This according to the Lone Ranger:

“Wait a minute. Wait a minute,” said Hawkeye. “You just had a turn.”

“That’s right,” said Robinson Crusoe. “Whose turn is it now?”

“I’m not tired,” said the Lone Ranger. “I can keep going.”

“It’s Ishmael’s turn,” said Hawkeye. “I remember.”

“Okay,” said Robinson Crusoe. “But let’s keep going.”

“Okay?”

“Okay.”

This according to Ishmael:

All right.

In the beginning there was nothing. Just the water. Everywhere you looked, that’s where the water was. It was pretty water, too.

“Was it like that wonderful, misty water in California,” says Coyote, “with all those friendly bubbles and interesting stuff that falls to the bottom of your glass?”

“No,” I says, “this water is clear.”

“Was it like that lovely red water in Oklahoma,” says Coyote, “with all those friendly bubbles and interesting stuff that floats to the top of your glass?”

“No,” I says, “this water is blue.”

“Was it like that water in Toronto . . .”

“Pay attention,” I says, “or we’ll have to do this again.”

So.

There was water everywhere, and when Changing Woman looked out over the edge of the Sky World, she could see herself reflected in that beautiful Water World.

Hmmmm, she says, not bad.

Every day, Changing Woman goes to the edge of the world and looks down at the water and when she does this, she sees herself.

Hello, she says.

And each day, Changing Woman leans a little farther to get a better look at herself.

“If she leans out any farther,” says Coyote, “she’s going to fall.”

“Of course she’s going to fall,” I tell Coyote. “Sit down. Watch that sky. Watch that water. Pretty soon you can watch her fall.”

“Does Changing Woman get hurt?”

“Nope,” I tell Coyote. “She lands on something soft.”

“Water is soft. Does she land in water like First Woman?”

“No,” I tell Coyote. “She lands on a canoe.”

“A canoe!” says Coyote. “Where did a canoe come from?”

“Use your imagination,” I says.

“Was it a green Royalite Old Town single,” says Coyote, “with oak gunnels and woven cane seats?”

“No,” I says, “it wasn’t one of those.”

“Was it a red wood-and-canvas Beaver touring canoe with cedar ribs and built-in portage racks?”

“Not one of those either,” I says. “This canoe was big canoe. And it was white. And it was full of animals.”

“Wow!” says Coyote.

So Changing Woman falls out of that sky. And she falls into that canoe. And she lands on something soft. She lands on Old Coyote.

“Oh, no!” says Coyote.

“Oh, yes,” I says. “Stick around. This is how it happens.”

“Is that our ride?” said Hawkeye.

“Yes, I believe it is,” said the Lone Ranger.

“So, what happens now?” said Ishmael.

“In that car?” said Robinson Crusoe.

“The newer ones don’t have as much room,” said the Lone Ranger.

“We were better off standing,” said Robinson Crusoe.

The Lone Ranger and Ishmael and Robinson Crusoe and Hawkeye stood by the road and watched a man get out of the car and open the back door.

“Is that him?” said Ishmael.

“I think so,” said the Lone Ranger.

“We were better off standing,” said Robinson Crusoe.

Hawkeye shielded his eyes and looked at the man and the car. “Why is he standing in a puddle of water?”

“Toilet’s backed up again!”

Latisha straightened the menus and watched the bus hit the pothole and lurch into the parking lot. “Bus coming,” she shouted back to Billy. “How bad is it?”

Billy began whistling “Ebb Tide.” Latisha could hear a mop sliding through water.

“Enough water here to make a dry land farmer grin.”

The bus had Montana plates. Tourists. Rita stuck her head out of the kitchen. “How many puppies you think?”

Latisha could feel an itch settling in behind her ear. “Start with fifteen.”

“What’s the flavor?” Billy sang out from the bathroom.

“American.”

“We got enough menus and cards?”

“What about the water?”

“We got plenty of that,” Billy shouted.

American tourists were the best. They almost never ordered the special, and they almost always bought the menus and the postcards.

Cynthia came out of the back room. “A guy called for you.”

“Who was it?”

“Didn’t say.”

“Lionel? Eli?”

“Don’t think so. Said he’d be in town on the weekend. Said he’d probably catch you at the Sun Dance. He sounded cute.”

Latisha nodded and wiped the blackboard. “What are we going to call the special today?”

“What did we call it yesterday?” said Cynthia.

“I forget.”

“Rita,” shouted Latisha, “what’d we call the special yesterday?”

“What difference does it make?”

“How about Old Agency Puppy Stew?” said Cynthia.

“Rita,” shouted Latisha, “it’s Old Agency Puppy Stew, again.”

One of the secrets of a successful restaurant was to keep things simple. Every day Rita cooked up the same beef stew, and every day Rita or Billy or Cynthia or Latisha thought up a name for it. It wasn’t cheating. Everybody in town and on the reserve who came to the Dead Dog Café to eat knew that the special rarely changed, and all the tourists who came through never knew it didn’t.

“Toilet’s working.” Billy let the door swing shut behind him. “You want me to change the gas on the dispensers?”

“No, get dressed. We may need help out front.”

“Plains, Southwest, or combination?”

The itch was more persistent. “What’d you do yesterday?”

“Plains.”

“Do Southwest.” Something was coming. Latisha could feel it.

The food at the Dead Dog was good, but what drew tourists to the cafe was the ambience and the reputation that it had developed over the years. Latisha would like to have been able to take all the credit for transforming the Dead Dog from a nice local establishment with a loyal but small clientele to a nice local establishment with a loyal but small clientele and a tourist trap. But, in fact, it had been her auntie’s idea.

“Tell them it’s dog meat,” Norma had said. “Tourists like that kind of stuff.”

That had been the inspiration. Latisha printed up menus that featured such things as Dog du Jour, Houndburgers, Puppy Potpourri, Hot Dogs, Saint Bernard Swiss Melts, with Doggie Doos and Deep-Fried Puppy Whatnots for appetizers.

She got Will Horse Capture over in Medicine River to make up a bunch of photographs like those you see in the hunting and fishing magazines where a couple of white guys are standing over an elephant or holding up a lion’s head or stretching out a long stringer of fish or hoisting a brace of ducks in each hand. Only in these photographs, it was Indians and dogs. Latisha’s favorite was a photograph of four Indians on their buffalo runners chasing down a herd of Great Danes.

Latisha had some of the better photographs made into postcards that she sold along with the menus.

“What do you want?” Cynthia was holding up several tapes. “Chief Mountain Singers or that group from Brocket?”

The tourists milled around in front of the restaurant. Latisha stood at the window and watched them as they pointed at the neon sign of a dog in a stewpot and took pictures of each other.

“Chief Mountain, I guess. But keep the volume down.”

Trouble, thought Latisha, scratching at her ear. That’s what was coming. Trouble.

Eli Stand Alone stood at the window of the cabin and watched the water slide past the porch. It was getting higher, but they had done that before, open the gates just a little and let the stream come up over the sides of the channel and wash against the logs. A lot of trouble for nothing.

He took his cup of coffee out on the porch and sat down in the easy chair and looked back to the west. Four hundred yards behind the cabin, he could see the dam, an immense porcelain wall, white and glistening in the late morning light.

Eli could also see Clifford Sifton walking down the streambed, and he waved to Sifton and Sifton waved back.

“You want some coffee?” Eli shouted, though he knew Sifton couldn’t hear him above the rush of the water. Sifton raised his walking stick and shouted back, but Eli couldn’t hear him either.

Eli brought the coffeepot out and put it on the table. The water was still rising, and Sifton was having difficulty wading through the thigh-deep, gray-green water as it tumbled over the granite riprap. The water buffeted Cliff’s legs, and Eli could see the man rocking and balancing as he stepped from rock to rock, picking his way across the stream.

“Guess they’re mad as hell about the new injunction,” Eli said.

“Guess you’re right,” said Sifton, making the porch and looking at the coffeepot. “Brewed or instant?”

“Always make brewed. You know that. You always ask me that, and it’s always brewed.”

“That one time it was instant.”

“You guys flooded me in for two weeks. What’d you expect? Besides, that was seven years ago.”

“Always pays to ask.” Sifton pulled a package out of his knapsack. “Here,” he said. “Where do you want it?”

He poured a cup of coffee and leaned his walking stick against the porch railing. “How you think the fishing is going to be this year?”

“Should be good. Be better if your dam wasn’t there.”

“Not my dam, Eli. And you know it.”

“So you say.”

Sifton sat on the railing and squinted at the sun. “That’s the beauty of dams. They don’t have personalities, and they don’t have politics. They store water, and they create electricity. That’s it.”

“So how come so many of them are built on Indian land?”

“Only so many places you can build a dam.”

“Provincial report recommended three possible sites.”

“Geography. That’s what decides where dams get built.”

“This site wasn’t one of them.”

Sifton rolled his lips around the cup. “Other factors have to be considered too.”

“None of the recommended sites was on Indian land.”

Sifton swirled the coffee in the cup until it sloshed over the rim. “I just build them, Eli. I just build them.”

“So you say.” Eli settled into the chair. “What do you figure? Now or later?”

“Now, probably,” said Sifton. “No sense wasting good coffee and a beautiful day. You know, we haven’t had any wind for almost a week.”

“Weather pattern,” said Eli. “It’ll change.”

“I know it’ll change. I just want to enjoy another day without that damn wind.”

Eli leaned over the arm of his chair and watched the water.“Looks like it’s going down.”

“Just before I left, I told them to back off.”

“Came pretty close this time.”

“We know our business.”

“Guess they’ll be turning on the light again, too,” said Eli.

“We know our business,” said Sifton.

“So ask the question.”

Sifton put his coffee cup down and pulled a white card out of his jacket pocket. He looked out over the stream, cleared his throat, and began to read.

Eli’s mother died while he was living in Toronto. No one told him about her death until his sister called.

“Mom died,” Norma said.

“When?”

“Couple of weeks ago.”

“What? Why didn’t you phone me?”

“Last time we saw you was twenty, thirty years ago.”

“Norma—”

“Haven’t written in four or five years, either.”

“It hasn’t been that long.”

“Thought you might have died.”

“I could have helped.”

“Didn’t need you. Camelot and I took care of everything. I was going to call, but then I forgot. I remembered today, so I called.”

“I could have helped,” Eli said.

“You can help now,” said Norma.

There was the matter of their mother’s house, Norma told him. No one could live in it because it was right in the middle of the proposed spillway for the Grand Baleen Dam, but Norma thought Eli might want to see the place or take a picture of it before it was flooded or torn down or whatever they did to things like that that were in the way of progress. There was even some furniture in the house that Eli could have if he wanted.

“You were born there before you went off and became white,” Norma told him, “so I thought it might be of sentimental value. I hear if you’re a famous enough white guy, the government will buy the house where you were born and turn it into one of those tourist things.”

Eli hung up before Norma could really get rolling. The next day he caught a plane to Blossom, hired a car at the airport, and drove all the way to the reserve without stopping.

It was morning when he walked out of the trees and across the meadow to his mother’s house. Off to the west, he could see bulldozers and semi trucks and a couple of portable offices. There was smoke coming from one of the offices.

His mother had built the house. Log by log. Had dragged each one out of the small stand of timber behind the house, barked them, hewn them, and set them. He and Norma had been too young to help, and Camelot was only a baby then. So they looked after their sister while their mother coaxed the trees into place.

Clifford Sifton had come down from the dam site that day, the morning sun in his eyes, and walked the length of the meadow, his walking stick stabbing at the ground. He had stood at the bottom of the porch and looked up at Eli. “Morning,” he said, shading his eyes. “Saw you drive up.”

“Morning,” Eli repeated.

“You must be Eli Stands Alone.”

“That’s right.”

“Your sister says you teach in Toronto. At the university?”

“That’s right.”

“What do you teach?”

“Literature.”

“Don’t suppose you have any coffee?”

Eli couldn’t put a name to it, but he didn’t like Sifton. He didn’t want to make him any coffee. And he didn’t want the man on his mother’s porch.

“Looks like you’re thinking about building a dam.”

“That’s right,” said Sifton. “She’s going to be a beauty.”

“This is my mother’s house.”

“Your sister said you might want some things out of it before we tore it down.”

“She built it herself, log by log.”

“If there are any big pieces, sing out, and I’ll send some of the boys to give you a hand.”

Eli ran his hands along the railing, feeling for the carvings that he and Norma had cut into the wood. In the distance, he could hear a diesel motor turn over.

“Don’t know that I want anyone tearing this house down.”

“Construction starts in a month.”

“Maybe it will,” said Eli. “And maybe it’ll have to wait.”

Sifton looked at Eli, and he looked back at the bulldozers and the semis and the portable offices. “Nothing personal,” he said, smiling and extending his hand.

Eli took Sifton’s hand and held it for a second with just the fingers, the way you would hold something fragile or dangerous. “Okay,” he said, “nothing personal.”

When Charlie Looking Bear got off the phone with Alberta, he fixed himself a sandwich and sat on the balcony. Somewhere to the west, in the suburban roil of apartments, houses, motels, restaurants, churches, and car lots, was the West Edmonton Mall. Beyond that, out on the horizon piled high with deep-bellied, blue-gray clouds, was Jasper and the Rockies.

So, Alberta was sleeping with Lionel. Mr. Television. Mr. Stereo. Mr. Video Movie. The idea galled Charlie more than he would have expected. Lionel’s birthday. Hardly a major holiday. Poor Alberta. She would drive all the way to Blossom, take a good, close look at Lionel all trussed up in the ratty gold blazer that Bill Bursum made his salespeople wear, and decide that she had made a terrible mistake.

Charlie munched on his sandwich and replayed the conversation.

“Hey, nothing personal, but you’re not sleeping with the guy, are you?”

“God, Charlie.”

“I really like you.”

“And so romantic.”

Okay, so he wasn’t romantic. And he wasn’t monogamous. But he wasn’t a television salesman, either. He loved Alberta. He was reasonably sure of that. And she loved him. Lionel was simply a diversion. Like Susan had been. Or Carol. Or Laura.

Charlie respected Alberta. She was smart. She was educated. Best of all, she was employed, albeit not in a profession Charlie would have chosen for her.

“You should be in law,” Charlie had told her. “It’s where the action is.”

“You mean where the money is.”

“Same thing.”

“I like teaching.”

“Money’s better.”

“Some of my students may be dumb, but they’re not sleazy.”

“Christ, Alberta, lawyers aren’t sleazy. They’re slick. There’s a big difference.”

It was always the same argument. Always the same topic. Stands Alone v. Duplessis International Associates. The case was ten years old, had started before Charlie had even been accepted to law school. And the way things were going, it would be in the courts for another ten years.

Duplessis had hired him right out of law school. Stands Alone v. Duplessis was his first case. It was his only case. He didn’t make the decisions, of course. Those were made by big-shot corporate lawyers in Toronto or London or Zurich. He was just the front, and he knew it. After all, they hadn’t hired him because he was at the top of his class. He hadn’t been. They hired him because he was Blackfoot and Eli was Blackfoot and the combination played well in the newspapers.

“Charlie, how can you work for Duplessis? You know that the tribe isn’t going to make a cent off that dam. And what about all that waterfront property on the new lake—”

“Parliament Lake.”

“Parliament Lake. What happened to all those lots that the band was supposed to get?”

“The government made some changes.”

“That’s a new way to describe greed. You know that the tribe isn’t going to make any money off the entire deal.”

“Then some of us should, don’t you think?”

“God, Charlie.”

“Look, where’s the harm? The case will probably be in the courts long after we’re dead. I mean, the dam is there. The lake is there. You can’t just make them go away.”

The dam was there all right. Anyone who wanted to could drive along the river to the small recreation area and have lunch in the shadow of the dam. Or you could walk along the lakeshore and enjoy the panorama of water and sky. Or you could drive across the top and look down the spillway into the concrete channels that were clogged with spongy moss and small plants.

The dam was there. It just wasn’t working. The lake was there. But no one could use it.

Eli had fought Duplessis from the beginning, producing a steady stream of injunctions that Duplessis countered. After the fourth year, the company hired Crosby Johns and Sons Inc., a slick public relations firm in Toronto, to mount a publicity campaign to convince the Indians that the dam was in their best interest, a campaign that culminated with a story in Alberta Now demonstrating rather conclusively, with graphs and charts and quotes from various experts on irrigation and hydropower, that after only one year of the dam operating at full efficiency, the tribe would make in excess of two million dollars. White farmers and white business would profit, too, the article conceded, but the Indians would be the big winners.

Two days after the article appeared, Homer Little Bear called an emergency council meeting to discuss ways to spend the money. At the meeting, Homer tried to read the article out loud, but had to give up, he was laughing so hard. Someone suggested that they rename the dam the Grand Goose or the Golden Goose because of the promised fortune and because, as Sam Belly put it, that’s about all Indians ever got from the government, a goose.

“It’s nice to see a company like that lose some money.”

“Duplessis isn’t losing money, Alberta.”

“The dam is just sitting there. They can’t use it. And no one can use the lake or build on the lots until the case is settled.”

“Most of the money was put up by the province. The company gets to write the losses off their taxes.”

“That’s sick, Charlie.”

“I don’t call the shots.”

The irony, Charlie mused, was that once Duplessis started construction on the dam, nothing stopped it. Environmental concerns were cast aside. Questions about possible fault lines that ran under the dam were dismissed. Native land claims that had been in the courts for over fifty years were shelved.

“Once you start something like this,” Duplessis’s chief engineer had told an inquiry board, “you can’t stop. Too damn dangerous.”

So Duplessis built the dam. But the day after it was completed, after all the champagne, the speeches, the pictures, just as the chief engineer, the premier of the province, and the federal minister for natural resources were set to throw the switches that would open the gates for the first time and send the rushing water down the channels to where the farmers, the businessmen, and the Indians waited, Eli Stands Alone finally got an injunction that stuck.

Well, the dam wasn’t his fault. Alberta knew that. In her heart, Charlie told himself, she knew that he was doing his job. But being right didn’t seem to be very persuasive. Maybe, Charlie thought, he should give his father’s method a try.

“If you want to get a woman interested in you,” Charlie’s father had told him, “act helpless.”

“Is that how you got Mom?”

“Absolutely.”

While she was alive, Charlie’s mother would laugh and tell his father that he had never had to act about that.

