‘When that piece of shit comes back, and he gonna come back, believe me, everyone better know what’s in their heart, ’cause he don’t be called the Trickster for nothin’.’

Calvin had pressed him often about what had happened back then but Eden would only nod and smoke and tell what he wanted to tell. The strangest thing was that Eden James Hunting Wolf still loved his son. He would say nothing judgemental about Moses at all, even when the women who cleaned, or the visitors who called, would tell him what new atrocities he’d performed on his family. That caused talk. Why didn’t the old man save his grandson? He knew what Sam was suffering at his son’s hands, and yet he sat in his chair and just looked on as the reports came back. He loved Moses and he loved Sam, but it was as though the events were out of his hands.

Calvin had been in Eden’s cabin the night Marlene lost her eye. Betty Sandtail had run over and told him, near-hysterical as she gasped out what happened, clutching and clawing at the folds of her cheap floral-print dress.

‘People is cruel and dumb,’ was all Eden said. Nothing more.

Yes, Eden was a mystery. He told Calvin often and long about how he carried the honour and the weight of being the keeper, and how his father before them had saved them all, or they wouldn’t be there now, eating burgers and drinking cheap watery beer. Calvin, as an apprentice to Eden, expected any day to be handed that keeper’s key and given his blessing. But he wasn’t. Calvin had pressed the old man gently on when Moses would be handed the knowledge and the responsibility, secretly hoping that it would prompt him into bestowing it upon him. But it never did.

‘Moses don’t need it,’ he said and changed the subject.

So that night, when Moses arrived, drunk and mean, Calvin had felt no duty to leave. He hated Moses Hunting Wolf, and he stuck around to make sure the bum didn’t end up dealing some nasty stuff up to his Pappy. Eden could stop a man’s fist mid-air with just a look, but sometimes he seemed meek in the face of his sly and useless son.

The pan was on, sizzling with onions, when the screen door flew open to admit Moses. Calvin took the battered implement off the gas, and Eden just took another draw on his pipe, his backside squeaking in the plastic chair as he shifted his weight. Moses took a good look round.

‘Got yer squaw cookin’ again?’

He grinned with his dirty teeth closed. He smelled bad, Moses. A mixture of piss and alcohol that swirled around him, reaching the nostrils of those nearby in random wafts.