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guard emptied a water pistol full of urine on him. It was only a routine joke by a bored prison guard, but Youngman tore the slicer off a photo cropper and cut the guard’s arm to the bone. When Youngman came out of the prison stockade a month later, he received two more years to serve, the first quarter in solitary, a close, unlit cell painted black. Towards the end of his second sentence, when Youngman was on a road-grading crew, one of the other Indians bolted, idiotically since there was nothing to run to except miles of flat, freshly turned Kansas prairie. As the guard in charge of the crew raised his shotgun to fire, Youngman knocked him down and said he would bring the escaping man back. Youngman was gaining on his friend when he was cut down from the back by two loads of 30-30 pellets. He spent two months in the hospital, and received two more years. From then on, the guards left him alone and he made no more friends.
    His first winter back on the reservation, he happened by Abner’s garage. The Fire Clan priest had long been run off the mesa as a witch, but he recognized Youngman.
    “Your car broke down someplace?” Abner stepped out of the garage wrapped in a blanket.
    “Haven’t got a car.” Youngman set his backpack down. There was a rain barrel by the oil drums. He cracked the ice on the top to scoop up a drink.
    “Long walk to the mesa.”
    “Not going to the mesa,” Youngman answered.
    “Well, there’s no place to stay out here,” Abner said belligerently.
    “There’s everyplace to stay out here.”
    The old man put his back to the chilled sun to see his visitor better.
    “You with the Bureau or the companies now, which?”
    “With no one.”
    “Then what are you doing?”
    “Walking.” Youngman turned to swing his pack to his shoulder. “Just walking. Okay?”
    “Wait,” Abner stopped Youngman from leaving. “Sit a second.”
    Youngman shrugged and squatted, keeping the pack balanced on his shoulder. Abner squatted facing him. After a couple of minutes, Youngman let his eyes slide from Abner’s and studied the terrain, which at first seemed as flat as a drumhead and only with patience yielded the shadow of leafless bushes and the faults of arroyos. When he finally looked back at Abner the old man was grinning.
    “I said a while ago you were empty inside,” Abner told him. “I see now that you are real, a full person.”
    “So?”
    “So, I got some wine inside.”
    From then on, Abner said, they were friends.
    In the hills above Dinnebito Wash Youngman lay down and let night sounds fill his head. He fell asleep watching a star called Hotomkam travel west.

    While the sun had been setting, a baby was born. Blind and hairless, it fell into a cradle formed by the membrane between its mother’s legs. Instinctively, it chirped through milk teeth while its mother spread her baby’s wings and sniffed scent glands that would distinguish it from all other infants in the dark. Only then did she allow it to climb to a waiting nipple. As it fed, she watched with bright eyes and oversized ears as the rest of the colony stirred from their torpor. Life was spreading. In the next niche, a male wrapped his wings around a female, his stomach to her back and his teeth dug into the nape of her neck, copulating. The female’s own weight locked the tendons of her toes into a grip on the cave roof that even death could not release. Nearby, two males fought, screaming and drumming their wings against the roof. They circled each other, hair stiff around their jowls, until they rushed together, using their wings as clubs. One fight set off others, circles of tension that grew as daylight faded. The large members of the colony, the females, looked on with mild interest. The mating couple disengaged, the male to join other males, the female to preen. A week-old baby unfolded stubby wings and chattered. The great colony’s mating, fighting, and births coincided until the shaft of light that fell through the