Neither Wolf nor Dog (16 page)

“And you can't become an Indian by growing a ponytail,” Grover added.

They grunted their approval of each other's insights, and turned their attention back to their red plastic baskets of burgers and french fries. I tapped a silent rhythm on the rim of my coffee cup and stared out the window. The green school bus was disappearing off into the distance over an amber rise.

T
he sun had almost set by the time we got back on the road. Dan had saved a corner of his cheeseburger for Fatback, and the dog was making a great ceremony out of licking the ketchup and onions off the greasy bun onto the seat beside me.

We drove without speaking. Only the sound of Fatback's incessant licking punctuated the great peace of the high-plains evening.

I marveled at the sense of well-being that this vast landscape induced in me. There were no jagged edges, no fragments of meaning. All was massive, singular, and soft under the prayerful canopy of the sky.

I thought of an old farmer I had met once in Bismarck. I
had asked him if he ever went east. “Nah,” he answered. “Trees make me nervous.”

In the deep amber peace of this prairie twilight, I could well understand what he meant.

Grover and Dan rode in the front seat in silence. It had been years since I had ridden in a silent car. I generally tried to fill the space with music or talk from the radio or a tape. I counted it a deficiency when I was forced to ride in quiet.

Now, in the enveloping dark of Grover's old Buick, the pleasures of silent travel came back to me from my childhood. I slid down in the back seat and listened to the whining of the tires and the steady, purring throb of the ancient V-8 under the hood. Fatback crawled over and put her head on my lap. The sky outside had changed from golden to orange to a blazing red, and was beginning to deepen to a velvety purple. My truck, my indecisions, and my petty grievances and angers seemed light years away. I was in Indian country, and I was traveling on Indian time.

Grover and Dan must have sensed my improved state of mind, but they said nothing. Instead, they started singing a plaintive, warbling song in Lakota. They sang it like it was part of them, issuing forth from their mouths as naturally as breath. It sent shivers through me to hear these two men, one almost eighty, the other a generation younger, singing together as we passed through the growing high-plains darkness. Their song seemed to come as much from the land as from themselves. I could not imagine another sound more fitting to the spaces through which we were traveling.

Suddenly I was overcome with an almost uncontrollable urge to sob. Feelings that I could not name welled up and begged for release. It was beauty, it was contrition; it was loneliness and it was joy. In a way that I can never explain, it felt like the first time I had ever heard Bach's Mass in B Minor.

The
Sanctus
, the
Agnus Dei
, the
Kyrie
of the American plains was finding its voice in the song of two old Lakota men and the humming purr of a Buick V-8.

I turned my head toward the window so the men would not see me cry. But I think they knew. There were sobs in their voices, too, but they were sobs of the land, far bigger, far greater, far deeper than mine.

Finally, Dan stopped singing and turned in his seat. He never looked at me, but stayed in profile, like a priest giving a penance or a ritual benediction. His voice assumed a formal tone.

“I will make my little talk, now,” he said. “And I want you to listen.”

I reached into my pocket and clicked on the tape recorder.

“It is hard for me to make this talk, because it makes me talk against my own people. I don't like to do that. You should not talk against your own people. Except in this case, I am talking against some people who are harming us and not respecting what we have been taught.

“I am talking about Indians who sell the things that are sacred.”

Dan inhaled deeply. This was a talk he meant to do right.

“These Indians I am talking about go around selling Indian culture to white people. They take some Indian name and say that they will give a ceremony for white people, then they charge money. They give sweats for white people, or pipe ceremonies. I have heard that some give naming ceremonies or peyote ceremonies or tell our stories that are not supposed to be told.

“These people are doing something wrong. They know it. But for some reason they don't care.

“I'm not talking about Indians who are trying to share our culture. I'm talking about Indians who are selling the sacred
truths of our ancestors. It is alright to show dances or tell legends that can help people. I think white people need to hear these things to understand us better. What I think is wrong is when an Indian sells his birthright as an Indian by taking money to make other people feel like Indians.

“I have thought about this a great deal. It troubles me. We know that white people have an endless hunger. They want to consume everything and make it part of them. Even if they don't own it physically, they want to own it spiritually. That is what is happening with the Indian, now. The white people want to own us spiritually. You want to swallow us so you can say you are us. This is something new. Before you wanted to make us you. But now you are unhappy with who you are, so you want to make you into us. You want our ceremonies and our ways so you can say you are spiritual. You are trying to become white Indians.

“If this is meant to happen, it will happen in the Creator's time. We cannot make you us by giving you those things that are ours. All that does is make us lose what we are, because we no longer hold it in value.

“These Indian people who sell the sacred ways, and even the ones who make up the ceremonies and pretend to sell the sacred ways, are killing our people. They are betraying the one thing they should hold most valuable.”

He paused and lapsed into silence, as if gathering himself. He sat that way for almost a minute before he spoke again.