Charlie brought out his address book. The long weekend. And Alberta was actually going to Blossom. He started with the A’s.

“Hi, Jennifer.”

“Jennifer’s not here.”

“Will she be back later?”

“Is this Ted?”

It was a beautiful day. Between calls, Charlie watched the sun heading west. He worked his way through the J’s and K’s and was into the first of the L’s before he realized that he had lost his enthusiasm. Rita Luther was home, but by then Charlie was no longer interested.

“Hi, Rita.”

“Charlie?”

“Yeah. Thought I’d call and say hello.”

“Charlie Looking Bear?”

“I was thinking of calling you sometime next week. Maybe we could catch lunch. Or something.”

“You okay?”

Charlie closed the book. Apart from the mountains, which you really couldn’t see, the sky was the best part of the landscape. One of his teachers at law school had said that the sky in Alberta reminded her of an ocean.

“A deep, clear ocean,” the teacher had said, “into which you can look and see the soul of the universe.”

“Look again,” Charlie had said under his breath, but loud enough for everyone in the class to hear.

Even the teacher had laughed.

What Charlie saw when he looked up was . . . sky, not some clever metaphor. Sky and clouds. Subtle colors. Shifting angles of light. That was it. Physics and refractions.

In the west, the cloud towers climbed high above the mountains and moved in front of the sun, momentarily capturing the light, while at the edges and along the seams, bright shafts and delicate fans burst from cover high above the prairie floor.

Charlie leaned back in his chair and stretched. Farther to the north, clusters of darker clouds drifted into the foothills. Charlie could hear the soft rumble of distant thunder, could see the low, banking mist and the sudden rains slanting onto the plains. It reminded him of movies.

Alberta and Lionel. She couldn’t be serious. Charlie picked up the phone.

“Time Air. When you fly with us, you fly on time. How may we help you?”

Charlie looked out at the clouds and the light. Yes, he could see how people might think of it as magnificent, spectacular. “Yes,” he said, turning back to the matter at hand. “When’s your next flight to Blossom?”

Lionel pulled his foot out of the puddle and shook the water out of his shoe. The old Indians watched him.

“Pretty good puddle,” said the Indian in the mask.

“Yes,” said the Indian in the Hawaiian shirt with the red palm trees. “You stepped in that pretty good.”

“Lionel,” Norma called from the car. “Mind your manners.”

Lionel put his weight on the wet shoe. It made a soft, squishy sound that was not altogether unpleasant. “Evening,” he said, looking at the four Indians. “You headed for the reserve? We can take you as far as Blossom.”

“That’s where we’re going all right,” said the Lone Ranger.“Blossom is where we want to be.”

“Come on, then,” said Norma. “Hop in.”

Lionel opened the back door for the Indians and sat on the edge of the front seat and took off his shoe. The sock was soaked. He angled the shoe and let the water collect in the heel. Lionel had remembered reading somewhere that if leather shoes get wet they have the tendency to shrink and that the best thing to do is to stuff them with newspapers.

Lionel wrung out the sock and laid it on the dash next to the piece of blue carpet.

“We got any newspaper?”

“Newspaper?” said Norma. “What do you want a newspaper for? You know when you read in the car, you get sick.”

“It’s for my shoe. To keep it from shrinking.”

Norma put the car into gear, checked her rearview mirror, stuck her arm out the window, and waved it up and down. “Put your foot back in it. Now,” she said, half turning toward the Indians, “let’s get acquainted.”

When Lionel found out that Alberta was seeing Charlie, he was confused. It didn’t make any sense. Charlie was a nice enough guy. He was good looking and he had a good job and a great car, but he was, well, sleazy. He had been sleazy as a kid and he was sleazy now. Some women probably liked sleazy, but not Alberta. She was solid and responsible. She had a good education and a good job.

“Charlie? Charlie Looking Bear?”

“I go out with you.”

“Why are you going out with Charlie?”

“I ask myself the same question about you.”

Lionel hadn’t liked the way the conversation was going, so he changed the subject. “I’ve been thinking about us.”

“And?”

“Just thinking.”

“About what?”

“Us.”

Which turned out to be even a worse topic of conversation. After that, Lionel didn’t see Alberta for a month.

Norma leaned her head toward Lionel. “This is my nephew Lionel. I’m Norma.”

“Yes,” said the Lone Ranger. “I’m the Lone Ranger.”

Lionel snorted. Norma whacked him in the ribs with her free arm. “Nice to see our elders out on vacation,” she said.

“Oh, we’re not on vacation,” said Ishmael.

“No,” said Robinson Crusoe.

“We’re working,” said Hawkeye.

“Working, huh?” said Lionel, and he dropped his arm to protect his side.

“That’s right,” said the Lone Ranger. “We’re trying to fix up the world.”

Norma glared at Lionel. “Sure could use it. I was just telling my nephew that the world could sure use some help.”

“That’s true,” said Hawkeye.

“But these young people just don’t listen to us.”

“Yes,” said Ishmael, “that’s true, too.”

Lionel was trying to hide his smile in his hand. “So, you’re hitchhiking to Blossom, and once you get there, you’re going to fix up the world?”

“Oh, no, grandson,” said the Lone Ranger. “It’s too big a job to fix it all at once. Even with all of us working together we can’t do it.”

“Yes,” said Robinson Crusoe, “we tried that already.”

“Things are too messed up,” said Ishmael.

“We let it go too long.”

Lionel shifted around so he could see the Indians. “So you’re going to start with Blossom and go from there?”

“Well, you have to start somewhere,” said Norma, glancing at Lionel to see if she could get at his ribs.

The Lone Ranger shook his head. “No,” he said. “That’s too big a job, too.”

“We’re not as young as we used to be,” said Hawkeye.

“And even when we were younger,” said Ishmael, “we couldn’t have done it.”

“When we were younger,” said Robinson Crusoe, “we tried. That’s how we got into this mess in the first place.”

Lionel looked at the four Indians. Now that he could see them clearly, he was surprised at how old they looked, perhaps eighty or ninety years old. Perhaps older. And there was something about them that made Lionel’s ear itch.

* * *

It was Norma who had given Lionel the key to Alberta. After Alberta disappeared for a month, his auntie took him aside and gave him a short lecture. “Babies,” she said. “That’s all you need to know.”

“What?”

“You deaf? Alberta wants children.”

“All women want babies.”

“That’s what men like to think. Makes them feel wanted. Not much good for anything else, I can tell you.”

“She’s never mentioned it to me.”

“Of course she’s never mentioned it to you. She doesn’t want to put up with a man. A woman who gets married and has a child winds up with two babies right off the bat. You get the picture?”

Lionel said he did just to keep Norma from shifting into high gear.

“You don’t get the picture at all, nephew.”

Norma took Lionel by the arm and sat him down on the couch. She pulled up a chair right in front of him, and she reached out and took his face in her hands and held it there so she could see his eyes.

“You ready?”

Lionel nodded that he was.

“First of all,” Norma said, “Alberta wants children. Most women want children. Why do you think there are so many human beings in this world? You think women are that crazy about men? You think women are that crazy about sex? Day after we find some other way to get pregnant, you guys will be as attractive as week-old fry bread.”

Lionel smiled and nodded some more. He could feel Norma’s fingernails at his ears.

“Second, stop talking about cars and other guys and sex and start talking about babies. Maybe borrow one. Got enough of them around. Tell her you can’t go out because you’re watching a baby for a friend. Invite her over. Let her hold the baby. Stuff like that.”

Lionel’s neck began to stiffen up. He wet his lips and blinked his eyes.

“Don’t go to sleep on me, nephew. We’re almost done.”

Norma let go of Lionel’s face and wiped her hands on her skirt. “Last,” she said, “don’t ask her to marry you. Don’t get all dressed up and take her out to a fancy dinner. Don’t get her a ring and crawl around on your knees. Don’t say squat about marriage. She’ll make up her own mind about that, and if she’s interested, she’ll let you know.”

Norma sat back and sucked on her lips. “You get all that?”

“Sure.”

Norma looked at Lionel and shook her head. “You’re my nephew, and I love you,” she said. “But I don’t think it’s going to help.”

“So,” said Lionel, “how do you figure you’re going to help?”

The Lone Ranger looked at Robinson Crusoe and Robinson Crusoe looked at Ishmael and Ishmael looked at Hawkeye and they all looked at Lionel.

“I mean, it’s a big world. And even if you split Blossom up four ways, it would be a lot of work, I guess.” Lionel could feel Norma measuring the distance to his ribs. “I mean, maybe you could use some help.”

“That’s real nice, grandson,” said the Lone Ranger. “But we made this mess and we got to clean it up.”

“But we’re going to start small,” said Ishmael.

“Real small,” said Robinson Crusoe.

“And once we get the hang of it,” said Hawkeye, “we’ll move on to bigger jobs.”

“That sounds smart,” said Norma. “Start small and work your way up.”

“So,” said Lionel, chuckling to himself and watching the prairie disappear through the rear window of the car, “where are you going to start?”

Bill Bursom stood at the far end of the store and looked back at the wall. It was magnificent, spectacular, genius. Oh, Eaton’s and the Bay had similar kinds of displays, but nothing of this size, and size, Bill reminded himself, was everything.

“What do you think, Minnie?”

Minnie Smith looked up from sorting the videos that had come in overnight.

“Ms. Smith,” Minnie corrected.

“Whatever,” said Bursum.

“Ms. Smith,” said Minnie.

Bursum stood in front of the “fantasy” section and held his arms out wide. “It’s done. What do you think?”

The far wall was filled with television sets. They ran from corner to corner and were stacked right to the ceiling, all shapes and sizes.

“Is it just that it’s crooked?” said Minnie.

“It’s not crooked,” said Bursum.

But it wasn’t exactly square, either. On the lower right-hand side, several twelve-inch televisions hung down like a tail. The entire left side was uneven, moving in and out as it rose to the roof. Even the top row dipped and peaked as it ran the length of the wall.

“Or is it just that it isn’t square?” said Minnie.

“It’s not supposed to be square,” said Bursum.

Minnie shrugged her shoulders. “What does it do?”

Bursum strode across the store, swinging his arms as if he were marching in a parade. “Watch.” And he picked up a remote control. For a moment there was nothing, and then each set blinked and a soft dot of gray light swelled to fill the screen.

All two hundred screens glowed silver, creating a sense of space and great emptiness at the end of the store. Bursum smiled back at Minnie.

“Now watch this.” Bursum pushed a tape into a VCR at the corner of the display and waited while the machine whirled and clunked and buzzed. Suddenly the screens came alive with brilliant colors.

“Yes!” Bursum shouted, and he looked back to see if Minnie was impressed.

“That’s very nice, Mr. Bursum,” said Minnie.

“It really catches your eye.”

“Do all the sets have to show the same movie?”

Lionel had helped him build the display, had assisted with the layout and the framing, but it had taken longer for Bursum to make the final connections and get everything running. Now that it was working, Bursum was anxious to see what Lionel thought of the finished product, not because he put a great deal of stock in Lionel’s opinion but because Lionel understood, to some degree, the difficulties of the logistics, the intricacies of the wiring, the spatial arrangements that had to be considered in conceiving the overall plan.

“Do you see it?”

“Sure,” said Minnie. “You can’t miss it.”

“No,” said Bursum. “Do you see it?”

Bursum smiled and moved in front of the televisions. He spread his legs and extended his arms. “It’s a map!”

Minnie cocked her head to one side.

“Of Canada and the United States.”

Minnie cocked her head to the other side.

“Here’s Florida,” said Bursum, pointing to the tail. “And here’s Vancouver Island and here’s Hudson’s Bay.”

“Where’s Blossom?” asked Minnie, her head still bent to one side.

“Someplace around there,” said Bursum, and he pointed at a thirteen-inch Sony Digital Monitor high on the wall.

Minnie cocked her head back to the other side.

Bursum raised his arms over his head and extended his fingers. “I call it . . . The Map!”

“Is it just for display?” asked Minnie.

Bursum doubted that even Lionel understood the unifying metaphor or the cultural impact The Map would have on customers, but that was all right. Lionel, at least, would be able to appreciate the superficial aesthetics and the larger visual nuances of The Map.

The Map. Bursum loved the sound of it. There was a majesty to the name. He stepped back from the screens and looked at his creation. It was stupendous. It was more powerful than he had thought. It was like having the universe there on the wall, being able to see everything, being in control. Yes, Lionel might just appreciate it.

And then again, he might not.

“Now that’s advertising,” said Bursum, adjusting his gold blazer. “Do you know what something like that is worth?”

Minnie nodded and smiled.

“It has no value,” said Bursum. “It is beyond value. Have you read The Prince by Machiavelli?”

Minnie nodded and smiled.

“It’s all about advertising. If you’re going to succeed in this business, you better read it.”

Lionel, at Bursum’s insistence, had read The Prince, and so had Charlie Looking Bear for that matter, but Bursum was sure that neither of them had understood the central axiom. Power and control—the essences of effective advertising—were, Bursum had decided years before, outside the range of the Indian imagination, though Charlie had made great strides in trying to master this fundamental cultural tenet.

Minnie leaned on the counter. “I suppose its advertising value compensates for its lack of subtlety.”

“That’s right,” said Bursum, turning around completely.“It’s like being in church. Or at the movies.”

“I’ve been elected spokesperson for our table,” said the woman, folding the map and putting it back in her purse. “My name is Jeanette, and this is my friend Nelson. This is Rosemarie De Flor and her husband, Bruce.”

Latisha nodded, hoping she could keep this short. Tourists loved to talk. Latisha guessed it was part of the lure of travel, the chance to tell someone who didn’t know you the stories everyone who did know you was tired of hearing.

“Don’t let her fool you,” said Rosemarie, spearing a Deep-Fried Puppy Whatnot. “Nobody elected her anything. She’s just bossy.”

“Damn straight,” said Nelson, and he and Bruce fell to giggling behind their coffee cups.

“And as spokesperson,” Jeanette continued, ignoring Rosemarie and the two men, “I get to ask all the questions everyone else is too embarrassed to ask.” Jeanette waited to see if there were any objections. Latisha shifted her weight and sighed. Jeanette looked like a woman just warming to a lengthy task.

“Now,” said Jeanette, “may we assume that you are Indian?”

“Jesus, Jeanette,” said Nelson, reaching out and patting Latisha on the arm. “Any fool can see that.”

“Never hurts to ask.”

“I’m Blackfoot,” said Latisha.

“Damn fine tribe,” said Nelson, leaving his hand on Latisha’s arm and trying to reach her hip with his thumb.

“Ah,” said Jeanette. “And you are the owner?”

“That’s right.”

Jeanette glared at Nelson. “And here at this restaurant that you own,” she said, raising her voice a notch, “you serve dog?”

“That’s correct.”

Nelson took his hand off Latisha’s arm and looked at his Saint Bernard Swiss Melt. “Jesus! You’re kidding. It’s not really dog?”

“Of course she’s kidding,” said Bruce. “I used to work for the RCMP—”

“We all know that, honey,” said Rosemarie.

“Twenty-five years I was a sergeant with the RCMP, and if we had heard of anyone cooking up dog and selling it in a restaurant, we would have arrested them. It’s beef, right?”

“Are you married?” asked Jeanette.

“No.”

“Very wise,” said Jeanette, leaning her head in Nelson’s direction.

Then again, Latisha reflected, she wasn’t single, exactly. But she definitely wasn’t married.

Nelson had lifted the top piece of bread off his sandwich and was examining the meat with his fork. “Looks like beef to me.” And he reached out to try to pat Latisha’s butt. “You were kidding, right?”

“Black Labrador,” said Latisha, avoiding Nelson’s hand.“You get more meat off black Labs.”

“Jesus!”

“But you have been married,” said Jeanette. “Every woman makes that mistake at least once.”

George Morningstar. Latisha had even liked his name. It sounded slightly Indian, though George was American, from a small town in Michigan. He had come out west to see, as he put it, what all the fuss was about. Tall, with soft light brown hair that just touched his shoulders. Best of all, he did not look like a cowboy or an Indian. Even at eighteen, Latisha had already tired of skinny men with no butts in blue jeans, pearl-button shirts, worn-at-the-heel cowboy boots, straw hats with sweat lines, driving pickups or stacked up against the shady sides of buildings like logs.

“We got to get this dog-meat thing straight,” said Nelson, his arm still hanging out in space.

“It’s a treaty right,” Latisha explained. “There’s nothing wrong with it. It’s one of our traditional foods.”

“I’ve never heard of that, either,” said Bruce, “and I was a sergeant with the RCMP for twenty-five years.”

“We raise them right on the reserve,” Latisha explained.“Feed them only horse meat and whole grain. No hormones or preservatives.”

“Jesus,” said Nelson. “I had a black Lab when I was a kid. He was a great dog.”

George had come out to the reserve for Indian Days. Latisha could still remember what he had been wearing—tan cotton slacks and a billowy white cotton shirt that was loose in the body and tight at the cuffs. He had on oxblood loafers and patterned socks, and he had stood at the back of the gawking crowd and watched. At the end of the day, he was still there, watching, listening, looking for all the world like the most intelligent man in the universe.

“His name was Tecumseh,” said Nelson. “After the Indian chief. And you know what?” Nelson motioned for Latisha to come closer. “He could sing.”

“You’re not eating Tecumseh,” said Rosemarie. “Did I tell you I was in opera?”

“Yes,” said Jeanette, “we all know you were in opera.”

Nelson laid his head back and pointed his lips at the ceiling.“When I’m calling you, oo–oo–oo, oo-oo-oo!”

Billy stuck his head out of the kitchen and looked at Nelson. Latisha waved him off and shifted her weight to the other leg.

“He lived to be fourteen years old,” said Nelson.

“Once they get past two or three,” Latisha said gravely, “the meat’s too tough to eat.”

“That dog wasn’t singing, Nelson,” said Rosemarie, “he was just howling. Now, I could sing, isn’t that right, Jeanette?”

“And,” said Jeanette, trying to regain control of the conversation, “were you born on the reserve?”

That was one of the things George had asked her that first evening, had been pleased that she was, as he said, a real Indian. And he had been so attentive. It was his one great quality. He made you believe that he was listening, made you believe that what you had to say was important, made you believe that he was interested.

“You know, Country,” George told her on their third date, “talking to you is better than sex or good food.”

