I sat with my chin in my hands, an ache in my chest. Grief. I wanted Yellow Knife to leave, hobble back down the road and leave me be. The alcohol was roaring in my belly and I wondered how people could stand to drink the stuff.

Yellow Knife was quiet for a long while, what seemed like hours. He bent over, holding his side, and he rocked back and forth. He didn’t look like the Yellow Knife I knew. I knew he’d taken a beating that would have killed another man, would have killed me. I thought he still might die, and I was still the mean bastard whose only thought for the moment was that I didn’t want him dying in my house.

I was strapping on my work boots when Yellow Knife began talking as if he was talking to someone else. But Baptiste Yellow Knife was talking to me and for the first time I didn’t have my badge pinned to my chest. I wondered if he was delirious and I think he was. Baptiste Yellow Knife was telling me a story, and I heard in his voice a memory of the man he could have been. I didn’t want to listen to this Indian talking. I had to get my wife back. I rolled my head in my hands and saw the long night of work stretching before me, and then I found myself leaning forward just a little, straining to hear what Yellow Knife was saying. His voice was a light inside me, pulling me up the rock cliffs behind my house, and I could see, see beyond the valley, see beyond myself.

Louise GOING HOME

She didn’t want to stay in Jules Bart’s house. He had probably saved her life last night, but she could not forget the day she had entered his house uninvited. She felt she had betrayed him, and he had been good to her more than once without any reason. As Louise reached the edge of the highway she sniffed the cold air and felt the good pull in her lungs. She was going home again. She walked, glad for the walk. There was fog on the low hills, a mist on the road that felt good on her face. She saw the car in the distance, the round repeating rings of light, the dense lit darkness. She knew the sound of Harvey Stoner’s car, and Harvey Stoner was heading up over the hill toward her.