I baked her, wrapped in clay, in the coals of a long fire, wisps in the pines, the smoke waiting for the moon. My brother had fished the pools all day and come back empty. He sat by the fire stones, lying about the rainbow that got away, a blanket wrapped around thin shoulders, damp coals in his eyes. The good days and nights before his death, before it all ended. I was trying then to live a life without artifice. That I failed did not diminish my reverence for things. Those many weeks I disappeared into the blue bush country. I offered my brother the breast meat, a chunk of fry bread. He took them gladly, telling me how he was going to run away to the city. Again. His wife and kids scraped by on welfare, cold nights and withered glass, waiting. I look out the window at the day coming on, grey clouds without end.
