Summary
Barnes is searching for Patrice, ignorant that she has left the reservation for the Twin Cities. As he thinks of Patrice, his mind goes to romantic illustrations of lovely Indian maidens in flowing buckskins offering food. When he drops Pokey off at his house, he goes in, hoping to see Pixie inside, but instead meets their mother, Zhaanat, who offers him food. While eating, Zhaanat, with Pokey translating, asks Barnes why he is here. Barnes deflects, saying that he wants to update her on Pokey’s progress. After a pause, Zhaanat tells him that she knows that is not why Barnes is here, and that Pixie does not like him because he smells bad. Shocked, Barnes stands up and leaves. After being interrogated by Pokey, Zhaanat reveals that she hopes Barnes will stay away from Pixie, who does not return his affections.
Back to Patrice on the train, she is still sleeping in her seat when a blond man sits next to her and orders her to switch seats with his wife. She refuses through her obstinate silence. The man becomes frustrated and waves down a conductor. Finally, another man offers to trade his seat with the wife.
Pixie meets Wood Mountain on the train, who is on his way to a fight in Fargo. They talk about mutual acquaintances and Barnes, Mountain’s boxing coach, comes up. Pixie reveals to Mountain that she doesn’t care for him and refuses to explain why when he presses. He asks about her plans for finding Vera. She explains that she doesn’t have one but plans to visit a couple addresses and walk around. He advises Patrice to visit the “scrum” on the street, the “not-police” who are in charge of the bad things. Pixie asks what kinds of bad things there are, and Mountain worries that Patrice is not street-wise enough.
During his night watch, Thomas reads the congressional bill announcing the termination of the Turtle Mountain Band of Chippewa. He throws down the pages and walks around, feeling a hollow, thrumming sensation. The next morning, he calls his old friend, Martin Cross, a former tribal chairman and source of wisdom over Indian rights. Cross tells him the congressman leading the fight to pass the termination bill is Arthur V. Watkins, a Mormon. Cross jokes that for Mormons, it is “in their religion to change Indians into whites.”
Thomas studies the bill again, dwelling on the tedious legal phrases that entail the end of his tribe and way of life. Thomas sits down at his work as a night watchman and pens a letter to his son, Archie, and falls asleep, but jolts back awake with the intuition that someone is breaking into the plant. He spots a white owl against the window, stretching its wings and fighting its own reflection, and eventually returns to his room when the owl flies away. In his time clock, instead of punching the hour, he writes a cryptic message about the snowy owl. The white factory supervisor picks up the message and calls on LaBette, a Chippewa man who works as the evening janitor, to interpret the owl message for him. LaBette pretends that it is a joke drawing on typical Indian mysticism to make them laugh, but when he leaves their presence, he is disturbed. The owl means death, suggesting that someone close to Thomas will die, including, possibly, himself. He whispers for someone named Roderick to come help him.
What follows are two cryptic reflections as Thomas comes to grips with the nation’s attempt to destroy his tribe by absorbing it into the American fabric. We learn that Thomas belongs to a specific generation—the “after-the-buffalo-who-are-we-now” generation that was born and grew up on the reservation, that always grew up with a watch, never keeping time by the moon and sun. He questions how Indians are supposed to relate to this country that is attempting to destroy his tribe by fully assimilating them into the American fabric.
Thomas has a flashback to his time as a schoolboy. His mother had cut off his braid, anticipating the teachers doing so when he would enter the government boarding school, and weeping afterwards. At school, he noticed the omnipresence of the US flag. When his teacher made the kids place their hands on their heart and recite the Pledge of Allegiance. When he hears the phrase, "a flag worth dying for," chills prickle up his spine.
Back on the train, Wood makes Patrice give him the addresses where she will be headed so that he can follow her trail in case she gets lost. He gets up and leaves, smiling at her in an attempt to catch her attention. He leaves thinking that he has been successful.
After Pixie wakes up from her nap, she sees a wiry old lady knitting a blanket beside her. They fall into conversation. Once the lady realizes that Patrice is looking for her lost sister and her baby, she gives her the blanket. For the baby, she says, once he is found. At the train station, Patrice leaves with the intention of waving down a cab to go to her first address, but a car pulls up and an unknown man tells her to get in and says he will drive her to the address with a “special price for a pretty lady.” He asks her if she’s looking for a job, as a newcomer to the city, and she says no. However, he insists, and pulls up at a bar called Log Jam 26. Patrice is uncomfortable and refuses to go in, but he lies and says that the establishment is a camera shop and then, along with another man, physically drags her into the interior of the shop. Patrice is terrified that they are kidnapping her and struggles against them until another man intervenes and tells the others to let her go.
The man introduces himself as Jack Malloy, apologizes for the misconduct of his colleagues, and invites her to have a drink. She wants to leave, but he convinces her to stay and listen to his job pitch with a free lunch. He explains that they are looking for a lady who can perform as a waterjack wearing their waterproof rubber suit, a Babe outfit. She would wear the outfit and perform ox tricks underwater. When he asks Patrice for her name, she lies and says it is Doris Barnes.
