prepare for Pogo’s burial and start a fire to soften up the ground to dig his grave.

At work, she doesn’t tell anyone about her father.

Thomas works on the grave house while Wood Mountain works on the cradle board. Thomas thinks about how Zhaanat asked him to build it “because she knew he did it the old way” (321). However, he thinks about the even older way in which a person was wrapped in birchbark and affixed to a tree, wondering if the grave house came along after reservations were established.

Knowing that Zhaanat will be suspicious, Wood Mountain asks if they should avoid telling her that he was working on the cradle board so close to the grave house. Thomas says that it will be okay, but Wood Mountain decides to light some sage.

Wood Mountain also muses about how he sometimes feels so connected to those who came before him, saying, “Sometimes when I’m out and around […] I feel like they’re with me, those way-back people. I never talk about it. But they’re all around us. I could never leave this place” (323).

Having learned about the bear from Patrice, Zhaanat killed and cooked it. When Patrice returns home from work, she sees her house filled with people, including Millie Cloud. Perturbed that Millie is on her bed, Patrice decides to be nice because she wants to ask Millie about college.

She goes out and helps Wood Mountain break up the earth, feeling relieved that, once they bury her father, they will be safe from him.

During the night watch, Patrice sees something move through the trees. When the grave is finished, she sees it again and knows it’s her father. He looks over her grave and whistles, “trying to pull the life out of her” (329). She tells him that he can’t get them now. Zhaanat comes out to give her some soup.

In the daylight, their house fills again, and Bucky arrives. He goes to Zhaanat and kneels before her, giving her the shoes he had taken from Patrice and begging her to heal his face and leg. She reminds him that his actions caused the affliction.

Gerald tells Pogo’s body what to do once he arrives on the other side, and Millie asks Patrice what he is saying. Then, they bury him.