Neither Wolf Nor Dog: On Forgotten Roads With an Indian Elder by Nerburn Kent

Author:Nerburn, Kent [Nerburn, Kent]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Travel, Spirituality, Memoir, Native American, Biography, History, Autobiography, Philosophy, Non-Fiction
ISBN: 9781577318866
Goodreads: 8009101
Publisher: New World Library
Published: 2002-08-09T07:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER

SIXTEEN

THE

STRANGER

Imade Grover stop at the convenience store so I could make my call; the phone in the cafe had hung on the wall only about two feet away from where the six men in feed caps were sitting. I figured they had enough stories without hearing me try to explain to my wife how I wasn’t coming home because my truck was being dismantled by a giant while I drove across fields in an old Buick with two Indians and an arthritic dog.

When I returned to the car, Grover and Dan were engaged in an animated conversation that had Dan laughing in his old good-hearted cackle.

“You talked more than a white man,” Grover was saying.

“Gives those old bastards something to talk about.”

“Yeah, it gave them another old bastard to talk about.”

Dan cackled his approval.

“Straighten things out?” Grover said as I pulled the door shut behind me.

“I guess so,” I answered. It had been a sad conversation, full of unspoken angers and longings and sadnesses. My boy had gotten on the line and begun pouring out stories of his little friends and toys he had gotten and birthday parties he was going to attend. My wife had tried to be supportive, but there was a hard distance in her voice. She was carrying too much on her own. She needed me home.

“You’ve got to just let it go, Nerburn,” Grover said.

His flip attitude angered me. I wanted to recede into my own private hurt. Dan said nothing.

We wheeled back onto the main highway. For reasons that I did not understand, Grover headed east again. The route seemed completely haphazard and without purpose. But I didn’t care. My cares were in my mind; what Grover chose to do did not interest me. The Buick settled into its eight-cylinder throb and the three of us lapsed into silence. Fatback was gnawing furiously on one of the bones that the waitress had given us.

We rode without speaking for almost an hour. I gave myself over once more to the rising hills and distant vistas. My child’s voice haunted me.

The “little trip” had developed into a routine. Grover determined the route. Dan determined when we would stop and for how long. I rode along in the back with my canine companion, taking notes, observing, and staring out at the plains.

Gradually the pain of my distant family eased. The subtle power of the landscape washed over me once more. The ebbs and swells of the land, and the lure of the distant horizon had a soporific effect on me. I nestled down into my corner of Grover’s commodious back seat and let the great sweep of the land hypnotize me.

The waning afternoon passed in this fashion, with no discernible rhythm or moments of individual consequence. Perhaps I had dozed, or merely drifted into deep reverie. But when Dan blurted out, “Go in there,” I jumped in my seat like a man jolted from sleep.

Grover slowed the car so quickly that my stomach churned. We had been descending a long, gradual hill, and the car had to fight to come to a halt.

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