Neither Wolf nor Dog (13 page)

“See you tomorrow, old man,” I said with a sigh, and clicked off the TV and the light. The only answer was the dull thunking of beetles against the screen door, and the low, insistent drone of a plane passing somewhere far overhead.

I
t would be far from the truth if I said I met the next dawn with joy and enthusiasm. A patina of shame had been added to my feelings of alienation and indignation.

I had the terrible feeling that Dan would know I had considered leaving. At the same time, I had tasted — if only for a moment — the sense of relief that would come from being free of this project. I had allowed the image of my wife and children to flood in upon me and transport me back to my home, and that image echoed in my mind as I showered and dressed for another day.

I decided I had to confront the old man on some level. If this was to be my project, it had to be on my terms — not his, not Grover's, not some ancient dog's. Too much had to be done to leave everything to serendipity.

I had too many notes. My method and purpose were unclear. My truck had begun making an odd, vaporous smell during our trip up the rise yesterday, and was long overdue for a servicing.

Today I would set everything in place. I would clarify my task and the old man's expectations, then leave for home with
my notes, my tapes, and a better sense of my ultimate intentions. I would spend some time with my family, get my truck checked out by a mechanic I trusted, and allow everything to gestate into some kind of meaning and order. Then, when I had a clearer picture of where I was going, I would come back with a series of specific tasks and hammer this whole thing into form.

It was the only way. None of these people knew what was involved in producing a book. None of them had experienced that need to get control of a project so you could bring it to a meaningful conclusion. For them it was an endless exercise of niggling and criticizing and saying, “Why didn't you do this?” or, “You should have mentioned that.”

When all was said and done, this was my book and I had to give it form.

I had to take charge. I just had to.

It took me only a few minutes to pack. I had become accustomed to traveling light, and everything I owned went easily into the green canvas aviator's bag that had become my suitcase of choice.

The woman at the front desk didn't even look up as I checked out. Her eyes were glued to a small black-and-white television that was propped on the ledge of the sign-in counter. She scribbled a haphazard receipt and slapped it on the counter with exasperated indifference. She didn't even count the bills I had given her.

The knowledge of my plan buoyed me as I drove out toward Dan's house. A violent thunderstorm had passed overhead late last night and drenched the prairie with a short but nourishing rain. The earth exuded a smell of sweet nectar, and the swaying grasses were alive with buzzings and flutterings. I rolled down my windows and breathed deeply. White butterflies were hovering near the tall grasses and doing crazy dances against the azure sky.

It was a day to savor.

I bounced my way through the ruts leading to the old man's house. Fatback scrambled out from beneath the dead Chevy and barked and wagged. Wenonah's car was parked in the driveway, as I had expected.

I hopped out, gave Fatback a tousle, and walked to the steps. It was my habit to wait outside until invited in.

Soon Wenonah appeared at the door and peered through the broken screen. “He's not here, Nerburn,” she said.

“That's okay,” I said. “I'll just walk up the hill and sit a bit.”

“He won't be back for quite a while,” she continued.

“Like, how long?”

“I don't know.”

The news startled me. “Where'd he go?”

“He just said he was going on a little trip.”

I shook my head in amazement. He could have told me yesterday. Then I could have started for home last evening and saved the cost of another night in the motel. There I was, anguishing over my decision to leave, and he had no trouble just getting up and going without even telling me.

Wenonah must have seen my disgust.

“He didn't tell you to come back today,” she said.

Something snapped inside me. “Damn it,” I said. “I know he didn't tell me to come back. But I'm doing this book for him. I drive hundreds of miles on my own time and money to do a book to help him have his peace at the end of his life, and you're standing there acting as if I have no right to be upset when he just up and disappears without telling me.

“I'm sick of this crap. I have no right to be upset about anything, but you and he and Grover can be upset if I tie my shoelace wrong or use the wrong adverb. How come nothing that I think is important matters?”

Her voice was calm and composed. “Maybe we're tired of
having everything you think is important matter. Maybe that's the way it's been ever since your people got here, and maybe we're sick of it. Nobody asked your people to come over here. Nobody asked you to give us blankets full of smallpox and to kill our old people so you could take over the whole continent and build highways and shopping malls.

“Maybe you drive five hundred miles to see him. Big deal. He fights to stay awake and fights back pains and memories you can't even imagine to give you the story you think you want.

“You should be thankful he talks to you at all. It's a privilege when an elder shares with you. You don't even appreciate it.”

She turned around and walked back into the darkened room.

“Hey, Wenonah,” I shouted. “You can't just walk away like that.”

There was silence from the house.

“I know you can hear me, and I'm going to say what I have to say. I've had it with this honorific shit. I know it's a privilege, and I appreciate it. But it's a privilege for him to have someone care enough to do this thing, too.

“I've got a wife and a teenage daughter and a young boy who I die for every day being away from them. I'm sleeping in a fleabag motel room filled with the stink of whiskey from the endless drunks who stay in the next room. I'm spending money I don't have, and I'm being watched like a goddamn hawk by Grover and everyone else to make sure I don't make a false move.

