Harry stood up and went to the open kitchen door. The wind had dropped a little now, and the sun was shining from a high, hazy sky. Four or five birds were taking a dust bath just outside the cellar doors.

“As it turns out,” said Harry, “the best thing you did was feel too sentimental to go get your gun. Any artefact, whether it’s a stone pot or a knife or a bow and arrow or a twelve-gauge shotgun, has some kind of spirit inside it, some kind of manitou. This table has a manitou, this door has a manitou, although they’re obviously very lowly spirits, nothing to get scared about. But the problems start when you try to turn a weapon onto a powerful wonder-worker like Misquamacus. He can actually control the manitou inside of your gun, maybe even the manitou inside of the bullet you fire, and turn your own gun against you.”

“You’re kidding,” said Neil. “You mean we can’t use guns against these medicine men?”

“No way. Not unless we want to massacre ourselves in ten seconds flat with no break for commercials.”

“Jesus,” breathed Neil. “That never occurred to me.”

Harry turned away from the door. “It’s this way,” he said. “We’re basically a European culture, with European ideas of religion and spirituality. That makes us outsiders in this country, without any real understanding of the spirits that live in the soil and the rocks and the water. The Indians spent thousands of years getting to know them, getting to understand them. They know the ways of conjuring them up, and the ways of controlling them. We’re just floundering about here, Neil, with no spiritual help to call on, and with about every odd you can think of stacked against us. They’re going to—”

Just then Toby came into the kitchen with his catcher’s mitt and his baseball. Harry changed the subject in mid-sentence, and said glibly, “—bring me a new rental car up in the morning, as soon as their office opens.”

Toby ignored him and said to his father, “Can I go out to play in the yard, sir?”

“Sure, as long as you don’t go any further than that.”

“Is mommy coming back today?”

Neil shrugged. “Maybe. When we’ve sorted out all our problems.”

“Daddy—” began Toby.

Neil raised his eyes. For one fleeting moment, he had heard Toby as he used to be. Toby the child. Even Harry turned around, and then glanced back at Neil and lifted one questioning eyebrow.

“What is it, Toby?” asked Neil, softly.

Toby blinked, as if he’d started to think of something, and then forgotten it. His eyes clouded again.

“Nothing, sir.”

He went out into the yard to play with his ball, and Harry sat with Neil at the table for a while, finishing his cigarette.

The day slowly began to darken.

*