Neither Wolf nor Dog (29 page)

I wanted to talk but had no idea what to say. By bidding me to sit, she had locked me in place for no apparent reason. I heard the low whisper of her prayer litany: “Hail Mary, full of grace.” She was speaking in English.

She worked her way down the beads as the sun worked its way into the sky. The day was going to be a hot one. I sat in silence as she fingered each bead until she arrived at the crucifix that hung on the end. She lifted it to her mouth and kissed it in a ritual fashion, then put it in the pocket of her dress. Having finished, she arose. She held up one finger to indicate that I should pay attention, then walked into the house.

She emerged shortly with a black-and-white photograph mounted on a piece of heavy cardboard. It was old and faded. The picture was of a group of children posed in front of a porch. There were about fifty of them, arranged in rows, boys separated
from girls, all about seven or eight. The girls were wearing white dresses and the boys had on little men's suits. Most of the boys were wearing floppy pork-pie hats or snap-brim fedoras. Behind them, off to the right, stood a single adult: a white man, wearing a Roman collar.

Annie pointed to one of the poker-faced little boys. “Dan,” she said, using his Indian name. She moved her finger to a cute little girl in pigtails sitting with her hands demurely in her lap. “Me.”

I laughed with pleasure. Dan's leathery old scowl was immediately recognizable in the tough little expression on the boy in the photo. Annie put her hand to her mouth and giggled like a girl.

“Oh, yah,” she said. “He was always in trouble. Ran away all the time.”

I looked at the stern-faced priest. “Oh,” I said.

“I liked it there,” she volunteered. “I got to work in the kitchen with the nuns.”

“Did they ever talk about the Ghost Dance?” I asked.

She chortled and made a dismissing gesture with her gnarled hand. “Oh, that was just silly Indians,” she said.

I wanted to ask more, but the sound of barking interrupted me. The dogs had taken off up the ridge behind the house. Within seconds the hum of an engine could be heard, followed by a dusty cloud in the distance. Soon a white pickup poked its nose over the ridge and clanked its way down toward the house with the dogs circling and barking at its front fender.

Annie got up to meet it. It bounced into the yard and pulled to a halt. There were four people in the front seat — a man, a woman, and two children. Another boy in his early teens rode in the back.

They stepped out one by one. The man was in his late thirties, wearing the standard range outfit of jeans, white
T-shirt, and cowboy boots. His hair shone like a blackbird's wing from beneath a white cowboy hat. His mouth was locked in a gambler's grin.

The woman, who was somewhat younger, had on a Hard Rock Cafe T-shirt and jeans. She was skinny and tough, with the hard hollow-cheeked beauty of a bar queen. She guided the children out like ducklings.

The children were scruffy but scrubbed. They ran toward Annie, who had bent over and stood with arms outstretched. The two older children were dark-haired and round-faced. The third, who was no more than five, had blue eyes and a long, shaggy mop of blond curls.

Annie grabbed them each and spoke to them in Lakota. They spoke back to her in English. Forgetting the picture in my hands, and making no introduction, she led the children inside where I heard screams of “Grandpa, Grandpa.”

There was scuffling and scraping. A figure appeared in the door, pushed in a wheelchair by two of the children. It was the man whose voice I had heard the night before. He, too, was almost as old as Dan. His face was brown as a chestnut and his hair was pushed to the side in a shock of white. He was wearing a white long-sleeved shirt buttoned at the neck and a pair of blue trousers. He had no legs below the knees.

I smiled clumsily at the man and woman who had emerged from the pickup. Much to my surprise, the man reached to shake hands with me. Reverting to form, I introduced myself. “Kent Nerburn. I'm a friend of Dan's and Grover's.”

“Delvin,” he said, offering no more, and took my hand in a lazy grip. The woman reached out more formally: “Danelle.” She held my hand with authority, like someone trying to assay its value. They both looked me in the eye as they introduced themselves. They had lived somewhere among white people.

The name “Danelle” aroused my curiosity. It could just be
a coincidence, I told myself. But the woman bore a striking similarity to Wenonah in both looks and manner. I wondered what the connection might be, but did not feel comfortable pursuing it. I was happy enough just to be in the presence of some people who seemed to operate by some of the ground rules of white society.

Like a man overseas who has just met someone from home, I wanted to start chattering. But I held back. The woman's stern formality and the great silence of the open space did not encourage idle words.

Danelle saw the picture and warmed a bit. “Grandma talking about the old days?” In the glancing sunlight I could see the harsh textures of a case of childhood smallpox written on her skin.

“Not much,” I said. “We just got started.”

“Grover's here, huh?” she said.

“You know him, I assume?”

Her expression clouded. “Yeah, I know him.”

