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a fake-wood-grained cabinet, and retrieved a Styrofoam cup from a stack. He blew into the cup, poured some of the dark brown liquid from the coffeemaker into it.
    Dylan accepted the Styrofoam cup from Andrew and took a drink, feeling the liquid warm his aching bones immediately. Or maybe it was the Percocet warming him. Didn’t really matter one way or the other.
    â€œBe right back,” he said, setting the coffee on the table. “Gotta pack my cargo.”
    Andrew watched as he pulled Webb from the couch and half walked, half dragged him to the door. Webb’s eyes opened as Dylan struggled with the door, and he was able to stand on his own.
    â€œMake it down the steps?”
    â€œ Hunph ,” Webb said.
    Dylan took that as a yes but held on to Webb’s good arm as they stumbled their way to the small Ford Ranger.
    Webb cocooned himself into the passenger seat without any small talk, and Dylan started the truck again, letting it idle to bring up the heat.
    He went back inside the trailer and grabbed his coffee cup.
    â€œThanks for the coffee,” he told Couture, then turned to Andrew. “And I owe you.”
    â€œJust the way I like it,” Andrew said, rocking back in the metal chair. “Make sure you give a big how-de-do to the fine folks down on the Crow rez for us.”
    â€œMaybe I will, if I ever get back there.”
    Andrew looked across the table at Couture, who had worked his way through most of another cigarette but remained silent. “Guess I didn’t tell you, Dylan here isn’t a rez boy. He’s one a those urban Indians. Lives in the Big City.” Andrew took another sip of his coffee. “In that case, give a big how-de-do to the fine folks in Billings for us.”
    Dylan, already at the front door, stopped and turned once again. “Maybe I will,” he said. “If I ever get back there.”

11
    Dylan met Webb for the first time in a bar. The Rainbow Bar, down on Montana Avenue next to the tracks in Billings, appropriately named because it was always packed with a rainbow coalition of people in search of a buzz. Young college students. Retired railroad workers. Hispanic migrant workers in from the sugar beet fields. And more than a few Crow and Northern Cheyenne, parading through the long, thin interior in a never-ending river of humanity.
    Typically, Indians in the bar would scan, find other Indians in the bar, give a nod. Maybe even group together, exchange a few rounds.
    Dylan wasn’t typical. He noted the dark eyes of others he recognized as Crow, but didn’t acknowledge their gestures. He wasn’t really a Crow anymore. Not after leaving to join the army. Not after returning from the army unannounced to anyone on the rez. Most of all, though, not after Joni. If he were to venture back to the rez at all, and if he were to be recognized, he would just be that guy whose sister disappeared.
    On top of that, Dylan rarely spent time in bars. Rarely spent time anywhere outside his house since returning from the VA hospital in Sheridan several months ago. Venturing into the outside world took too much energy; he had to select a mask that hid the emptiness inside if he ventured into the outside world. His inside world, built around a television, a few threadbare pieces of furniture, and a bottle of painkillers, was so much more comfortable. No masks needed.
    On the night he’d met Webb, though, the painkillers had ironically brought him out of his house. Somewhere, somehow, he’d lost the scrip pad he’d nicked from his doctor, and the prescriptions he had going at several different pharmacies had expired. Major painkillers such as Percocet and Vicodin and OxyContin rarely had more than one refill, which hadn’t really been a problem since Dylan had lifted the prescription pad from Doctor Stewart’s office. With a whole pad of more than one hundred prescriptions, he could hop from pharmacy to pharmacy; by the time