"Do you want some potatoes mom?" Amanda asked after putting mashed potatoes on her own plate. It was later in the evening and she had laid out a steak meal on the table along with steamed vegetables and gravy. Mark was cleaned up in jeans and t-shirt as he sat at the head of the table cutting up his steak.

"No, I've had quite enough potatoes," Wendy answered, a woman in her late sixties with a short bob cut, she was a petite woman from age but still lived with the confidence that a privileged life brought.

"It's alright, I've made a lot."

"Yes honey, but I've learned a long time ago that just because you can doesn't mean that you should," Wendy smiled at her daughter as the other pulled the plate back. "You're not saying much Mark."

Mark looked up at Amanda first than over to Wendy as if he forgot the other was there. "I'm sorry?"

"You're not saying much. Rough day at work?"

"We don't talk work at the table Mom." Amanda said politely as she started eating.

"I'm just showing an interest in his life. So, rough day at work?" Wendy asked again.

"For who?" Mark answered.

"For you. Why would I be worried about the savages?" Wendy said. Mark stared blankly, it's been years since he's heard that term; old movies maybe.

"I don't like that word Mom, savages." Amanda was trying to get the attention off Mark.

"What offends you about it?" Wendy asked back.

Mark wondered if there was something in her brain that switched off so she could no longer tell when people were hinting that some topics were off limits. He wanted to blame it on her age but she was this way for as long as he could remember. She has never had any tact.

"They used to be a proud people mom."

"When? Is that what they tell you?"

"I've never actually met one, no."

"Would you want to? Ask Mark, he's around them all day. They live in shacks with no indoor plumbing, covered in mud all the time. Savage is the most appropriate adjective." Wendy looked to Mark for confirmation but all he did was shrug. What Wendy was saying was true but she left out what they both knew; it wasn't by their choice. "You're too young to remember what it was like before the sterilization programs. There were Indians everywhere. They were breeding like rabbits. You couldn't go into Vancouver without feeling like a minority. Roadblocks all the time, shutting down highways, train lines, costing us all a lot of money and what for? Our land, land we lived on for decades and they just expected us to hand it to them?"

"I'm just saying mother, if it were a lion they were..." Amanda was going to say hunting but stopped herself when she saw Mark’s look, some things she was not allowed to share. "A lion kept in a zoo they'd still show it some respect."

"I show them respect," Wendy stated, "and if you must know, I'm in the sponsor program."

"The what?" Mark perked up, something new.

"There's a man that comes to my church every few months, he runs a program that helps Indians learn. He goes to the reserves and teaches them to read, maybe if we can teach them to think like us they'll be less dangerous. He asks for donations and I help them out. I do my part." Wendy said proudly. Mark smirked. He's heard of the program a Christian group put together but saw first hand that the only thing from them that reached the reserve were second hand bibles. "But Amanda, a lion isn't likely to shit on your carpet and tell you it's a present."

"What?"

"Have you ever had to sit through one of their dances?" Wendy went back to her meal.

Several hours later Mark sat on his bed with his back against the wall, legs crossed at the ankles as he read a paperback copy of 'Where the red fern grows,' not really getting into it. Amanda moved about in the large bathroom as she went about getting ready for bed.

"You set the alarm?" She asked through the doorway.

"It's set," Mark answered and then looked over at the clock to make sure, he reached over and hit the button.

"You brush your teeth?" She said as she came into the room dressed in her oversized T-shirt. Mark looked up at her.

"I...yeah," He said and waited until she sat on the bed. "Are you my mom now?"

"No, I just thought that since you've been down lately I could cheer you up by fooling around tonight." She smiled like she was up to no good.

"Yeah?"

"Yeah."

"That's...that's what our marriage has come to? That's your best seduction technique?" Mark closed his book and put it on the dresser.

"You're a boy, is seduction really necessary?"

"Well, nobody likes to be taken for granted."

Amanda faked a sigh. She nodded her understanding and got to her feet. "Alright, hmmm."

Amanda reached up to her hair and pulled out the release, it cascaded down her back as she shook it out. She turned back with an entirely changed attitude, a sex goddess as she climbed onto the end of the bed.

"Sweetheart..."

"Yes."

Amanda crawled halfway across the bed and stopped. Mark smiled. She moved up to him and straddled his legs so they were almost chest-to-chest. "I'm going to rock your world."

Thirty minutes later Amanda was curled up against Mark’s side as he stared up at the ceiling, the two of them uncovered and naked as they cooled down.

Amanda raised her head to watch him for a bit, touching his chin.

"I'd wish you'd talk to me."

"What?" He looked at her.

"We used to just talk, you don't do that anymore, and I wish you would." She weakly smiled, sad.

"What do you want to talk about?"

"What you're thinking."

"I'm not...I'm not thinking anything."

"You're kind of a bad liar."

"Hmmm," Mark laid his head back down and stared off into space. He decided to bring up the elephant in the room. "I'm thinking about Indians."

"Oh." She said, laying her head on his chest, she could feel his heartbeat speed up. "What about them?"

"I don't know." He betrayed some emotion. "You ever wonder about what makes them so wrong?"

"No, not if I can avoid it," She answered. He nodded his understanding that it wasn't something either of them wanted to think about.

"Everything we have...our whole life Amanda."

"I know."

"How did we come this far? How do you go from relocations to legal homicide? How do we just...what did we become?" Mark thought back to the reports he's read, the news he remembered as a young man. "It was war, but the war ended. It was over. But it wasn't enough to just beat them, we needed to destroy them. We turned them into pets."

Amanda pushed herself up to look at him. She studied his face. "Are you alright?"

Mark looked at her and breathed softly, "No."