And Latisha had talked, poured her life out, a great flood of dreams and enthusiasms, and George had sat there and waited and listened, his mouth set in a pleasant smile, his blue eyes never blinking.

Jeanette put her napkin on the table. “Most interesting pictures,” she said, gesturing to the photograph of two Indians holding up the ends of a pole strung with dachshunds. “The waitress tells us that you sell recipes for dog.”

“Yes, that’s right.”

“That is very clever of you. I suppose we’ll have to buy one for Nelson.”

Latisha was beginning to like the old woman. Nelson was back to nibbling at his sandwich again. Jeanette pushed her chair back and struggled to her feet.

“Could you help me, dear,” she said. “These days, I have a little trouble getting going.”

Latisha took her arm. “Where to?”

“She has to go to the bathroom,” said Nelson. “She’s always going to the bathroom. Has a bladder problem.”

Jeanette smiled back at Nelson and Rosemarie and Bruce. Latisha felt the old woman’s grip on her arm tighten and realized that the woman was strong, could probably break Nelson’s neck.

“He’ll die before I do,” Jeanette said under her breath as Latisha helped her down the hall. “There’s some consolation in that.”

George had kept his hands in his pockets. After fighting off the local cowboys and Indians, it was nice to be with a man who didn’t think that her shoulder or her waist or her butt was part of the public domain. For the first month he didn’t touch her at all. They walked and talked, had cheap, wonderful dinners, went to the movies. One night George took her to the Blossom library. Latisha had never even been inside the building. He led her into the record section, and they spent the evening listening to classical music on headsets.

He had seemed vulnerable then, almost girlish, always looking off into space. To commemorate their third month together, he gave her his copy of Kahlil Gibran’s The Prophet.

She had felt the itch early on and thought it was love. Six months later, they married, and before the first year was out, Latisha realized that the reason George wondered so much about the world was because he didn’t have a clue about life. But by the time she figured out that the itch was really trouble and not love at all, it was too late. She was pregnant.

Jeanette paused at the door. “This is fine, dear. I can make it the rest of the way myself.” She let go of Latisha’s arm and leaned on the door handle. “How long were you married?”

“Nine years.”

“Children?”

“Three.”

Jeanette shook her head. “Did you kill the bastard?”

Latisha laughed. “No, he’s still alive. I threw him away.”

“Splendid,” said Jeanette, opening the door. “I love storie swith happy endings.”

“Watch the toilet,” Latisha called after her. “Sometimes it overflows.”

“Don’t they all,” Jeanette called back, sounding very far away. “Don’t they all.”

From where Eli sat on the porch, he imagined he could see the cracks that were developing near the base of the dam. Stress fractures, they called them, common enough in any dam, but troublesome nonetheless, especially given the relatively young age of the concrete. Of more concern was the slumping that had been discovered.

“It’s a beauty, isn’t it?” said Sifton, swirling the remains of the coffee around in the cup. “You know, if your cabin faced west, you’d have a great view of the dam from your front window.”

“View is fine as it is.”

“It’s nice in the morning. Sort of white. Like a shell.”

“Reminds me of a toilet,” said Eli.

“But the evening is the best. Soon as the sun gets behind it, the whole face turns purple. Sometimes I’ll walk down the streambed just to be able to see it in evening light.”

“Hear they found some more cracks in the dam.”

“You know,” said Sifton, “I could have had the big project in Quebec.”

“Hear they think the earth is moving under the dam.”

“But I said no. I want to do the job in Alberta. That’s what I said.”

The clouds to the northwest were filling up the sky. They had been slowly organizing and gathering all day. Eli turned his face into the wind. Rain.

Sifton set his coffee cup on the railing. “You know, I always thought Indians were elegant speakers.”

“Storm’s coming.”

“But all you ever say is no. I come by every day and read that thing those lawyers thought up about voluntarily extinguishing your right to this house and the land it sits on, and all you ever say is no.”

“Be here by tonight.”

“I mean, no isn’t exactly elegant, now is it?”

“Maybe get some hail, too.”

“It’s hard work walking down here every day, and it would help if sometime you would tell me why.”

Every July, when Eli was growing up, his mother would close the cabin and move the family to the Sun Dance. Eli would help the other men set up the tepee, and then he and Norma and Camelot would run with the kids in the camp. They would ride horses and chase each other across the prairies, their freedom interrupted only by the ceremonies.

Best of all, Eli liked the men’s dancing. The women would dance for four days, and then there would be a day of rest and the men would begin. Each afternoon, toward evening, the men would dance, and just before the sun set, one of the dancers would pick up a rifle and lead the other men to the edge of the camp, where the children waited. Eli and the rest of the children would stand in a pack and wave pieces of scrap paper at the dancers as the men attacked and fell back, surged forward and retreated, until finally, after several of these mock forays, the lead dancer would breach the fortress of children and fire the rifle, and all the children would fall down in a heap, laughing, full of fear and pleasure, the pieces of paper scattering across the land.

Then the dancers would gather up the food that was piled around the flagpole—bread, macaroni, canned soup, sardines, coffee—and pass it out to the people. Later, after the camp settled in, Eli and Norma and Camelot would lie on their backs and watch the stars as they appeared among the tepee poles through the opening in the top of the tent.

And each morning, because the sun returned and the people remembered, it would begin again.

“Look, it’s not my idea.” Sifton raised his arms in surrender. “It’s all those lawyers and the injunctions and that barrel load of crap about Native rights.”

“Treaty rights, Cliff.”

“Almost as bad as French rights. Damn sure wish the government would give me some of that.”

“Government didn’t give us anything, Cliff. We paid for them. Paid for them two or three times.”

“And so because the government felt generous back in the last ice age, and made promises it never intended to keep, I have to come by every morning and ask the same stupid question.”

“And I say no.”

“You know you’re going to say no, and I know you’re going to say no. Hell, the whole damn world knows you’re going to say no. Might as well put it on television.”

“So why come?”

Sifton looked at Eli and both men began to chuckle. “Because you make the best damn coffee. And because I like the walk.”

“Answer will be the same tomorrow.”

Every year or so, a tourist would wander into the camp. Sometimes they were invited. Other times they just saw the camp from the road and were curious. Most of the time they were friendly, and no one seemed to mind them. Occasionally there was trouble.

When Eli was fourteen, a station wagon with Michigan plates pulled off the road and came into the camp just as the men were finishing their second day of dancing. Before anyone realized what was happening, the man climbed on top of the car and began taking pictures.

Eli saw the man and told his uncle Orville, who quickly gathered up his two brothers and their sons and descended on the car. The guy must have seen the men coming because he slid off the car, climbed into the driver’s seat, rolled up all the windows, and locked the doors.

The men surrounded the station wagon. Orville motioned for the man inside to roll down his window. There was a woman sitting in the passenger seat and a little girl and a baby in the back. Orville tapped on the glass, and the man just smiled and nodded his head.

Things stayed like that for quite a while. The dancers finished, and as word went around, a large part of the camp moved in on the car. The baby in the car began to cry. Finally the man stopped smiling and began to wave at Orville, motioning for him and the rest of the people to get out of the way.

“Roll down your window,” Orville said, his voice low and controlled.

Instead, the man started his engine, revved it, as if he were going to drive right through the people. As soon as the man started the car, Orville’s brother, Leroy, went to his truck and grabbed his rifle off the rack. He walked to the front of the station wagon and held the gun over his head. The man in the car looked at Leroy for a moment, yelled something at his wife, and turned off the engine.

Then he rolled the window down just a crack. “What’s the problem?”

“This is our Sun Dance, you know.”

“No,” said the man. “I didn’t know. I thought it was a powwow or something.”

“No,” said Orville, “it isn’t a powwow. It’s our Sun Dance.”

“Well, I didn’t know that.”

“You can’t take pictures of the Sun Dance.”

“Well, I didn’t know that.”

“Now you know. So I have to ask you for the pictures you took.”

The man looked over at his wife, who nodded her head ever so slightly. “Well,” he said, “I didn’t take any pictures.”

“You got a camera,” Orville said.

“We’re on vacation,” said the man. “I was going to take some pictures of your little powwow, but I didn’t.”

Orville looked at Leroy, who was still standing in front of the car, the rifle cradled in his arms. “Is that so?”

“Yes,” said the man. “That’s the truth. Take it or leave it.”

Orville put his hand on Eli’s shoulder. “My nephew here says he saw you taking pictures.”

The man’s wife suddenly leaned over and grabbed her husband’s arm. “Give them the pictures, Bill! For God’s sake, just give them the pictures!”

The man turned, shook her arm off, and pushed her against the door. He sat there for a moment, looking at the dash, his hands squeezing the wheel. “I got pictures of my family on that roll,” he said to Orville. “Tell you what. When I get them developed, if there happen to be any pictures of your thing, I’ll send them to you along with the negatives.”

Orville took out a handkerchief and blew his nose. “No,” he said very slowly. “That’s not the way it’s going to work. I think it’s best if you give us the film and my brother will get it developed. We’ll send you the pictures that are yours.”

“There are some very important pictures on that roll.”

“Yes, there are,” said Orville.

Eli had never seen someone so angry. It was hot in the car and the man was sweating, but it wasn’t from the heat. Eli could see the muscles on the man’s neck, could hear the violent, exaggerated motions with which he unloaded the camera and passed the film through the window to Orville.

Sifton pushed off the railing and snapped to attention, lowering his voice to a deep growl. “I am required by law to respectfully request that you relinquish your claim to this house and the land on which it sits and that title to this property be properly vested with the province of Alberta.”

Sifton quickly sat down in the chair next to Eli and smiled up at the character he had just created.

“No,” Sifton said, imitating as best he could Eli’s soft voice.

Eli laughed and shook his head. “That’s pretty good, Cliff. Real soon now you’ll be able to do it all by yourself. You won’t need me at all.”

Sifton stayed in the chair. “You know what the problem is? This country doesn’t have an Indian policy. Nobody knows what the hell anyone else is doing.”

“Got the treaties.”

“Hell, Eli, those treaties aren’t worth a damn. Government only made them for convenience. Who’d of guessed that there would still be Indians kicking around in the twentieth century.”

“One of life’s little embarrassments.”

“Besides, you guys aren’t real Indians anyway. I mean, you drive cars, watch television, go to hockey games. Look at you. You’re a university professor.”

“That’s my profession. Being Indian isn’t a profession.”

“And you speak as good English as me.”

“Better,” said Eli. “And I speak Blackfoot too. My sisters speak Blackfoot. So do my niece and nephew.”

“That’s what I mean. Latisha runs a restaurant and Lionel sells televisions. Not exactly traditionalists, are they?”

“It’s not exactly the nineteenth century, either.”

“Damn it. That’s my point. You can’t live in the past. My dam is part of the twentieth century. Your house is part of the nineteenth.”

“Maybe I should look into putting it on the historical register.”

Sifton rubbed his hands on his pants. “You know, when I was in high school, I read a story about a guy just like you who didn’t want to do anything to improve his life. He just sat on a stool in some dark room and said, ‘I would prefer not to.’ That’s all he said.”

“‘Bartleby the Scrivener.’’’

“What?”

“‘Bartleby the Scrivener.’ One of Herman Melville’s short stories.”

“I guess. The point is that this guy had lost touch with reality. And you know what happens to him at the end of the story?”

“It’s fiction, Cliff.”

“He dies. That’s what happens. Suggest anything to you?”

“We all die, Cliff.”

Orville took the man’s name and address. The people pulled back from the station wagon and let it pass. Halfway out of the camp, the man gunned the engine and spun the tires, sending a great cloud of choking dust into the air that floated through the camp. Then Leroy went for his pickup, but Orville stopped him.

“Come on, Eli. You’re a big city boy. Like me. There’s nothing for you here. You could probably get a great settlement and go on back to Toronto and live like a king.”

“Nothing for me there.”

“Nothing for you here, either,” said Sifton. “One of these days we’re going to open the floodgates, the water is going to pour down the channels, the generators are going to start producing electricity, and this house is going to turn into an ark.”

“This is my home.”

“Hell, what this is is a pile of logs in the middle of a spillway. That’s what it is.”

The film was blank. The people at the photo store told Leroy that it had never been used. Orville wrote the man, but the letter came back a month later marked “Address Unknown.”

Leroy had copied down the man’s license number. He called the RCMP and explained what had happened, but there was little they could do about it, they said. The man hadn’t broken any laws.

Eli stretched and pushed his glasses back up his nose. “When I figure it out, I’ll let you know.”

Sifton stood and leaned over the railing. The water had receded into the channels. “Time for me to get back. You need anything?”

“Nope. Probably go into town the next day or so.” Eli walked with Sifton to the edge of the water. “What happens when it breaks?”

“The dam?”

“What happens when it breaks? You can’t hold water back forever.”

Sifton jammed his walking stick into the gray-green water.“It’s not going to break, Eli. Oh, it’ll crack and it’ll leak. But it won’t break. Just think of the dam as part of the natural landscape.”

“Just thought I’d ask.”

Eli watched Sifton work his way into the stream. As he climbed out on the opposite bank, Sifton turned and raised his stick over his head. Eli could see the man’s mouth open and close in a shout, but all the sound was snatched up by the wind and drowned in the rushing water.

“Oh, no!” says Coyote. “Changing Woman has landed on Old Coyote.”

“Yes, yes,” I says. “Everybody knows that by now. And here’s what happens.”

Changing Woman falls out of the sky. She starts way up high, so she can see all around the water. And what she sees is all that water, and what she sees is a canoe.

Hello, she says, I can see a canoe. And she could. A big canoe. A big white canoe with lots of animals in it. There were elephants and buffalo and rabbits and alligators in that canoe. There were frogs and mosquitoes and hawks and monkeys and spiders and worms in that canoe too. There were snakes and pigs and dogs and honeybees and many other interesting things in that big white canoe.

It must be a party, says Changing Woman as she falls through the sky. But as she gets closer, what she sees is poop. There is poop everywhere. There is poop on the side of the canoe. There is poop on the bottom of the canoe. There is poop all around the canoe. That canoe isn’t all white, either, I can tell you that.

Oh, dear, says Changing Woman. I don’t know that I want to land in poop.

* * *

“Well, I know I wouldn’t want to land in poop,” says Coyote.

“Well, neither would I,” I says.

So. There is Changing Woman falling out of the sky. And there are those animals. And there is that canoe full of poop. Watch out for the poop, all those animals shout.

But just as Changing Woman comes falling into that canoe, Old Coyote wakes up and that one rolls over and that one stretches. And Changing Woman lands on Old Coyote.

Psssssst, goes Old Coyote. He makes that sound. Like something that has gone flat.

What was that? says one of the Pigs.

Sounded like a fart, says one of the Raccoons.

Okay, says one of the Moose, who farted?

No one farted, says Changing Woman. It was only me. I landed on Old Coyote. But before Changing Woman can apologize to Old Coyote, before she can give him some tobacco or some sweetgrass, a little man with a filthy beard jumps out of the poop at the front of the canoe.

Who are you? says the little man.

I’m Changing Woman, says Changing Woman.

Any relation to Eve? says the little man. She sinned, you know. That’s why I’m in a canoe full of animals. That’s why I’m in a canoe full of poop.

Are you all right? Changing Woman asks Old Coyote.

Psssst, says Old Coyote.

Why are you talking to animals? says the little man. This is a Christian ship. Animals don’t talk. We got rules.

I fell out of the sky, says Changing Woman. I’m very sorry that I landed on Old Coyote.

The sky! shouts the little man. Hallelujah! A gift from heaven. My name’s Noah, and you must be my new wife.

I doubt that, says Changing Woman.

Lemme see your breasts, says Noah. I like women with big breasts. I hope God remembered that.

Don’t do it, says one of the Turtles. He’ll just get excited and rock the canoe.

I have no intention of showing him my breasts, says Changing Woman.

Talking to the animals again, shouts Noah. That’s almost bestiality, and it’s against the rules.

What rules?

Christian rules.

“What’s bestiality?” says Coyote.

“Sleeping with animals,” I says.

“What’s wrong with that?” says Coyote.

“It’s against the rules,” I says.

“But he doesn’t mean Coyotes,” says Coyote.

For the next month, Noah chases Changing Woman around the canoe. Noah tries balancing along the railing, but he falls in the poop. Noah tries jumping across the backs of the animals, but he falls in the poop.

He tries to wade through the poop to get at Changing Woman. But every time he works his way to the front of the canoe, she dances to the back. And every time he works his way to the back of the canoe, she dances to the front.

Hahahahahahahahahahahaha.

Then, one morning, they find an island.

Time for procreating, shouts Noah, and that one leaps out of the boat and begins chasing Changing Woman up and down the beach. All the animals line up on the beach and watch Changing Woman and Noah run back and forth.

Five dollars on Changing Woman, says those Kangaroos.

Who’s got any of that good Noah money? says those Bears.

Odds, says those Trout. Who will give us odds?

After a while, that Noah gets tired and that one has to sit down. Well, this is certainly a mystery, he says. I better pray.

* * *

“Boy, is he going to be surprised,” says Coyote.

“We’re going to have to sit on that mouth of yours,” I says.

“I didn’t say anything,” says Coyote.

Well, pretty soon Old Coyote comes over to where Changing Woman is resting. Old Coyote is still sort of flat. He walks flat. He talks flat. He thinks flat. Boy, says Old Coyote, I feel kind of flat.

Hello, Old Coyote, says Changing Woman. What are you doing on this voyage?

It all started when the waters rose, says Old Coyote. The waters rose, and we had to get into Noah’s canoe.

That was nice of him, says Changing Woman.

Oh, no. He tried to leave us behind, says Old Coyote. Then he tried to throw us into the water. But his wife and children said no, no, no. Don’t throw all our friends into the water.

Wife? says Changing Woman. Children?

Noah threw them into the water instead, says Old Coyote. It’s the rules.

Rules, says Changing Woman. What rules?

Well, says that Old Coyote, Noah has these rules. The first rule is Thou Shalt Have Big Breasts.

And Noah’s wife had small breasts? says Changing Woman.

No, says Old Coyote, she had great big breasts.

Ah, says Changing Woman.

It makes sense when you think about it, says Old Coyote.

We got to get rid of those rules, says Changing Woman.

“Rules?” says Coyote. “Rules?” Coyote says that again. “Is this that contrary dream from the garden story?”

