Eden smiled. That hurt Calvin. The power that man had was awesome. Why didn’t he defend his chosen apprentice? Calvin was a medicine man and a shaman now. Maybe he should defend himself, but when he looked at Eden’s calm face he knew he did not have the licence. Moses took a seat on the pine bench against the wall, took out a cigarette and lit it with the flourish of a movie star. He’d looked at Calvin for a long time with those narrowed eyes, then decided that he didn’t exist.

He turned his attention to his father. Eden was a beautiful old man. The lines in his face were so deep they were trenches but they radiated from the corners of his eyes in fans of laughter and the skin that joined them was still smooth and the colour of walnut. His eyes were not yet milky with age, but sparkled like jet when the crinkled skin surrounding them let in sufficient light to bring them alive. The braids of silver-grey hair were still thick and long, and he let whoever wanted to, take them out and comb them, as though he were a girl.

‘You thought about what I said?’

Moses squinted through his own smoke. Eden kept his pipe in his mouth and smiled, holding the wooden stem between his teeth.

‘Don’t need to think. You ain’t the keeper, Moses.’

Moses’s eyes had flashed with malice and hurt, and he threw down his cigarette and stood. ‘You old fuck. You give me that fuckin’ thing an’ let me at its power. I’ll show you what a real man can do with it.’

‘You ain’t gettin’ it, Moses. You go back home.’

Moses took three steps towards the old shaman and made two fists. As Calvin watched, Eden gently raised one gnarled finger to his son like he was a teacher making a point in a lesson. Moses stopped.

‘I be dead before you ever get this off me. You know that.’

Moses seemed to be wrestling with an invisible force, holding him back from the old man like a net. ‘And Sam? You’d give it to Sam?’ He spat the name of his own son like he was cursing.

‘Sam ain’t never asked.’

‘But you’ll fuckin’ give it him, won’t you?’

‘Looks that way.’

Calvin had been amazed. Nothing had made him think that Sam was in line for Eden’s bizarre inheritance. He’d stood silently, watching father and son stare each other down. Moses broke first, and turned away as he spoke. ‘You be such a dumb old fuck, havin’ medicine like that hangin’ round your scrawny neck and usin’ it for nothin’.’

‘It ain’t such good medicine, Moses. I told you plenty times.’

‘That’s what you say. You just keep it for yourself, but you don’t never use it.’