Dog Run Moon

SUN DANCE

Rand spent whole afternoons sitting in his trailer, head in his hands, blueprints in rolls on the tables around him, the water cooler giving an occasional gurgle. Sometimes a shadow crossed the sun, flocks of starlings, coming down to perch, chattering in the trees.

It was early spring. When the ice had come off enough, he took his boat up to the Bighorn reservoir. He’d always liked fishing but now he had a hard time concentrating on it. After a while, he stopped bringing a rod. He’d pack a sandwich, a thermos of coffee, and a six-pack of beer. He’d fill an extra gas tank and run upstream against the placid flow of the river, hugging the soaring canyon walls, hearing nothing but the drone of the outboard.

When it was time for lunch, he’d nose the boat into a side canyon and tie off in the lee of a boulder to get out of the wind. After the constant noise of the motor his ears would taste the strange silence of the canyon, and Rand would feel for a moment that there had been a reprieve. He would sit perfectly still until something broke the silence — the boat rubbing against the rock, the croak of a passing raven, a fish jumping somewhere out across the lake — and then the spell was shattered and he’d unpack his sandwich and drink his beer. He’d stare at the wild striations of the sandstone canyon walls and invent lives for the four men he’d killed.

—

The crew leader’s name was Angel. He spoke perfect English. As was usually the case, he’d hired his cousins and brothers to work for him. They did block, concrete flatwork, and stone masonry. Rand had been using Angel’s crew for a few years. Always on time and dependable. He’d never found fault with their work. On the news there’d been a story about a contractor in New Jersey who’d gotten fourteen months in jail for hiring illegals to build a Wal-mart. There were sex offenders who got less time than that. If a man wanted to work, let him work.

Official company policy was that he needed a copy of a driver’s license from any laborer on his job site. Some of the licenses they came in with looked like they’d been printed off at Kinko’s. Rand would laugh and shake his head on the way to the copy machine. The guys would leave the trailer grateful. A man who was appreciative of his job made the best worker. Rand had figured that out a long time ago. And, everyone knew that the Mexicans were the best bricklayers around. Theirs was a country whose history could be sketched out in the transition from stacked stone to adobe brick to rebar-enforced concrete block.

The weather that fall had been unusually bad — a foot of snow on the ground on Halloween day. By Thanksgiving, they were over a week behind schedule. It was a residential job, a huge stone-and-timber ski chalet — style house in the Yellowstone Club Ski Resort development complex. The owner was some sort of tech genius. He’d made a fortune creating apps. Rand was peripherally aware of what an app was. The guy wanted to be in the house by New Year’s, in time for his annual ski vacation. The place had a private lift line running up the mountain from the garage. Rand was pushing, paying out more overtime than he would have liked. Then Thanksgiving hit. The thought of the project being stalled for one whole day at this stage set his teeth on edge. Angel’s crew was in the process of building the large stone pillars that offset the main entrance, one of the final touches to be completed on the home’s exterior. He was supposed to give the owner’s representative a walk-through soon. If they could get the pillars done, Rand thought that the whole endeavor would have a more finished feel, despite the fact that the interior was still a mess of raw walls and floors and wires spewing from the Sheetrock.

On Thursday, none of the other guys were going to be working. If there was one thing Rand had learned in his years on job sites it was that you couldn’t fuck with Thanksgiving. There was the holy trinity of football, food, and booze to contend with. The electricians and plumbers and finish carpenters had knocked it off early on Wednesday afternoon. It was bitterly cold and supposed to only get worse. The next day was forecasted to reach zero degrees for a high. Rand sat in the job trailer all afternoon looking out the window at the house, those damn unfinished pillars. Angel and his crew had the stone worked up about halfway but there were at least two more full days of work to be done.

The more Rand sat and looked at the pillars, the more he knew they needed to be completed before the walk-through. He went out to talk to Angel.

—

The masons were gathering their tools. Their big diesel was already running in the parking lot. The sky over the Spanish Peaks was going a washed-out pastel pink. He stood under the scaffolding, hands jammed into his pockets, waiting for Angel to finish what he was doing and climb down.

Mexicans didn’t celebrate Thanksgiving anyway. He figured it wouldn’t be a big deal — that they’d want to work. They always wanted to work.

As it turned out, they didn’t want to work.

“I already told my guys to take the day off,” Angel said. “Sorry.”

