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“So he grew up on the reservation. He hated it Didn’t consider himself no Indian and wouldn’t mix with Indian kids. I guess he got that from Emily, who kept tellin’ him his old man was a no-good drunken Indian.

“Anyway, they give him over to a Cheyenne family on the reservation. They couldn’t do nuthin’ with him at home. They couldn’t do nuthin’ with him at the school. So they just let him run wild. He lived out in the woods by himself for weeks—months—at a time. They used to call him—” (then he muttered a name like ‘Kayseehotame’ or some such thing like that). “In Cheyenne,” he went on, “it means ‘Running Cat.’”

Alice had been standing in the doorway while Graycloud was speaking. Now she came out on the small veranda and stood behind him, listening to his story.

“I was lucky,” Graycloud continued. “I hung around out there a couple of days, and sure enough, one afternoon that kid just come right down outta the hills. It was the first time I seen him. What a sight. A small, mangy-lookin’ kid with big eyes. He was all skin and bones and looked like he been sleepin’ with the animals out there.

“I told him I was his father. His face screwed up and he kinda looked at me skeptical. He didn’t believe me, he said, and then he spit and called me a ‘God damned Indian.’” Graycloud laughed. “Anyway, I brought him some swords and flags and things I picked up abroad—”

“A German Iron Cross?” I asked.

He looked at me oddly for a moment. “Yeah—I think so.” Then continued right on. “And I took him out with me to a restaurant and a couple of movies and bowlin’ and pretty soon we were fast friends.

“Rut in a couple of days my leave was up and I hadda go. When I told him, he said he wanted to come with me. But I told him I couldn’t take him. I told him I was being sent far away, and when I told him that he cried. I told him I’d write him regular, and that now that I knew where he was, I’d come back and see him whenever I could. He didn’t believe me, though. His face just screwed up again and he looked at me skeptical.”

The sun was now directly overhead burning brilliantly down upon us. Graycloud paused for a moment to watch the gulls wheeling over the blue-green water.

“I kept my word, though,” he continued. “I sent him money whenever I could and come up to see him every chance I got. He stayed on the reservation till he was about sixteen. Then he went into Cody to some trade school there. Wanted to learn to become a mechanic. Said he wanted a skill, a trade, ’cause he didn’t wanna live like no Goddamn Indian. He got through that school pretty good, though. Then he was on his own.

“We kept in touch alright, and from time to time I’d get cards from him all over the States. That’s how I heard he was livin’ with you. And I was glad for him. Grateful. ’Cause he never had no home like that.”

Graycloud appeared to be finished. Now he looked once again at me, considering me, not at all sure if he approved or disapproved.

“How did you find us?” I asked.

“Your wife wrote and told me what happened.”

I looked at Alice still standing behind Graycloud. She was staring at me, her eyes rimmed with red.

“When it happened,” she said, “they asked me if there was a next-of-kin to notify. I recalled some talk about a father and a picture in Richard’s wallet. They found the wallet on the body and the picture with an address on the back of it.” She looked at me apologetically. “I’m sorry, dear. I didn’t tell you because you weren’t in any condition to hear.”

I asked him if he was bitter about the manner in which Richard died. “No,” he said almost coldly. “If it hadn’t been up there, it would’ve been someplace else. He was a queer kind of kid, and folks don’t tolerate too much queerness.”

It seemed scarcely to grieve him. Or if it did, he had his own special way of grieving, which I imagine was something he’d do in a very private, solitary sort of way.

Then I asked him if he had any bitterness toward me. His eyebrow rose and cocked high. “Should I?”

Suddenly I felt a need to tell everything. To unburden myself. “When things got very bad—”

“Albert!” Alice started toward me, but I waved her back.

“When things got very bad,” I started again, “we got very frightened and I asked him to leave. I ordered him out—”

“He killed someone,” said Graycloud. His voice was like stone.

“He killed someone defending us, and I abandoned him,” I said.

“I don’t blame you,” said Graycloud. He was watching the gulls again. “What you did, you hadda do.”

“I could have had the decency to die with him.”

Graycloud’s eyes narrowed exactly the way I’d seen Richard’s do so many times.

“That’s what an Indian would’ve done,” he said. “White men are something else.” There was no accusation in it. He had simply stated a matter of fact as he saw it.

Graycloud stayed a while longer. He drank a glass of lemonade and when we tried to persuade him to remain with us for supper, he said he couldn’t. He said there was someone waiting for him at a nearby motel. I got the feeling that it was a woman.

And that was the last we saw of Graycloud. But since that time, each Christmas we get a card from him. It’s written in a large rather clumsy handwriting, and its message is usually the same thing. It wishes us a merry Christmas in the season of the Prince of Peace.

That’s all a long time ago. But Alice and I, though we never mention him, still think of Richard Atlee. The reason I know this is because several years after Graycloud’s visit, I woke up late one night and found Alice sitting up in bed crying. When I asked her why she was crying, she told me she was crying for Richard Atlee. She’d had a dream about him. She said he’d been in her mind almost constantly. I told her that that had also been the case with me, and then I told her, for the first time, about that strangely lifelike dream I had in the hospital and that because of that dream in which I’d been rebuffed and turned away by him, I had no hope of ever again feeling the quiet ease of a soul at peace with itself.

What is one supposed to do for one’s fellow men? What is one supposed to be? I confess I know no more now than I did before.

We bought the place on the beach and have now set-tied in there more or less permanently. I don’t think we will ever move again. It’s curious to think of buying a house in which you know you will someday undoubtedly die. To have come at last to your final address in life, far from being disturbing, is a curiously comforting thought.

One day, a stray cat wandered into our yard and decided to stay. For three days he crouched under a tree at a distance of twenty-five feet or so, just watching us come and go about our business. Then one day he accepted food and entered our house.

Since that time he’s become a great comfort to me. At night I lie in bed with Alice sleeping at my side and feel the cat, in bed, too, warm and heavy against my leg. Outside the wind whines over the sand gnashing its teeth against the branches of the plum tree just beside the window. If you listen, you can hear the low, ceaseless rolling of the ocean tumbling gently down on the shore.

These I count the best hours. It’s oddly comforting to feel the cat warm and heavy against my leg and Alice, far, far away, sleeping deeply at my side. Sometimes I can feel the cat’s heartbeat through the mattress, or feel him purring in his dreams. It’s a peaceful sound, and from it I gather that he takes as much comfort from the warmth and nearness of my body as I take from his. On those long, sleepless nights it’s nice to know as you lie there waiting for dawn that you’re not the last living creature on earth; that you’re united with the other sleepers and dreamers and those who are simply waiting.

I think that is really all there is here—just a handful of creatures huddling together on a wild plain in the chill, dark hours before the morning, taking succor from one another while waiting for a dawn that scarcely even promises to come.