He smiled at me as he stood up. “Patience was never your strong suit.”

“Vinnie, you always loved this cabin. You told me once you’d buy it off me for a million dollars. You remember?”

“I do,” he said. “This was the best cabin I’ve ever seen.”

“Put yourself in my place,” I said. “If somebody burned this down, what would you do?”

“First of all, I’d kill whoever did it.” He thought about it for a moment. “Did you kill him?”

“No,” I said.

“But he’s dead.”

“Yes.”

“Okay, then. The next thing I’d do is rebuild the thing, as close as I could to the original.”

“Exactly.”

“But I wouldn’t do it alone,” he said. “Not with a friend down the road who knows twice as much about building cabins as I do.”

“Excuse me, twice as much? Since when?”

“Make that three times as much. I was trying to be kind.”

“Yeah, well, if you’ll excuse me, I’ve got work to do.”

“You’ll never even get to the roof,” he said. “You want the snow to pile up in here all winter?”

“What are you saying? You really want to help me?”

“Your father’s spirit sent me,” he said. “He knows what this thing would look like if you did it yourself.”

“Ah, Indian humor,” I said. “I’ve really been missing that.”

“Let me go get my stuff,” he said. “I’ll see if I have an extra pair of earmuffs, too.”

“Yeah, get me those earmuffs,” I said. “I have a feeling I’ll be needing them now.”

That’s how I got my help. That’s how we started being friends again.

We worked until the sun went down. I offered to buy him dinner at the Glasgow, but he took a pass. He said he was going over to the reservation to see his mother. The next morning, he was on the site before I was. He was spot-peeling logs with his drawknife.

“Let me ask you something,” I said when I pulled up. “Aren’t you supposed to be out in the woods this month?” Vinnie’s regular job was dealing blackjack over at the Bay Mills Casino, but every fall he’d make extra money working as a guide for hunters.