“Morris knows them?”
“Some. His mother bothered me to work with him. See, this here drum went traveling for a time. Most of the songs got scattered.”
“What will the nurses say?”
“Oh,” said Bernard, “they’ll be all right. It’s not the first time they had to contend with their own medicine. There’s a hospital policy on traditional healing. We can’t burn any sage, but the drum we can pound as long as we keep it low and everyone is awake. We’ll do it in the morning.”
Bernard left the room and went downstairs. While he was gone, Ira checked on Shawnee and Alice. They were asleep, breathing calmly, and when she slipped from their room she saw Bernard getting off the elevator. He carried the drum in a canvas case, by a strap, and he also carried a cloth case that looked as though it held a short pair of skis, but she knew it held the legs that kept the drum off the floor. She followed Bernard into the room. He took the drum from its case, then put the drum on the recliner, and pushed it against the wall.
“There’s room, isn’t there?”
“Sure,” Ira said, “there’s room.”
Bernard left the case standing in the corner, and he went out the door. The night nurse came in and checked everything about Apitchi. Then she left. Ira smoothed out the covers on the cot again, and climbed in with her clothes on. The drum was behind her head, just above. Immediately, she slept.
The nurse tucked the digital thermometer underneath Shawnee’s arm and she swam up from her dream to half-wakefulness. She heard the whoosh of the pump on the blood pressure cuff, and heard it again as the nurse stood over Alice. An hour ago, Shawnee’s hands had throbbed and itched, but now that the medicine the nurse had given her had kicked in, she was comfortable. The nurse went out of the room, but Shawnee did not return entirely to sleep. The door was open a crack and she could hear the nurses talking at their big round station in the middle of the ward. It was comforting talk. A low babble. Heat flowed softly through the louvered vent alongside the window. Her mother was down the hall with Apitchi, and she had come through the woods. They were all safe. Since they’d been in the hospital, every time Shawnee closed her eyes she was back at the house as it burned, or dragging Alice, or floundering through the snow with Apitchi on her back. Now when she slept, she dreamed the whole thing over again, and several hours later she woke cold. She did not know where she was at first. Her vision was clouded, her eyes weak, and she felt the snow reaching up around her waist. But then she heard the beating of the drum, as she had back in the woods. Once she heard it she slowly allowed herself to return to consciousness. She pushed the sheet down, tossed off the pillow that had fallen over her eyes. As the room and its safety surrounded her, she was flooded by a startling and almost painful happiness.
Morris knew that he had fallen hard in love with Ira while they were back there in the cab of the truck. Did she know that her voice was lovely? So precise and yet hesitant? Could she even imagine how the give of her lips and the soft, hot little cave of her mouth, behind her lips and teeth, affected Morris? His fall was so dramatic and sudden that he’d actually trembled when she said her name in his room. They had taken him off morphine and he hadn’t cared. That’s how distracted he was. He thought of everything about her, everything he’d learned. The power and determination as she trudged through the snow, her devotion and her failure, her dignity which had not yet allowed her to ask to move in with him, though he hoped that she would ask. He had to know her. He had to understand the simplicity and even placement of the beads in her beadwork. It took patience and years of practice to bead that well. Yet she was impulsive, too. She made tiny mistakes, one here, one there. Some mistakes had bigger outcomes than they deserved. He felt so much pity for Ira that he wanted to take some of her trouble on. He missed her. He felt the print of her body against his when he’d dragged her across the seat. The aching print. There was the knowledge that his eyes were all fucked up and would not get better and he was addicted to painkillers. Not an ideal father figure. But there were positives. He did get a disability check and Bernard had come to talk to him about the songs belonging to the drum. His father had left those drum songs to him—taken the scrolls into the earth, but taught some of the songs to Morris first. The old man who had spoken to the wolves had both named him and taught him a few more songs. Then Bernard had taken over. Those songs had helped Morris, even kept him sane. He was sane now. He wanted her. He wanted to get his shit together and be clean. He wanted to construct a life that she could tolerate.
“Thank you for bringing my next wife,” he said to his brother on the phone. “I love her and can never thank you enough.”
“I got no claim on her,” said his brother, who was very surprised.
“You sure as hell don’t,” said Morris.
“She’s got kids,” said John.
“Don’t I know it. And don’t give me any of that shit about getting herself laid for food. I want to know something. Why I saw men die for oil in this country where a woman has to sell herself for bread and peanut butter.”
“Macaroni too,” said John.
“The hell with you. I want to know why I lost my eyes for that. It should not be.”
“Okay now,” said John, “don’t go off on that track.”
“I’m going to have her,” said Morris.
“You’re not ordering a Happy Meal,” said John. “She’s no Happy at all that I could tell. But then again, she can talk straight at you.”
“I’m going to do more,” said Morris.
“And what is that?”
“I’m going to help her raise her kids. I’m going to give her all my money. I’m going to teach them everything I know.”
“Well, good luck to you then, brother.”
Morris hung up the phone, quiet with ecstasy. In his mind Ira drove the truck and they put the kids in the jump seats right behind. Tipi canvas and poles and their suitcases of regalia corded down in the truck bed. Him on the passenger’s side. They were going to the big arbor powwows in Montana where the drum entered you straight up from the earth. Yes, it will be a beautiful, new life, thought Morris. I’m just going to lay here and pile on the details. I’ll play my own tape in my head. Let’s see, first I’ll buy her a soft fleecy tight-fitting sweater through which I will feel her breasts with my hands. And food, we’ll have food. Maybe all kinds of waffles in a restaurant. Juneberries. We’ll pick from a roadside bush. The only thing is, I’ve seen her face for the last time, maybe. Probably. This made Morris weep. His eyes felt deliciously soothed, but the tears stung his raw cheeks.
Bernard checked the gauges on the boilers and went down his twenty-item checklist. He made sure his crew was keeping the emergency room entrance free and clear of drifting snow. He helped clean a hospital room, using proper infection-control procedures. He ordered lightbulbs and did a small repair on the intercom system. Then he sat down in his office, drank a cup of strong tea, and thought he’d go up next and check on the drum. What had happened surprised him, but at the same time he had expected something like it. Ever since his children had grown up and moved to Fargo and his wife had followed, he had wondered why he couldn’t make himself move away to be near them. Though they visited often, he missed out on his grandchildren growing up. And he missed out on living with his wife, although it seemed like they got along better now. Still, he hadn’t known why he stayed on the old allotment except that the city was too loud, too fast and cramped for space. There were only sidewalks to walk on, no paths. Perhaps, he thought, someone needed to keep up the old house. There was his hospital job, but he could have quit that. He was over retirement age anyway.