“He’s not what you think he is,” she said. I had no answer to that. Yellow Knife was an angry Indian, a mean drunk, but I could not speak ill of him now and not to Louise, his wife, so I said nothing. I considered for one moment that I hadn’t known him. I had only passed judgment on him. I thought of my own father and the stories I had heard of him after his passing. So many of those stories were strange to me. It was like they were speaking about someone else, not the man I knew. I felt a sudden rising sadness in my chest, the certain feeling I had missed something that would haunt me. There would have had to be more to the man Yellow Knife than all of my shallow pronouncements. He was dead and gone and I could consider him. Not long. I closed my eyes and remembered Louise limping, her sad and sorrowful breast. I thought of the Indians I had picked up off the floor after Yellow Knife had lit into them.

Images of Yellow Knife returned to me. Yellow Knife at the post office in Perma. Yellow Knife slamming a dime down on the counter. Yellow Knife turning to me, the damp smell of him pungent as highway dust before rain. Yellow Knife always looking at me for a second too long, the prickle of sweat at the slap of my back. Yellow Knife exiting rooms by hitting doors with the butt of his hand.

Yellow Knife returned to me like that one mean Indian who had hid in the shadows of my matinee memories, a knife pressed between tight lips, the nickel-movie Indian who frightened real Indians. In death that image seemed ridiculous to me and yet I knew the image I had conjured of Yellow Knife would be the only memory that remained. Unreal and permanent. Yellow Knife larger than life. The ghost of Yellow Knife already spooked me. I swallowed hard. Even with all the trouble I was facing as the result of my hand in his death, I felt relief.

Louise lit a cigarette. I heard the slow exhale of her breath, the stuttered inhale. She was putting on her coat and lacing her bootlaces.

“You’re not going out in this weather,” I told her, but she turned to me, her eyes etched hard.

“Get away from me,” she said. I moved to stop her but she yanked her arm from me so quickly I lost my balance. “You could have helped Baptiste,” she said. “Of all people, you could have helped him.”

I wondered what she knew. She left the door open to the cold and I did not follow her. I had done enough damage. I had let Yellow Knife die, and whether I had let him die in Cheflers’ field or in a bar fight I was still responsible.