It was a night of too much lonesome that gave me the harebrained idea to call Aida. I would call her and beg her to come back to me. It was the call of a man too desperate, a man with nothing to offer but regret. I stopped at Malick’s and stood out in the crusted snow, my breath a fog in the receiver, wet as tears I wouldn’t cry. I got her sister Arnette on the phone. “It’s Charlie,” she said to the family I imagined had gathered around the kitchen table. I heard the scuffle of footsteps. I heard the whisper of my wife. “Tell him I’m not here,” she said. The urge to speak to her was so overpowering I considered taking my patrol car to see her, driving all the way to Toppenish with my lights flashing. I wanted to forget about Louise. She had suddenly become a hard knot in me, the worst of my wrong choices, something beautiful turned ugly. Louise had made me face the fear that clenched my gut, made me see the side of me I had tried to hide from myself. I should have done better. I could have done better. I could have saved Yellow Knife, but I chose not to. Louise’s condemnation called back the voices of all the nuns I had ever known. I was immoral. I was forever soiled. Yellow Knife was the cousin I had forsaken, the brother whose wife I had coveted, the brother I had allowed two white men to bludgeon. I was the worst kind of Indian, an Indian without loyalty or love for self, and I wanted Aida to love me again, the way I imagined she loved me for who I really was with all my faults. “Please,” I said to Arnette, “please, I just want to tell her I’m sorry.”

Aida answered me. “Charlie,” she said, and her voice was steady and certain. “Charlie,” she said again, and I answered her, ready, at attention. “You’re heading toward trouble,” she said. “I can’t save you.”

I stood in the cold of a Montana night coming down hard. I could feel my bones ache with a loss that would sink me when I was old. “Just come home,” I said. My chest quivered but my voice remained steady. “Come back to me,” I said, but the line buzzed. I was talking to myself.