Rand sighed and spit into the snow. “Shit, man. I was really hoping you would be able to make some headway on this thing tomorrow.”

Angel shrugged. “Gonna be too cold anyway. We should have heaters as it is. The mud isn’t setting up right.”

“I’d consider it a big favor if you’d come in tomorrow. I’ve got a walk-through coming up. These pillars. If they’re done the whole thing looks more done, you know what I mean?”

Angel shrugged again, he was gathering an extension cord, wrapping it in loose coils around his arm from hand to elbow. “Sorry, man. The guys already have plans. No one else is working anyway, right?”

“I’ll be here.”

Angel smiled. He was missing a canine, and Rand could see the pink mollusk of his tongue through the gap. “But, you’re the boss,” he said. “No days off for the general.”

“Okay,” Rand said. “Sure.” He kicked a little at a chunk of snow. “I understand.” He started to walk away and then stopped. He cleared his throat. “Hey,” he said. “There’s another thing that has recently come to my attention. Now, I just want to say that this is coming from the higher-ups, my boss, you know? I’m getting some pressure to verify that everyone on my job site is legal. I’m not implying anything. I’m just saying it could be an issue. Get me?”

Angel was still smiling. “I was born in San Antonio,” he said, squinting a little.

“Sure. I know that.” Rand nodded toward Angel’s crew, up on the scaffolding gathering their tools. “I don’t know about them, though. And, up until this point, it hasn’t mattered. I’m just saying that might change.”

Angel nodded slowly. “And if we come in to work tomorrow?”

“I don’t foresee any problems. Can I count on you?”

Angel’s smile tightened. “Heaters,” he said.

“I’ll get them set up tonight, personally.”

Angel shouted up to his men, and Rand headed back to his trailer. He didn’t understand what Angel was saying but he could tell his crew was unhappy. There was rapid-fire Spanish, grumbling. One of them threw a shovel down from the scaffolding and it hit an overturned metal mortar trough. There was a hollow boom that echoed once, and then was swallowed up by the cold. It would be dark soon. An inversion cloud was forming over the distant peaks, a pewter sheet turned down over the sky.

—

When everyone had left, Rand bundled up and pointed his truck so the headlights were on the house. He felt bad about coming at Angel that way, but that was sometimes the way things had to go. Years ago Rand had thought that getting into the building trades would be a simple, straightforward, honorable profession. You made things with your hands, and at the end of the day you had hard physical evidence of your effort. You wouldn’t get rich but you slept well — sore muscles and a clear conscience, that sort of thing. That might have been true in the beginning. When he was a journeyman carpenter swinging his hammer for a paycheck things had been much easier. But, as it happened, he’d been good at his work, and he’d advanced.

He hadn’t done any serious shovel work or walked joists in years. He wasn’t complaining — he owned his own home, he had a fishing boat and his truck was paid for — it was just, now, at the end of a day, he had a harder time determining what it was exactly he’d done.

Managing people. That’s what he concerned himself with these days. It was tricky, but he’d discovered he had an aptitude for it. He didn’t have a construction management degree like many of the kids the companies hired now. He’d come up through the ranks and he thought the men respected him for this. He knew what it was like to work for an hourly wage, to actually do the work. He was familiar with the grind. That was something you couldn’t learn in college. Case in point, here he was, after dark — his truck thermometer had read minus seventeen — making a tent around the pillars and scaffolding with lengths of plastic sheeting. The plastic would retain the heat from the forced-air propane blower. The stonemasons would get the pillar done in comfort. The walk-through would go well.

Rand dragged the heater in place, made sure the propane tank was full, gave one final look over his work, and was satisfied. He was halfway home before the pins and needles subsided in his fingers and toes. It really was brutally cold. He’d go home and make a pot of coffee, put some bourbon in it. Crank up the woodstove. Go to bed early to wake up and do it all again, Thanksgiving be damned. Like Angel had said, he was the general. He had never once expected anything out of a worker that he himself was unwilling to do. That was fairness.

—

Earlier that week, his friend Sam had invited him over for Thanksgiving dinner. He had just gotten married and was irritatingly happy. “We don’t acknowledge Thanksgiving, for obvious reasons,” Sam had said. “But Stella decided to make a big old turkey dinner on Thursday. Just a coincidence, really. We’d love to have you.” Sam was laughing and Rand could hear Stella scolding him playfully in the background. Sam’s new wife was from Lodge Grass — a member of the Crow Nation. Her maiden name was Estella Marie Stabs-on-Top. Sam was a short, pale-blond Swede from Minnesota. Stella was a long-limbed black-haired woman of the plains. After their marriage, Sam and Stella had taken each other’s names. They were now, officially, unbelievably, Sam and Stella Stabs-on-Top-Gunderson.

