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He’d even had a leaf through, though he hadn’t taken a whole lot of sense from it. The Indians’ ways and doings, rituals and clothing, how they built their canoes and the like. Truth was, it made Harry all the more nervous in his presence. Six and a half feet of trader, Indian chieftain, writer of books … even scientist.
    â€œOur skin is brown,” said Hunt, “and we are a family of substance.”
    â€œI don’t have no prejudice like that,” Harry said, and carefully.
    Hunt leaned forward, his chair groaning, to better look at him. Harry directed his eyes floorwards. The silence dragged. It took an effort of will to remain still.
    â€œThere ain’t much choice of men hereabouts,” Hunt said at last. “Most of them dead.” He was silent again. Then he said, “Well, if you’ll squarely face the seriousness of what you is asking. And if she herself is willing.”
    Harry floundered through the rituals, feeling the fool in his Indian finery, a button blanket wrapped about him, a bear-fur hat upon his head. Afterwards, they went to the Reverend Crosby at the mission as well, and he gave a blessing, if sourly, to their union. The priest didn’t rightly approve of mixed-race weddings and, especially, as the man said quite openly, ones that had their inception in damned heathen idolatry.
    Grace’s joy, the goodwill of the people toward him, then George handing him the management of the family store: all brought him almost to believe that this small place on the edge of nowhere might become a home.
    But it did not answer. Grace was all things she should be, if she had a voice sometimes to scare a whale from the water. Still, he felt as if he dreamed his way about the village, as if he was living in some in-between place, as if—were he to shake himself hard enough—in that shaking he would wake suddenly to find himself alone, the Hesperus heeling far over, a moment from broaching in massive seas.
    And what did these people want with him? Truly? Taciturn white man no one knew from whatever Adam they believed in. No member of any of the lineages they so obsessed over. It was as George said: there weren’t men enough left no more. He was new stock, and George didn’t think much ofthat stock anyhow. Harry had seen that well enough the morning before, when they’d had their disagreement.
    Now, standing together outside the store, Grace sniffed and then, taking hold of his shirt, blew her nose in it. “Must get ready the funeral,” she said.
    He took away his arms from around her. “Yes,” he said. “There ain’t much time.”
    It was noon and the people were gathered in front of the Hunt family greathouse. Most squatted on the beach in family clusters, their formal blankets wrapped closely about them, sewn with buttons in designs of animals and ancestors. They wore hats made of the fur of black bear, or else white man’s billycocks or shovels, and the women in wide-brimmed hats of woven basketry.
    Harry stood in the doorway of the greathouse. With their wrinkled faces and their straight backs, the people looked like the bands of monkeys he’d seen once when he’d docked in Madras, aboard a steamship trading out of Hong Kong. They’d been hunkered in similar fashion, their knees drawn up, perched on the walls around the port, picking in each other’s sandy fur. Weren’t we all from monkeys, far back in the past? He’d heard it said, though it sounded fantastical to him, and he knew the Church would not want such slanders spoken. Anyhow, what did these people know of the spread of civilization? Of the great cities of the world, such as Harry had seen? Of the politics of empires and the powers of the great companies that were the blood flow in their veins? He’d sailed the merchantmen all across the Pacific. History had no role to play in such a benighted place as this.
    He whistled to