“Of course,” I says. “It’s all the same story.”

“That makes sense,” says Coyote.

Rest period is over, shouts silly Noah, and that one jumps to his feet. Time for procreating!

So Noah and Changing Woman run back and forth along the beach. They run back and forth for a month. And then Noah gets sweaty, and that one gets angry and that one stops running back and forth.

No point in having rules if some people don’t obey them, says Noah. And he loads all the animals back in the canoe and sails away.

This is a Christian ship, he shouts. I am a Christian man. This is a Christian journey. And if you can’t follow our Christian rules, then you’re not wanted on the voyage.

“Oh, oh,” says Coyote. “Changing Woman is stuck on the island all by herself. Is that the end of the story?”

“Silly Coyote,” I says. “This story is just beginning.”

“Initial here that you’ve read the rules, here that you don’t want the special no-deductible insurance waiver, and sign at the bottom.”

Charlie signed the rental-car form while the clerk behind the counter chirped away about the points of interest in and around Blossom. There were old Indian ruins and the remains of dinosaurs just to the north of town and a real Indian reserve to the west. She stuffed a bag full of restaurant guides, maps, two-for-one coupons, several pens, a copy of the local paper, and a Welcome-to-Blossom litter bag. She announced each item as if it had intrinsic value over and above the cost, and as one thing disappeared into the bag, another would magically appear at her fingertips.

It was much too late to be that cheery. Charlie felt under assault as he waited for some computer in Toronto or Vancouver to verify his credit. All he wanted was to get the car, drive to the hotel, and fall asleep. He would find Alberta in the morning.

As he waited for the woman to finish, he decided, not for the first time, that flying to Blossom and chasing after Alberta was truly stupid, on a par with watching television and smoking. What was he going to say?

“Hi. I was just in the area.”

“Hi. I was in town on business.”

“Hi. I was just passing through on my way to Waterton for the weekend.”

“Hi. I didn’t want to miss Lionel’s birthday.”

Act helpless. On the flight down from Edmonton, Charlie had turned his father’s advice over once again. Easier said than done.

“You’re not a movie star or something like that, are you?”

Charlie didn’t hear the woman at first.

“I mean, you look . . . you know, sort of familiar.”

“No,” said Charlie, trying to work up a smile. “That was probably my father.”

“Oh, wow!” said the woman, and she handed him the keys to the car, the rental agreement, and the white and orange bag stuffed with advertising debris. “Have a nice stay.”

Portland Looking Bear had been a movie star. After Lillian got sick and was confined to her bed, Charlie would sit with her after school and listen to the stories about how she had run off with Portland, how they had borrowed her father’s pickup and made it as far as Missoula before it bellied-up in a motel parking lot, and how, from there, they had worked their way through Montana and Idaho, Washington and Oregon, all the way to Los Angeles. Hard times and good times.

“This was long before your father changed his name to Iron Eyes Screeching Eagle.”

“You’re kidding.”

“Oh, yes. Iron Eyes Screeching Eagle. What an imagination!”

Hollywood had not even noticed them arrive, but Portland had been persistent, and a few roles as an extra in crowd scenes turned into some bit parts. Within two years, Portland was in almost every B Western that the studio made.

“Did he ever play the lead? You know, the hero.”

“He could have,” Charlie’s mother told him. “But that was back before they had any Indian heroes.”

“I mean, did he ever playa lawyer or a policeman or a cowboy?”

“A cowboy.” And his mother had laughed. “Charlie, your father made a very good Indian.”

After the fourth year of playing minor roles, C. B. Cologne, a red-headed Italian who played some of the Indian leads and ran the extras for three or four of the studios, told Portland he should think about changing his name to something more dramatic. Portland and Lillian sat around one night with C. B. and his wife, Isabella, and drank wine and tried to think of the most absurd name they could imagine.

“Iron Eyes Screeching Eagle. It still makes me laugh.”

But before the year was out, Portland was playing chiefs. He played Quick Fox in Duel at Sioux Crossing, Chief Jumping Otter in They Rode for Glory, and Chief Lazy Dog in Cheyenne Sunrise. He was a Sioux eighteen times, a Cheyenne ten times, a Kiowa six times, an Apache five times, and a Navaho once.

“We were on top of the world then. We lived in an apartment that had a pink swimming pool. Can you imagine? And if you stood on the toilet, you could see the ocean.”

“Did you know any of the big movie stars?”

“All of them,” Charlie’s mother told him. “We knew them all.”

“So what happened? Why’d you leave Hollywood?”

When Charlie had first asked that question, his mother said she was tired and that she should rest. And for weeks after that, while she continued to delight Charlie with stories of life in Hollywood, she did not touch on the subject of their leaving Los Angeles and coming home to the reserve.

Then a few days before she slipped into a coma, Lillian had Charlie sit very close to her and said in a whisper that Charlie could barely hear, “It was his nose, Charlie.” And she laughed, the effort sending spasms through her thin body. “It was your father’s nose that brought us home.”

* * *

Charlie dragged his bag to the parking lot. The woman at the desk had said that the rental car would be waiting at the far end of the lot, that he couldn’t miss it. So far as Charlie could tell, there was nothing at the end of the lot. But as he walked away from the lights and the terminal, he began to make out a ghostly form in a dark corner, tucked in against some bushes.

As he got closer, the first thing that Charlie noticed about the car was that it was red, a color he hated. The second thing was that it was old; in fact, as he got up to the car itself, he realized that some of the red was, in reality, rust. Charlie looked around the lot again. Nothing. He tried the door key. The door opened.

The walk back to the terminal was even longer than Charlie remembered. It had just been a mistake. No one rented cars like that, not even the secondhand outfits. Charlie was halfway to the building when the terminal lights went out. By the time he got to the door, it was locked. He leaned against the glass to see if he could spot the young woman at the rental counter, but the counter was in shadows. As he stood by the door, he felt the wind freshen, and as he debated his options, it began to rain.

Portland’s nose wasn’t the right shape. As long as he had been in the background, a part of the faceless mob of Indians falling off their ponies in the middle of rivers or hiding in box canyons or dying outside the walls of forts, things had been okay. But now that he was center stage, playing chiefs and the occasional renegade, the nose became a problem.

The matter came to a head when Portland auditioned for the Indian lead in The Sand Creek Massacre starring John Wayne, John Chivington, and Richard Widmark. The director, a slight man with a sparse blond mustache that made his upper lip look as if it were caked with snot, told Portland that he could have the part but that he would have to wear a rubber nose. Portland thought the man was kidding and told him that the only professionals he knew who wore rubber noses were clowns.

The next day, it was announced that C. B. Cologne had been signed to play Chief Long Lance in the movie. There were two other Westerns that were casting, and Portland tried out for them.

“He brought the nose home with him,” Charlie’s mother told him.

“What’d he do with it?”

“It was the silliest thing you ever saw. Portland put it on and chased me around the house. He only caught me because I was laughing so hard.”

“What’d he do with it?”

“He nailed it to the wall in the bathroom.”

The desk clerk at the Blossom Lodge was a thin, older man. He had on a dark blue blazer and a gold name tag that said “N. Bates, Assistant Manager.”

“I have a reservation. Charlie Looking Bear.” And Charlie handed the man his credit card.

“Is that one word or two?”

“Two. Looking and Bear.”

“Ah, yes, here it is. Mr. and Mrs. ?”

“Just me.”

“Certainly,” said the clerk, never taking his eyes off the computer. “Does the gentleman have a major credit card?”

“I already gave it to you.”

“Ah, yes, so you did. Here we are. Does the gentleman have a car?”

Charlie looked out the window. The Pinto was leaning to one side. “The red thing.”

The clerk leaned over the counter. “The Pinto?”

“It’s a rental.”

The parts dried up completely after that. Portland held out for six months. Then one morning, when Lillian came into the bathroom to brush her teeth, the nose was gone.

Everyone loved the nose. C. B. and Isabella swore it made him look even more Indian. And the parts began to open up again. But the nose created new problems. Portland couldn’t breathe with the nose on, had to breathe through his mouth, which changed the sound of his voice. Instead of the rich, deep, breathy baritone, his voice sounded pinched and full of tin. Then too, while the nose looked dramatic in the flesh, it looked rather bizarre on film. Under the lights, in front of the cameras, it seemed to grow and expand, to dominate Portland’s face. And Portland found that he was constantly bumping it or hooking it on a cup of coffee. Worst of all, it stunk, smelled like rotting potatoes. People began to measure their distance. And the parts dried up again.

Charlie dumped his bag on the dresser and went to the window. Outside, in the parking lot, he could see the rain falling. What should he say to Alberta? What did he want to say to her?

The Pinto was sitting in a low depression that was fast becoming a puddle. He’d call in the morning and see about an exchange. In the meantime, maybe it would just float away.

The second wave of tourists arrived just before five. Latisha got off the stool and took a deep breath. Dinner was the toughest shift. At lunch, everyone was still energetic, looking forward to what lay ahead. After five, tourists tended to sag, get grouchy. Food was never quite right. Service was always too slow. The adventure of the day had floated away, and all they had to look forward to was a strange bed in a strange motel.

“Bus in,” Latisha shouted into the kitchen.

“What flavor?” Billy shouted back.

The bottom half of the bus was crusted with dirt, as if it had spent part of the morning wallowing in a mud hole. Latisha couldn’t see the license plates.

Billy leaned around the doorway. “Not Canadian, I hope.”

As the people got off the bus, Latisha could see that they all had name tags neatly pasted to their chests. They filed off the bus in an orderly line and stood in front of the restaurant and waited until they were all together. Then, in unison, they walked two abreast to the front door, each couple keeping pace with the couple in front of them.

“Canadian,” Latisha shouted.

* * *

Early on in their marriage, George began to point out what he said he perceived to be the essential differences between Canadians and Americans.

“Americans are independent,” George told her one day.“Canadians are dependent.”

Latisha told him she didn’t think that he could make such a sweeping statement, that those kinds of generalizations were almost always false.

“It’s all observation, Country,” George continued. “Empirical evidence. In sociological terms, the United States is an independent sovereign nation and Canada is a domestic dependent nation. Put fifty Canadians in a room with one American, and the American will be in charge in no time.”

George didn’t say it with any pride, particularly. It was, for him, a statement of fact, an unassailable truth, a matter akin to genetics or instinct.

“Americans are adventurous,” George declared. “Canadians are conservative. Look at western expansion and the frontier experience. Lewis and Clark were Americans.”

What about Samuel de Champlain and Jacques Cartier? Latisha had asked.

“Europeans.” George laughed, and then he gave her a hug.“Don’t take it personally, Country.”

The woman at the near table held up her hand and waited. Her name tag said “P. Johnson.”

Latisha took four menus with her. “Good evening.”

“Yes, it is,” said the woman. “And your name is?”

“Latisha.”

“That’s a lovely name,” said the other woman, whose name tag said “S. Moodie.”“My name is Sue and this is my good friend Polly.”

The two men nodded as Latisha passed out the menus. They smiled and stuck out their chests so Latisha could read their tags: “A. Belaney” and “J. Richardson.”

“Could you tell us what the special is?” asked Polly.

“Everything smells so wonderful,” said Sue.

“Old Agency Puppy Stew.”

“And how much is it?”

“Six ninety-five.”

Polly looked at Sue and the two men. “Archie? John?” Both men nodded. “Excellent. We’ll all have the special.”

“Four specials.”

“Does the special come with a vegetable?” asked Archie.

“Vegetables are in the stew,” said Latisha.

“And bread?” asked John.

“Bread comes with it.”

“I don’t suppose dessert is included,” said Sue.

“Ice cream or Puppy Chow. Coffee comes with it too.”

“Wonderful,” said Polly. “We’ll all take the special.”

“Four specials,” said Latisha, holding her tongue between her teeth.

It hadn’t bothered Latisha at first. But as George made these comparisons a trademark of his conversations, Latisha became annoyed, then frustrated, and then angry. After a while, she began to lay in wait for him.

“All the great military men in North America,” George began, “were Americans. Look at George Washington, Andrew Jackson, George Armstrong Custer, Dwight D. Eisenhower.”

“What about Montcalm?”

“He was French, and he got beat by an American.”

“Wolfe was British.”

“Almost the same thing.”

“What about Louis Riel? What about Red River and Batoche?”

“Didn’t they hang him?”

“Billy Bishop!” Latisha almost shouted the name.

George put his arms around her and kissed her forehead.“You’re right, Country,” he said. “There’s always the exception.”

* * *

“With the exception of Archie,” said Sue, “we’re all Canadians. Most of us are from Toronto. Archie is from England, but he’s been here for so long, he thinks he’s Canadian, too.”

“It’s nice to meet you.”

“None of us,” said Polly, looking pleased, “is American.”

“We’re on an adventure,” said Sue.

“We’re roughing it,” said Archie.

“That last motel was as rough as I want it,” said John, and Polly and Archie and Sue laughed, though not loud enough to disturb the other people at the other tables.

“Well, there’s lots to see around here.”

“What we really want to see,” said Archie, “are the Indians.”

“Mostly Blackfoot around here,” said Latisha. “Cree are a little farther north.”

Sue reached over and put her hand on Polly’s arm. “Polly here is part Indian. She’s a writer, too. Maybe you’ve read one of her books?”

Latisha shook her head. “I’m sorry, I don’t think I know them.”

“It’s all right, dear,” said Polly. “Not many people do.”

It was a stupid game, but Latisha had to will herself not to play it. The baby helped. After Christian was born, Latisha had little time for George’s nonsense. It was a stage, she told herself. But if anything, George’s comparisons became even more absurd. The United States had more doctors, more lawyers, more writers, more motels, more highways, more universities, more large cities, and had fought in more wars than Canada.

Americans were modern, poised to take advantage of the future, to move ahead. Canadians were traditionalists, stuck in the past and unwilling to take chances. Americans liked adventure and challenge. Canadians liked order and guarantees.

“When a cop pulls a Canadian over for speeding on an open road with no other car in sight, the Canadian is happy. I’ve even seen them thank the cop for being so alert. What else can I say?”

In the end, simple avoidance proved to be the easiest course, and whenever George started to warm up, Latisha would take Christian into the bedroom and nurse him. There, in the warm darkness, she would stroke her son’s head and whisper ferociously over and over again until it became a chant, a mantra, “You are a Canadian. You are a Canadian. You are a Canadian.”

Latisha shook hands with Polly and Sue and Archie and John as they left the restaurant. None of them bought menus. Latisha got the trolley from the kitchen and began clearing the dishes off the tables.

“Thank God they’re not all Canadians,” said Billy.

“You sound like George,” said Latisha.

“And how many specials did we serve?”

Latisha laughed. “Okay, so they all had the special.”

“Twenty-six specials. Baaaaaa,” said Billy. “It was like feeding cheap sheep. Oh, Cynthia said that that guy called again.”

“He leave a message?”

“Nope.”

Latisha began clearing the tables. She was finishing up when she saw it. Sitting on a chair under a napkin. For a moment she thought someone had forgotten it, and she tried to remember who had been sitting at the table.

The Shagganappi.

Under the book was a twenty-dollar tip.

Even before Eli opened the package Sifton had brought, he knew it was books. Sifton always brought books. Sifton’s brother-in-law, Arthur, owned a book store in Calgary. From time to time, Arthur would get in an uncorrected proof or an advance reading copy or a free promotional book. Some of them he would keep. The others he passed on to Cliff, who passed them on to Eli.

“Don’t read anything over four pages anymore,” Sifton told Eli. “Here, you used to teach literature and that sort of stuff.”

Over the years, Eli had stocked several shelves in the kitchen with books Sifton had brought by and stored the rest in boxes under the bed.

There were three books this time. Eli hefted each one and decided on the Western. The cover featured a beautiful blond woman, her hands raised in surrender, watching horrified as a fearsome Indian with a lance rode her down. There was a banner stamped across the from that said, “Based on the award-winning movie.”

He stacked the other two books on the floor and settled into the sofa. He paused for a moment, looked around the room to make sure he was alone, and then he opened the book. Even after all this time, Eli could still feel Karen looking over his shoulder.

He had met Karen in his second year at the University of Toronto. After a few weeks of repeated hellos, casual conversations, coffee at Murray’s, and several brisk walks around Queen’s Park, Karen had asked him if he had read any good books lately. Eli had not been prepared for the question. It was the first time a woman had asked him anything like that. Not having an answer he was sure of, he asked her what she was reading, and Karen promptly pulled a copy of Sinclair Ross’s As for Me and My House from her pack.

“It’s a wonderful novel,” she said, and she lowered her voice. “All about a woman who almost dies of boredom on the prairies.”

Eli hefted the book, turned it over once, smiled, and nodded.

“So,” said Karen, “what are you reading?”

At that moment, all Eli could see was the reading list for the Victorian novel class he was taking.

“Just finished Wilkie Collins’s Bleak House.”

“You mean Dickens.”

“Right.”

“What else?”

“Ah . . . The Woman in White by . . .”

“Wilkie Collins.”

“Right.”

“Is this for a class?”

After that, Karen began lending him books. Some of them were interesting. He rather liked the one about the Halifax explosion.

“Penny’s a New Woman,” Karen told him after he had read half the novel. “Don’t worry. She gets her baby back.”

Others were not as interesting. “These are about Indians, Eli. You should read them.”

“Okay.”

“This one is about a kind of mythic character who comes out of the ground. He fights a bear. You’ll like that. This one is by that painter in Vancouver or Victoria who does totem poles. You know, the one with all the animals.”

“I think it’s Vancouver.”

“Here’s one by a Native writer on Indian legends. My father heard her speak once. Said she was very good.”

Eli found a copy of Stephen Leacock’s Arcadian Adventures of the Idle Rich at a used-book store. “You ought to read it,” he told Karen. “It’s funny as hell.”

“A little on the light side,” Karen told him. “Here,” and she gave him a thin volume by Dorothy somebody. “Imagist poetry. It’s a little tough going at first, but worth the effort.”

Most of the books that Karen brought by were about Indians. Histories, autobiographies, memoirs of writers who had gone west or who had lived with a particular tribe, romances of one sort or another. Eli tried to hint that he had no objection to a Western or another New Woman novel, and Karen would laugh and pull another book out of her bag. Magic.

“You have to read this one, Eli. It’s about the Blackfoot.”