“It’s for the kids we’re eventually going to have,” Sam had explained. “It’s unfair, not to mention chauvinistic, to expect her to take my name. And, our kids should grow up having a fair representation of their heritage present in their name. I mean, Gunderson is only half of the story here.”

—

When he got to the site in the morning, they were already there, their radio blasting mariachi out into the snow-laden pines. It was the kind of brittle temperature that froze the mucus at the corners of your eyes, made your nose hairs prickle, made you cough if you breathed in too deep. Rand got the coffee going in the trailer and did some paperwork. Once, he looked up from his desk to see a string of elk emerging from the edge of the timber. They looked patchy and miserable, their caution lost to the cold, moving aimlessly for warmth.

At noon Rand bundled up and went out to check on the crew. He brought a case of Miller High Life. A peace offering. Angel nodded at him when he ducked under the tarp. Rand saw that they were making good progress.

“Warm enough in here?” he shouted over the radio.

Angel gave him a thumbs-up.

“I brought you some Thanksgiving beer.” Rand set the beer on a bucket.

Angel gave him a double thumbs-up.

“Okay. Good work, guys. I appreciate it, Angel. I’m going to take off. Make sure the propane is unhooked when you leave.”

Angel nodded and shouted, “Okay!” His crew had barely looked at Rand. He wasn’t sure how much English they understood, although it had always been his experience that they understood more than they let on.

—

Rand went to dinner at the Stabs-on-Top-Gunderson’s and had a good time. He felt a little guilty about leaving work early, but he had been caught up on his progress reports and would have just been sitting there twiddling his thumbs anyway.

When they sat down to eat, Stella said, “For the record, I have no problem with Thanksgiving.” She pointed her fork at Sam. “Who could argue with a holiday based on giving thanks for what you have?”

Sam shrugged. “I’m going to eat the hell out of this turkey, but I just want everyone to know that is no way indicative of me endorsing this gluttonous festival of oppression.”

They ate and drank too much, and then all pitched in on the dishes. Rand watched Stella and Sam as they bantered and snapped each other with dishtowels and talked about their unborn children as if they were not so much possibilities as certainties that just hadn’t happened yet.

Rand rarely wasted too much time thinking about women. He’d spent enough years on construction jobs to know that this put him in the minority among men. There was a Korean massage parlor in Billings that he visited once a month. The women there were probably closer to fifty than forty, but he didn’t mind. They were good-natured, motherly almost. He tipped well and, if they didn’t have another customer right away, sometimes he stayed and had a cup of roasted barley boricha with them. Occasionally, he fixed things around the place that needed attention. He hadn’t had a serious girlfriend in ten years.

After dinner, Rand returned to his empty house. Everything was in its place, and if it wasn’t, it was because he was the one who had misplaced it. That was comfort. The woodstove was casting its glow in the living room and he made himself a whiskey and sat in his recliner. He switched on the TV and watched some sports highlights. He didn’t think his life lacked for much of anything, at least there were no holes that couldn’t be filled by getting a dog. Last spring, his old lab Charlie had gone to chase the big tennis ball in the sky. He thought enough time had passed now and maybe he’d go look at the shelter sometime soon.

—

The day after Thanksgiving, he got to the job site early. He figured he’d be the first one there and do a walk around to see what was what before any of the crews showed up. He was somewhat surprised to see Angel’s truck in the parking lot. It had snowed a bit overnight, just a couple powdery inches, but it was enough to cover the tire tracks in the parking lot. No one had come or gone this morning. He couldn’t figure out why Angel’s rig was there. It just didn’t make sense, really.

There were no tracks to the Porta John, to the lift, to the pallets of stone — no tracks of any kind. A white blanket of snow. Complete quiet, until a jay shrieked in the pines. Rand was out of the truck now, walking fast and then slowing, stopping. There was a dark shape pushing against the semi-opaque plastic around the pillars where Angel’s crew had been working. When he got closer, he could see that the shape had a face. Rand wanted to turn, run, get into the truck and drive, but he forced his feet to move, kicking through the snow. He ducked under the plastic. It was cold. The propane tank must have run empty.

