Thursday, December 25, 1997 -- 2:40 a.m.

Christmas, technically. Four rooms rented. A family from Montana going to Grandma's in Iowa, who didn't make it past here because of the snow on the interstate. A salesman who didn't want to be home, I think. A young couple who got married at the courthouse on Monday and are driving to tell her folks. And the trucker in 14.

Mrs. Bhakta left a plate of sweets for me, the milky ones with the silver paper on top. I put them out in the lobby with the coffee and a sign that says MERRY CHRISTMAS FROM THE NIGHT DESK. The salesman ate five.

I called the kids at their mom's at nine, before I left. Derek said thanks for the basketball shoes. Shawna said thanks for the dictionary, the big one, and then she said, "Dad, you know you're weird, right?" I said yes. She said, "Good."

Snow coming down under the parking lot lights like somebody's shaking it out of a sack. Very quiet. The buffalo sign buzzing. Four Christmases ago I was in no shape to know what day it was. Tonight I know exactly. It's a good present.

Friday, November 28, 1997 -- 1:50 a.m.

Thanksgiving at Mom's. The kids came with me. Their mom said yes, which is a thing she didn't used to say. We drove down in the morning, the three of us, Derek in the back with his headphones on and his big feet up on the seat, Shawna in front changing the radio station every ten seconds.

Mom made turkey and fry bread and wojapi, the berry sauce, and green bean casserole with the onions on top, because she's modern. Uncle Wilbur came and told the story about the time the pickup rolled into the creek, and every year the truck goes a little further into the creek. Derek laughed so hard milk came out of his nose, which at fourteen is a humiliation he'll need years to get over.

Nobody offered me a drink. Nobody's offered me one in that house in three years. I used to think they were being careful of me. Now I think they're just used to me like this. That's better.

Drove the kids back up to Rapid, dropped them at their mom's, came straight here for eleven. Deer hunters in half the rooms, orange hats on the beds. They'll be up at four. So will I, only from the other side.

Thursday, October 16, 1997 -- 2:30 a.m.

Went down to see my mom on my days off. She's sixty-six. She lives by herself in the same house outside Kyle where I grew up, with a woodstove and a cat that isn't hers and a picture of every grandchild on the wall, even the ones from my cousins that nobody's sure about.

She's tired lately. She's thirsty all the time. She keeps a big plastic cup of water by her chair and fills it and fills it. She says it's the weather. I said the weather's cold. She said then it's the cold weather. She's lost some weight and she's proud of it.

I know what it probably is. Everybody on the rez knows what it probably is. Half her friends have it. Uncle Wilbur has had trouble with his feet from it for years. I told her go to the clinic. She said she would. That's what she says.

Shawna's working on college applications at the kitchen table at her mom's. She asked me to read her essay. It's about her grandma. It's good. She spelled the Lakota words right, which is more than I can do.

Sunday, August 31, 1997 -- 3:40 a.m.

I had the TV on in the lobby when I came on at eleven, and the news was that Princess Diana was in a car wreck in Paris. A while later they said she died. Everybody who came to the desk tonight already knew, or found out from me. A woman from 19 came down in her robe at two and stood in the lobby watching and didn't say anything, and I didn't either. Then she said, "Those poor boys." And went back up.

That's what I keep thinking about too. Two boys. The oldest is fifteen, they said. Derek is fourteen.

My dad died when I was eighteen. Not in any way anybody put on TV. But I remember everybody in the house talking in low voices over my head all night, like the TV in this lobby.

School starts Tuesday. Shawna's a senior.

Sunday, August 3, 1997 -- 4:10 a.m.

Rally week starts tomorrow. Up in Sturgis, thirty miles north, the motorcycle rally, and every motel from here to Wyoming is full of bikers. Mr. Bhakta triples the rates and apologizes to nobody. He's saving for his daughter's wedding back in Gujarat, and he says the rally is going to pay for the horse the groom rides in on. I think he's kidding about the horse.

The bikes came in all night. You can hear them from the edge of town, a sound like weather. Most of them are older than you'd think. Dentists from Minnesota. A couple from Arkansas married forty-one years, matching leather, matching gray braids. She showed me pictures of their grandkids for twenty minutes while he fell asleep standing up.

