I do know that, said Malvern, enraged now. It was me who originally remembered that rule and Ignatia who tried to break that rule. The beings who might bring our stories to the lowest levels of the earth, to the underwater lions and the giant snakes and other evil beings, they have to be froze in the ground, sleeping.
There’s one more piece of frybread left, said Emmaline.
Let her have it, the one who tells the stories out of season, said Ignatia, pursing her angry lips at Malvern.
Gawiin memwech, said Malvern. Let’s give it to the one who tried to steal my husbands, all six of them, one right after the other one. She tried to snatch away the fathers of my children by jiggling her stuffs at them! For shame!
They never saw nothing they didn’t want to see. Ignatia gave a choking snarl. You were so mean you scared them limp. They couldn’t take it. They swarmed after me.
Giiwanimo!
Don’t you call me liar. Your pants are smoking!
Emmaline cut the piece of frybread in half and slathered it with butter and jelly. She put a piece in each woman’s hand. The antagonists gnawed off bits, glowering and guttering, and for a moment it looked like they might soften. Then Malvern blurted.
Giiwanimo! Giin! Your underpants are burning! Hot pussy, you, at this age. For shame!
Ignatia threw her buttered bread at Malvern and it stuck to her breast, right at about her nipple. She looked down and snorted.
Here, let me help you, my darling, said Sam Eagleboy. He lifted the bit of bread off, then spit on his handkerchief and scrubbed slavishly at her bosom. Malvern pretended to bat his hands away.
Sam automatically popped the frybread in his mouth.
Sam ate the whiteman’s food! Mrs. Webid leaned excitedly toward Malvern. He must love you pretty bad, eh?
A man who will do that will do anything, said Ignatia. I should know. Her face screwed into a wink.
NIGHT SHIFT? YES, I believe. . I am certain. I will be. Quite happy with those hours, said Romeo, nearly dumbstruck with excitement.
Sterling Chance had a round, worn, dignified face. His hands were calm between the stacks of papers on his desk.
You are working out real good here, Romeo. Don’t always get to see that. We don’t just clean and repair stuff, you know, we are kind of the guiding force around here. If we don’t do our job, nobody can do a damn thing to fix people, right?
So far, Romeo had tinkered with and revved up an emergency generator. He had hot-wired the ambulance. He had gently broken into file cabinets and even an office when nurses had forgotten their keys. He had squeezed a breathing pump for a kid with asthma during a blackout. He had figured out stuck windows, coaxed fluorescence out of touchy bulbs, unclogged toilets, and dehairballed showers. All without uttering one single swear word that could be heard outside the sanctum of his head.
You’re polite, said Sterling Chance, with gravity. That also counts.
As Romeo walked out of the maintenance office, his prospects expanded.
Not only would he not be alone, at home, at night, which had gotten tedious, but certainly there would be only sleepy supervision at the hospital. Certainly the rules would relax. During the first week of work, he found that he was right. All around Romeo, over the upside-down hours, there was talk. Gossip ruled the night shift. Not mean gossip, like at the Elders Lodge, just valuable updates. You had to talk to stay awake. And you had to move around to stay awake, too, so Romeo might as well do some work. He continued to normalize servile behavior in order to get close to many conversations — any of them might be useful. He let himself be seen polishing the floor on his hands and knees.
You know, we’ve got a floor-polishing machine, someone said to him.
Thank you, but I have my standards, he replied.
The emergency team had a little picnic table set up outside their garage door. Of course, they had life-and-death matters on their minds, but really, what careless people! Romeo had to pick up the bits of paper they crumpled, the cigarette butts of course, the candy and sandwich wrappers that blew down off their lunch. He did this even after the sun went down, as they sat beneath the floodlights. Then he had to slowly, slowly, dispose of these items. He had to smooth out and stack each piece of trash before he lowered it reverently into the bin. Romeo placed himself near the emergency team, around the emergency room, anywhere he could get near the EMT on duty or the nurses who might have a bit of information to spare, or the doctors. He blended into the hospital furniture with his mineral-colored outfits. He wore a tan turtleneck to hide the blue-black skulls around his throat. His gray stretchy jeans were the color of dirty mop water. Probably, they were women’s jeans. He didn’t care. He didn’t tell his own stories, he just encouraged others. He didn’t make himself obvious in any way. He wore black rubber sneakers he’d found abandoned on the highway. Mornings, on the way home, head brimming, he entered his disability sanctum and emptied his pockets of papers — jottings on Post-it notes, papers drawn from the trash, even copies of a few files left out overnight. He kept his notes in piles. Pocketed another box of colored thumbtacks. Kept on tacking the pertinent scribblings up on the softened drywall of his rotting walls.
From these scraps of conversation Romeo learned: There was a kind of disease where you acted drunk, but it was just your own body making alcohol. Eating food off the edge of a sharp knife had resulted in an ambulance call for Puffy Shields. A baby was born with hair all over its body. Another baby was born holding a penny that the mother had swallowed. Old Man Payoose had a son on methamphetamine. That son had stolen the old man’s money and while that boy was high had shoved a carrot up his own ass, which was what brought him to the ER. A lady whose name he tried to catch used small round lake stones to exercise her vagina. A tribal member, a roofer, had breathed several nails into his lungs and wouldn’t let the doctors take them out. There was too much salt in everything, including the air. A little girl froze to death because she couldn’t get back into the house where her mother was passed out. Although she was pronounced dead at the scene, a doctor CPR’d and warmed her blood and brought her back from the spirit world. Now the girl knew things, like that other kid, LaRose. A teenager froze to death sleeping under the porch of his father’s house. They tried, in hope, but couldn’t get that boy back. An old woman got lost taking out the garbage but she didn’t quite freeze because she buried herself underneath the snow.
But wait. Romeo mopped his way up to the door of the dispatcher’s office, where the ambulance crew sometimes did paperwork or just talked. He heard Landreaux’s name. He strained, leaned closer, held his breath and tried to make out the words.
Not the femoral, said someone.
For sure?
Not that one either.
What day was it?
A Wednesday? A Tuesday?
You coulda fooled me.
Then they started talking about the carrot again.
Romeo strained his work-weakened mind. Tried to memorize. When he had to move on, he swiftly wrote down what he’d heard on pages torn from a waiting-room magazine. Into a file folder rescued from the trash, he slipped all that he found. Possibilities. Creative possibilities. He took pride in how he organized his own reality.
MAGGIE SNEAKS INTO LaRose’s room and curls up at the end of his bed.
I think it’s going good. I think she’s happier, says Maggie.
Me too. She’s not making the cakes.
And she might take a job with Dad at Cenex. I heard them.
You gotta stay nice to her.
Are you saying. . Maggie’s voice is low. . are you saying she wanted to hang herself because of how mean I was?