By that time we weren’t enemies, I don’t think, but I wouldn’t say we were friends, either. I knew how many kids Marie had, but not her kids’ names, knew what she thought about her ex-husband but not her current one. I knew Lawrence had it bad for a woman wouldn’t give him the time of day, didn’t know why he had it so bad for her. I knew that Jay had an older son in jail, younger one played high school football. I didn’t know who he talked to for so long on the phone during cigarette breaks. They knew about Lily, knew my kid got taken, knew about my lonely days because they were looking at them. They didn’t know about ElfQuest, about whittling, about the wolf pack. They didn’t know how small Perley was, how little he weighed when I’d wrenched him up by the arm. They didn’t know his shut-down eyes when I tossed him out into the snow. I listened to them and they listened to me, but we didn’t ask one another too many questions. Even when Jay fought with Lawrence, even when Marie’d had enough of both of them, still I was always the one on the outside.

So when Jay didn’t show up to work one morning, Lawrence and Marie just said he had to go up north to see about his family, didn’t explain more than that.

“I guess I’ll call Shane,” I said, heading for the trailer. Lawrence stopped me.

“No need to call Shane,” he said. “We’ll just work shorthanded until Jay gets back. Shouldn’t be more than a few days. It’s no big deal.”

“I don’t think we’re supposed to work shorthanded,” I said.

“Supposed to, nothing. This isn’t a union job,” Marie said. “I don’t want to work with whatever prize white guy Shane decides to send us.”

“What, now you’re racist?” I said.

“Call it what you want,” she said. “Mixing hasn’t ever done me much good. When I’m pipelining I try to stick with Natives, even Natives from other tribes. Just seems to work out better that way.”

“All white people aren’t bad,” I said.

“All white people don’t have to be bad,” Marie said. “Just the right white people at the right time.”

“How bad could it be?” I asked.

“Probably pretty bad,” Marie said.