Neither Wolf Nor Dog. Kent Nerburn

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      BURNT OFFERINGS

      It was several months before I was able to make the drive back out to the old man’s reservation. I had gone home with a pile of tattered notebook sheets and several shoe boxes of notes scribbled on everything from napkins to cash register slips. One of the boxes had contained a selection of clippings from newspapers that the old man had collected over the years. Some of them were obituaries of friends. Others were articles on subjects ranging from Indian affairs to politics. There were several Ann Landers columns and a few advertisements. I had been unable to discern any pattern to them, or to divine any reason why he had chosen to collect them in a shoe box, much less to send them home with me.

      But I had not asked questions.

      In the months that had passed I had spent many hours laying out pieces of paper and cobbling phrases and notations together into thematic unities. As I drove up the pathway to his house, I was excited but apprehensive. I had crafted a few good chapters, or so I thought. But still, it seemed artificial and vaguely unsatisfying, as if it were more my work than his. I was anxious to see how he would receive it.

      Fatback was lying in her usual place on the stoop. She barked once, then scuttled off into the dirt hollow she had dug beneath the junk car. I could hear laughing inside the house.

      Soon the old man appeared at the door. He gestured me in with a flap of his wrist. “Haven’t been around for a while,” was all he said. For all his surprise and sense of ceremony, I might have been gone only fifteen minutes.

      Three men were sitting around a table, playing cards. They were all old, but none so old as the old man himself. The house was filled with cigarette smoke. The TV was blaring in the corner.

      One of the men looked up and said, “Who’s that? Grizzly Adams?” It was said with good humor and directed at the old man, as if he, not I, were responsible for explaining my presence. The other men laughed a bit and nodded, then turned back to their cards. Other than that, no one paid any attention to me. The old man didn’t introduce me or offer me a place to sit.

      One of the men threw three cards on the table. “Son of a bitch,” said another, and they all burst into laughter. I had my packet of Prince Albert to offer the old man, but it seemed strange and inappropriate. I stood silently, holding my computer printouts and listening to the buzz of the fluorescent light over my head.

      “Wasichu play cards?” one of the men said to the old man. I recognized the Lakota term for “white man.”

      “Don’t know,” he answered. He pointed toward me with the ash of his cigarette. “Hey, Nerburn. You play cards?”

      “No,” I answered. “I never really learned.”

      One of the men grunted. I was no longer significant. He began dealing a new hand while I stood awkwardly in the doorway, disregarded and forgotten.

      Suddenly, as if he had been waiting, the old man said, “Well, read one.” The others kept talking among themselves and smoking cigarettes.

      “Now?” I said.

      “Hell, yes. I might not make it until tomorrow.”

      There was a general round of laughter. I wanted to leave.

      I stepped further into the room and started paging through the neatly stapled packets, trying to find one in which I had confidence.

      “Just pick one. It don’t matter,” said the old man.

      I grabbed the one sitting on the top. It was one of the most beautiful, I thought, and it was the one that had come to me most fully crafted. Unlike the others, this one had been meticulously printed in ballpoint pen and sealed into a separate envelope. I was not even sure he had written it alone.

      I had improved the grammar and changed a few words. But the phrasing, the cadences, and the thoughts were exactly as I had received them.

      I cleared my throat like a schoolboy and began:

      Hello, my friends.

      I am going to speak to you now. I have thought about this for many years.

      I have always tried to follow the ways of my grandfathers. In my ears I have heard the words of Sitting Bull, telling me that white people are not to be trusted. But I have also heard the words of Black Kettle, who told us to reach out a hand of peace.

      I have carried them both in my heart.

      Now that I am old I have decided to speak.

      There are many of my people who would have me keep silent. They feel we must continue to hide ourselves from the white man. They say that every time we have offered our hand we have been destroyed.

      But there is no more place to hide. The white man controls the air we breathe and the water we drink. He comes among us for good and for ill. Our numbers are small, but we are strong in heart. We must meet together, red people and white, one final time before it is too late. Perhaps our strong hearts will be heard this time. If they are not, what does it matter? Then our time is done either way.

      I choose to believe otherwise. The Creator СКАЧАТЬ