Charlie watched the state trooper raise a coffee mug to his sandy moustache and take a loud slurp. The cup’s logo, like all of the county’s official signage, featured the State of Washington’s official spelling of Palalla: “Pilalla,” with an “i” up front. Decades after the Palalla Nation had replaced the “i” to reflect the proper pronunciation of its name, the State had stayed its own course.

The trooper set down his cup and peered at his computer screen through the bottom of his glasses. “Mr. Meninick, we appreciate your coming in again this week. We just have to double-check some of our information. Need more water?” He nodded at the Styrofoam cup in Charlie’s hands.

Charlie shook his head. His stomach was too tight to drink what he already had.

The trooper looked back at his monitor. “So you were in a closed tribal area, patrolling for illegal logging activity on behalf of the Palalla Land Enterprise.” His eyes shifted to Charlie’s.

“Yes.”

“All right. We’re used to seeing your Forest Patrol or Tribal Police folks perform that function; that’s why we wanted to double-check.” His moustache rose with his perfunctory smile. “Your cousin Eddie Washines hired you and you were living in a cabin owned by the tribe.” He paused for confirmation and Charlie nodded. “And that was his rifle you were carrying?”

Charlie bristled at the question. He had every right to carry a rifle on Palalla land, or anywhere in the state for that matter, but he answered anyway. “Yes, sir, Eddie lent it to me.”

The “i” on the trooper’s cup seemed to stare right at him. His uncle Virgil—the “political” uncle, the one who wanted him to study law to help his people—always used to rail against that misplaced “i”, the white man’s “i” that stood for land grabs, broken treaties, and decimated tribes. Only thing we have to thank the white man for, he’d say, is a chance to show our resilience.

“So tell us again,” continued the trooper. “What did Mr. Washines want you to do if you encountered poachers?”

“Radio him.”

“That’s all?”

“Yeah, just radio him and he’d take care of it.”

“And by ‘take care of,’ what did he mean?”

“I don’t know,” said Charlie, trying not to sound annoyed. “He’d decide what to do, I suppose.” Why all the same questions again?

Charlie watched the trooper’s fingers stab the keyboard, wondering what those files could possibly be missing by now. Charlie Meninick, Palalla, twenty-nine years old, average height, medium build, brown eyes, short black hair, just returned from Seattle, Washington, where he failed as student, construction worker, and boyfriend; recently witnessed—

“What was the gun for?” the trooper asked. “Were you supposed to hold the poachers until help came?”

Charlie frowned, but then quickly relaxed his face. It wouldn’t help to look too hostile. “Like I said before, Eddie gave it to me so I could hunt—animals for food. And for protection, from bears, mostly.”

“Mostly?”

“Eddie said the poachers might have guns, so he wanted me to have one too.” What the hell was their fixation on him having a gun? Those poachers were the criminals, not him.

“But you say they didn’t have any firearms, that you knew of.”

“No, sir.”

“Mmm-hmm,” murmured the trooper, scrolling through a file.

Was there some kind of rap sheet on him in there, Charlie wondered. Okay, so maybe he and his last girlfriend argued sometimes, loud, and the neighbors called the police once or twice. But that was in Seattle—the trooper couldn’t see that in his record, could he?

“So you heard them talking,” the trooper said. “Then you heard the chainsaws and radioed your cousin. What time was that, when you called him?”

“I don’t know. I didn’t stop to check my watch.”

He noticed the trooper looking across the desk at the Styrofoam cup in his hands. Charlie hadn’t realized he was rotating it between his palms. He set the cup on the desk.

“About how long after you heard the chainsaws did you hear the men yell?” asked the trooper.

“I don’t know, five minutes, ten at the most.”

“And they managed to cut down a mature tree in five to ten minutes?”

“I don’t know.” Charlie shrugged. “I don’t know how they did it. That tree must’ve been four feet across.”

The trooper stroked his moustache. “So, did you see the tree fall?”

“No. It was already down by the time I got there.”

“Did you see any other tools they might have been using? Chains, for example; could they have used the truck to pull the tree down?”

Charlie shook his head again. He stretched out his fingers, still scratched up from digging around the fallen tree. One of the cuts on his thumb had started bleeding again.

“All right,” said the trooper, scrolling through the report. “But you saw the truck leaving the scene.”

“Yeah.” He wiped at his bloody thumb with his other hand.

“And can you tell me one more time what happened next, Mr. Meninick? We’re still trying to understand this part.”

Charlie tried to keep impatience from slipping into his voice. “The truck was headin’ away from me, and then I heard a big snap and this big branch came down on it.”

“Straight down?”

“No, it kind of came at the truck, like…” He swallowed. “Like someone threw it.”

“Must’ve been some powerful spirits in the forest that day.”

Charlie remained silent.

The trooper cleared his throat. “When was the last storm out there, Mr. Meninick? I mean, strong enough to potentially cause tree damage that severe?”

“I only been out there a couple of weeks, but there haven’t been any storms since I got there.”

“You were in Seattle before, right?”

Charlie froze.

The trooper looked up from the screen.

Charlie concentrated on keeping his knee still. That’s one of the things they look for, he’d heard, to see if you were nervous. “Yeah,” he murmured.

The officer finished pecking at the keyboard and took a swig of coffee. “Well, just watch your head out there. Forestry folks are over there right now taking samples, trying to figure out why this timber was so unstable. Could be another beetle infestation, I suppose; but then, it’s not my area of expertise.” He leaned back in his chair and scrutinized Charlie. “Mr. Meninick, as you know, this is a very complicated situation, two men dead—one white, one Indian—on tribal land. Very complicated.”

Complicated? thought Charlie. Try just plain wrong. The white poacher was bad enough. The Palalla man stealing from a tribal business: lowest of the low.

“I suppose you’re speaking with Tribal Police too?” asked the trooper.

“Yep, tomorrow.”

“That’s a lot of driving.”

“I’m stayin’ with my cousin in Nakalish the next few days,” said Charlie. “It’s not so far.”

The trooper leaned forward and cupped his hands around his mug. “We can send someone down there so you don’t have to keep coming up to Pilalla City.”

“No,” he barked, instantly regretting his vehemence. “I just—I don’t want to bother my cousin and his family.”

The trooper stared at him a moment longer. “All right, Mr. Meninick. Thank you for coming in.” He stood and extended his hand over his desk. “I think this is all we need right now. We’ll contact you if anything else comes up.”

“Fine,” said Charlie. He wiped the sweat from his palm and accepted the outstretched hand. He’d keep coming in as long as he had to. There was no way he was going to bring the shame of a trooper’s car to his cousin’s door.