There's a lot of beer this week. In the parking lot, in the coolers, in the rooms. I'm not going to pretend it doesn't get to me some. It does, mostly around four, when it's quiet and the lot is full of people laughing. My first year I called Leonard at 4:30 in the morning. He answered on the first ring, like he'd been waiting. He said, "Drink a cup of coffee, Vernon. Then drink another one. Then it's morning."

I'm on my third cup. It's almost morning.

Saturday, July 5, 1997 -- 3:05 a.m.

They landed a little car on Mars yesterday. On the Fourth. I watched the pictures on the lobby TV at three this morning with a trucker from Nebraska who couldn't sleep. Red rocks under a pinkish sky. He said, "That looks like the Badlands." It did. It looked like the road to my mother's house.

The fireworks in town went till midnight, and the dogs on the east side barked till two. Room 6 had a family with a little boy who was scared of the booms, and his dad brought him down to the lobby in his pajamas and they watched Mars with us. The boy asked if there were people on Mars. The trucker said no. I said we don't know yet, they only just got there. The boy looked at me like I was the only grownup in the room with any sense. I get that look from kids and dogs. Never from bankers.

Friday, June 6, 1997 -- 2:15 a.m.

Shawna finished her junior year today. Honor roll, again. Her mom called me at the apartment this afternoon before I went to sleep, which she doesn't do much, just to tell me. "I thought you'd want to know, Vern." I did want to know.

Shawna wants to go to college. The university in Vermillion, or maybe farther. She took the ACT in April and did good, she says, not great, which I've figured out means great. She wants to study something with biology in it. Nursing, maybe. Maybe medicine. She says "maybe" like it's a door she's holding open to see if anybody pushes back.

I didn't go to her eighth grade graduation. I was supposed to. I was somewhere else, which is all I'm going to say about 1993. She was thirteen. She's never brought it up. That's worse than if she did.

I'm going to be at the next one. That's the plan. Next May, front row. Leonard says that's how the program works: you don't fix the past, you show up for the next thing. So I'm practicing showing up. Tonight I showed up at the desk at 10:52, eight minutes early, which is my record.

Saturday, May 24, 1997 -- 3:30 a.m.

Memorial Day weekend, so the season has started. Every room full by nine. Minivans with bikes on the back, kids asleep in the back seats with their mouths open, and the dads come in to the desk looking like they drove from Iowa without stopping, which they did.

A lady from Ohio asked me tonight where they could go to see some real Indians. I said, "Ma'am, you're looking at one, and he's out of towels till the dryer's done." She laughed and then got embarrassed and then laughed again. I gave her the powwow brochures and extra towels when they came out of the dryer. She left me five dollars in the morning. I'm not sure what for. Maybe for being real.

The trucker who always wants 14 came in at 1:40. He won't take any other room. Fourteen has the same bed and the same painting of a pheasant as all the others. I've never asked him why. That's the rule of the desk: you don't ask why. People tell you sometimes anyway, around three.

Tuesday, May 13, 1997 -- 2:50 a.m.

Mr. Bhakta bought a computer for the office in April so he could keep the reservations on it instead of in the big green book. His nephew in Denver set it up and put the internet on it and went home. Mr. Bhakta doesn't trust it. He still writes everything in the green book too, and then types it in. So now we have everything twice, which he says is American business.

He told me I can use it after two in the morning if the register's balanced and the coffee's made. The register's balanced. The coffee's made. So here I am.

My name is Vernon Two Bulls. I'm forty-one. I'm Oglala Lakota, grew up on Pine Ridge, out by Kyle. I've been the night clerk here since '95, eleven at night to seven in the morning, at a motel on the old highway on the east side of Rapid City, where all the motels were before the interstate came through and took the business up the hill. Twenty-four rooms. The sign out front is a neon buffalo with one back leg burned out, so he looks like he's limping toward the Black Hills.

I've been sober since March 3, 1994. Three years, two months and some days. I have two kids. Shawna is seventeen and finishing her junior year. Derek is fourteen and taller than me already. They live with their mom across town.

I don't know who this is for. The nights are long and the people I'd tell things to are asleep. My sponsor says write it down. I don't think he meant on the internet. He's seventy-three. I'm not going to tell him.