They were all there, three men slumped on the scaffolding, and Angel, sitting, back against the stone pillar, eyes closed as if he were taking a nap. Rand knew immediately. It was impossible to mistake it for anything else.

It was carbon monoxide, they told him. Somehow the heater exhaust had been covered by the tarp, filling the area the men were working in with deadly fumes.

Two of the men — Angel’s cousins — had been illegal after all.

—

There was a delay in the construction, while the situation got sorted out. But then, sooner than seemed decent, they were back at it. A new crew came in to finish the stonework. The carpenters and electricians wrapped up the interior. And, not long after the first of the year, Rand’s trailer got hauled away and the whole affair was complete.

He never actually met the homeowner. The final inspection was handled by the app genius’s wife. She had their young son with her, happily running and sliding in his stocking feet on the new wood floors.

“Donald can’t wait to get away,” she said, leaning against the kitchen island, tousling her son’s hair. “He is so busy right now working on a product launch. He checks the snow report three times a day. He really loves to ski. I like it okay. I’m not very confident, though. This little guy is going to get lessons this year. Donald is adamant about starting him out young. He says a child has to start before he has a real fear of falling. That’s the best way. I didn’t start until I met Don, which was too late, really.”

Rand was nodding. He’d never skied in his life. “So,” he said. “If you don’t have any more questions, I’m going to get out of your hair. I’ll leave you this refrigerator magnet here, it has the company’s contact info and my personal cellphone. If anything, and I mean anything, comes up, please don’t hesitate to call me.”

When Rand turned to leave, she followed him to the door. She stood on the threshold, one hand on the door, perfectly manicured nails tapping on the knob. She looked back into the house to make sure her son wasn’t within earshot.

“There was one thing,” she said. “I heard about what happened. Those workers. I’ve been handling most of the details about this house. I never even told Don because I knew he would worry. But, I just, well, this might be weird, but I have to know. Were they in the house, I mean, actually inside, when it happened? It shouldn’t matter, it’s such a tragedy, but for some reason I’d like to know exactly where, they were, um, discovered.”

She had a small, fixed smile on her face. Rand thought that this was a woman who was used to being found ridiculous. Her husband, a tediously practical man, was no doubt in the habit of acquiescing to her desires, but not without first patronizing her.

Rand had a brief urge to lie, to tell her Angel and his men had been working on the stone fireplace, that he’d found them slumped right there on her living room floor where the kid was slipping around in his socks. He wanted to give credence to her fears somehow but he couldn’t, because she had that smile, the fragile kind.

“Outside,” he said. “They were working on the entryway. They never even went in the house.”

“God, it shouldn’t matter,” she said hurriedly. “It’s just such bad energy, a horrible way to christen a beautiful new chapter in our lives. And after all the work you’ve done, I mean this place is fabulous, you must be very proud. Something like that is such a detraction.”

Rand shrugged. “It was unfortunate. An accident. They were good workers. I didn’t know them well.”

She nodded and crossed her arms under her breasts, hugging herself. She must have been cold in the doorway with no coat. “I’m going to put up a wreath,” she said. “Right on the entryway there. It’s not much but it will be my own little memorial. I don’t think I’m going to tell Don. It’s not something he’d deal with well.”

Rand shook her hand and got in his truck and never set eyes on the house or its occupants again.

—

After Rand told him about the accident, Sam was constantly inviting him to do things with him and his new bride. Come over for dinner, Rand; Stella is making spaghetti. Meet us out at Jake’s; Stella and I are going to get a drink. Stella and I are going camping; you should come along. Rand managed to wriggle out of most of these invitations. The latest was he wanted Rand to join him in a sweat lodge ceremony.

“This is just what you need, man. It’s purifying. I did one last month and I felt like I’d been wrung out and hung out, you know what I mean? In a good way. I felt light.”

Rand had been avoiding Sam, not returning his calls, and then one evening, as Rand was loading up in his truck to head home after work, Sam pulled in, blocking his way. “Hop in,” Sam said. “We’re going to be late.”

“What? I’m going home. I’m tired.”

“Nope. We’ve got sweat lodge tonight. I told everyone I’d be bringing a friend. They’re expecting you. Let’s go. I brought you a towel.”

