“They’re of my brother, Rudy. I don’t think he made it off Bataan. Funny, I can picture him better at night than during the day because we used to keep animals out back. I took care of the horses. Rudy had a rabbit hutch. We used to go back and feed them in the evening, and I can still see Rudy and those white does in the hutch, their fuzzy whiteness in the dark.”

“But no pictures of you?”

“I left home. When I was fifteen I went to El Paso. A circus had its winter quarters down there, and I caught on hauling water and hay.”

“That must have been exciting.”

“Hauling hay for elephants? Mainly I remember sneezing,” he said, and gave her a glass. “Well, that was more words from Sophie than I can remember. You like being Thinking Woman?”

“I like the idea that I thought you up, that you’re my idea.”

“Your idea?”

“My biggest. What else did you do at the circus? I feel responsible.”

“There was an old sideshow fighter. Local boys paid five dollars against fifty dollars if they could knock him down. No one ever knocked him down. He showed me the first things about boxing—that’s probably why I’m basically a counterpuncher. But the best was the circus bandleader. I played a pedal organ a little bit here at the church, but he taught me the piano. He used to describe himself as ‘a gentleman of the Negro persuasion,’ and he drove the Texans crazy because he dressed better and acted finer than any of them. He was a ragtime player. And stride. Name it. He hated me fighting, but that’s where the money was; that was the ticket North.”

“You must have been a good fighter. I’ve asked you about the pictures twice and you’ve ducked the question each time. You must never have been hit.”

Joe studied a photo of Rudy on a horse. “You know, Sophie’s right. Indian men do work on their dignity. They don’t talk a lot. As Oppy would say, they’re nonverbal. They keep things inside, and to outsiders, which may include women, they may not say a word. They’ll drink themselves to death or drive off a cliff, but they’ll do it with a sense of quiet dignity. I’m not that Indian. I’ve spent half my life away from here. I’ve got a half-breed brain now. Lost the old natural dignity.”

“You have better than that; you have invulnerability.”

He was astonished. “Me?”

“You seem to be the giant who has attracted all the men from here up to the Hill.”