Catchy title, thought Craig. Bet the film rights have already gone. He sighed and flipped the first page over on its binder.

To discuss in context the historical beliefs and surviving indigenous religious culture of the Native Canadian, it is important to assess the abstract as well as literal understanding of the word ‘reality’ to the Indian mentality.

Jeez, this was going to be riveting. He leaned a heavy head on one hand and forced himself to read it. If it carried on as it started he would be comatosed by page three, and it would probably be of little use. But let’s face it. It wasn’t going to do any harm.

They should have just let him out the front door. He knew those journalists would have given him money for booze if he’d talked to them. But they took Wilber out the back door and drove him away so that those guys didn’t see. No matter. He’d find them again and then he’d get plenty drunk. They had money, those guys. Yeah. Big money. You could smell it off them.

Wilber wanted a drink real bad. It was only ten before noon but he’d had a thirsty morning, what with those cops making him cry like that and telling them over and over again about the bird and the thing in it. He swallowed, and looked behind him. They’d dropped him out in the suburbs, by all that staff accommodation for the hotel and ski workers, where there was a hostel for guys like Wilber. But he didn’t want a hostel. He wanted a drink. And he knew the guys in town would get him one. So he waited till the cops drove off, and made it look like he was going to go inside the grim wooden shack that he’d slept in before, then when they turned off the block he started to walk back into town. It was less than a mile. About two miles off, high on the hill above the roofs of these hidden cabins and ill-kempt cabins, the towering Rocky Mountain Chateau poked its turrets out of the pines. That was just its big backside you saw from here and it was still something. Yes, it was something, all right. Wilber looked up at it as he shuffled through the snow, and wondered who all the people were that were in it right now. He’d got into the grounds one time and been able to get right into the foyer before a bell-hop saw him and took him by the arm all the way back to the gates.

It was like a heaven in there. All old wood and a big round carpet on a marble floor. There were girls in green jackets all lined up behind a big long bar that was the reception desk, and they were smiling at everybody who spoke to them.