Sam drove them out of town and then on a series of ever-narrowing roads that wound back into the low hills. The sun was setting behind them as they pulled up in front of a pale-blue trailer house. There were half a dozen other vehicles parked in the drive. Two paint ponies stood motionless in a corral. There was an elk skull and antlers on the trailer house roof, long tapering lodge poles leaning like massive knitting needles against the porch railing.

“This is Stella’s grandparents’ house,” Sam said. “They raised her. They’re different from most of the people around here. They brought her up the way they themselves had been raised. Traditional, you know? They still follow the old ways.”

“The old ways?”

“Yes. Notice, for example, the fact that they don’t have a satellite dish on their roof. Everyone out here has a satellite dish. Stella told me they just got electricity a few years ago. They used to spend the whole summer in a lodge up in the Bighorns. A tipi, Rand. They lived half a year in a tipi gathering berries, fishing, hunting, living. That’s why my wife is so beautiful, right? She was running wild out in the hills as a kid, not drinking Pepsi and watching The Real World and working at a casino, living shabbily off whatever scraps we toss their way.”

“We?”

“Yes. We. Call me crazy but I feel like in small way she and I are doing some sort of small mending in the huge tear that we made in these people’s universe.”

“I didn’t tear anyone’s universe. I don’t want to do this. I’m going to just sit in the car.”

“Nonsense. They’ve adopted me, Rand. I’m family and you’re my guest. It’s going to be great, trust me.”

Moments later, Rand stood shivering in his underwear in front of a low, canvas-covered dome. There was a fire going outside, rounded river rocks were piled in the blaze. He could hear talking and laughing coming from the lodge. Sam motioned for him to follow and ducked into the low entrance.

A furious wave of wet heat hit Rand upon entering. He coughed and dropped to his knees next to Sam, sweat already pouring from his face and shoulders. It was dim. Faces periodically appeared in the steam. There were half a dozen men seated around a pit filled with rocks. Rand watched a man, his bare torso shiny with sweat, reach out of the lodge with a pair of metal fireplace tongs and bring a rock from the outside fire. The rock was still glowing faintly red in the gloom, and he placed it carefully on the other rocks in the central pit. He did this twice more, and then squirted water from a two-liter soda bottle onto the rocks. There was a great hiss, and huge gouts of white-hot steam filled the air. Then, a noise like a rifle shot in the enclosed area as one of the rocks split. Rand swore and flinched. There was soft laughter from the shadows. The increase in steam made Rand feel as if his skin were being parboiled from his body.

“Relax, man,” Sam said. Smiling, his blond hair plastered to his skull with sweat. “Focus on your breathing.”

Sam introduced him around. All of them were relatives of Stella. Brothers, cousins, uncles, and the oldest, her grandfather — long thinning gray hair, small compact potbelly and skinny crossed legs. The old man was staring at him. Rand lowered his head and concentrated on taking shallow breaths.

“Hey,” the old man said. “How tall are you?”

Rand looked around. The old man was still staring at him, one eye perfectly black, the other with the scalded-milk skim of cataract.

“Me?”

“Yeah. What, like six-two, six-three, something like that?”

“I’m six-three.”

The old man nodded as if this confirmed a suspicion he’d held all along. “So, you’re a forward? Maybe a small forward? I’m saying that only because you don’t look quick enough to be a shooting guard. No offense.”

“I — what?”

The old man raised his arm and pointed across the lodge. “That’s Nolan, my grandson. He’s going to take us to the championship this year. He’s not real tall but he’s got a quick release. Quickest release off a screen that I ever saw. A leaper too. Nolan can jump right out of the gym. Only a sophomore this year. And college coaches are coming to watch him play. Gonzaga. That’s big time. What do you say, Nolan?”

Nolan scratched his head and wiped the sweat from his face. He looked to be about forty, with a sunken chest and the burst nose of a serious drinker.

“I don’t know, grandpa,” he said. “I’m going to try.”

There was silence in the lodge for a few minutes and then someone on the other side said, “Hey, Sam, you’re looking skinny. My sister’s cooking not agreeing with you?”

Soft laughter. Then, another voice from the steam, “Eh, it’s not the cooking. I got married once. I’m guessing she’s keeping him fed just so she can wear him out at night.”

“Succubus,” Nolan said, pouring water on his face. “All the women in this family. I believe I warned him before they got hitched.”

“Suck-what?”

“Shit, my ex-wife? On my birthday, if I was lucky. You young guys have it better.”

“MTV. That’s what did it. And, all the hormones in the water. Makes women shameless.”