“I didn't give anyone smallpox blankets. In fact, I think I'm probably sleeping on some of them in that damn motel. I didn't sail on any damn Pinta or Niña or Santa Maria, and I didn't take any maize from Squanto or ride with General Custer.

“I'm just a decent guy who is trying to do his best for a man I respect. And all I want is a little respect in return.”

Wenonah's shadow reappeared in the doorway. She opened the door and stepped out onto the wooden stoop. There was a tattered manila envelope in her hand.

“Come here, Nerburn,” she said.

I walked up the steps. She was holding a jumble of stiff sepia photographs. She handed me one. It was of a little boy in a military suit with a pair of heavy black shoes. He looked like a little Civil War or Spanish-American War soldier.

“You know who that is?” she asked. “It's my grandfather,” she said without waiting for an answer.

“You know what he's wearing? A little wool suit made out of U.S. Army uniforms.

“You know why he's wearing it? Because he was kidnapped from his parents and taken to a boarding school where they cut off his hair and burned the leather leggings and moccasins that his mother had made for him with her own hands.

“And you know why his parents didn't come and get him? Because his dad was arrested when he complained about the police taking his son away to school.

“You think you know everything, Nerburn. But you don't know anything.”

She handed me another photo. It was a big white wooden barn-like building. “Do you know what that is?”

“It looks like a dormitory, or old boarding school,” I said.

“It's the place where they made him kneel on marbles and hold his arms out to the side for a half-hour if they caught him speaking his language. It's the place where they made him line up with all the other kids and open his mouth for a dentist who took pliers and pulled out every tooth that didn't look right, and never gave anyone any novocain. It's the place where he started wetting his bed and the matron tied the skin on the end of his penis shut with fishline every night until he got an infection so bad that he almost died.”

She shoved the photographs back into the envelope and folded it shut. “He doesn't do what white men want anymore, Nerburn.”

She stood up and walked into the house. I looked at Fatback, who was engrossed in chewing on her own rectum.

“Christ,” I said, and climbed back into the safety of my own truck.

I
must have raced out of the driveway too fast or perhaps accelerated too hard, because by the time I got to the main road the vaporous smell was back. A steamy haze was starting to come into the cab through the air conditioner vents. “Come on, Baby,” I said to the truck. “You can do it.”

But she couldn't. Within a half a mile there was a loud pop and a great fluttering sound from the engine. Something between smoke and steam started to fill the cab.

I hopped out and opened the hood. A wall of white vapor engulfed me.

“Damn! Damn! Damn!” I bellowed. It had to be a head gasket. There was no hope, and only a little time. I jumped back in the cab and hit the gas. A great cloud of steamy smoke
poured from the tailpipe. The engine roared and flapped and spewed billows of steam from under the hood. The truck inched forward. It wouldn't go more than five miles an hour.

I headed for the center of the reservation. Cars full of Indians passed me in rez-mobiles, honking and waving. Agonizingly, glacially, I popped and roared down the incline toward the few buildings that passed for a town.

As I thundered onto the central street, I searched frantically for any indication of a gas station or auto repair shop. The temperature gauge had buried itself in the red zone. Kids on bicycles were circling around me and laughing and pointing. One little fellow pedaled in front of me and waved for me to follow. I didn't know where he was going, but I was in no position to ask.

He zoomed around a corner beckoning me with his left hand. He skidded up in front of a low, run-down concrete building with a white garage door. A piece of weathered plywood was nailed above the entrance. On it had been scrawled, “Broke Car's and Stuff ‘fixed.' Not running ‘ok' Jumbo.”

I turned off the key and coasted into the dusty area in front of the garage door. The engine dieseled and chugged, then wheezed to a stop.

I sat in my truck collecting my thoughts. Whoever he was, Jumbo was going to have to save me. This truck was not going another foot further.

The little boy on the bike ran into the shop. Soon the door opened and he ran outside again. He stood in front of the truck, staring toward the shop in anticipation. I started to get out when a shadow emerged in the doorway. At first I thought it might have been a car being moved inside. But the door pushed open, and out stepped the hugest man I had ever seen. He must have weighed well over four hundred pounds. His head was the size of a basketball and just as round. He had a
shaggy bowl haircut and chestnut brown skin. From what I could see he appeared to have few, if any, teeth.

A dirty white T-shirt hung like an umbrella over his midsection, which in turn hung like a flour sack over his belt buckle. From the front, the origin of his pants was invisible beneath the great pendulous girth of his belly.

He wore filthy white high-topped tennis shoes with no laces, and when he walked he kept his arms out at his side like a man trying to balance himself.

“Jumbo?” I said, trying to contain my astonishment.

He didn't even look at me. He just walked over to the front of the truck and popped the hood.

He stuck his head into the billowing steam, like a man placing his head in the mouth of a dragon. He pulled on a few things, then slammed the hood shut.