She poured me a thick cup of coffee and waited for me to take a sip.

Yellow Knife leaned against the kitchen sideboard and looked at the floor. I noticed the ink stain of Louise’s name blue-black on his hand. And then I saw Louise’s name again on his forearm, encased in a broken heart, a twisted thorny rose wound around the bottom of the heart, a blue-and-red genuine parlor tattoo. I had entered the wrong place.

The black-haired white woman sat across the table from me with a polite nonsmile on her face. She held her car keys as if she were counting them over and over. Baptiste spoke to his mother. I understood a few words, less than I thought I would. They used many old words that were only hints of something I could understand. Dirty Swallow shook her head and dabbed her eyes when he said “Hemaucus.”

There was a long silence. A silence that made my muscles squirm, the silence of sleeping snakes and flat rocks, a silence only Dirty Swallow could settle or conjure. I drank hot coffee, let it line the long length of my throat. I held my hands still on the table, afraid to look at my watch and see no time had passed at all or see that hours had gone by. The silence sifted down on me, heavy, quiet. In that silence I saw Hemaucus smile and turn her face away from me.

Yellow Knife was quiet in the backseat of my patrol car. He looked down at his hands. I could smell the cigarette smoke in his thick hair, the sour clothing of a man who had been drinking too long, enjoying too much pussy. I pictured Louise rubbing his forehead, lighting another cigarette for him.

The drive to Polson was long. I couldn’t let go of the stories I had heard about him, the stories I knew to be true. He moved like a snake, quick and quirky, suddenly at you and suddenly away from you. His skin gleamed with every turn of the road, every shift of light. I had to stop myself from thinking about his breath coming through the diamond slats at my back.

I used to think Yellow Knife would give up the booze and his anger. But I understood he would always be edgy, unreadable. I believed I had the most dangerous man on the Flathead seated behind me, looking at the back of my head and knowing how much pressure it took to rattle my brains with a puff of his breath, his spell turned toward me. I tried to shake the notion, tried to believe it was only superstition. I had to believe I was the one with the power.