Codi, please tell me what you hear about this. I can't stand to think it could be the same amnesiac thing, big news for one day and then forgotten. Nobody here can eat or talk. There are dark stains all over the cement floor of the church. It's not a thing you forget.

She signed it, perversely, "The luckiest person alive."

I heard nothing. I listened to the radio, but there wasn't a word. Two days, nothing. Then, finally, there was one brief report about the American in the helicopter who was taken prisoner by the Nicaraguan government. He was an ex-mercenary running drugs, the radio said, no connection to us. He was shot down and taken prisoner, and that is all. No children had died in an orchard, no sisters, no mothers, no split skulls. And I'm sorry to say this, I knew it was a lie, but I was comforted.

"Who came up with the idea that Indians are red?" I asked Loyd one morning. If I wasn't careful I could lose myself in this man. His color was like some wholesome form of bread, perfectly done. His forearm, which my head rested on, was sparsely covered with silky black hair.

He turned his head. His hair was perfectly straight, and touched his shoulders. "Old movies," he said. "Westerns."

We were in my bed very late on a Sunday morning. Loyd was a wonderful insomnia cure, good enough to bottle. That's what I'd written Hallie, whom I told everything now, even if my daily letters were comparatively trivial. "He's a cockfighter," I'd confessed, "but he's better than Sominex." When Loyd lay next to me I slept deep as a lake, untroubled by dreams. First I'd felt funny about his being here-exposing Emelina's children, and all that. But he didn't invite me to his place, saying mine was better. He liked to pull books down off my slim shelf and read parts aloud in bed, equally pleased with poetry or descriptions of dark-phase photosynthesis. It occurred to me that Emelina would have a good laugh over my delicacy concerning her children. She probably was daring them to look in the windows and bring back reports.

But the shades were drawn. "Old westerns were in black and white," I reminded him. "No red men."

"Well, there you go. If John Wayne had lived in the time of color TV, everybody would know what Indians look like."

"Right," I said, gently picking up Loyd's forearm and taking a taste. "Like that white guy in pancake makeup that played Tonto."

"Tonto who?"

"Tonto Schwarzenegger. Who do you think? Tonto. The Lone Ranger's secretary."

"I didn't grow up with a TV in the house." He withdrew his arm and rolled over on his stomach, forearms crossed under his chin. It looked like a defensive posture. "After we got plumbing in Santa Rosalia we all sat around and watched the toilet flush. Sounds like a joke, right? How many Indians does it take to flush a toilet."

"It's no big deal. Sorry. Forget it."

"No, it is a big deal." He stared at the painted headboard of my bed, rather than at me. "You think I'm a TV Indian. Tonto Schwarzenegger, dumb but cute."

I pulled up the covers. For a bedspread I'd been using the black-and-red crocheted afghan, Hallie's and my old comfort blanket. "And what is that supposed to mean?" I asked.

"Nothing. Forget it."

"If you said it, Loyd, you meant it."

"Okay, I did." He got up and began to put his clothes on. I reached over and caught his T-shirt when it was halfway over his head, and pulled him to me like a spider's breakfast. I kissed him through the T-shirt. He didn't kiss back. He pulled his head free of the shirt and looked at me, waiting.

"I don't know what you want from me," I said.

"I want more than I'm getting. More than sex."

"Well, maybe that's all I have to offer."

He still waited.

"Loyd, I'm just here till next June. You know that. I've never led you on."

"And where do you go after next June?"

"I don't know." I poked my fingers through the holes in the black-and-red afghan, a decades-old nervous habit. He held eye contact until I was uncomfortable.

"Who do you see yourself marrying, Codi?"

I could feel my pulse in my neck. It was a very odd question. "I don't."

"Yes, you do. But he'd have to be taller than you, smarter than you, more everything. A better job and more damn college degrees. You're like every other woman alive."

"Thanks very much," I said.

"Your height alone kind of limits the field."

"If that's supposed to be an insult, you're way off. I always wanted to be even taller than I am, taller than Hallie."