his arms.

* * * * *

The lenses on the desk stared accusingly up at Raoul.

_Why do I keep taking them out and looking at them?_

It was like picking at a scab, making it bleed over and over again, so
that the wound never healed.

With a gentle hand he closed the silver case. He had long since cleaned
and polished it, but he still remembered it as he had first seen it,
streaked with the blood of the Indian woman he had just killed. He put
the case in his desk drawer.

Armand Perrault, sitting across the desk from Raoul, grunted with
disgust.

Ignoring him, Raoul picked up his whiskey glass and sipped from it,
running the tip of his tongue over the ends of his mustache.

"Why don't you get rid of those damned spectacles?" Armand said as he
refilled his glass from Raoul's jug.

When Armand picked up his glass it left a wet ring that would stain the
polished maple surface. There were already many rings on the desk, even
though it had been shipped out from Philadelphia only two months ago.
They looked like owl's eyes, staring as the spectacles stared.

But Raoul couldn't bring himself to care about how his desk looked,
just as he couldn't care enough to get started on rebuilding Victoire.
He preferred to live at the trading post. He hadn't felt like doing
anything, ever since Auguste's second escape from Victor. Next spring,
he told himself, he'd get the work going.

And so he sat up late every night in his counting room with Armand and
they drank and told each other the same stories about the war with Black
Hawk's band. There were men to drink with in the trading post taproom,
but he didn't care for most of them. Armand had been with him longer
than anybody. Raoul might not like him much, but he was used to him.

Armand had grudgingly accepted Raoul's explanation that he hadn't read
his copy of the will carefully before sticking it in the fire. He
thanked Raoul for the belated two hundred dollars and dismissed Pierre's
generosity as an attempted bribe from beyond the grave.

Raoul stared at his stained desk. The drawer was still open, the silver
case still visible. "They were my brother's spectacles."

"I know that. Why do you keep them? You hated your brother."

Raoul brought the flat of his hand heavily down on the desk. "Shut up!
You know nothing about it."

_How do I feel about Pierre? Do I still love him in a way? Is that why I
keep his spectacles?_

Unwilling sudd