“And Bill Clinton. It’s not even sex anymore.”

Sam was laughing, shaking his head. Rand watched, not saying anything, sweat stinging his eyes. Sam was part of some sort of unlikely brotherhood — a side effect of marriage that Rand had never before considered. It seemed like a good thing, but he didn’t let himself get too sentimental. In reality, while the Stabs-on-Top men adopting Sam into the fold meant friendship, sweat lodges, manly companionship, it probably also included the occasional jailhouse call for bail money.

Eventually, the heat overwhelmed Rand and he had to stumble out of the lodge before he fainted. He stood outside in his soaked underwear, steam rising from his shoulders and arms, his neck craned back looking at the stars. Out here, town wasn’t even a glow on the horizon. As Rand was trying to find the Big Dipper, there was a soft whistling, a flock of mergansers, up from the river, flying low over his head — dark swimmers, moving in formation upstream against the flow of the Milky Way.

The men were laughing in the lodge, and then he could hear Sam’s voice rising up a little above it and then it was quiet. He knew they had been talking about him and he thought it was ridiculous of Sam to bring him here. He decided he wasn’t going to go back in. He stood shivering, listening to the horses breathing in the corral.

—

“The poor old guy’s got Alzheimer’s,” Sam said in the car on the way home. “It’s an unfortunate thing. Sometimes he’s perfectly clear. Everything is clicking. He tells stories, about his childhood and older ones, you know, legends and stuff, the history of the people. It’s really great. And then sometimes he gets on his basketball kick. He used to be a coach. Just ungodly what it does to a person. Anyway, I’m glad you came with me tonight. Stella and I, you know, we worry about you, man.”

“I’m fine.”

“It was her idea about the sweat lodge. And, she thinks you need a girlfriend.”

“I’ve been thinking about getting a dog.”

“Well, there you go. I’ll tell her that.”

Sam dropped him off back at his truck, and when he drove away Rand walked across the parking lot down to the new job site. They were building a massive ski chalet — style dentist office. They had the floors poured and the walls framed in. The roof was still an empty framework of jutting steel beams. He overturned a bucket and sat with his back to a wall, looking up at the moon coming up a bloody egg-yolk orange. He thought, behind the roof joists like that, it looked like some sort of mottled internal organ, a pulsing lunar heart lodged between the ribs of a giant skeleton.

For some reason he couldn’t stop thinking about Nolan. The basketball star. The great leaper with the quick release. The obviously ruined alcoholic. Had he led the Hardin Tigers to the state championship all those years ago? Maybe in the finals game he’d choked, missed the potentially game-winning free throw, and then started his downward slide — no championship banner, no Gonzaga, no longer any reason to stay in shape, the new dedication to drinking, puking in cold frozen fields, pickup games at the dingy rec center gym where that free throw went in every time.

Maybe some people wouldn’t think something like that was possible, that such a small event could precipitate so great a fall — everything in a man’s life hanging on a hoop, a net, the soft spin of the pebbled leather kissing the fingertips goodbye on the release. Rand was not one of those people.

—

Summer. From his desk, in the mornings, he could see sandhill cranes stalking the fallow field across the road. Rand watched their stilted movements against the rimrock hills. The dentist’s office job was coming to an end. A month or so more of loose ends and then they’d come and haul the trailer away, and Rand would be embarking on a whole new project. He wasn’t sure exactly what yet, the company had put an aggressive bid in on a small, high-end, ski chalet — style strip mall in Bozeman. He was having a hard time drumming up enthusiasm for a new job.

The site was in a small wooded area just off the freeway, and Rand took his lunch out into a thicket of pines and immature aspens and ate his sandwich sitting on the ground in the shade. He brought his pup with him most days. He was a small block-headed black lab mix whose existence revolved around food, searching it out, devouring it as quickly as possible, and retrieving sticks. On his lunch break Rand would let the dog out of the trailer to run around cadging treats from the guys.

On the weekends, he ran his boat upriver. He was fishing again. One day he caught his limit of walleye in an hour. The puppy hadn’t been fond of the water at first. Eventually Rand caught him by the collar and tossed him off the dock. After a few moments of thrashing, he figured it out.

Mostly things were going okay, and it seemed that the events of the winter would eventually fade — the sharp edges ground away by the simple everyday adherence to routine. He walked the dog in the early-morning dark. Made coffee and went to work. Put in a full day. And then he went home, walked the dog, and made dinner, watched TV — his dog on the floor next to him. He could hang his hand over the edge of the couch and rub the dog’s ears.