What amazed Eli was that there were so many.

Eli settled into the couch and opened the novel. The plot was simple enough. A young woman from the east, who had lived a sheltered life, had come west to join her fiance, only to find that the young man had been killed by Indians. Distraught, she threw herself on his grave, had a good cry, packed her bags, and headed back east. Just beyond the town, where the road wound its way through a narrow pass, the stagecoach was attacked by Indians led by the most notorious Indian in the territory, the Mysterious Warrior. The Indians killed the driver and the guard and one of the passengers, an older man who, perceiving the young woman to be in danger, drew a pistol in her defense. Trembling and alone, the woman, whose name was Annabelle, huddled on the ground waiting for death. But instead of being scalped as she had supposed, the Mysterious Warrior picked her up, put her on his horse beside him, and galloped away.

Eli got up and put a pot of water on. The light was beginning to fade. It was junk and he knew it, but he liked Westerns. It was like . . . eating potato chips. They weren’t good for you, but no one said they were. Beyond the river and through the trees, Eli could see the prairies, and he chuckled as he imagined for a moment galloping through the tall grass on a glistening black horse with Karen flung across the saddle. At first, she lay there, looking up at him with wondering eyes, and then she was laughing and throwing books into the air and shouting, “Read this one, read this one.”

And then the horse stumbled.

Eli poured the water over the tea bag and went back to the couch. He took off his shoes and stretched out, a large pillow behind his shoulders, and opened the book.

Chapter four.

Karen liked the idea that Eli was Indian, and she forgave him, she said, his pedestrian taste in reading, and at the end of the summer, after Karen had come back from an extended vacation in France with her family, she and Eli moved in together.

Actually, Eli moved in with Karen. It had always been obvious that Karen had money, and moving from his fourth-floor studio walk-up into Karen’s brownstone just off Avenue Road reminded him of the distance the two of them had crossed. The flat was simple enough and there was no conspicuous show of wealth, but even Eli could tell that the rugs on the floor were Persians and the paintings and prints on the walls were not the cheap reproductions that the university bookstore sold.

“That one is by A. Y. Jackson. The other is by Tom Thomson. What do you think?”

“They’re great.”

“It’s the light. It makes the land look . . . mystical.”

“They’re great.”

That first night in bed, surrounded by the rugs and the paintings and the books, Karen rolled on top of Eli, straddled him, and held his arms down by the wrists. “You know what you are?” she said, moving against him slowly. “You’re my Mystic Warrior.” And she pushed down hard as she said it.

The Indian’s name was Iron Eyes, and his family had been killed by whites. He was sworn to stop western expansion onto his people’s land and he had spared Annabelle’s life because he wanted her to see that Indians were human beings, too.

“Iron Eyes will not hurt you. You will go free. Tell the chiefs who watch the sun set that Iron Eyes wishes to live in peace.”

But before she could be released, Annabelle had to spend some time in the camp. At first she thought it was the dirtiest place on earth. The tepees smelled, the people smelled, the food smelled, the dogs smelled. The Indian women resented her and the men kept casting lewd glances in her direction. After a few weeks in camp, her dress was in shreds and her hair, which had been delicately piled on her head, was hanging across her face in matted lumps. Worse, she began to smell.

Finally, Iron Eyes’s sister, a beautiful woman named Hist, took Annabelle under her wing, showed her where she could bathe in the river, gave her some buckskin clothes to wear, and combed and braided her hair for her. When Annabelle and Hist came back into the camp that evening, Iron Eyes, who was practicing hand-to-hand combat with some of his men, stopped what he was doing, walked over to where Annabelle and Hist were standing, and took Annabelle’s hands in his.

Eli closed his eyes for a moment and rubbed his stomach. He was going to sleep. Not a good sign. He rolled off the couch and went back to the kitchen. The water was still hot, and he poured himself a second cup. As he came back into the living room, he caught a glimpse of himself in the mirror. Tall, dark, overweight, gray. He smiled at his reflection and tightened his chest muscles for a moment. It didn’t help.

Eli adjusted the pillow, sipped at the hot tea, and opened the book.

Chapter eight.

They had lived together for two years before Eli met Karen’s parents. Karen assured him that her mother and father would love him as much as she did, and Eli was sure that she was wrong.

“Mom and Herb are going to the cottage we have in the Laurentians. You’ll love it.”

Eli knew he was not going to love it, but he smiled and pretended that he was looking forward to the trip.

The cottage was not a cottage at all. It was a four-bedroom house set on a lake. When Eli and Karen arrived, Karen’s father was up on a ladder painting a shutter.

“Go on in,” he shouted. “Maryanne’s waiting for you. I’m Herb. You must be Eli. Nice to meet you.”

Karen’s mother greeted him as if he were a long lost son, and while Karen helped her mother in the kitchen, Eli wandered back outside and watched Herb touch up the corners of the shutter.

“Looks good,” he shouted.

“Thought you Indians had keen eyes.” Herb laughed, and he hung the bucket on the ladder and came down.

Karen had told Eli that they would probably have to have separate rooms. Her parents knew they were living together, but at the cottage they might have to compromise.

And that was another pleasant surprise. Not only did Karen’s father seem like a regular guy, but when Eli took the bags upstairs, he found Karen in a large, airy room with a view of the water, sitting in the middle of a bed.

“Nice. Where do I sleep?”

Karen patted the bed. “Here.”

“What about your parents?”

“They’re progressive. Mom said that this was the twentieth century.”

Eli dropped the bags, climbed on the bed, and rolled Karen on her back.

“But we can’t do anything.”

“What?”

“God, Eli. My parents. What if they heard?”

Herb was an avid reader. The cottage was stuffed with books, most of them mysteries and Westerns.

“Maryanne indulges me. I mean, this stuff is junk, but, well, hell, I love it. You read Westerns?”

“You bet.”

“Those sleazy little cowboy and Indian shoot-’em-ups?”

“Yes,” Eli admitted. “Those are the ones.”

Herb went to a shelf and took down a book. “Here, I’ll bet you haven’t read this one yet.”

That evening, Eli snuggled against Karen and slid his hand under her nightgown. “I really like your parents,” he said, finding her nipple. “They won’t hear us.”

“You’re awful,” she said, and she pulled Eli’s shorts down in one decisive jerk.

Afterward, as Eli was on the verge of sleep, Karen kissed his chest and drew herself in against his body. “So,” she said in a sleepy whisper that seemed to come from miles away, “when do I get to meet your parents?”

Lionel paid for the gas and slid behind the wheel. “I’ve got lots of options,” he said.

“You ran out of options years ago,” said Norma. “The boy can use all the help he can get.”

“She’s just kidding,” said Lionel.

“No, I’m not.”

“I don’t need any help.”

“You should see some of the mistakes he’s made. Would make your teeth fall out.”

Lionel tried to brush Norma off with a wave of his hand.“Doing just fine.”

In the rearview mirror, Lionel could see the old Indians talking to each other, but he couldn’t hear what they were saying.

“Okay,” said the Lone Ranger. “We can do that.”

“Look,” said Lionel, “maybe you should save a whale or something like that.”

“Whales don’t need help,” said Ishmael.

“No,” said Robinson Crusoe. “It’s human beings that need help.”

“So we’re going to help a human being,” said Hawkeye.

“That’s right, grandson,” said the Lone Ranger. “We’re going to help you.”

Lionel opened his mouth just as the Lone Ranger leaned forward and patted his shoulder. “No need to thank us, grandson,” he said. “Where do we start?”

“Well,” said Norma, “you can start with his jacket. The one he has to wear to work is real ugly.”

“Oh, boy,” said the Lone Ranger. “That’s a good start all right.”

“Yes,” said Ishmael. “And we have just the thing.”

Actually, three mistakes wasn’t so bad. Lionel had made a great many good choices. He had chosen Alberta. Nothing wrong with that choice. Even Norma liked her. Lionel could even remember the evening he had decided that Alberta was the woman for him.

It had been a Tuesday evening, four years ago in June. He had come home from work and called his mother to tell her about the big sale Bursum’s had on stereos.

“Don’t need a stereo, honey,” Camelot said. “That RCA you gave us for Christmas still works real good.”

Lionel couldn’t remember giving his parents an RCA. “Is that the one that Grandpa had in his basement?”

“Oh,” said his mother. “Maybe it is.”

“It’s getting kind of old.”

“So are we,” said Camelot. “Latisha was out this weekend. Said she hadn’t seen you for a while.”

“You know the television business.”

“I’m making Hawaiian Curdle Surprise this Friday. You can’t get food like this in town.”

“What’s in it?”

“It’s a surprise. Your father can’t wait to taste it.”

“Alberta’s coming out this weekend. We’ll probably go over to Waterton. Or maybe Banff.”

“Bring her out to the house. She’s a wonderful woman. Wouldn’t mind her for a daughter-in-law. Your father likes her, too.”

“I think we’re going to Banff.”

“If you’re serious about Alberta, you should bring her home so we can meet her.”

“You’ve known her all your life.”

“It’s not the same.”

Actually, it hadn’t been a bad idea, after Lionel thought about it for a while. They could have dinner at his parents’ house. Go for a walk on the prairies in the evening. The next day they could drive to Banff, maybe take in the hot springs. And at the right moment, Lionel could turn the conversation around to relationships and marriage. He had debated getting a ring, but decided there was no need to rush things. After all, Alberta might want to help pick it out. She was an independent woman. She might even insist on sharing the cost. But whatever happened, the dinner at his mother’s would get things off to a good start.

“The jacket is a real good start,” said Ishmael.

Up ahead, Lionel could see the sign for Blossom. He’d drop the old Indians off at the Lodge, take Norma home, go back to his apartment, and watch some television. Alberta might have phoned. She might even be in town. Tomorrow he would be forty, and by that evening, if everything went as planned, he’d have his life back on track.

“He sells televisions,” Norma was telling the Indians. “His birthday is tomorrow. He’s going to be forty, and he sells televisions.”

“Birthday?” said the Lone Ranger. “I guess we got to sing that song.”

“No need,” said Lionel. “It’s not until tomorrow.”

“No,” said the Lone Ranger. “We better start now. No telling what’s going to happen tomorrow.”

The turnoff for Blossom was just ahead. Lionel pressed down hard on the accelerator.

* * *

Things got off to a bad start. Alberta was happy enough to eat at his parents’ house, but the minute Lionel stepped in the door, his father started in.

“You still working at that toilet store?”

“Television store.”

“Don’t see much of you.”

“It’s long hours, but it pays good.”

“Don’t see much of you.”

The Hawaiian Curdle Surprise was a big surprise. Lionel didn’t know exactly what was in it, but he was able to identify the pineapple and the fish.

“It’s delicious,” Alberta told his mother.

“I got the recipe out of the cookbook on Hawaiian cuisine that Harley gave me for Christmas. You’re supposed to use octopus for the stock, but where are you going to find octopus around here?”

“It’s really good.”

Lionel fished around in the stew and found another piece of pineapple. “Bill’s Fish Market might have octopus.”

“Moose works just as well,” said his mother.

By the time they had finished dinner, the wind had come up. Lionel could hear the dirt hitting the windows and the sides of the house.

“Harley and I are going for a walk,” his mother said, looking at her husband. “Why don’t you two just stay here and relax.”

“A walk?” his father said.

“We always go for a walk after dinner.”

“In this wind?”

“It’s okay, Mom,” said Lionel.

“No,” said Alberta, “it sounds like a great idea. Why don’t we all go.”

“In this wind?” said Lionel.

By the time Lionel got to the Lodge, Norma and the Indians had sung four choruses of “Happy Birthday.” Lionel had driven as fast as he could, run yellow lights, cut off corners, passed cars on two-lane streets. Whatever else the old Indians were, they weren’t singers. All the way through town, their voices had twisted and turned, sounding for all the world like cats trying to get out of a tin can.

“Boy,” said the Lone Ranger, “that was some good singing. That was a good way to start. It made me feel good all over.”

“You sing real good,” said Norma. “After you fix the world, maybe you want to come out and visit.”

“That would be good,” said the Lone Ranger.

“I’m going to be setting up my lodge tomorrow.”

“That’s a good idea,” said Ishmael. “We should do that.”

“Will our grandson be there?” said Hawkeye.

“What about it, Lionel?” And Norma stabbed him in the ribs again.

“Here’s the Lodge,” said Lionel, pulling under the canopy at the front door, jumping out, and opening the back door. “Sure was nice to meet you.”

“You got a favorite color?” asked Ishmael.

“A color that makes you feel good?” said Robinson Crusoe.

“I like red, myself,” said Hawkeye.

Lionel opened the front door of the Lodge for the Indians.“You have a safe trip. Maybe we’ll run into each other again sometime.”

“Tomorrow,” said the Lone Ranger. And the Indians walked past Lionel single file into the lobby of the hotel.

“Tomorrow,” said Lionel after they all got back from the walk and his parents had gone to bed, “I thought we could go to Banff.” There were pieces of grit in Lionel’s hair and in his nose. As he talked, he casually tried to scoop his ear out. “We could go to the hot springs or walk around or something. Anything you want to do.” Lionel put his hand across the back of the sofa, the fingers almost touching Alberta’s shoulder.

“Your parents are nice.”

“Nobody cooks like Mom.”

“That’s mean. Your mother’s very adventurous.”

“No, I mean it. She’s a great cook.”

Lionel moved his hand so that he could rub Alberta’s shoulder with one finger. “So, tomorrow we drive to Banff. Stay the night.” Lionel leaned forward as if he was stretching and moved closer. “It’ll give us a chance to talk.”

By the time Lionel got up the next morning, his mother and father were sitting at the kitchen table drinking coffee.

“Thought you wanted to get an early start,” his mother said.

“No rush.”

“Tell Alberta when she uses the shower to watch the hot water handle. Harley hasn’t fixed it yet.”

“She like waffles?” asked Lionel’s father. “I’m making waffles today. Belgian waffles. Camelot got this great recipe from Latisha.”

“She had to go back to Calgary.”

“Alberta?”

“She forgot about a meeting.”

“Today’s Saturday, son.”

Camelot frowned at her husband. “You two have a fight?”

“Nope.”

“That’s too bad, honey. Banff is beautiful this time of year. And romantic, too.”

Lionel’s father got the waffle iron down and plugged it in.“You want some waffles?”

“Sure.”

“Could use a hand around the house.”

“Probably should get back,” said Lionel, cutting a hunk of butter off the block. “Bursum’s getting a big shipment today. I can always use the money.”

“It’s not much. Just a little plumbing and a hand with the front porch.”

“We got any maple syrup?”

* * *

Lionel unlocked the door to his apartment. Inside, the air was cool, the room dark.

The old Indians.

Lionel could still hear their singsong voices in his head. Happy birthday. Happy birthday, as if something was coming apart, as if he had unknowingly made yet another mistake.

Lionel squeezed past the Formica table, fumbled his way into the easy chair, and found the remote control without ever having to turn on the lights.

By the time Alberta arrived in Blossom, it was too late to drive out to the reserve. Another hour over two-lane roads in the dark was not the way she wanted to finish her evening. As she followed the off ramp, Alberta could see the big square sign for the Blossom Lodge. The only parking spot was next to an old red car that was tilted to the side at a funny angle. When she got out, she saw that one of its tires was flat. Even more annoying, there was a small lake around the car, and Alberta had to walk all the way out to the curb in order to get back to the lobby.

“I’d like a room for the night.”

“Mr. and Mrs.?”

“No, a room for one.”

The desk clerk looked over his glasses at Alberta.

“As I recall, you have a university discount,” she continued.

“And does the lady work at a university?”

Alberta pulled out her university identification card and her driver’s license.

The desk clerk smiled and handed her cards back to her.“You can’t always tell by looking,” he said.

“How true it is,” said Alberta. “I could have been a corporate executive.”

* * *

The receptionist at the clinic had been almost as unctuous.

Option four.

Artificial insemination.

When Alberta was small, she had seen cows artificially inseminated. There was nothing wrong with it, she guessed, for cows, but even there it had seemed . . . mechanical. The thought of crawling up on a table and putting her behind in the air while some doctor fiddled with a hose made her furious. She wasn’t even sure that that was how they did it with humans, reasoned that it was not. But she remained skeptical and unconvinced, even by the articles that she was able to find on the subject, which dwelt, for the most part, on the successes and the failures and not the process itself. All that changed after the night she had stood across the street from the Shagganappi Lounge and watched the lights change.

But having made the decision, Alberta discovered she had no exact idea how to go about it. So one Saturday, greatly comforted by the fact that she could do the preliminary gathering of information by phone, Alberta sat down with the Yellow Pages and looked up artificial insemination.

Cows. Cows.

Horses.

Cows. Horses.

Cows. Cows.

“Does the lady have a major credit card?”

Alberta put her card on the desk.

“Does the lady have a car?”

“The blue Nissan parked next to the red thing.”

“And does the lady require any help with her bags?”

Alberta smiled and leaned forward on the counter.

By the time she got to her room, Alberta was sorry she had been so rude. At least the room was pleasant. Alberta flopped down on the queen-size bed, stacked the pillows under her head, let her shoes drop off her feet, picked up the remote control, and aimed it at the blank screen. Then she got up, went to the bathroom, and flossed her teeth.

The next thing Alberta did was to call the general number for the Calgary hospital.

“Information.”

“Yes. Could you transfer me to the Artificial Insemination Department.”

The woman on the other end of the phone didn’t say anything for a moment, and Alberta hoped she was running her finger down the directory, looking in the A’s.

“Please hold,” said the woman.

“Gynecology.”

After that, Alberta got Obstetrics, and after that, Pediatrics. And after that, the main switchboard.

“Information.”

“Ah . . . Artificial Insemination?”

“Please hold.”

“Gynecology.”

But the call hadn’t been a total waste of time. As she hung up the phone, Alberta realized that the best place to start was probably with her own gynecologist. Dr. Mary Takai was a short Japanese woman, and while they were not exactly friends, they had, over the years, developed a professional relationship, and more important, Alberta felt comfortable talking with her.

“So that’s the situation,” Alberta said after she had explained her dilemma to Mary.

“Ah,” said Dr. Takai.

“Given the options, I think that artificial insemination would be the best.”

“Let me make some calls.”

Alberta read the newspaper while Mary called Edmonton and several clinics in Calgary. “Okay,” she said, “I have good news and I have bad news.”

