Being a tribal officer was never easy, but the job was hell when I was working with Officer Cliburn Railer, a white police officer from Lake County. Railer didn’t like me either. Old Railer got wind of my connection to Baptiste Yellow Knife, not something I like to admit even to the Indians who know we’re related. Yellow Knife’s my cousin. My auntie’s husband was a Yellow Knife and, according to the old ways, that bonds me to him. Just last week Railer referred to Baptiste as the troublemaker, the troublemaker my blood brother. Railer saying that to me made me realize again how much I had in common with Baptiste Yellow Knife, and how stupid the white man could be. Railer was imagining I had mixed blood with Baptiste by choice; Boy Scouts behind the outhouse rubbing self-inflicted cuts, pledging oaths. I wondered how the white man could be civilized if they didn’t know their relations. How did Railer know his wife wasn’t his sister; his mistress, his cousin. For a moment, I felt superior. For a moment, I believed the reason the white man had become so crazy was because they were an inbred people. I considered the story of Adam and Eve the nuns would tell us, how that story shamed me when I was a young boy dreaming of girls and letting myself imagine parting the warm thighs of my cousin Eileen. For a while I figured if we were all related to Adam and Eve we were all brothers and sisters, first cousins. The idea allowed me to shame myself, to entertain for a few short years the idea of bedding all my beautiful cousins. And the idea soiled me, made me grim nailed, leering, and disrespectful. An idea that still has the power to shame me, can make me lower my eyes in Eileen’s company, turn my back to family gatherings.