Occasionally, something would come to him. Sitting out in the thicket on his lunch break maybe, chewing his dry sandwich while the dog sat impatiently waiting for the crusts. He’d remember a simple thing, like the way Angel’s crew used to cook their lunch outside. They’d bring an electric skillet and set it up on an overturned bucket. Someone would have a plastic bag of marinating beef and someone would have tortillas, and they’d throw together simple tacos, filling the air with the scent of seared meat.

Once, Angel had called him over and offered him some. Rand had ended up eating three, juice running down his chin, wiping his hands on his jeans like the other guys. They were good tacos.

“Better than a sandwich?” Angel had said. And Rand had nodded, his mouth full, thinking that not all food cultures were created equal, that maybe he should bring a hot plate into the trailer and cook his lunch. He never did, but at the time it seemed like Angel’s guys were onto something. They had a knack for enjoyment. All the other workers were sitting in their trucks, eating fast food or choking down the same ham-and-cheese their wife had been making for them for years — and here these men were, cooking in the open air, talking, laughing, eating a real meal.

Remembering this wasn’t much, just enough to make his sandwich stick in the back of his throat.

—

In late August, Sam called to tell Rand that Stella was pregnant, and to invite Sam to another tribal ceremony. This time it was something called Crow Fair, specifically the culminating event — a sun dance.

“This is the real one, man. I really hope you’ll come.”

“What do you mean, ‘the real one’?”

“Yeah, they have a dance that’s open to the public — concession stands, moccasins for sale, Winnebagos full of lost South Dakotans looking for the Little Bighorn Battlefield — and then this one, tribal members and close friends only. I’m going to be dancing.”

“You? Why?”

“For my unborn child. To show my gratitude. For good luck.”

“I didn’t know you were a dancer. I mean, how do you know what to do?”

“I will be fasting, meditating. Other things I can’t reveal to you. It’s a whole weeklong process. The dance is just part of it. Anyway, it’s not a goddamn tango competition or something. Everyone dances their own way. Some of the guys who really feel it stick bone skewers through the skin on their chests and lean back against ropes and dance until they rip out. Stella says that if I try to get macho and do that she’ll divorce me. So, are you going to come?”

“Jesus. Okay. Sure.”

“Great. Really great. And, just so you know, this kid is going to grow up calling you Uncle Rand. You ready for that? I mean, if something happens to me, I like to think of you stepping in and taking care of business.”

“I don’t really know anything about kids.”

“I don’t either. That’s irrelevant. This is about you taking care of my family if I kick it for some reason. This isn’t something you argue about. You just say, ‘Right, sure thing, Sam, you can count on me.’ I’ve already talked to Stella about it. She thinks it’s a great idea. You’re the godfather, man. She said she’s always thought you were pretty good-looking and would do a decent job as fill-in husband.”

“Wait, what?”

“Yeah. I’m making a will, just in case. I’m going to include a special letter to you. In this letter will be several pointers, suggestions, an instruction manual, basically, that should be useful to you as you undertake the care and fulfillment of my wife. I mean, you’re an F-150 driving man. She’s a Ferrari. You could get hurt, that’s all I’m saying.”

“Christ. Are you serious?”

Rand could hear him slapping his desk. “Hell, no. I’m not serious. About Stella, anyway. If I die you better keep your grubby hands off her. But about the kid, I’m dead serious.” He stopped laughing. “If you ever have a pregnant wife, you’ll understand. You have to promise me you’ll take care of them as best as you can. I know if you say you will, you will, not to get lame here but that’s the kind of guy you are. You’re the only one I can trust with this.”

“All right. Fine. If you die, I’ll take care of business.”

“There, that’s what I’m talking about. Okay, then, I’ll see you at the dance. Wish me luck.”

—

The afternoon of the ceremony was a hot one, approaching one hundred degrees on the sun-baked field. Grasshoppers clattered away in droves as Rand walked through the dead grass. There were wildfires burning in the western mountains, the air hazy with smoke.

