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“I imagine it works,” I said. I knew full well it did; my students had used the same trick on me, and it had taken me months to catch on.
“It works, all right,” the old man said. “But it causes problems, too. I remember as a little boy in school. When the teacher would call on me I would sometimes want to think about my answer. She would get nervous and tap her ruler on the desk. Then she’d get angry at me and ask me if maybe I didn’t hear her or if the cat got my tongue.
“How was I supposed to think up my answer when I could see her getting upset and nervous and knew that the longer I waited the worse it would be? I’d end up saying one word or, ‘I don’t know.’ I’d say anything to get her away from me. Pretty soon they said I was stupid.
“I remember one teacher telling me I needed to learn how to think. She really didn’t care about my thinking. She just wanted me to talk. She thought talking meant thinking. She was never going to be happy unless I started talking the second she called on me. And the longer I talked, the happier she would be. It didn’t even matter what I said. I was just supposed to talk.
“I wouldn’t do it. I thought it was disrespectful to talk when I didn’t have anything to say. They said I was a bad student and that I was dumb.
“Now I see the same thing happening to my little great grandchildren. Their teachers say they don’t pay attention because they don’t look at the teacher’s eyes all the time and they say they aren’t very smart because they don’t talk all the time.
“I know what they are really doing. They don’t look at the teacher’s eyes because they are trying to form their thoughts. They are just being respectful in the way we teach them, because for us it is respect to keep your eyes down when someone more important is talking. If the teachers would give them time to form their thoughts and let them do it inside their own minds, they would see that my great grandchildren are very smart. But the teachers don’t think like us. They want everyone connected to everyone else by words and looks. They don’t like silence and they don’t like empty space.”
“Like the pioneers didn’t like the empty space of the land,” I said.
Dan brightened perceptibly. “Exactly! You’re starting to understand.” I glowed inwardly and kept listening.
Dan continued. “This is a lot of the reason why we Indians make white people nervous, Nerburn. White people like to argue. They don’t even let each other finish sentences. They are always interrupting and saying, ‘Well, I think...’
“To Indians this is very disrespectful and even very stupid. If you start talking, I’m not going to interrupt you. I will listen. Maybe I will stop listening if I don’t like what you are saying. But I won’t interrupt you.
“When you are done I will make my decision on what you said, but I won’t tell you if I disagree with you unless it is important. Otherwise I will just be quiet and go away. You have told me what I need to know. There is nothing more to say.
“But this isn’t enough for most white people. They want me to tell them what I think about what they are thinking, and if they don’t agree with me, they want to talk more and try to convince me.
“You don’t convince anyone by arguing. People make their decisions in their heart. Talk doesn’t touch my heart.
“People should think of their words like seeds. They should plant them, then let them grow in silence. Our old people taught us that the earth is always speaking to us, but that we have to be silent to hear her.
“I try to be that way. I taught my children to be that way.”
He swept his hand out across the panorama in front of us. “Do you hear the sound of the prairie? That is a great sound. But when I’m talking I can’t hear it.
“There are lots of voices besides ours, Nerburn. Lots of voices.”
I smiled at his gentle lecture. “You make good sense, old man,” I said. He nodded in quiet acknowledgment. I think we both felt a sense of pride at how things were progressing.
He picked up a handful of loose earth and looked at it. “What do you do in your mind while we are up here, Nerburn?” he asked.
“Oh, I think about my family. Sometimes I make little prayers or look for shapes in the clouds. Mostly, I guess I’m just in some kind of reverie.”
“Do you know what I do?” he said. “I listen to voices. For me this hill is so full of life I can never be quiet enough to hear all the voices.”
I wanted to press him on this, but gently. I didn’t want to break the spell. “Do you mean real voices, or sensations that seem to have meaning?”
“I mean real voices. They’re not all people. They’re not all speaking our language. But they are voices. Listen.”
I heard the buzzing of locusts and the distant, rhythmic call of some kind of bird.
“Do you hear that bird?” asked Dan.
I told him I did.
“Do you know what he is saying?”
“I don’t speak ‘bird,’” I answered.
“You should,” he twinkled. “Learn a lot. The birds are ‘two-legs,’ like us. They are very close to us. He is calling to another. He is saying it will rain soon.”
“You can tell that?”
“Yes, and I can tell that the wind is switching to the north and we will soon have colder weather.”
“How do you know that?”
“I just do,” he responded cryptically. “It’s in the voices I hear. I can understand all the trees. The wind. All the animals. The insects. I can tell what a color of the sky means. Everything speaks to me.
“There,” he said, pointing to a patch of scrubby grass in the distance. “What do you see?”
“It looks a little greener than the rest of the hills,” I answered. “At least in a few patches.”
“Good. Now why is that?”
“I don’t know.”
“Look closer.”
I squinted my eyes. There was nothing to be seen except the short green grass.
“I don’t see anything,” I said.
“Look closer.”
I squinted again. There seemed to be some kind of movement, but it was too small to make out.
“Something is moving,” I said.
“Good. Do you know what it is?”
I admitted I didn’t.
“Pispiza. СКАЧАТЬ