“Look, Santiago is a poor place. This is still the Depression here—it’s always the Depression here. For the last twenty years the most dependable income here has been pottery, and that’s made by women. One reason the men work so hard on their dignity is that’s all they’ve got. Then the Army took over the Hill, and the men are happy to work up there; they don’t need me as an attraction. There’s a price, of course; if the lowest caste on the Hill is the soldiers, lower than them are the Indians.”

“Have you ever been hit, or hurt, or touched?”

“Lower than the Indians is me, because I’m not really from either place; I just serve as a go-between. At least the men from Santiago know who they are and have someplace to go home to. Who am I? I’m a driver, a joker, a mascot. I’m the most insignificant person on the Hill. I’m a has-been fighter, a so-so musician who’s going to be scrambling for jobs in nightclubs for the rest of my life. A giant? That’s a joke. I feel like I’m committing a perpetual fraud, a hoax, because inside is a coward. Men are fooled, Oppy and Roberto are fooled, but I don’t want you to be. I didn’t mean to enlist in the Army, I wasn’t a hero on Bataan, I made a deal to get out of the stockade. I’m like the Gestapo—Fuchs was right about that. This is not self-contempt; it’s simple honesty. Rudy was fooled. Rudy joined the National Guard because he wanted to be like his big brother. Dolores wasn’t fooled. She said Rudy would be safe at home if it wasn’t for me. When I ran away, I took one son from her. When Rudy left, I took the other. She wrote me in the hospital in Australia and said as far as she was concerned, I was as dead as Rudy. Not to write and not to come home. That seemed unfair to me, but after a while I saw there was a grain of truth in what she said. I’d tried to cut everything Indian away from me, and maybe Rudy got caught and killed in the process. See, Dolores cut right through me. So that’s why there are no snapshots here of me. When Rudy comes home, that’s when my picture goes up.”

“Your mother’s dead. You said your brother’s dead. How can it go up?”

“You’re Thinking Woman? Think of something. Anyway, to answer your question, I have been hit and I have been hurt. And you, you could completely destroy me.”

* * *

She sat across the table from him. The moon in its downward transit no longer entered the house; the lamp flame was the only light.