The beer was blondish-brown like the roots of a crested wheatgrass, frizzy filaments spilling down into the dirt deeper than a tall man's height, bitter happiness foaming down into his balls. His companion was hunting hookers now like a Métis with his long rifle and red headband riding close on his pony, aiming at a wide-eyed buffalo. He stood up, began to stalk two women playing pool, and fell on his face. By the time he'd discovered how to plant his feet beneath him again, the bartender was beside him, pointing grimly to the doorway. The man began to walk out. Suddenly he turned and spread his swollen grayish cheeks like an Atlantic wolf-fish whose jaws sometimes open to show in faint anticipatory chewing motions its sharp yellow teeth, and the man's gold-ridged black pupils glared and bulged forward as he shouted: You gonna try an' fuck my wife again? That's my
Then the rain fell on him.
Left thus to himself, the John drank another beer. He saw a tipsy woman with many parallel scan across her wrists (her face like one of those squarish bark baskets with rounded corners for winnowing rice) and he remembered how last night his companion's wife had said: Funny things happen in this town. Like my cousin Maisie. She kept tryin' to kill herself. Gash her wrist so many times with a knife, try to jump off a bridge, all that stuff. Well, she wanted to commit suicide, but she didn't have to. She died in her sleep.
Did you love her very much?
Her? I hate her guts! she'd laughed.
Now finishing the bottle, he went to the woman and said: What's your name?
Maisie.
I thought you died in your sleep.
I did, she muttered. Then the security man came and pushed her out.
It was night now, and he was alone. One tubby girl went up for another beer, and he saw the bartender take her lovingly by the shoulders, kiss her neck, and begin to push. He pushed her down the corridor that led past the hotel desk to outside, and then he came back. The lonely man went out to see what had become of her. She was on the street trying to hail a cab but forgetting in mid-gesture what she was about. — Everyone's hassling me tonight, she wept. And now I can't get a cab. I need a fucking cab. Call me a fucking cab! I need to eat! I wanna pee! Find my shoes for me, please.
Her asymmetrical purple mouth imploded, slobbered and kissed him.
The late darkness of summer had begun to dim the hot gray night. On Main Street sat a drunken Indian panhandler, and when he gave him change the panhandler stared at the coins adding up on his palm without comprehending; and he walked past three staggering Indian boys in baseball caps, and came to the old Indian hooker who had to hold onto a lamppost to keep from falling down, her tongue the brown, black-banded furry ovoid of a queen bee hibernating in the dirt under the snow of men's mouths, and after her he kept passing Indians leaning in front of hotels that served beer downstairs and a piece of thistledown blew against his face from a vacant lot full of puddles and frostcracked mud and beer bottles and planks and dandelions and camomile and horsetails, and it began to rain again. The vacant lot was a slice of muskeg, and muskeg was an Ojibway word. Across the street, an Indian in a blue cap walked head down, kicking something, and then he turned and kicked it back the way he had come. An Indian in a fringed leather jacket strode energetically, swinging his arms. Three Indian boys came. One said: Why you fellas fuckin' whinin'? It's time for another fuckin' round, so let's fuckin' go.
He remembered how his companion's wife (who was on probation for assault) had said to him: We have our traditions, aye? We have our power. Like, suppose it's stormy outside in the morning and we want it to be calm weather. All we got to do is say: I want it to be a nice day, and then smoke a pipe, and pretty quick it calms down.
He saw the woman who had died in her sleep and said to her: Can you stop the rain?
Sure, she said. Anytime. As long as it's not raining beer. A Mountie came to shove her along and she said: Did you notice there's a red stripe on your leg?
Oh, fuck off, the Mountie said.
Did you notice that you're wearing a bulletproof vest?
Yeah, I noticed that all right, Maisie.
Are you wearing bulletproof trousers, too?