A single cottonwood tree rose in the middle of the empty meadow, and its branches had been adorned. String, strips of colored cloth, feathers, twisting and flapping. Around the tree, the dancers shuffled, their bare feet stirring small clouds of red dust. There was drumming, shrill piping, and chanting. People milled around, and Rand had a hard time discerning who were participants and who were spectators, if such a distinction existed. He tried to pick Sam out of the crowd. He stood near his truck feeling conspicuous, out of place, unwanted. He had made up his mind to leave when he spotted Stella making her way toward him.

“I’m glad you came,” she said.

“Maybe I shouldn’t be here.”

“Nonsense.” She grabbed his wrist, and he was relieved, as if being attached to her might lend his existence there some credence. She led him through the throngs of people to a place near the edge of the dance circle. Up close, he spotted Sam immediately, dancing slowly, his pale torso streaked where the sweat had run rivulets through the dust.

Standing next to Stella, he watched her as she watched Sam dance. She was wearing a light-blue sundress and had one hand on her just-beginning-to-swell belly, looking serene and beautiful despite the heat. He was going to be a godfather.

She caught him staring at her, and she smiled and reached out to squeeze his arm.

—

The dancers — twenty or thirty of them, mostly men — rotated slowly, around the decorated cottonwood tree. The sun beat down, the wildfire smoke turning it an angry red as it neared the horizon line. Rand had no idea how long this thing lasted. Was there a halftime? Was there a finish line? Already several of the older dancers had collapsed or stumbled off. Sam kept going, the circular shuffle, eyes squinting out at some point far above their heads. Then, Rand spotted Nolan. The fallen basketball star was dancing too. His bare feet slapped the dirt, and his calf muscles were like knotted brown rope, his head thrown back, eyes closed against the sun. Most of the other dancers looked as if they were just trying to survive, slow foot stomping, plodding. Nolan, though, was dancing like he wanted to die — quick jerky movements, chest ballooning and caving. It was a hard thing to watch, a man giving birth to something that might kill him.

At a certain point, the sun sank, and still the dance continued. Bonfires were lit on the edges of the circle. The drums had taken up residence in Rand’s chest. They were the echo that threatened to overtake his heart. Stella had drifted off. Sam had fallen out of the dance, and she had gone to take care of him. But Nolan still carried on, if anything, his movements had increased their desperate tempo.

Then Nolan danced his way to the center of the circle and took hold of a long rope that had been dangling from the center tree. He resumed his place in the circle and his grandfather emerged from the crowd. He came to Nolan and helped him do something with the rope. Rand couldn’t see what. Nolan’s back was to him. And then the old man retreated, and Nolan was dancing again. The firelight cast its glow, and Rand could see the purple streaks of blood on Nolan’s torso. He was leaning back against the rope, his skin stretched taut at the points where the bone skewers ran through his chest.

As Nolan danced past him — close enough that Rand could have reached out to touch him — he searched Nolan’s face for any sign of pain. He found just ecstatic blankness.

By now, many of the other dancers had filtered off. Two other men were attached to the center tree in the same manner as Nolan. Rand didn’t want to be there any longer but he couldn’t leave. He was so close, he could smell the sweat of the dancers, see the way their muscles trembled on the verge of collapse.

What was a basketball championship in the face of this? How could anything compare? This was absolution. This man had poured his whole life out on the ground to make room for vodka, and then, in one moment, he’d gotten everything back. Possibly fleeting, but no less real.

What do I have? Rand thought. What is available to me? Rand was aware that he was now the only stationary person in the crowd. Painted figures were moving on all sides of him. There was the clicking of beads and bone and jangling bells and shrill whistling, and he knew that dancing himself, or leaving, were the only two easy options. He tried, did one slow, heavy, foot-stomping revolution, and then he stopped, feeling ridiculous. He was an impostor. Maybe someone else could have done it, danced it away, but not him. In the end he just stood, stock-still, looking straight ahead so that the circle of dancers were forced to part around him, their eyes flashing as they went by.

Someone was pointing at him from across the fire, and then there was a hand on his shoulder. They were going to drag him out, he thought, and that was fair. That was their right. But he would make them do just that, drag him. He wasn’t going to move an inch on his own. The hand was on his back now, patting it, trying to get his attention. He turned. It was Stella’s grandfather, bare chested, his braids swinging like silver ropes over his shoulders.

The old man was dancing, a strange flapping motion, elbows out, rising on his toes, doing something with his hands. Dancing, but not quite. There was a post up, a pump fake, a pivot, and finally, the fade-away jump shot, his wrist crooked in perfect follow-through form, a wide, toothless smile on his face.