“Bad news?”

“Most of the clinics won’t take single women. I think it’s a question of morals.”

“Morals?”

“One clinic will take single women. But you have to get a letter from me testifying to your physical health, your mental health, and your morals.”

“Morals?”

“In the first instance, they figure that if you’re not married, you’re not trying. In the second instance, they figure that if you’re not married but trying hard, you’re not the kind of person they want to associate with.”

“I just want a child. I don’t want a husband.”

“The Bennett Clinic in Edmonton.” Mary wrote down the address and the phone number.

“Edmonton? Isn’t there something in Calgary?”

“Foothills isn’t taking any new patients. I’ll write the letter today and you should hear from them in about six to eight months.”

“Six to eight months?”

Mary smiled and crossed her legs. “It takes most couples longer than that just to get pregnant.”

Alberta lay on the bed and touched the remote control. An old Western. Alberta changed to the next channel. Nothing. The next channel. Nothing. And the next. Before she knew it, she was back to the Western.

What men saw in these kinds of movies was beyond her. This one featured a white woman who was being held captive by Indians. Alberta watched the screen and thought about what she should get Lionel for his birthday. A book was the obvious answer, but Lionel, so far as she knew, didn’t read. He could use a new jacket. That horrible gold thing that Bill Bursum made him wear was hideous enough in the context of the store, but Lionel insisted on wearing it on dates. She could always call Latisha in the morning, maybe even drop in for breakfast, and see if she had any ideas.

It was nine months before Alberta heard anything from the Bennett Clinic, and what she got was a form letter welcoming her interest in the services of the Bennett Clinic, a twenty-four-page form to fill out, and a chart on which she was to plot her body temperature and her periods for the next four months.

The woman who answered the phone was very friendly.

“Hi,” said Alberta. “I just got a letter from your clinic—”

“And you’re wondering why you have to wait another four months to get this thing rolling.”

“Ah . . . well, yes.”

“Everybody wants to know that. It’s a real pain, isn’t it.”

“Well, inconvenient, I guess.”

“I know just how you feel. You’re probably regular as clockwork, eh?”

“Well, yes, I am. But I guess I don’t mind filling in the form.”

“If I got something like that, I’d be tempted to toss it out and forget the whole thing.”

“No, no. I don’t mind filling it out at all.”

By the time Alberta got off the phone, the sweat was pouring down the sides of her breasts. That evening, she filled in all the questions.

Do you have frequent intercourse?

Are your periods painful?

Have you ever taken drugs?

Is there any mental illness in your family?

And later that month, when she started spotting, Alberta taped the chart to the wall and put a thermometer next to her bed.

The movie had run on ahead without her. Now the white woman was in love with the Indian chief and the soldiers were coming to rescue her. Just the sort of thing that Lionel and Charlie would like. As Alberta watched, the chief, a tall man with a muscular chest and a large nose, sent the woman back to the fort and prepared to ambush the soldiers at the river.

Two months after Alberta sent in the questionnaire and the chart, another woman from the clinic called to tell her she was a blue priority patient and that they would call her for an interview as soon as they had an opening.

“Interview?”

“That’s right. All of our patients have to see one of our staff psychologists. It’s a rule.”

“Blue priority?”

“It’s based on age. Younger women get higher priority. You can see why.”

“I’m not sure—”

“And when you get the interview, make sure your husband comes with you. We can’t begin the interview process unless both the husband and the wife are here.”

“I’m not married.”

“A lot of people make that mistake.”

“I’m sure.”

“The women come and the men stay home.”

“I don’t have a husband.”

“And then we have to start all over again.”

Alberta readjusted the pillows and pulled the blankets around her shoulders. Lionel’s birthday. What Lionel really needed, Alberta concluded as she fiddled with the remote control under the covers, was some help with his life. It had sort of drifted away from him. Lionel wasn’t pushy and slick like Charlie. He was sincere and dull. And when she thought about it, Alberta wasn’t sure that there was anything in between. Maybe all men were like that, Charlies and Lionels. Or worse. Maybe, in the end, they all turned into Amoses, standing in the dark, angry, their pants down around their ankles.

Charlie couldn’t sleep. He rolled around in bed for an hour, rearranging the pillows, adjusting the blankets. Finally he sat up and turned on the lamp. There were color bars on channels two, four, and eleven, static on channel twenty-eight, and a Western on twenty-six.

Charlie shoved all the pillows behind his back so he could see the screen without having to sit up. A Western. The long flight down to save Alberta from herself. The mix-up with the car. Insomnia. And now a Western.

Lillian was three months pregnant when Portland packed everything in a pickup, and they came home from Hollywood. They stayed at Lillian’s mother’s place until after Charlie was born, and Portland went to work for the band council. Those were good years. Charlie and his cousins ruled the prairies, and if Portland missed the glamour of Hollywood, he didn’t say. He stayed busy organizing tours, doing slide shows, writing articles for the travel magazines, and on the weekends he showed his son and the rest of the kids how to mount a horse without a saddle, how to ride bareback using just the mane and your hands, how to drop to the side of the horse so you couldn’t be seen. How to fall off.

Charlie was fifteen when his mother got sick. He could remember her being sick. The trips to the hospital, the jars of pills, the machine next to his mother’s bed that sounded as though it were breathing. But by the time he realized just how sick she was, she was dead.

A week after they buried Lillian, Portland stopped going to work.

At first, he simply stayed at the house and fixed things—the water pump, the fence, the door on the barn. Then he stopped fixing things and began to watch television. He would sit in the chair and flip through the channels, never watching any program for very long. Except for the Westerns.

“That one was on last week, Dad.”

“I played a small part in that movie, but they cut it out.”

“What else is on?”

“That’s C. B. Cologne, Charlie. That Italian friend of mine I told you about. He got most of the good Indian parts in those days.”

“What else is on?”

“You know what the C. B. stands for? You’ll laugh. Crystal Ball. It was a perfume his mother was crazy about.”

One afternoon, Charlie came home and found his father packing the pickup. Charlie stood at the gate and watched his father stuff a large suitcase into the camper.

“If you could go anywhere in the world,” his father said, looking up in the sky, “where would you want to go?”

“What happens if I guess right?”

“Go ahead.” Portland stood by the pickup, his hands stuck in the back pockets of his jeans. He had on his good boots. His hair was combed, and he had shaved. “Where would you want to go?”

Charlie wasn’t sure he wanted to go anywhere, but as he looked at his father standing there, shifting his weight back and forth, smiling, Charlie knew the answer his father wanted to hear.

“Anywhere in the whole world,” his father said.

“Hollywood?” said Charlie.

Charlie adjusted one of the pillows. He was sure he had seen the Western before. But after watching so many of them with his father, they all just ran together. There was a white woman in this one and an Indian chief and soldiers, and they ran around and shot at each other. Charlie recognized John Wayne, and one of the character actors was a man his father had known. The plot was boring, the acting dull, and Charlie was not any sleepier than before.

Lionel and Alberta. Lionel was his cousin, but even with the benefit of kinship, and allowing that women saw things in men that other men could not, Charlie was still at a loss to understand why Alberta would want to be seen with Lionel.

Charlie was better looking. It wasn’t even close. Charlie had the better job, the better education. He made more money. Drove a better car. Better clothes. Better, better, better. Charlie rolled up on his side and turned the sound off. Damn. Damn, damn, damn.

All the way down through Montana and Idaho, Oregon and northern California, Portland retold the story about how he and Lillian had made their way to Los Angeles and into the movies. Sally Jo Weyha, Frankie Drake, Polly Hantos, Sammy Hearne, Johnny Cabot, Henry Cortez, C. B. Cologne, Barry Zannos, friends and rivals, a tight community of Mexicans, Italians, Greeks, along with a few Indians, some Asians, and whites, all waiting in the shadows of the major studios, working as extras, fighting for bit parts in Westerns, playing Indians again and again and again.

They stopped at a service station just outside Los Angeles. Portland slipped into the phone booth, dropped a dime in the slot, and dialed a number. Charlie had never seen so many cars, so much traffic. As they had come farther south, the traffic had increased, until now it was a steady flow, like a stream or a large river.

“Charlie,” his father shouted, “you got a quarter?” Portland stood just outside the booth, the phone dangling from his hand. “It costs a quarter now. Would you believe it? When me and your mother were here, it was a dime.”

“There sure are a lot of cars.”

“You’re going to love it here, Charlie. With your looks, you may even become a bigger star than me.”

Charlie could hear the big trucks as they hissed across the overpass in the dark. There was a green highway sign in the distance, but it was too far away to read. Above the freeway lights and the headlights of the traffic pouring south, the sky was yellow and purple.

“Sky looks kinda funny, Dad.”

“It’ll be tough at first, but once we get rolling, nothing’s going to stop us.”

Portland winked and closed the door and the booth lit up. Charlie leaned against the truck and watched his father dial the number. There were no stars in the sky like home, and Charlie guessed it was because there were high clouds. Portland was talking to someone now, gesturing, smiling, laughing, rocking his shoulders backward and forward.

By the time Portland finished his call, Charlie had decided he wanted to go home and he told his father so.

“When are we going to go home?”

“We just got here. You’re a little homesick right now, but you’ll get over it.”

“But if I want to go home, can we?”

“Sure,” his father said. “You just say the word.” And Portland started the truck, pulled onto the freeway, and they headed south.

That was it.

Charlie sat up in bed. His father had been right all along. Lionel was helpless. That’s what Alberta saw in him. Helplessness. It was, Charlie admitted, the one area where Lionel had him beat. Lionel was helpless. Charlie was self-sufficient. Being better was suddenly worse.

Lionel was overweight, and Alberta felt sorry for him. Lionel had a lousy job, and Alberta felt sorry for him. Lionel had a mediocre education, barely earned minimum wage, owned a twelve-year-old car, and had to wear a gold blazer. And Alberta felt sorry for him. Damn. Damn, damn, damn.

C. B. Cologne and his wife, Isabella, insisted that Charlie and Portland stay in their basement.

“Rents are hell,” C. B. told Portland. “Things have changed. The whole place has gone to shit. Remember how it was?”

“It was the best.”

“Bet your sweet ass it was. You remember Frankie Drake?”

“Sure.”

“He died.”

“Shit!”

“Remember Henry Cortez? He played Montezuma in that little classic that what’s-his-name directed.”

“Me and Henry were like that.”

“Dead, too.”

Isabella went to bed at two. Charlie curled up on the couch and listened to his father and C. B. catch up on the years.

“I’m sorry as hell to hear about Lillian. Me and Isabella loved her, you know. Christ, you should have called. If I’d known, we’d of come up for the funeral.”

“I need to get some work, C. B. Get back in the swing. Who’s doing the Westerns these days?”

“Christ, Portland, things have changed. Not like the old days. Unions, rules, more asses to kiss. Who can predict it. It ain’t like the old days at all. Hell, you don’t even have to act anymore.”

Act helpless. And Lionel didn’t have to act. Charlie wasn’t sure he could act as helpless as Lionel looked. Of course, there was the Pinto.

That was pretty helpless. Just seeing Charlie in that wreck should be enough to sweep Alberta off her feet.

Charlie laughed at the idea. In the old days, a man would bring in horses or perform brave deeds to impress the woman he loved. Now courtship had been reduced to displays of incompetence and junk cars.

The next morning, Portland and Charlie and C. B. piled into C. B.’s Plymouth and drove to the studio, and Portland spent the day meeting people, shaking hands, talking about the old days. C. B. showed Charlie around the different lots where movies were being shot.

“Hey, you know your father was the best. I mean it. Better than even Sammy Hearne.”

“What are they doing over there?”

“Nobody played an Indian like Portland. I mean, he is Indian, but that’s different. Just because you are an Indian doesn’t mean that you can act like an Indian for the movies.”

“Is that Jeff Chandler?”

“It’s expensive down here now. You know what I mean? Me and Isabella do okay. But, hey, coffee costs a buck a cup. Who’d have guessed? What the hell are you supposed to do with that?”

C. B. and Portland spent the next night telling the same stories they had told the night before.

“You used to run the extras, C. B. What happened?”

“Hey, what can I say. They brought in some accountant type. A bean counter. He’s the big cheese’s nephew. And now they got computers.”

“I need work, C. B. Couple more months, Charlie has to be back in school. We got to find our own place.”

“Hey, maybe Remmington’s is hiring.”

“Oh, God!”

“Hey, hey, hey. Better than Four Corners.”

The next day, they were at the studio again. The day after it was the same. Everyone remembered Portland. And everyone was glad to see Portland, all smiles and laughter. Charlie had never seen so many happy people in his life.

Bill Bursum squeezed past the packing crates, turned on the light, unlocked the back door, and let Minnie out.

“Good night, Mr. Bursum.”

“Good night, Minnie,” said Bursum.

“Ms. Smith, Bill,” said Minnie.

“Whatever,” said Bursum, smiling. “My mother trained me.”

“Try again,” said Minnie.

“Good night,” said Bursum.

“Good night,” said Minnie.

Mrs., Miss, Ms. Bursum locked the door behind her. He just couldn’t keep everything straight. At first it had been fun. Ms. For God’s sake, it sounded like a buzz saw warming up. He had tried to keep up, but after a while it became annoying.

Indians were the same way. How many years had that old fart held up the dam? Some legal technicality. And the lake. A perfectly good piece of lakefront property going to waste.

And you couldn’t call them Indians. You had to remember their tribe, as if that made any difference, and when some smart college professor did come up with a really good name like Amerindian, the Indians didn’t like it. Even Lionel and Charlie could get testy every so often, and they weren’t really Indians anymore.

The world kept changing and you had to change with it. Otherwise you could go crazy like that nut in Montreal. One bad apple and the next thing you know, everyone is screaming that the whole barrel is full of worms.

Make money. The only effective way to keep from going insane in a changing world was to try to make money.

Bursum walked back to his office and ran the totals. Not a bad day. Not a good day. He opened a drawer and pulled out a catalogue. How he wished he had been in on the video market from the beginning. He could have predicted the popularity of old movies. Ten years ago, all the movies that came through his store were new movies. Now more than half were old movies, made before video had even been invented. A gold mine.

Better yet, Bursum enjoyed old movies more than he liked the new videos, in which most of the action centered around weird machines and robots with rifles. Romance, that’s what the new movies were missing. And the best romances were Westerns.

Bursum wandered through the displays of televisions, stereos, VCRs, speakers. Everything said money. It was a wonderful feeling. Bursum slipped the tape into the VCR and pushed a button. He pulled up a chair and sat down in front of The Map.

The screens glowed and flashed silver. One by one they came to full color. Bursum rocked back and forth in the chair, watching one screen and then another. Then taking in the panorama.

The Mysterious Warrior. The best Western of them all. John Wayne, Richard Widmark, Maureen O’Hara. All the biggies. He had seen the movie twenty times, knew the plot by heart. Even knew some of the lines.

“Yes!” Bursum whispered as the movie opened with a shot across Monument Valley, and he clutched his hands in his lap as if he was praying.

When Latisha got home, Christian was cooking something on the stove. Benjamin and Elizabeth were watching him.

“What’s cooking?”

“Ssh!” Benjamin whispered, his hands clutched in his lap.“If you talk too loud, the food will burn.”

“Yep!” said Elizabeth.

Christian pulled one side of his mouth up and looked at Benjamin. “It’s just that they wouldn’t stop talking. Where have you been?”

“Had to work late.”

“You own the place.”

“That’s why I had to work late.”

Christian stirred the pot with the yellow spatula. “Maybe we should come down to the restaurant to eat.”

“What are you cooking, honey?”

“Spaghetti.”

“You cooked spaghetti last night.”

“I’ve cooked it every day this week.”

“You should probably use a wooden spoon to stir it.”

“They’re all dirty.”

“Well, you could wash them.”

Christian stayed over the pot with his back to his mother. “I do everything already.”

Latisha sighed. So that’s the kind of evening it was going to be.

“It’s okay, Mom,” said Benjamin, rocking against his chair.“Elizabeth likes spaghetti.”

“Yep,” said Elizabeth.

She had stayed with George for nine years. That was how long it took to get the matter settled in her mind. Christian had been an only child for years before they decided that a second child would be good for Christian and would probably save their marriage. Benjamin and Elizabeth were two years apart. Elizabeth had been a surprise. The divorce was not.

At first, Latisha didn’t believe it. It was one thing to know that George was worthless and quite another to act on it. It wasn’t that George didn’t have a job. He had had lots of jobs. Changed them four or five times a year. Each one was going to be the one.

“You got to move with the times, Country,” George told her.

“Nothing wrong with a steady job. My brother does okay.”

“Things that stand still, die.”

And it wasn’t the affairs, or as George called them, “lapses in judgment.” In fact, she had grown tired of hearing about George’s “lapses,” had grown tired of forgiving George.

That was it. In the end, Latisha had just gotten bored. George was dull and he was stupid, bone-deep stupid, more stupid than Latisha could ever have guessed whites could be stupid.

“Quite a few men are like that, honey,” Camelot told her daughter. “You ought to read the articles in Cosmopolitan.”

So far as Latisha could tell, George’s twinkling eyes, his wonderful smile, and his sparkling teeth were all painted on a balloon.

“I’m sorry I’m late, honey.” Latisha gave Christian a hug. “You know how the place gets.”

“I want a hug,” said Benjamin.

“Me,” said Elizabeth.

Christian spooned the spaghetti into three plates. It slid out of the pan with remarkable speed, bright red and quivering. “You want some, Mom?”

Latisha looked at the wad of noodles on the plate. Under the strands of spaghetti and the oily sauce were brown chunks. “What’s in the spaghetti, honey?”

“Hot dogs,” said Christian.

“Oh, God.”

“Oh, Gawd,” said Elizabeth.

“That’s a bad word,” said Benjamin. “You’re going to have to have time out.”

“No time out,” Elizabeth shouted.

“How about it?” said Christian. “I don’t want to stand here all night.”

“No,” said Latisha. “I’m not really hungry.”

Elizabeth was sucking on her cup. “Yook, Mommy, yook,” and she held it up. The liquid inside was brown.

“Christian, what’s Elizabeth drinking?”

“Coke and milk.”

“What?”

Christian tossed the spatula into the sink. It landed in a bowl of water and flipped specks of spaghetti sauce on the window. “It’s the same thing as a milk shake.”

