As he went to shut the window, he hesitated and let the breeze, flustering the leaves of the eucalyptus, play over him as the sun melted into the Pacific. Could he ever deny it? When they had gathered around him on the bluff, everyone staring with horror and awe at the space where Lew had been, those men—Siggy, Goldwin, Finn, Aaron, Otto, Seamus, Walter, Sal, Tack, Tatmeyer, Bennet, the Messinger boys, and the rest—had not seemed in the least strange to him, nor a single one of them any more or less responsible than he for what happened. In fact, he had been almost overwhelmed by the sensation that he had known them all forever and that in every life he and they had gathered, would gather, at an abrupt, serene, and terrible absence. When he had stood in that human crescent upon a precipice high above the muddy brown Missouri, Annie pressed into his chest, her sobbing inaudible over the screams of Baby, among men clever and foolish, brave and cowardly, diligent and lazy, all holding rifles with no more power than sticks in the hands of boys, he could never deny it. Never. He was one of them.

To this day he would wake in the night, his breath snatched out of him by a primordial dream of falling. But of Lew falling, though it felt no different than if it were himself. He was in that moment again at the edge of the bluff. In memory the distance between him and Lew had shrunk to an arm’s length, less. Even before he had lunged, the whole moment had been so vividly conceived it seemed almost over. He had already taken hold of Lew’s shoulders, wrenching him from the edge, pulling him to the ground, clasping him so tightly he couldn’t move until the others got there.