Patrice initially refuses the waterjack offer but keeps listening once he mentions the money that she could earn every night, including tips. He offers her a cot in the bar to sleep in, or a room in a nearby hotel. Finally, he offers to drive her to the addresses to help her find her sister. If she has no luck, she returns and does tonight’s show. When Patrice asks what happened to the last lady who performed as a waterjack, Jack replies that she fell “gravely ill.” Patrice finally agrees to let Jack drive her to where she wants to go.
Back at the reservation, Thomas and other men of the tribe have gathered to discuss the new bill terminating Turtle Mountain Band as well as all other Indian tribes. Biboon, one of the elders, talks about how Turtle Mountain was able to hold on to their scrap of land by banding everyone together, non-violently confronting the settlers if they infringed on their boundaries, and putting up a delegation to D.C. with a petition. They discuss creating their own petition. Later that night, Thomas convenes a meeting of the advisory committee. The bill is read out loud and passed around, and the room becomes more anxious as it becomes clear that the US government intends to relocate—a euphemism for removal—them entirely. They plan to get a group of people together to meet with the Bureau of Indian Affairs to have the bill explained.
Jack drives Patrice around to the different contacts she has written down. After several no-shows, she tells him that she wants to visit Bernadette’s house, but the day is drawing to a close, and he says that they should return to Log Jam 26 so that she can rest before her first show as the waterjack. Patrice reluctantly agrees to perform, negotiating up her wages and increasing her security. She tries on the waterjack outfit and is pleased to find that it fits her; the performance goes off without a hitch, and she finds that she is a natural performer. Patrice as the waterjack is a hit.
Analysis
Barnes' attempts to get close to Patrice are further frustrated—not by her, but by her mother, who tells him that Patrice doesn’t like him because he smells bad. When Barnes leaves and Pokey asks why she made up that reason when he could easily wash himself and solve the problem, she replies that even if he does, “he’ll still smell like they do. He can never wash that off” (84). She implies that his smell is intrinsic. Smell is notable in that it is a physiological feature unique to oneself. In deeming his smell repugnant, she is also deeming him repugnant in a fundamental and physiological way that he can try to disguise—by putting on cologne—but cannot get rid of. She is drawing a dividing line of kinship that Barnes is attracted to but cannot partake in. This uncertainty of where he stands —a kind of familiar discomfort—becomes a theme in Barnes’ relationships with other Chippewa people.
Patrice embarking on her journey from her reservation marks the beginning of a venture outside of the insular world of the reservation into a strange, unpredictable, and dangerous urban world. It is marked by encounters on the train that force Patrice to stand up for herself and demonstrate her independence. Patrice’s refusal to leave her seat for the white man and his wife evinces her growing resistance to domination as she ventures outside of her familiar social context. When Wood Mountain asks why she isn’t interested in Barnes, she refuses to answer and asks him why she needs to give a reason in the first place. However, Patrice also has encounters with familiar faces, such as bumping into Wood Mountain on the train, and receives random acts of generosity from strangers, such as receiving a blanket from an elderly lady. These interactions affirm her determination, which she soon needs to draw upon when she enters the city.
Patrice, known for her strength, intelligence, and independence, is suddenly forced into an unfamiliar situation where she must depend upon strangers to achieve her goal of finding her sister. She encounters her first major conflict in the form of a cab driver who forcibly takes her to an unknown bar and is asked to work for them as a performer. The employer, Jack, offers very enticing incentives—wages, a place to stay, and a free ride to the addresses where she might find her sister. However, gaining these comes at the cost of independence and security as she would be submitting herself as an employee to these strange men. She is therefore pulled in opposite directions, and needs to make a decision very quickly. Certain lines suggest reasons for concern, such as the fact that the previous waterjack performer fell “gravely ill,” but the rapid pace of the dialogue and action forces the reader and Patrice to make decisions hastily and generates a sense of disquietude of what may lie on the horizon.
The arrival of the snowy owl in the middle of the night disturbing Thomas from his slumber is an ominous sign of death. Its appearance also coincides with Thomas’ dawning realization of the existential threat that the bill poses to his beloved tribe. The owl is a supernatural device that allows past incidents to resurface in Thomas’ —in particular, memories of government boarding school, many miles away from his family. He reflects on the repetition and prevalence of the American flag at the school, a symbol of nationalism and assimilation, meaning the slow death of his traditional life. Contextualized in these childhood memories, the termination bill becomes only the logical conclusion of a lifetime of assimilation that had always intended the destruction of American Indians and their way of life.
The meeting of tribal leaders that Thomas gathers highlights the importance of intergenerational wisdom and organizing within the community in the face of enduring federal hostility. Biboon, Thomas’ father, informs the younger generation that the termination bill is not the first time that the government has tried to kick them off their land. He explains how they defended themselves last time by sending a delegation to Washington D.C. with a petition to argue their case. Thomas ends up organizing a similar delegation this time. His work is thus situated as a continuation of an intergenerational project in which his own father had participated.