“Look, guys,” Latisha said, rubbing her forehead, “I could use some help around here, you know.”

Christian ran his fork through the spaghetti. “What do you think this is?”

One day George walked into the restaurant wearing a fringed leather jacket. “What do you think?”

Latisha had looked and nodded and gone back to work. George stood there in the middle of the restaurant as if someone had turned him off.

“There’s a hat and gloves that go with it,” he said. “They belonged to one of my relatives. Now they belong to me.”

“Nice jacket,” Billy had told him.

“Damn right it is,” said George.

“Thought you just liked new things,” said Latisha, wiping down a table.

“It’s history,” said George, rolling his shoulders in the jacket.“Most old things are worthless. This is history.”

“Guess you got to know which is which.”

“There’s a hat and gloves that go with it.”

That night when Latisha got home, George was sitting in front of the television with Christian curled up on his lap. He still had on the jacket. Latisha hadn’t even seen it coming. George turned the television off, got out of the chair as if he was getting up to get a cup of coffee, grabbed Latisha by her dress, and slammed her against the wall. And before she realized what was happening, he was hitting her as hard as he could, beating her until she fell.

“Don’t you ever do that again,” he kept shouting, timing the words to the blows. “Don’t you ever do that again.”

He stood over Latisha for a long time, breathing, catching his breath, his feet wide apart, his knees locked. And then he sat down in the chair and turned the television back on.

Latisha could feel blood running from her nose, but she stayed there on the floor. She could hear Christian sobbing, could see her son’s thin body shaking as George took the boy in his arms to comfort him.

Benjamin and Elizabeth fell asleep on the couch, curled up against each other. Christian slouched over a pillow, his feet leaning against the wall.

“Mom, is this the one where the cavalry comes over the hill and kills the Indians?”

“Probably.”

“How come the Indians always get killed?”

“It’s just a movie.”

“But what if they won?”

“Well,” Latisha said, watching her son rub his dirty socks up and down the wall, “if the Indians won, it probably wouldn’t be a Western.”

On the screen, the chief and his men thundered across the river, yelling as they came. On the other side of the river, John Wayne stood up and waved his pistol over his head. He was wearing a leather jacket with fringe on it and a wide-brimmed hat. He stood in the sand, his feet set, challenging, ready. His gloves were stuck in his gun belt. On the ridge behind the Indians, a troop of cavalry appeared.

Christian took off one of his socks, smelled it, and threw it in the corner. “Not much point in watching it then.”

“Oh, oh,” says Coyote, “I don’t want to watch. Changing Woman is stuck on the island by herself. Is that the end of the story?”

“Goodness, no,” I says. “This story is just beginning. We’re just getting started.”

Changing Woman is on that beautiful island by herself for a long time.

So.

One day she is watching the ocean and she sees a ship. That ship sails right to where Changing Woman is standing.

Hello, shouts a voice. Have you seen a white whale?

There was a white canoe here a while ago, Changing Woman shouts back.

Canoe? shouts the voice. Say, are you an able-bodied seaman?

Not exactly, says Changing Woman.

Close enough, says the voice. Come aboard.

Okay, says Changing Woman. And that one swims out to the ship.

I’m Ahab, says a short little man with a wooden leg, and this is my ship the Pequod.

Here says a nice-looking man with a grim mouth, and he hands Changing Woman a towel. What’s your name?

Changing Woman, says Changing Woman.

Call me Ishmael, says the young man. What’s your favorite month?

They’re all fine, says Changing Woman.

Oh dear, says the young man, looking through a book. Let’s try again. What’s your name?

Changing Woman.

That just won’t do either, says the young man, and he quickly thumbs through the book again. Here, he says, poking a page with his finger. Queequeg. I’ll call you Queequeg. This book has a Queequeg in it, and this story is supposed to have a Queequeg in it, but I’ve looked all over the ship and there aren’t any Queequegs. I hope you don’t mind.

Ishmael is a nice name, says Changing Woman.

But we already have an Ishmael, says Ishmael. And we do so need a Queequeg.

Oh, okay, says Changing Woman.

“My favorite month is April,” says Coyote.

“That’s nice,” I says.

“I also like July,” says Coyote.

“We can’t hear what’s happening if you keep talking,” I says.

“I don’t care much for November,” says Coyote.

“Forget November,” I says. “Pay attention.”

Pay attention, says Ahab. Keep watching for whales.

Why does he want a whale? says Changing Woman.

This is a whaling ship, says Ishmael.

Whaleswhaleswhaleswhalesbianswhalesbianswhaleswhales! shouts Ahab, and everybody grabs their spears and knives and juicers and chain saws and blenders and axes and they all leap into little wooden boats and chase whales.

And.

When they catch the whales.

They kill them.

This is crazy, says Changing Woman. Why are you killing all these whales?

Oil. Perfume, too. There’s a big market in dog food, says Ahab. This is a Christian world, you know. We only kill things that are useful or things we don’t like.

“He doesn’t mean Coyotes?” says Coyote.

“I suspect that he does,” I says.

“But Coyotes are very useful,” says Coyote.

“Maybe you should explain that to him,” I says.

“Just around the eyes,” says Coyote, “he looks like that GOD guy.”

We’re looking for the white whale, Ahab tells his men. Keep looking.

So Ahab’s men look at the ocean and they see something and that something is a whale.

Blackwhaleblackwhaleblackwhalesbianblackwhalesbianblackwhale, they all shout.

Black whale? yells Ahab. You mean white whale, don’t you? Moby-Dick, the great male white whale?

That’s not a white whale, says Changing Woman. That’s a female whale and she’s black.

Nonsense, says Ahab. It’s Moby-Dick, the great white whale.

You’re mistaken, says Changing Woman, I believe that is Moby-Jane, the Great Black Whale.

“She means Moby-Dick,” says Coyote. “I read the book. It’s Moby-Dick, the great white whale who destroys the Pequod.”

“You haven’t been reading your history,” I tell Coyote. “It’s English colonists who destroy the Pequots.”

“But there isn’t any Moby-Jane.”

“Sure there is,” I says. “Just look out over there. What do you see?”

“Well . . . I’ll be,” says Coyote.

* * *

It’s Moby-Dick, Ahab tells his crew, the great white whale.

Begging your pardon, says one of the crew. But isn’t that whale black?

Throw that man overboard, says Ahab.

Begging your pardon again, says another one of the crew. But isn’t that whale female?

Throw that man overboard, too, says Ahab.

“Look out! Look out!” shouts Coyote. “It’s Moby-Jane, the Great Black Whale. Run for your lives.”

“That wasn’t very nice,” I says. “Now look what you’ve done.”

“Hee-hee, hee-hee,” says Coyote.

Moby-Jane! the crew yells. The Great Black Whale!

Throw everybody overboard, shouts Ahab.

Call me Ishmael, says Ishmael, and all the crew jumps into the boats and rows away.

This could be a problem, says Ahab.

That is a very beautiful whale, says Changing Woman, but I don’t think she looks very happy.

Happy, happy, there you go again, says Ahab. Grab that harpoon and make yourself useful.

But Changing Woman walks to the side of the ship and dives into the water.

Hello, says Changing Woman. It’s a good day for a swim.

Yes, it is, says Moby-Jane. If you’ll excuse me, I have a little matter to take care of and then I’ll be back.

And Moby-Jane swims over to the ship and punches a large hole in its bottom.

There, says Moby-Jane. That should take care of that.

That was very clever of you, says Changing Woman as she watches the ship sink. What happens to Ahab?

We do this every year, says Moby-Jane. He’ll be back. He always comes back.

How curious, says Changing Woman.

Where are you going? says Moby-Jane.

Someplace warm, I think, says Changing Woman.

Come on, says Moby-Jane. I know just the place.

“I know the place she is talking about,” says Coyote. “Italy.”

“No,” I says, “that’s not the place.”

“Hawaii?” says Coyote.

“Wrong again,” I says.

“Tahiti? Australia? The south of France? Prince Edward Island?” says Coyote.

“Not even close,” I says.

“Hmmmm,” says Coyote. “How disappointing.”

Eli opened the book and closed his eyes. He didn’t have to read the pages to know what was going to happen. Iron Eyes and Annabelle would fall madly in love. There would be a conflict of some sort between the whites and the Indians. And Iron Eyes would be forced to choose between Annabelle and his people. In the end, he would choose his people, because it was the noble thing to do and because Western writers seldom let Indians sleep with whites. Iron Eyes would send Annabelle back to the fort and then go to fight the soldiers. He’d be killed, of course, and the novel would conclude on a happy note of some sort. Perhaps Annabelle would find that her fiancé had not been killed after all or she would fall into the arms of a handsome army lieutenant.

Chapter ten.

Eli opened one of his eyes. Then again, this one might be different.

Eli avoided the question of Karen’s meeting his mother as long as he could. He wasn’t sure why he was reluctant to take Karen with him back to the reserve, but he knew in his heart it was a bad idea.

At first, he didn’t say anything, hoping that Karen would forget about it.

“When was the last time you were home?”

“Few years ago.”

“You ever phone?”

Karen never came out and said that they should go to Alberta. She just let Eli know that she hadn’t forgotten. Then one morning, as Eli was getting ready to go to class, Karen poked her head out of the shower.

“When am I going to meet your family?”

Eli waved at her and smiled.

“I mean,” said Karen, leaning out and dripping water on the floor, “your mother’s not an Indian or something like that, is she?”

Eli laughed and pulled a towel off the rack.

“Come on,” Karen said, running her hands over her soapy breasts. “I showed you mine. You’ve got to show me yours.”

Eli should have kept his eyes closed.

Chapter fourteen.

Iron Eyes and Annabelle were standing on the bank of a beautiful river. It was evening, and in the morning, Iron Eyes was going out with his men to fight the soldiers.

“It’s such a beautiful evening,” said Annabelle, brushing a wisp of hair from her glistening cheeks. “I don’t want to leave,” she said, trembling. “I don’t want to leave this land. I don’t want to leave you.”

Eli shifted his body on the sofa. His left leg was going to sleep.

“Tomorrow is a good day to die,” said Iron Eyes, his arms folded across his chest, etc., etc., etc.

Eli flipped ahead, trying to outdistance the “glistenings” and the “tremblings” and the “good-day-to-dyings.”

Flip, flip, flip.

In April, Eli wrote his mother, suggesting that he might come out to Alberta in early July, that there was someone special he wanted her to meet. It was a long letter, eight pages to be exact, and the information on coming out and on Karen was buried in the middle.

At the end of May, he got a letter back from Norma that simply said, “We’ll be at the Sun Dance, your sister, Norma.”

“The Sun Dance!” said Karen. “I didn’t even know you guys still practiced that. Is it true?”

“I guess.”

“That’s really nice of your sister. I mean, she doesn’t even know me, and she invites us to the Sun Dance.”

Eli agreed that it was nice of his sister.

“Can whites go? I mean, aren’t some of those ceremonies closed?”

“No, you can go. It’s no problem.”

“I’ll borrow my father’s camera.”

“You can’t take a camera.”

“Really? Well, I guess that makes sense.”

Karen’s father paid for the flight to Alberta. Said it would do them good to get away from the city, and they could think of it as a prehoneymoon.

“Isn’t Herb progressive?”

At the Calgary airport they rented a car, a four-door De Soto, and drove the three hundred kilometers to the reserve without stopping. Eli liked being behind the wheel of the De Soto. There was no need for a car in Toronto, but if they ever got a car, this was the kind of car he wanted. It flew along the roads, floating over the landscape like a bird in flight.

Eli was having such a good time, he flew right off the asphalt and onto the lease road and the gravel and ruts before he had a chance to slow down.

From there, the De Soto became a different car. It lurched and wallowed through the potholes, slid on the gravel and the dirt. Karen had to brace her hands on the dash, the car pitching forward on its nose, as if it had been shot. Even slowing down didn’t help a great deal. And behind the car, a huge, towering dust plume rose off the road into the night sky.

“How much farther?” Karen shouted over the bang and scrape and thump, thump, thump of the road.

The car windows slowly filmed over with dirt. Eli turned the windshield wipers on and cut tiny fans in the glass.

Just before dawn, Eli pulled the De So to off to the side of the road. He got out and raised the hood to let the engine cool, and sat down on the bumper. Karen was asleep in the car, and Eli sat there for a long time and watched the circle of lodges in the distance slowly turn from blue to pink to white as first light gave way to the sun filling up the eastern sky.

The women’s lodge was up. It had already started.

Smoke was rising from the tepees. There would be the horses moving on the prairies and the camp dogs nested beneath the wagons and the cars and the trucks, waiting for the day to begin. And the children. All the sounds and smells, all the mysteries and the imaginings that he had left behind.

It was cold still. Eli wrapped his arms around his chest and leaned against the radiator to stay warm. And as he sat on the bumper of the De Soto and watched the world turn green and gold and blue, he tried to imagine what he was going to say to his mother.

Eli flipped his way ahead almost to the end of the book.

Chapter twenty.

Iron Eyes was dressed in feathers and war paint and Annabelle was dressed in a beautiful white buckskin dress.

“Go,” said Iron Eyes, stretching his arms out and pointing over Annabelle’s shoulder.

“No,” said Annabelle, flinging herself into his arms. “I want to stay with you forever.”

Iron Eyes held her for a moment, and then pushed her away. “No,” he said, his proud face turned toward the rising sun. “I am a warrior and a leader of my people. I cannot turn my back on them. I must fight and you must go.”

“But I love you,” said Annabelle, the tears forming in her eyes.

Just then, a runner came into the camp to say that the soldiers had been spotted, and the teakettle on the stove began whistling. Eli put the book down and got off the sofa.

It was a black, moonless night. Eli stood at the window and dipped the tea bag in and out of the cup, listening to the water swirl past the cabin in the dark.

Eli waited until Karen woke up.

“My God,” she said. “That’s beautiful. It’s like it’s right out of a movie.”

It took a while for the De Soto to negotiate the track that led to the camp. As they got closer, Eli could see people moving among the lodges.

“It’s enormous. There are hundreds of tepees.” Karen leaned against the door as Eli swung around the circle. “What happens now?” she said. “You’ll have to tell me what to do. I don’t want to make a mistake and embarrass you.”

His mother’s lodge had always been on the eastern side of the circle. If it wasn’t there, he would have to ask, but he wanted to avoid that if he could.

“It’s like going back in time, Eli. It’s incredible.”

The lodges were six to eight deep, but he found his mother’s lodge without difficulty. It looked deserted. As he pulled the car beside the tepee, the flap was drawn back, and Norma stepped out. She looked at the De Soto for a moment, shook her head, and went back inside.

“Who was that?”

“One of my sisters.”

“I really want to meet her.”

Eli opened the door of the car. It was getting warmer. The lodges cast long shadows on the land. Off to the right two dogs were arguing, and in the sky above a lone bird floated in the morning air.

“Is that an eagle?” asked Karen.

“No, it’s a vulture.”

Karen gestured toward the tepee. “Do we knock or something?”

“No, we just go in.”

“Herb would like that.”

Karen pulled the flap to one side and she stepped in.

Eli started to follow her. But for a moment, for just an instant before he stepped across the threshold and into the warmth of the lodge, Eli had an overpowering urge to lower the flap, get into the De Soto, and drive back to Toronto.

Chapter twenty-five.

The exciting part. Eli rolled up on the sofa with his tea. Iron Eyes and the other warriors rolled through the valley, driving the soldiers across the river, trapping them against a cliff. The scout, a tall man, stood up, took off his leather jacket, and waved his hat at the Indians.

Iron Eyes twisted around on his horse. The sun was at his back. As the light dropped into the eyes of the soldiers, Iron Eyes raised his rifle and swung his horse into the water.

Chapter twenty-six.

Eli’s mother wanted to hear all about Toronto, what the city was like, where he lived. Norma took Karen around the camp and introduced her to Eli’s relatives. Neither his sister nor his mother said anything about how long he had been gone or why he hadn’t written.

Each day, friends and relations dropped by the lodge for coffee and conversation.

“Here’s your boy all grown up,” Eli’s auntie told his mother.

“How’s that Toronto, Eli?” his uncle wanted to know.

“When I get to Toronto, I’m going to come by and visit you,” Eli’s cousin Wilbur told him.

At first Karen was silent, content to listen as Eli’s mother ran through the families. The babies who had been born, the young people who had gone away or come back, the elders who had died or were sick. Each one was a story, and Eli’s mother told them slowly, repeating parts as she went, resting at points so that nothing was lost or confused. And then she would go on.

When Karen began to talk, she did so in short, abbreviated conversations that began apologetically and ended in mid-sentence. But by the third day in camp, just as the men began to dance, Karen found her voice, and Eli, who had been content to lounge on the blankets and drink coffee, was flushed from the lodge.

“Go on, Eli,” Norma told him. “Go outside and chop some wood or chew some grass. Us women got talking to do.”

There were other men outside, standing in groups, sitting in the grass. Eli stayed just outside the lodge. Every so often he would hear Karen’s voice and the low muffle of laughter above the wind.

They stayed until the men finished dancing. And then Eli helped his mother take the lodge down.

“You going to marry her?” Norma asked him as he packed the suitcases into the De Soto.

“I’m sorry I haven’t been back for a while.”

“Rita Morley was asking about you.”

“With any luck, we’ll be able to get out here again next year.”

“She wanted to know if you were married, and I told her I didn’t know.”

“Thanks for looking after Karen.”

“You know Rita.”

Eli’s mother gave him a blanket and a braid of sweetgrass. She didn’t ask him to write or to come back soon or to call. She kissed him, held him for a moment, and then she shook hands with Karen. Eli got into the car and started the engine.

Norma leaned in the window. “Camelot said to say hello. She couldn’t make it over.”

“Sorry I missed her.”

Norma walked back to where their mother was standing, leaning on her cane. Both of them waved.

“We’ll be here,” Norma shouted over the roar of the engine.

Eli circled the camp. Most of the lodges were down. By nightfall the grounds would be deserted.

“It was wonderful, Eli. I’ve never been to anything like that.” Karen drew her feet up on the seat and snuggled against the door. “Your mother and sister were great.”

The De Soto made its way to the gravel road. Karen watched the camp through the rear window until the hills rolled up behind them.

“You must miss it.” She put her head against his shoulder.

