If life were perfect, Hugh Glass would never have lost his wife, a beautiful and wise and brave Pawnee woman who had been one of the lights of his life. If life were perfect, he would have never had to see his little boy Hawk, his other light, all of six years old, horribly burned over a quarter of his face and frightened half to death. If life were perfect, the Natives and the settlers wouldn't be fighting in the first place.

If life were perfect, he wouldn't be here now, with nothing in the world to devote himself to besides the protection and care of his now-sixteen-year-old son, who had become, for the most part, quiet and withdrawn from the years of mockery he'd faced from the others in the trappers' camps and forts. Mockery for being different, for being a child of two very separate worlds. Mockery purely for the fact that he had ever been born.

Sometimes when people mocked his son, Glass wanted to lash out and tell them to shut up. He knew it wouldn't do any good to react violently, though: he kept telling the boy to hold back from reacting, to just be invisible. To react in defense of him would only mean undoing years of careful teaching. He couldn't hold back the tide of sorrow and pure love, though, when he would sometimes catch the boy crying at night, asleep or awake. Those were the moments when he sat by the boy, stroking back that soft, raven-dark hair and murmuring gently to him in the native tongue:

"You are my son, Hawk. You are my son. And I love you."