From MS page 58 of Under the Small Lights . . .

The late afternoon air didn't deepen so much as pale, turning dark blue only at the edge, where the tree-line deepened. Our collective high reached a loopy summit. We may already have been coming down. I stared at the typewriter. I couldn't make something happen. The page nearly blurred in the sunlight.

"We should get back." The cold that haloed my hands for twenty minutes was reaching up my arms. I felt it blush in my spine.

"You want to finish a scene first? Or at least decide on a scene?"

"How about we don't invade North America, but instead the Indians invade us." Bill said. We were walking back toward my car. Time jumped at me furiously. "They gang up – let's say they crossed the land bridge a few hundred years earlier than they did, so they have time to organize – and they cross the Atlantic in canoes. All of them. And maybe they just attack England, because Europe would be too considerable."

"Wouldn't Europe rally to England's defense?" I didn't feel the cold. Bill's talk distracted me out of it.

"Nah. They make a treaty with France. They're good at that. Frenchies figure anything that fucks up England is good for them."

"So what do they do, set up a little paradise there? Wipe out English?"

"It's just so much better than what happened." Bill said, looking at the pressed dirt and rocks patched with snow. He carried the typewriter. I was shaky.

"Really?"

"We should write about Crazy Horse. Do you know anything about him?"

"No."

Bill shuffled the backpack against his other shoulder. I felt my numb toes tingle in the walk. It was all my own fault for wearing cowboy boots all winter. That, and the slips on ice should have taught me. And the way the novelty spurs got bent from the pedals when I drove.

"He went on a vision quest. His father was a shaman, but he did it alone. His vision told him to never keep anything for himself, to be beneficent. And never to let anyone hold his arms back. And to dress simply, just a stone behind his ear."

I was quiet for a minute. When he didn't say anything, I asked, "What did Crazy Horse do again? I don't think I ever knew."

"Custer. And he lived his whole life according to the vision. I wish I had that strength."

"The vision at Walden."

"The vision at Walden. Spin your own clothes."

"Take amphetamines. Smoke, um, Greek cigarettes. How are we going to fit Crazy Horse in a play about a girl on a train? Or is that what it is now?"

"I don't like the train," Bill said loud. I pictured how different I would be if I lived generously, dressed simply.

"Train stuff doesn't work. Outdated. What about her already having arrived. Her father's gone. Her new life begins?"

"I don't know a Mohawk from an Iroquois."

"That's our fault," Bill said.

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