Eli drove the car through the gravel and the ruts and the washboards until he caught up with the main road to Calgary. And all the way across the prairies, he never looked back.

Chapter twenty-six.

Channel twenty-six.

On the screen, the chief and the captive white woman were in each other’s arms. It was standard stuff, but Charlie found himself watching the romantic tension that was building and wishing that Alberta were here in the room with him tonight. He suddenly felt lonely, terribly lonely. The kind of loneliness he hadn’t felt for a long time. Not since his mother died. Not since he and his father had gone to Los Angeles to try to out-distance her death.

Portland had run into difficulties early. The matter was a simple one. No one would hire him as an actor. Or more properly, no one could hire him as an actor.

“You got to be a member of the union,” Portland told Charlie.

“You going to join?”

“You have to have acting experience to join.”

“You used to be an actor.”

“Doesn’t seem to count for much now.”

There were a few nonunion jobs that Portland tried for, but everyone wanted young, muscular men with small butts and broad shoulders. Charlie had never thought of his father as middle aged or overweight. He wasn’t. But he wasn’t twenty, either.

“Remmington’s is hiring,” Cologne told Portland. “It’s a shit job, I know. But, hey, the hours are flexible, and maybe someone sees you. Like the old days.”

“Christ, C. B., I’m too old to do that.”

“What about Charlie? Father-and-son team. They’d love it.”

Portland continued to go to the studio, but each day he came back a little earlier. One day, Charlie came home and found his father sitting in front of the television. Portland had the remote control in his hand, but the set was turned off. He looked as if he had been sitting in the chair for a long time.

“You okay, Dad?”

“Sure, son.”

“Maybe it’s time for us to go home.”

“You know how I got my start in the movies?”

“I mean, we’ve seen Disneyland already.”

“Remmington’s. I worked at Remmington’s. I even worked at Four Corners for a while. I met C. B. when I was working at Four Corners.”

“And there’s nothing much for us here.”

Portland put the remote control down and got to his feet.“It’s how I started, and I can do it again.”

“I’d like to go home.”

“Come on,” said his father. “We’re just getting started.”

Maybe what Charlie and Alberta needed to do was to start over. Charlie could see that he hadn’t been as attentive as he might have been. Even cavalier. She was a professional, and he should treat her as such. Teaching was a fine profession, especially at the university level.

“My darling,” the woman on the television was saying, “I don’t ever want to leave your side.”

“As long as the grass is green and the waters run,” said the chief, holding her in his arms.

Charlie didn’t need that kind of romance from Alberta, but it would be nice if she was more attentive, too. And supportive. His job was tough enough without the woman he wanted to marry criticizing him. Sleazy. She hadn’t meant it. Slick. Slick.

Charlie looked at the clock. It was two in the morning. The movie wasn’t getting any better. And he wasn’t any sleepier. Charlie closed his eyes, folded his hands across his stomach, and waited.

Remmington’s was a steak house. It was done up to look like an Old West boardinghouse. The waiters all wore cowboy hats and cowboy shirts and chaps and cowboy boots. They all had bright colored bandannas tied around their necks and holsters hanging off their hips. Most of them wore mustaches. It was sort of like Disneyland with food.

“You friends with C. B., that right?”

“That’s right,” Portland told the man in the cowboy outfit.

“Okay, we can use a couple of guys. You worked here before, that right?”

“That’s right.”

“Check in with Doris. She’ll give you your gear.”

“Right.”

“You dent any of the cars, it’s out of your hide.”

“Right.”

The cowboy outfits weren’t bad. Charlie hoped he’d get one with a blue shirt and a red bandanna. And like his father said, parking cars was an honest living. Lots of actors did it to get through the hard times.

“The cowboys work inside,” Portland told him as Charlie squeezed into the flesh-colored tights. “It’s the Indians who park the cars.”

Charlie had to admit that he felt foolish standing around in front of Remmington’s in tights, a beaded vest, and a headband with a brightly colored feather. The worst part was the fluorescent loincloth that hung down from his waist. “Remmington’s” was written across the front.

“Remember to grunt,” his father told him. “The idiots love it, and you get better tips.”

At first the job was great. Charlie got to drive all sorts of really expensive cars—Mercedeses, Porsches, Lincolns, Jaguars, Ferraris. And the people were nice. Every so often a movie star would stop in. Once John Wayne came to Remmington’s and Charlie got to get his car for him. Charlie grunted and handed Wayne the keys, and Wayne told Charlie not to order the prime rib and gave him a five-dollar tip.

After the second week, Portland caught him at the locker.

I’ve got another job that pays better. But it’s only for one.”

“Where?”

“The Four Corners.”

“Parking cars?”

“No, it’s a strip joint.” Portland smiled when he said it, as if he had just made a joke.

“You going to strip?”

“No, I just do some background dancing. Look, why don’t you stay with this until school starts. The new job gives me more exposure. Probably pick up an acting job in no time.”

“Sure.”

For the rest of that summer, Charlie grunted and parked cars. On a good night, he could make up to fifty, sixty dollars, sometimes more. After work, on the weekends, he would walk over to the Four Comers and wait until his father finished his last set, and then the two of them would go out to Manny’s and have breakfast.

Nothing happened. Charlie lay there and pretended to be asleep, and nothing happened. The white woman and the chief were still in each other’s arms. Charlie put a pillow over his head and began counting horses, the kind of horses he and his cousins used to ride when he lived on the reserve.

In the background, filtered through the pillow, Charlie heard someone say something about soldiers and peace and love and then the white woman on the television began singing a song and all the horses in Charlie’s head turned into dancing Indians.

* * *

The Four Corners was a burlesque theater. It was only about eight blocks from Remmington’s, but the two were worlds apart. Remmington’s was in the middle of an old neighborhood that had been gentrified into fashionable office complexes, upscale boutiques, and outdoor cafés. The Four Corners was in the same neighborhood, but in a section that had escaped urban beautification. There were no mosaic sidewalks outside the Four Corners. No decorator trees in natural clay pots. No little shops that smelled of cedar and rosemary, where all the prices were written on soft, cream cards and attached to the various objects with colored yarn.

On one side of the Four Corners was a bar. On the other side of the Four Comers was a bar. That was the block. The rest of the buildings were deserted, their windows either broken or boarded.

The first night Charlie went to the Four Corners to meet his father, he didn’t know what to expect. He sat through three or four women who danced around on the runway and took off most of their clothes. It was smoky in the theater and so dark you could hardly see the dancers. There was a slightly pungent smell in the air, more than just the smoke, and as he shifted around in his seat, Charlie discovered that the floor was sticky.

Then a guy in a tuxedo came out, told a couple of jokes, and introduced the next dancer.

“And now, straight from engagements in Germany, Italy, Paris, and Toronto, that fiery savage, Pocahontas! Put your hands together for the sexiest squaw west of the Mississippi.”

The woman, tall and good looking, was dressed up as if she were going to park cars at Remmington’s. She walked around the stage as if she were lost, looked out into the audience with her hand shielding her eyes. And then, for no particular reason, she began to rotate her hips.

All of a sudden, Portland bounded onto the stage with a yell and grabbed Pocahontas. Charlie didn’t recognize his father at first. He was wearing a black mask and he had done something to his nose and had painted it red. He looked silly, and he looked scary as he danced around waving his tomahawk and grimacing and sneering at Pocahontas and the audience.

At first Pocahontas pretended to be frightened, but as the two of them danced, things got friendlier. Halfway through the routine, Portland began to take pieces of Pocahontas’s clothes off, first with his tomahawk and then with his teeth.

Just as Portland removed the last piece of clothing and the woman was standing on stage in just her pasties and G-string, another man, dressed up in a cowboy outfit, looking for all the world like one of the waiters at Remmington’s, leaped onto the runway. The cowboy and Portland fought a short fight with the cowboy winning, and as Portland crawled off the stage in defeat, the cowboy began dancing with Pocahontas, their groins pressed together tightly, the cowboy’s hands clutching the woman’s buttocks.

“It’s a dumb routine,” his father told him as they walked to Manny’s. “But that’s acting.”

“At least you don’t have to take your clothes off.”

“You’re not embarrassed with me working there, are you?”

“No. Like you say. Maybe someone will see you.”

Portland shoved his hands into his pockets and dropped his shoulders. “No one’s going to see me, son.”

A week later, Portland quit the Four Corners and went back to sitting in front of the television. In the mornings when Charlie got up, his father would be sitting in the chair in front of the television. When he left for work, his father would be there. Even after a long shift, Charlie would come home and find Portland sitting in the chair as if he had never moved.

C. B. took Charlie off to one side. “You know, your father isn’t doing so well. I mean, hey, it’s not really my place to say anything, but he’s my friend.”

“He just sits in front of the television.”

“It’s a young man’s game. That’s the problem. Portland left just as he was hitting the big money. No way he’s going to get back in like before. It’s a hard world, kid.”

“Why’d they leave?”

“Your mom and dad?”

“Yeah.”

“Don’t know. Portland found out your mother was pregnant, and a couple of months later, bingo, he was gone. I guess that was it.”

“What?”

“Maybe he didn’t want to raise a kid in the city. Can’t blame him.”

The next evening Charlie packed their stuff in the pickup. His father stood on the sidewalk and watched his son lash the suitcases to the top of the camper.

“If you could go anywhere in the world,” Charlie said to his father as he put the last bag on the truck, “where would you want to go?”

Portland looked at his shoes for a long time. When he finally looked up at Charlie, there were tears in his eyes.

“Anywhere in the world,” said Charlie.

“Hollywood,” his father said in a whisper. “I’d like to go to Hollywood.”

The next day Charlie caught a taxi downtown, put his bags on the bus, and headed home alone.

Charlie took the pillow off his face. The white woman was nowhere to be seen. Soldiers were building a barricade of logs and saddles. More soldiers were running back and forth, shouting at each other. Charlie turned the sound off and lay there with his eyes open.

Alberta turned back to the movie. The soldiers were trapped on one side of the river against a cliff face, and the Indians sat on their ponies on the other side. The chief whirled his horse around several times, held his rifle over his head, and all of the Indians began yelling and screaming, whipping their horses into the river. On the riverbank, four old Indians waited, their lances raised in the air.

Alberta hit the Off button. Enough. The last thing in the world she needed to do was to watch some stupid Western. Teaching Western history was trial enough without having to watch what the movie makers had made out of it.

But it was too late. As she closed her eyes, she could see Charlie mounted on a pinto, a briefcase in one hand, the horse’s mane in the other, his silk tie floating behind him.

And Lionel mounted on a bay, naked, except for the gold blazer that billowed and flapped as he lay against the neck of the galloping horse, and his shiny wing tips glistening in the sun.

Christian took off the other sock and dragged it along the edge of the couch.

“Is it over, Mom?”

Latisha watched as the cavalry charged into the river bottom. John Wayne took off his jacket and hung it on a branch. All around him, the other men were starting to cheer as the soldiers bore down on the Indians.

“Yes,” she said, “it is.” And she touched the remote control. And the screen went blank.

Lionel settled into the chair. Norma hadn’t let up, and Lionel had had to listen, once again, to his aunt’s opinions about his life, about Alberta, about his job. Everybody wanted to run his life for him, as if he couldn’t do it himself. Even the old Indians.

There was nothing on but a Western. Lionel settled farther into the chair and closed his eyes.

On the screen, an Indian danced his horse in the shallows of a river. On the bank, four old Indians waved their lances. One of them was wearing a red Hawaiian shirt.

But Lionel saw none of this. He lay in the chair, his head on his chest, the tumbling light pouring over him like water.

Charlie lifted the remote control and turned the sound on. The Indians were running their horses back and forth along the riverbank. On the other side, John Wayne and Richard Widmark waited behind a makeshift barricade of logs and saddles.

“Hear me, O my warriors,” shouted the chief. “Today is a good day to die.”

The chief spun his horse around in a circle, all the time grimacing and snarling into the camera, his long black hair flowing around his head, his wild eyes looking right at Charlie. But it was the voice that brought Charlie off the bed. He stood in the middle of the hotel room and watched as the chief rallied his men for the attack.

There on the screen, beneath the makeup, buried under a large rubber nose, was his father.

Chapter twenty-six.

Iron Eyes attacked the soldiers.

The cavalry came riding over the hill.

Etc., etc., etc.

Flip, flip, flip.

Eli tossed the book on the table, rolled up on his side against the cushions, and went to sleep.

Bursum took off his coat and put it on the back of the chair. On the screen, John Wayne pulled his pistol out of his holster and raised it over his head and was shouting, “Hooray! We got ’em now, boys,” as the cavalry came galloping into the valley.

Bursum stood in front of The Map and watched the spectacle of men and horses and weapons.

“Hooray,” he shouted, waving the remote control over his head and turning the sound up. “Hooray!”

Babo put the plate on the table and eased herself into the recliner. The day had been exciting. The police and all. Sergeant Cereno had been especially entertaining. Sort of like Mike Hammer or maybe Perry Mason.

Those Indians. Boy, could they cause a stir. You’d think they had stolen a rocket and flown to Mars, the way people ran around.

Even Dr. Joseph God Almighty Hovaugh himself had come down to the lounge to talk to her. It was no big deal. The Indians would be back. They always came back.

Now her car was a big deal. She had no idea where it had gotten to, but Martin was going to hear about it. Cereno could have cared less, but that nice patrolman, Jimmy, had taken down all the information and promised to do the best he could to see that it was returned.

Babo turned on the television and flipped through the channels. Nothing. Nothing, nothing, nothing. Western. Nothing, nothing. It made the choices easier.

Babo put her feet up just as the chief spun his horse around in the river and raised his rifle to signal the attack. But it wasn’t the chief that caught Babo’s eye. In a small knot of Indians standing off to one side was an Indian in what looked to be a red shirt, and as Babo looked closer, she saw Hawkeye, Ishmael, Robinson Crusoe, and the Lone Ranger smiling and laughing and waving their lances as the rest of the Indians flashed across the river to where the soldiers lay cowering behind some logs.

“Well, now,” said Babo out loud to herself. “Isn’t that the trick.”

Dr. Hovaugh sat in the wingback chair and watched the chief spin his horse around and around in the water. Such a perfect symmetry of man and animal. Even though it was only a movie, Dr. Hovaugh was moved by the plight of the Indians, caught between the past and western expansion just as the soldiers were caught between the Indians and the sheer rock wall.

The horse must be an Arabian, Dr. Hovaugh reasoned, and the chief just might be an Indian. He knew that Hollywood used Italians and Mexicans to play Indian roles, but the man’s nose was a dead giveaway. Probably a Sioux or a Cherokee or maybe even a Cheyenne.

As Dr. Hovaugh watched, the chief raised his rifle over his head and charged across the river, the rest of the Indians right behind him, while on the riverbank four old Indians raised their lances, encouraging their comrades, cheering them on.

It didn’t reach Dr. Hovaugh all at once. When it did, he sat up in the chair.

“Oh, my God,” he said, and he put down the remote control and reached for the phone.

The Lone Ranger and Ishmael lay on one bed. Robinson Crusoe and Hawkeye lay on the other.

“Oh, boy,” said Robinson Crusoe, “it’s a Western.”

“But we have missed most of it,” said Ishmael.

“Isn’t this the one we fixed?” said Hawkeye.

“I believe it is,” said the Lone Ranger.

“Yes, look,” said Ishmael. “There we are.”

As the old Indians watched, the chief led his men across the river. The soldiers behind the logs began shooting. One of the men stood up and waved his pistol over his head, and on the bluff overlooking the river, a cavalry troop appeared on the skyline.

Robinson Crusoe looked at the Lone Ranger.

Hawkeye looked at the Lone Ranger.

Ishmael looked at the Lone Ranger.

“Oh, oh,” said the Lone Ranger. “Looks like we got to fix this one again.”

I know just the place to go, says Moby-Jane.

Where is that? says Changing Woman.

Florida, says Moby-Jane.

Is it warm?

Oh, yes, says Moby-Jane. That place is very warm and it is very wet. Just relax on my back, says that whale, and I’ll take you there.

So, Changing Woman stretches out on Moby-Jane’s back. Pretty smooth back, that one. Changing Woman presses herself against that whale’s soft skin and she can feel those waves rock back and forth. Back and forth. Back and forth.

This is very nice, says Changing Woman.

Yes, it is, says Moby-Jane. Wrap your arms and legs around me and hold on tight and we’ll really have some fun.

It is marvelous fun, all right, that swimming and rolling and diving and sliding and spraying, and Changing Woman is beginning to enjoy being wet all the time.

“Hey, hey,” says Coyote. “That’s not what I thought was going to happen. Hey, hey, hey. What are those two doing?”

“Swimming,” I says.

“Oh . . .” says Coyote.

* * *

So.

Changing Woman and Moby-Jane swim around like that for a month. Maybe it is three weeks. Maybe not.

Then Moby-Jane sees some birds. Then that one sees some trees. Then she sees some land.

Oh, dear, says Moby-Jane. Here we are.

Perhaps we could swim some more, says Changing Woman.

That would be lovely, says Moby-Jane, but I have to get back and sink that ship again.

Moby-Jane and Changing Woman hug each other. Changing Woman is very sad. Good-bye, says Changing Woman. Have fun sinking that ship.

Changing Woman stands on the shore watching her friend swim away. So she doesn’t see the soldiers.

Gotcha, yells those soldiers, and two of them grab Changing Woman. What have we here? says another.

Call me Ishmael, says Changing Woman.

Ishmael! says a short soldier with a greasy mustache. This isn’t an Ishmael. This is an Indian.

Call me Ishmael, says Changing Woman again.

All right, says the short soldier. We know just what to do with unruly Indians here in Florida. And the soldiers drag Changing Woman down a dirt road.

Fort Marion, says the short soldier with the slimy mustache. Have a nice day.

Changing Woman looks around. There are soldiers with rifles everywhere. And there are Indians, too. There are Indians sitting on the ground drawing pictures.

This is quite interesting, says Changing Woman, but I’d rather be swimming with Moby-Jane.

“Fort Marion?” says Coyote. “The Lone Ranger is at Fort Marion.”

“That’s right,” I says.

“Oh, good,” says Coyote. “I love stories with happy endings.”

“Happy endings?” I says. “You are one crazy Coyote.”

“But I am very useful.”

“Oh, boy,” I says. “It looks like we got to do this all over again.”