I had a hard time in school myself. I listened to my auntie, not wanting to recollect the hard times I’d had. The kids would make fun of me. Call me “pansy” and “pussy.” But when old Sam Plowman came along, skunking around the schoolyard in his skulky clothes, I could laugh at him too. When I was eleven, Sam Plowman became the joke. For a short time I could feel like I belonged. I was part of the group.

Then the feeling changed for me. The more I called him names, the more rocks I threw at him, the more I felt connected to him. He could bear the brunt for both of us. So I threw even more rocks at him. I stood beside all the other boys. I pitched rocks fast and hard, pelting his sloped shoulders, grazing his ears. We’d sting him bad. I’d run away laughing with the sound of his whimpering roaring in my ears. I turned once to see him rubbing his knees, sitting on the Mission steps and no Hemaucus in sight.

It wasn’t until I got older that I began to see he was neither funny nor one to be made fun of. Like the time he beat Hemaucus up outside of school when we were fourteen. We stood in a circle, maybe fifteen of us boys, our hands in our pockets, all of us vaguely embarrassed because we did nothing but watch. His fists were grinding. When he finished with her, her eyes were small, redrimmed as a sow’s, and bleeding. Nothing was ever done that I know of. We didn’t know who to tell. Hemaucus walked home alone, snuffling through a fist-sized nose. And that was the last time Hemaucus came to school. I understood people had reasons to suspect Sam Plowman. I was sticking to my suspicions about Yellow Knife.