"Well...I guess that's...that." Johnny said as he walked away from the house on the corner of the dark street. It was his mother' house. The house he'd grown up in.

"What...happened? Are you okay?" Roy asked cautiously.

They walked in silence in the darkness for a while. There was no moon out that night.

The only traffic light on the reservation, the one at the intersection of main street and first, blinked red. It had been broken in a wind storm and had never been fixed.

In the blinking red light of that traffic light, Roy could see Johnny's shoulders trembling.

"...No. I'm not okay." Johnny said shakily after a long pause.

He stopped walking. A coyote howled somewhere.

"He...sounds so...lonely. Doesn't he, Roy?" Johnny said.

Roy furrowed his brows. "I'm...sorry?"

"The coyote." Johnny said, so quietly he was almost whispering. "I know his pain."

Roy looked down. He walked over to his partner's side and put a hand on Johnny's shaking shoulder.

"What happened?" Roy said quietly.

For the moment, his only answer was a stifled sob.

He tightened his grip on his partner's-his best friend's shoulder.

"I'm here for you."

"I'm alone." Johnny said almost too quietly to hear.

"No. You're not alone. I'm here." Roy said.

Johnny stifled another sob.

"You're...right. I guess. But..." Johnny let out a laboured breath. "I...don't have a family anymore."

Roy's eyes grew wide. Had things really gone that bad?

"What are you talking about?" Roy asked, helping Johnny to sit down on the deserted curb.

A few cockroaches scurried away.

"She...hates me. She...said that everything's my fault." Johnny said.

"She said...I'm the reason that my father left."

Roy shook his head. He couldn't believe what he was hearing.

"...What?" Was all he could manage to say.

"She said that...the whole family is disappointed in me for leaving...that they don't-" Johnny's voice caught in his throat. He cleared it and continued.

"That...If I don't come back and live with them, then they don't ever want to see me again."

Roy was so shocked, he couldn't find his voice. All he could do was shake his head.

Johnny was quiet for a moment, then continued.

"What do I do, Roy?" Johnny said, using a stick he had found to dig some of the dirt out of the crack in the sidewalk he was sitting on. "How do I just...walk away from...my roots?"

Johnny's tears fell onto the sidewalk.

"How do I walk away from-from the place I was raised, and...never come back again? I'm prou-proud of who I am. I don't just walk around...hoping people don't notice that I have dark skin. I am an Indian. I am a Native...FUCKING AMERICAN."

Johnny's voice had suddenly turned angry, and the tears were only getting worse. Roy scooted closer to Johnny and hugged his shoulders.

"But how...can I be PROUD of something that isn't PROUD OF ME? I'm just a HALF-BREED to them." Johnny sobbed. "A NOBODY. A NOTHING."

"She said...Why couldn't I have been more like my GODDAMNED PERFECT FUCKING BROTHER?" Johnny sobbed. "He married a GODDAMNED FUCKING PERFECT INDIAN GIRL. That just makes him the LONGEST FUCKING FEATHER IN THE GODDAMNED CAP, DOESN'T IT?"

Roy let Johnny yell. He let Johnny sob. The only thing he could do was to be there for his friend, so he held him.

"It's all my fault, isn't it?" Johnny sobbed. "I'm the one nobody wants, so that has to be why my father left, cos he cou-couldn't fucking stand to look at me? I..." His voice caught in his throat. "I can't believe that. I can't...I...can't..."

Johnny went limp in Roy's arms. He felt defeated and thrown aside.

"Nothing I can do wi-will ever make them happy. But...they're...my family. God. I loved them. I...looked up to them. Do they have to thr-throw me in the dirt like this? All because I wanted a better life?"

Roy hugged Johnny close to him.

"I be-became a fireman...because I wanted to help people. Be-because I wanted to make a di-difference. Is that wr-wrong?"

"No."

"Then...why is e-everything...my fault?"

"It isn't, Johnny."

"Then...why...why...?" Johnny fell silent. Roy hugged his shaking shoulders.

"It just...do-doesn't make sense." Johnny sobbed.

"You're right. It doesn't."

There was a long pause. When Johnny had calmed down, he began to talk again.

"Roy?"

"Hmm?"

"51s...we're a family, right?"

"Of course."

"And...I'm proud to be a member of 51s...So, even if I go and pull an overtime shift at 10s...you guys don't get mad at me for that, do you?"

"No, of course not! We're all professionals aren't we? It's good to keep that camaraderie between the stations. That way, we're not at each others' throats when we're trying to fight a fire."

"Well, yeah...But...say...if I got an opportunity to go someplace better-suited to me...say I-well...this is hypothetical, but...say I ace the Captain's exam..."

He and Roy smiled at each other in the red of the traffic light.

"...Say I ace the captain's exam a-and I want to leave. You guys wouldn't get mad at me for that, would you?"

"No." Roy said. "We'd...gosh, Junior, we're a family. We'd all miss you terribly. But...we know that we'd be stifling you if we tried to keep you with us...and...well, to tell you the truth, that'd be goddamned selfish of us."

Johnny fell silent for a moment.

There, in Roy's arms, he felt supported. Understood. Even in the middle of the place he'd grown up in...a place that he had, in recent years, come to feel estranged in, he felt safe.

Because he had somebody who believed in him.

"Roy..." He said quietly.

"Thank you. That's what I needed to know."