“Shut up, Lawrence,” Jay said. Marie still hadn’t said anything, though she’d stopped laughing. Was she bored or was she angry? She shifted from foot to foot and leaned in closer to the fire so that the flames warmed the angles of her face. I opened my beer and drank for a decent amount of time.

“Aren’t your people against these pipelines?” I asked.

“Our people. I love it,” Jay said. “Let me ask you, what about your people?”

“Who are my people?” I asked.

“Exactly, who are your people? I don’t know. The redneck hillbilly bull-dyke people?” Jay said. Marie smiled.

“That’s not fair,” Lawrence said. “It is true, we do have a people and white people don’t have a people and they feel so sad about it. You’ve got to just leave them alone or they’ll start crying, you know that.” Jay raised his Mountain Dew can, winked. Lawrence turned back to me. “Short answer to your question is, I got to feed my kids. What about you. You got to feed your kids?”

“I do,” I said.

Jay reached into the back of the pickup and levered out a hunk of poplar, thunked it down onto the fire to make the embers explode. “This pipeline shit might be a fresh hell to your family,” he said, “but we already got this shit going through our land. Hell, whenever something like this comes through you can be damn sure they go for our homes first.”

“Probably hit the hillbillies next, though,” Lawrence said. “So that’s one thing we got in common.” But Jay wasn’t interested.

“What I like about white people,” he said, “is they’re always feeling sorry for us. And I’m like, Listen, you poor white-trash motherfucker, this pipeline’s coming for your family, too, so you can save your pity for your own kin.”

“Oh yeah?” I said. “What about you? I hear you’re bought by the company. You’re the pipeline’s Indians, paid to give them your sacred blessing.”

Marie came for me hard. She plunged straight through the fire, her right arm gleaming backward. She crushed her beer can into my face so that I fell back out of the firelight, cracked my head on the truck bumper as I went down, felt the sharp aluminum dig open my cheek. Marie stood back. “Say it again, you fucking cracker, say it again,” she said. Lawrence and Jay stood watching. I raised myself to one elbow, but Marie kicked my arm out, so that I stared again at the dull stars above, dimmed out by flaring. Marie’s spit hit my shoulder. “I ain’t no one’s fucking Indian,” she said.