“Here is something that is important to understand. When something is sacred, it does not have a price. I don't care if it is white people talking about heaven or Indian people talking about ceremonies. If you can buy it, it isn't sacred. And once you start to sell it, it doesn't matter whether your reasons are good or not. You are taking what is sacred and making it ordinary.

“We Indians can't lose what is sacred to us. We don't have much left. What we have is in our hearts and in our ceremonies. The land is gone. It was sold by false Indians who were made into chiefs by white people. Our sacred objects are gone. They were collected by anthropologists who put them in museums. Now there are Indians who are selling ceremonies in order to make money.

“When they are gone, all we will have is our hearts. And without our ceremonies, our hearts will not speak. We will be like the white man who is afraid to say the word ‘God' out loud and goes around trying to buy sacred ceremonies from other people. We will have the same hunger in our hearts and the same silence on our lips.

“I don't want us to be this way. I want us to have something that does not have a price. If we don't, my grandchildren who are not yet born are already dead.

“That is all I have to say.”

When he was finished, he turned forward again in his seat, without ever looking at me for approval, or even for assent. The whole talk had been given in a low whisper, and I had been forced to lean forward, like a man listening to a secret or a prayer.

The earth moved by outside, almost black now, a rolling land of silhouettes and silence. A thin band of light outlined the horizon. Above it, the sky was breaking forth into a symphony of stars.

Grover said nothing. Dan said nothing. Even Fatback had ceased her licking and settled into a contented silence. I sat like a child, transfixed by the landscape, lost in a world of unknown thoughts and feelings, like a sailor adrift on an inland sea.

M
orning came like birdsong, soft and sweet. I did not remember falling asleep. Grover must have driven miles after I had drifted off.

Feathery clouds with orange edges wisped across the sky to the east. We were parked on a rise, somewhere in hill country, ever more westerly than we had been the night before. Craggy rock out-croppings hinted of the mountains, but this was still the high plains, alive with the buzz of insects and the dancing of the winds.

I lifted myself up from my resting place in the back seat of the car. The old man and Grover and Fatback had risen earlier. I had heard the car doors open and close, but had chosen to burrow deeper into my sleep rather than to rise up before the dawn.

Dan was squatting on his haunches on a hilltop in front of the car, watching the sun rise. His back was toward me, and a small ribbon of cigarette smoke rose around his head. I marveled at the way he could sit for hours like that, squatting on the earth, at once vigilant and relaxed.

The leathery taste in my mouth brought me out of my reverie. I craved coffee, and I craved a bath.

Grover had built a small fire near the car and was tending a pot of coffee that was propped up on several rocks. Somehow he had managed to make himself clean and tidy. His white T-shirt looked like it had been laundered and ironed. Each sleeve was rolled up twice to reveal his sinewy biceps. The eagle tattoo on his right arm moved and jiggled as he poked the tiny flame with a stick. He saw me sit up, and motioned me over.

“Coffee, Nerburn,” he announced as I opened the door. The rich acrid aroma of cheap, potent coffee cut like a razor through the clear air of the high-plains morning. Grover thrust me a cup and leaned back on the ground.

“It's a good day, Nerburn,” he said.

“It is a good day,” I answered. And I meant it.

The rise on which we were parked overlooked an endless expanse of grassland. The field that stretched out before us was alive with cars and tents and people walking back and forth in bright, feathered costumes.

I surveyed the scene like a man encamped on an escarpment above a medieval battlefield. All the action below me was purposeful and full of life. Fires were sending plumes of smoke high into the sky. Brightly colored nylon tents stood side by side with teepees and conversion vans.

In the center of the field a large ring had been marked off with weathered posts. Erratic squeaks and squawkings issued forth from a PA system that was being tested or adjusted somewhere, though I could see no signs of an electrical power source
anywhere. Here and there a peal of laughter would arise, soon to be drowned out by short bursts of drumbeats and singing.

“Powwow,” Grover said.

I nodded. I glanced around furtively to see if the green bus was anywhere. It wasn't. I breathed a quiet sigh of relief and took a deep draught of Grover's vile and ferocious coffee.

“Navy brew,” he said proudly.

“Serious stuff,” I said, hoping to imply no value judgment.

Grover beamed wickedly.

The air of festivity created a sense of anticipation. I had been to powwows before, but they had been larger events, more established. This one seemed personal and private. There were no vendors' stands in sight, no milling group of hangers-on.

“Is this where we're going?” I asked Grover.

“Don't know,” he said. “Ask the old man.”

I walked over to where Dan was squatting. He had a passive, satisfied air about him.

“Is this where we're going?” I repeated.

He didn't answer. Instead, he gingerly shook his gnarled hand out toward the horizon.

“Look out there, Nerburn,” he said. I surveyed the lavender morning sky and the distant rolling foothills. “This is what my people care about. This is our mother, the earth.”

“It's a beautiful place,” I offered.

He snubbed out his cigarette. “It's not just a place. That's white man's talk. She's alive. We are standing on her. We're part of her.”