Betty remembered him. When he took the freight train to Duluth in 1942 in order to sign up she was thirteen, five years younger than Jacob. She had seen him around and though he’d nodded hello, they were both too shy to say it. She was only thirteen and so she merely watched him. She admired the snakelike curve of his back as he caned the felt during moccasin games at the powwow, eyed his easy stance in the back of his mother’s canoe as the village gathered at the lake on the opening day of ricing. She’d watched him disappear into the tan fuzz of the rice stalks with his mother until all that was left was the splunk of the pole, the click of her knocking and the scattered shouts and laughter of the other ricers.

When he came back from the war she was sixteen and looked at him differently. She’d stamped her feet like a horse and stared hard from under the screen of her lowered lashes. She watched him with hunger but could not, would not, give him more than a loaded, husky hello.

But there he was, with a home of his own and a box full of venison, walking up the path to her house. Her mother saw him first from where she was plucking ducks in the dusty yard. She brushed off her skirt, took the step and leaned in the open door.

“Nashke na, indaanis. Indaga nibinaadin!”

“Aaniin dash igo? Mooshkine akik,” Betty said, peering into the bucket. The water was full to the top, shuddering with each of her mother’s impatient footsteps.

“Ziigisen.”

“Aaniin?”

“Bizaan igo!” her mother snapped. “Mii geget igo bi-dagoshing waa-wiidigemad!”

Betty blushed and took the pail and dumped the water in the slop bucket. As she hurried from the door she passed Jacob on the path. She didn’t acknowledge him. She kept her eyes on the red hand pump down the trail.

Her father roused himself from where he was oiling his gun and cleared the table without having to be told.

When Betty came back with the water, Jacob was gone and her mother was lugging the box of meat into the makeshift icehouse next to the woodpile.

Two months later, after it had snowed twice and the lake was skimmed with ice and all the trees except for the red oak had shrugged loose their clothes, Jacob and Betty were married. There existed between them a similar nervousness; both were shy and overly gentle with each other, with that hesitant tension, that blend of tethered-dog quiver and dove-soft moan.