"He's Black Counsel," I said.
"Or maybe stupid," Ebenezar countered.
I thought about it. "Not sure which is scarier."
Ebenezar blinked at me, then snorted. "Stupid, Hoss. Every time. Only so many blackhearted villains in the world, and they only get uppity on occasion. Stupid is everywhere, every day."
I laughed. I couldn't help it. The world might be vicious and treacherous and deadly, but it couldn't kill laughter. Laughter, like love, has the power to survive the worst things life has to offer. And to do it with style.
Sometimes my head is like an Etch A Sketch. I shook it a little, and the image went away.
Smiling always seems to annoy people more than actually insulting them. Or maybe I have an annoying smile.
Paranoid? Probably. But just because you're paranoid doesn't mean that there isn't an invisible demon about to eat your face.
It does not do to dwell on dreams and forget to live, remember that.
One of the benefits of never relying on luck was that when it did grace you with its presence you were properly thankful.
"Most people are blind to magic. They move through a blank and empty world. They're bored with their lives, and there's nothing they can do about it. They're eaten alive by longing, and they're dead before they die."
Who can say what Kitchimanidoo is all about? We see little and understand less.
He thought often these days of the words that ended the traditional marriage ceremony of the Anishinaabeg. You share the same fire. You will hang your garments together. You will help one another. You will walk the same trail. You will look after one another. Be kind to one another. Be kind to your children.
All change brings bad things and good things to replace the bad and good things that were there before. It is natural to look back and say it was better before - but that does not make it true. Different is not worse. It is just different.
He was describing that moment when you realize that you are lonely. For a time you can be alone and doing fine and never give a thought to living any other way and then you meet someone and suddenly you become lonely. It stabs at you, almost like a physical pain, and you feel deprived and angry, deprived because you wish you were with that person and angry, because their absence brings you misery.
Sam Winter Moon had cautioned him long ago that it was best to believe in all possibilities, that there were more mysteries in the world than a man could ever hope to understand.
