The Night Watchman: The Waterjack Summary & Analysis

Patrice goes with Jack to the first address she has to look for Vera. The yard is dead, and the front steps have collapsed. Patrice knocks on the window next to the door. A dog barks, and its bark is high and whining and anxious to live. Patrice feels tears in her eyes. She calls out Vera’s name. Eventually, she gives up and decides to go on to the second address. Jack says that he’s familiar with the building and that if Patrice finds Vera there, it won’t be good.

At the next place, Patrice goes to each apartment but doesn’t get an answer. Jack says that it must be exhausting for Patrice and that they can set up a cot in the dressing room so she can rest. Patrice, though, wrenches her arm from him and tells him she wants to go to the third address, which belongs to Bernadette Blue. Jack asks if she means Bernie Blue and if the two of them are friends. Patrice tells him a friend gave her Bernadette’s address so she could stay there if she needed to. Jack says she’d be better off staying at Log Jam 26. When they get back to the bar, Patrice says she’ll consider being the waterjack if she can get the tips every night instead of just every other night.

The next morning, Patrice agrees to be the waterjack. She puts on the suit, and Jack shows her the moves that the waterjack does, moving his shoulders and hips and then doing a “tush wag” before blowing kisses over his shoulder. As she waits to be lowered into the tank, Patrice wonders what her mother would think of her. She thinks to herself in Chippewa, “mayagi. Strange. Maama kaajiig. Strange people. Gawiin ingikendizo siin. I am a stranger to myself.”  Patrice thinks that the feeling is one that can only be expressed in Chippewa, where the strangeness is humorous and the danger something you could laugh at, though you might get hurt as well.