Joe had suggested she take a couple of courses at the university in Duluth but she didn't want to leave the reservation. It had become her home, with the built-in safety net, the people who accepted her for what she was. The women in town liked her because she was sweet and kind and helpful and loved the handicrafts they made and tried to sell. The old men loved her because she pried old stories from them and was ever eager to learn more about the old ways. The young men liked her because she was pretty and fun. They loved Becky the way they had never loved Joe. Joe didn't quite belong to the reservation any more. Perhaps he never had. Perhaps he had always been just an observer and not a participant. From the time he was old enough to go to school he had wanted to get away from the reservation and its poverty and hopelessness. He didn't want to leave his family but there was no way to make money on the reservation. He made too much money now. His house was four times the size of anyone else's. He drove an expensive all-terrain vehicle to manage the back roads of the reservation. He put the other men on the reservation to shame and they hated him for shaming them. He was their success story, proof that even an Indian could succeed in the white world and they hated him for that. Joe passed the new motel on the right side of the road, overlooking the lake. It was big and tastelessly conceived but it would undoubtedly do very well because it was the last accommodation before the reservation. Tourists rarely stayed on the reservation. They only came to look from a safe distance. In his mind he could imagine Becky standing at the easel, finally making an artistic breakthrough, past the terror of her childhood with the alcoholic mother and incestuous stepfather. She had to get past that point or her painting would remain what it was when he first met her – schoolbook work with a certain charm but without insight or imagination. Sometimes Becky cried at night in bed when they were through making love because the love-making would be forever fruitless. Becky had been permanently damaged by her brutal step-father and there could be no children. But that was just as well. Becky herself was a child. There had been three psychiatrists, three modes of therapy, three failures. Becky did function, but not as an artist and that was all she had come to want. Perhaps today had been different for her. Perhaps today she forced herself past the ugliness and into the child she had been once long ago. Joe drove down the long driveway toward their house, forcing a smile. He promised himself he would not