"Bill Allard, is that Sarah?" It's seven-year-old Rene asking about my dog. "No," I say. "Sarah died. This is Buster." Respectful silence follows, but I know it will end. "Bill Allard," says Gregory, six, "can Buster hunt pheasants?" "Well, he's just a pup. But I'm going to find out." "Bill Allard," it's nine-year-old Ryan this time. "When you go hunting, can I go with you?" "No, not today." They know what I'm always going to say to that question, but they have to ask anyway. I guess I'd miss it if they didn't.

They're going to butcher 300 turkeys this cold morning. There's a lot of killing at a sustenance colony like Surprise Creek, most of it done for colony consumption. Almost everybody helps with butchering. Inside the slaughterhouse, the floor is shiny and slippery, splotched with red. The sweet smell of blood mingles with the smoky odor of wet feathers. Outside the slaughterhouse, young women with long wooden poles stir headless turkey carcasses in a large steel trough of steaming water. Rita, the handsome young mother stirring the trough, has a thin streak of blood crossing her cheekbone, almost like a scratch. It's turkey blood. A splatter. I think of taking my handkerchief and wiping it from her face, but of course I don't.

Spring 2005

In Minnesota, Scott is undergoing treatment. His hair and energy are gone. He can't eat much or keep down what he does eat. He's in pain and can't sleep. The pain lessens and sleep comes when doctors start the morphine. I'm with him for a week in early May on my way to Montana again. We go back and forth to the Mayo Clinic in Rochester a couple of times. In his living room I massage his swollen legs and feet as we watch a ball game on television. When I hug and kiss him goodbye, I say I'll see him on my drive home in June.

In Montana, the spring rains have been generous to the Judith Basin, and it rolls out fresh and green. Square Butte and the Highwood Mountains rise off to the north of Surprise Creek. In the Walter house Debbie is going out to shake the small rug that lies in front of the kitchen sink. I hear the soft padding of her stocking feet as she crosses the floor that always looks spotless. Darius is sitting at his usual place by the kitchen window. "What the hell you holler so loud for?" he's saying to his brother Paul, who's come in to talk about work at the new colony. Many of the men in the colony talk loudly, and there's plenty of arguing, good-natured usually, about the best way to do a particular job—about almost anything, really. Paul and some of the other guys sometimes accuse me of just wanting to hang out with the pretty girls and attractive women and take pictures of them. I suppose they're right in some ways. The women don't talk as loudly, for one thing.