Monday, June 21, 1999 -- 2:30 a.m.

Saturday I went down and sweated with Uncle Wilbur and some of the men out there. I'm not going to write about what goes on in there. It isn't mine to put on a computer, and it doesn't go into words the way other things do anyway. I'll just say I've been going since I got sober, a few times a year, and I always come out lighter than I went in, and hungry, and very clear about who I owe an apology.

Sunday was Father's Day. Derek gave me a big steel thermos, the kind the construction guys carry, "for the desk." Shawna gave me a card she made on the computer at the gift shop, with a picture of a buffalo on it with one leg missing, like our sign. Inside she wrote, "To the night clerk. Thanks for showing up."

I don't know what to say about that, so I'm going to go fill up my new thermos.

Derek goes to basketball camp at the college in Spearfish next week. Mom's numbers are better. The summer people are here, rooms full every night. The buffalo is limping along.

Monday, May 31, 1999 -- 3:15 a.m.

Memorial Day. Sunday I went down to the rez with Mom and Uncle Wilbur to put flowers on the graves. Out there it's a big day. Lakota people honor veterans more than anybody I know. The veterans carry the flags in at every powwow, and every family has somebody. The little cemetery on the hill was full of plastic flowers and new flags snapping in the wind, and old men in caps with their units sewn on. Wilbur wore his Army cap and stood up straight all day, which cost him.

My dad's buried up there. He was in Korea. He came home and was never all the way home again, Mom says. I understand that better than I used to. There are all kinds of wars you can come back from and not come back from.

Shawna's home for the summer. She got a job at a gift shop in Keystone, down the hill from the faces, selling T-shirts and rubber tomahawks and dream catchers made in Taiwan. She says tourists ask her if she's Indian and she says, "Yes, ma'am, Oglala," and they look at her like she came with the merchandise. She says it's good money. She says it's good research, too, for something. I don't know what. She's nineteen and everything is research.

Tuesday, April 27, 1999 -- 2:20 a.m.

All week the lobby TV has been the school in Colorado, and then the refugees from Kosovo walking with their bundles, and then the school again. People check in and stand there watching with their keys in their hand. Nobody says much. A couple from Colorado stayed Saturday on their way to their daughter's in Bismarck, and the lady told me they just had to get away from the news for a few days, and then she stood in my lobby and watched it for half an hour. I gave them the quiet room at the end.

I asked Derek if the kids at his school were talking about it. He said everybody was. He said a lot of people were saying it was video games or music. I asked him what he thought. He said, "I think nobody noticed those guys." Then he said, "Dad, you notice people. At the motel. That's like your job." I said I guess it is. He said, "That's a good job."

Mom's home. She kept the foot. She checks her sugar four times a day and writes the numbers in a notebook in the careful handwriting the nuns drilled into her at the mission school.

Saturday, March 20, 1999 -- 3:30 a.m.

Mom's in the hospital here in Rapid. A sore on her foot that she didn't tell anybody about till it got bad, because that's how she does everything. They've got her on antibiotics through a line in her arm, and the doctor says she'll probably keep the foot, which is a sentence I never wanted to hear "probably" in.

And they've switched her to insulin. The pills aren't enough anymore. A nurse with a ponytail came in with the needle and an orange to practice on, and Mom practiced on the orange and then looked up at her and said, "Now what do I do with this orange?" The whole room laughed. She's the most popular patient on the floor. She tells the nurses stories about me when I was little that I'd like her to stop telling.

I go every afternoon from four to ten and then I come to work. I sleep mornings. There isn't enough of me right now. Shawna's home for spring break next week and says she'll sit with her grandma days. Derek comes after practice and does his homework in the chair by the window and eats her Jell-O.

Harlan said, "You're doing it. That's all there is. You're doing it." I guess I am. It doesn't feel like doing it. It feels like driving in a blizzard with one headlight and the wipers going.

Thursday, March 4, 1999 -- 2:40 a.m.

Five years yesterday.

I got my chip at the noon meeting from Harlan, who's my new sponsor, or who I'm trying out, like a pair of boots. He's a retired rancher from out by Hermosa, a white guy with hands like tree roots, and he doesn't talk much, which is good, because I'm not used to anybody but Leonard talking to me that way yet.

It was an open meeting, so anybody can come. When I stood up to take the chip I saw Derek in the back row by the coffee urn. He'd skipped sixth period. His mom drove him. I didn't know they were coming. He sat there with his big hands in his lap looking at the floor the whole time I talked, and I talked for about two minutes and I don't remember one word of it.

After, in the parking lot, he said, "That was weird, Dad." I said yeah. He said, "Good weird." Then he said, "Five years is a long time." I said it's one day, done about eighteen hundred times. He said, "That doesn't even make sense." He's right. It only makes sense from the inside.

Leonard called the desk at midnight from Denver to say "Do another one." Then he hung up. Long distance costs money and Leonard is Leonard.

Saturday, February 20, 1999 -- 3:05 a.m.

Derek played in a varsity game tonight. Last four minutes, up by fourteen, the coach looked down the bench and said his name, and he pulled off his warm-up and went in like he'd been doing it all his life. He brought the ball up. He didn't rush. He found a senior under the basket with a bounce pass that went between two guys, and the senior laid it in, and the student section went "Ohhhh," which I'm told is a compliment.

That's it. That's all he did. One pass. I've watched it in my head about eighty times since.

I was in the top row in my work jacket because I had to leave right at the buzzer to make my shift. He knew where I was. After the pass, running back down the floor, he looked up at the top row for about half a second. Then he looked away, because he's sixteen and you don't wave at your dad in front of the student section.

The trucker in 14 asked why I was grinning. I told him. He said his boy played ball too, in Missouri, and he never went to one game. He said it the way he tells me what room he wants. Then he went up to 14 and I didn't see him till morning.

Friday, January 29, 1999 -- 2:50 a.m.

Leonard's moving to Denver to live with his daughter. His heart, and his knees, and the winters. He told me after the noon meeting Wednesday, in the parking lot, with the wind coming off the Hills so hard we both had to lean into it.

I didn't handle it well. I said, "Well, that's great, Leonard," in a voice that meant it wasn't, and he looked at me with those old eyes and said, "Vernon. I'm not your higher power. I'm an old man with bad knees. Get a new sponsor."

He's right. He's always right, which is the most annoying thing about him.

Five years he's been the one I call. At four in the morning, rally week, the night Shawna left, the night my dad's birthday came around. He always answered. I don't know how an old man sleeps with the telephone on his chest, but I think he did, for me and about nine other guys.

He leaves the 15th. I'm going to help him load the truck. I'm not going to cry in front of him. I'll do it in the Buick after, like a normal Lakota man.

Tuesday, January 12, 1999 -- 3:45 a.m.

Twenty-two below on the bank sign across the road at three a.m. The ice machine froze solid, which is a joke only a night clerk appreciates. They closed the interstate east of here at suppertime, and every room was full by nine with people who didn't plan on being in Rapid City tonight: truckers, a college basketball team in a yellow bus, and a family of five with a Labrador I am pretending not to know about.

The Buick didn't start this afternoon. I had the block heater plugged in all morning and it still didn't. Ron, Arlene's husband, came over with his truck and his cables and got it going in about four minutes, and didn't say anything smart about the Buick, which it deserves. That's twice now that man has done me a favor without making me pay for it in words. I'm going to have to start liking him.

I called Mom before my shift to make sure the woodstove was going. Uncle Wilbur's grandson brought her a load of wood Sunday. She said, "I'm fine, I'm fine, don't call me in the cold, it freezes the phone line." I don't think that's how phones work. I didn't argue.