Neither Wolf Nor Dog. Kent Nerburn

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      ONE WILY OLD INDIAN

      I didn’t bring up the subject of our conversation for a few days. I figured that the old man would say more when the time was right. But I knew now that Grover had been right. The old man had an orator’s eloquence that could never be captured by piecing together notes from a shoe box. I needed to stay with him, live with him, follow him, and listen. It was my pen and my tape recorder that were going to be my most precious assets.

      Dan really did live his life like Fatback. He got up when he wanted, lay down when he wanted, spoke when he wanted, stayed silent when he wanted. Unlike white people, he never explained his actions, or announced when he was going to do something, no matter how abrupt it might seem. I might be sitting and speaking with him, and he would suddenly stand up and go into his bed. Or he might stop in the middle of a sentence and start watching the television, which droned perpetually from the corner of his living room. Sometimes there were reasons. Other times it made no sense that I could understand. He was responding to some inner promptings that were not mine to know.

      The days passed in this relaxed and enigmatic way. Little of purpose was actually accomplished. We mostly spent the time driving around in my truck and sitting in his kitchen or on his porch.

      I became increasingly aware of how old and fragile he really was. It was as if he had etched a strength into his body over the years, and he now could call upon it when he needed it to act. But the effort was great, and there were times when he would just sink into a reverie and then gradually slide into a fitful sleep. If I happened to speak he would open his eyes and answer, but I could see that I was calling him back from some faraway place. So I soon learned to occupy myself in silence while he slept.

      One time Wenonah drove up while I was sitting there waiting for the old man to awake. She gestured me to her car. “You don’t have to sit there and wait for him, Nerburn,” she said. “He won’t mind if you go.”

      “It feels disrespectful to me to leave when he falls asleep,” I answered.

      “Don’t worry about it. That’s the Indian way. When you are here, you are here. When you are gone, you are gone. It isn’t a problem to be gone, so long as you are really here when you’re here.”

      “That’s a nice Zen sentiment,” I offered.

      She just smiled and shrugged. “He likes you. That means you can do what you want to. He will respect it.”

      “I’d rather sit and wait. I’d feel better.”

      She smiled and walked up the steps. “I’ve got to cook him some dinner.”

      As soon as the screen door slammed, the old man was awake and alert. “Been waiting for you,” he said.

      “You’re one wily old Indian, Grandpa,” she retorted. He responded with something in his own tongue and the two of them broke into gales of laughter.

      The old man saw me still sitting on the stoop. He called me in. “You’re getting to be like Fatback, Nerburn. That’s how she started, just hanging around.”

      “Maybe you should start sleeping under the car,” Wenonah said. “It’s cheaper than that motel.”

      The two of them laughed again. Dan seemed wide awake and in a good mood, so I ventured a question: “Do you mind being called an Indian, Dan?” It seemed appropriate, since his granddaughter had just referred to him as an Indian, and it was a question that always lurked just below the surface when I was involved in conversations with Indian people.

      “What the hell else would you call me?”

      “Oh, Native American. I don’t know. Something. Anything other than Indian.”

      The old man took a deep breath, as if he had explained this many times before.

      “It doesn’t bother me. It bothers a lot of our people, though. They don’t like that the name we have was a mistake. Just because Columbus didn’t know where he was, we have to be called Indians because he thought he had found the East Indies. They think it takes away our pride and our identity.”

      “That seems like a fair sentiment to me,” I said. The old man waved his hand in front of his face to silence me.

      “I guess I don’t mind because we have taken the name and made it our own. We still have our own names in our own languages. Usually that name means ‘first people,’ but no one would ever call us that. So we let people call us ‘Indians.’

      “Does that tell СКАЧАТЬ