jedioffsidetrap’s Reviews > Winter in the Blood > Status Update

“I had had enough of myself. I wanted to lose myself, to ditch these clothes, to outrun this burning sun, to stand beneath the clouds & have my shadow erased, myself along with it.”

“A large purple teddy bear was occupying my stool. The floor was littered w/punch board chances. The airplane man was working on a new board this one w/a picture of a senorita raising her flamenco dress. I sat beside the teddy bear stroking its fuzzy head. It had a white belly & face. Two black-button eyes stared solemnly at the mug of beer & a red felt tongue flopped foolishly from between its lips.”

“My grandmother b/f she quit talking had told me how Crees…drank too much & fought w/other Indians in bars though they never fought on the battlefield…Crees were good only for the white men who came to slaughter Indians. Crees had served as scouts for the mounted soldiers & had learned to live like them drink w/them & the girls opened their thighs to the Long Knives…So [grandma] sat in the rocker & plotted…

“He planned…He wasn’t crafty like Lame Bull or the white men of Dodson so he had to know the penalty [for poaching] almost as though the penalty would be the inevitable result of his hunt.

He never got caught because he never made the trip. The dream the planning & preparation were all part of the ritual… He had everything figured out but he never made the trip.”

“…it was said in those days that [his father] could fix anything made of iron…He drank w/the white men of Dodson. Not a quiet man he told them stories & made them laugh. He charged them plenty for fixing their machines… He made them laugh until the 30 below morning ten yrs ago we found him sleeping in the borrow pit across from Earthboy’s place.

He had dreams…he dreamed of taking elk in Glacier Park.

“…across the room & the paring knife grew heavy in the old lady’s eyes.”

“[Grandmother] sat across from the girl & the girl read movie magazines & imagined that she looked like Raquel Welch.
The old lady imagined that the girl was Cree & enemy & plotted ways to slit her throat. One day the flint striker would do; another day she favored the paring knife she kept hidden in her legging. Day after day these two sat across from each other until the pile of movie magazines spread halfway…

Meet the narrator: pee in a borrow pit, hungover w/black eye from a bar fight, having slept in the abandoned Earthboy place?

“Coming home was not easy anymore. It was never a cinch but it had become torture…Coming home to a mother & an old lady who was my grandmother. And the girl who was thought to be my wife. But she didn’t really count. For that matter none of them counted; not one meant anything to me.”

James Welch has said he wanted to write a poem about the landscape of the Montana Great Plains where for a time his family ranched & where he grew up, part Blackfeet & Gros Ventre, a little Irish. The novel grew out of this poem— one reason it retains its resonance & elegance.