Harry said, “It was too near this time. I don’t ever want to meet that goddamned Misquamacus again as long as I live.”
Susan gave him a gentle smile. “The best thing you can do now is forget it. It won’t happen again, will it? Not like this.”
“I don’t think so,” said Harry. Then he added, “No, it won’t.”
Neil drank beer and said nothing. Toby, at the other end of the table, was playing lumberjacks with the stalks of his broccoli, cutting them up and floating them downriver on the cheese sauce.
Harry said, “I still don’t know what happened with Broken Fire. I thought he was going to burn you up like a cheap hamburger out there on the bridge.”
Neil lowered his eyes. “I don’t know, either. But I’ve got a kind of hunch. I don’t know whether you saw anything in the air between me and that medicine man, but I could swear I glimpsed my dead brother Jimmy for a moment. It was as if he was acting as a shield between me and that fire.”
Neil set down his glass. “You remember what Singing Rock said about Broken Fire?
His magic didn’t work too well against the spirits of people who had been killed by white man’s technology. Well, that was how Jimmy was killed. We were out working on our car, him and me, and I accidentally let the jack slip and he was crushed.”
There was a pause. Susan and Toby and Harry all looked at him in silence, and let him come to terms by himself with what had happened.
“What I learned out there,” said Neil, “was that Jimmy doesn’t blame me. He protected me, and saved my life, just like the spirits of all those settlers protected the American heritage that they’d help to found. I believe the spirits of the past are with us all the tune, whether they’re good or whether they’re evil, whether they’re fancy and frightening or whether they’re plain and helpful. I still don’t understand it all, and I don’t suppose I ever shall, but I thank God that the world is made the way it is.”
Harry Erskine finished his beer, wiped his mouth, and stood up. “I’m going to have to make a move,” he said, “or else I’m going to miss that plane.”
“How long are you going to stay in Dakota?” asked Susan.
“Just long enough to make sure that Singing Rock gets buried the way a great medicine man should. Then it’s straight back to New York.”
Susan smiled. “Well, you call and see us again, you hear?”
Harry nodded. “Thanks for the lunch. It was terrific.”
They walked out to Neil’s pickup and Harry threw his suitcase in the back. Susan and Toby stood by the kitchen door waving as he climbed into the passenger seat and closed the door.
“So long,” called Harry. “And stay away from Indian medicine men from now on.”
Toby grinned and lifted his hand for a second in the same sign that Misquamacus had made before he vanished. The Indian sign for “so be it.” Then the sign was gone, and the boy was simply waving.
Harry looked at Neil and tried to appear cheerful.
“Nice boy you’ve got there,” he said, and reached for his cigarettes.