The children had pushed the old man out into the yard. Danelle went over and kissed him on the cheek. Delvin was unhitching the tailgate of the pickup truck. I went over to help him. The bed was filled with boxes of groceries and a big corrugated steel tank about the size of a fifty-gallon drum.

We brought the boxes into the house. Then Delvin climbed in the truck and drove it around the side. Thankful for something to do, I followed him. He backed up to the wall and hopped into the truckbed. He took a green garden hose and snaked it through a small opening in the wall. “Okay,” he hollered.

Danelle's voice answered from somewhere inside. I watched from the side of the truck. “Water,” he said, sensing my curiosity. “Can't drink this shit.” He grinned in the direction of the pump.

“Do they live out here all winter?” I asked.

“Used to. Not any more. Diabetes got the old man. He'd
stay out here now if we'd let him.”

“Pretty tough to survive in their condition.”

“Don't take bets.”

Delvin leaned against the cab of the pickup. “You writing a book or something?” I had no idea how he knew. He saw my surprise. “Just figured. White man hanging with the Skins.”

“It's for Dan,” I explained.

“Shit. If we had a dime for every book someone is writing about us we could buy back the Black Hills.”

There was no malice in his voice. Still, the comment stung.

“Dan asked me,” I explained, protesting too much.

Delvin defused my fears. “You're going to have to be a hell of a liar to turn that old duffer into a wise man.”

“I don't want to write a ‘wise man' book.”

“No ‘Black Elk Speaks'?”

“Maybe, ‘Black Dog Speaks,'” I said, nodding toward Fatback, who was lazing in the shade under the bedframe.

“Now, that's a book we could use,” he grinned. We shared a skeptic's sympathy.

“The water's not flowing,” Danelle shouted from inside the house. Delvin adjusted the hose. “That's better,” she hollered.

Delvin gestured toward the wall. “He's her grandfather, you know.”

“Who, Dan?”

My stunned response pleased him. “Yeah. You didn't know that? His kid was her dad.”

I didn't know what to say. In a few sentences I had discovered more about Dan than I had learned in being around him for several months. It made me realize how closed-mouthed he had been.

“You mean the son who got killed? Who went to Haskell?”

“Yeah. You didn't know that?”

“I don't know anything,” I said. “I just ride.”

He laughed a bit. It was a warm, friendly, natural chuckle. “That's what we all do, man. Just ride.” He tipped the tank on edge so the hose would have a chance to siphon all the water.

“So, Wenonah's her sister?” I asked.

“Yeah. She's the good one. Stayed home with Grandpa after Mom and Dad were killed.”

The revelations were mind-boggling. In themselves, they were nothing — just fragments like the notes in the shoe box. But they started to fill in the background of an old man I had come to respect and even love. I realized how much I longed to know these things. But I was unsure how far I should go in asking. Still, I decided to pursue. I was still completely confused, and I wanted to sort things out in my mind. Maybe, I thought, I could find a mainspring that would help me understand Dan and the mission that he seemed intent upon sharing with me.

“Do you mind talking about this stuff?” I asked Delvin. “Hell, no. I'm surprised the old man never told you these things.”

“He doesn't tell me much. He's mentioned his dad and his grandparents several times, and I saw some pictures on his wall. But that's all.”

“So you don't know about his wife, or any of that stuff?”

“I don't know anything,” I said, almost desperately.

“Yeah,” Delvin said. “I can see. He's a crafty old devil. Likes to keep the upper hand.”

“What about his wife?” I said. “I've wondered why there are no women anywhere around him.”

“It's a funny story. The old man married some white churchy social worker who came out to the rez back during the war. World War II. He couldn't get in because of his eye. I think it really bothered him. He really wanted to go. Those old Indians, you know, they really take that army stuff seriously.

“He tried to do some work on the reservation, but they
wouldn't let him. Wrong family. You know the bullshit. He and his wife had a kid. She sort of flipped out and split. Couldn't take the prairie. Went back East somewhere. I don't think he ever got over it.”

The mention of a white wife who was a social worker made me smile. It explained a lot of his vitriol at the cafe the day before.

Delvin was enjoying himself. He could see how hungry I was for this information. He doled it out in tantalizing chunks.

“Bobby — that's his kid — had a tough time, I guess. All that ‘halfbreed' shit. Really wanted to do it right for both his mom and dad. Went off to Haskell. Wanted to be a teacher or something. I don't know what happened, then. I guess Bobby ended up back on the rez. Got hooked up with AIM, or at least that's what people say. That's when he married Dannie's mom.”

“Dannie?”

“Danelle.”

“And . . . Dannie's mom is Annie's daughter?” I tried the name out on my tongue. It felt clumsy and confused.

“Yeah.”

“So what happened? How did he get killed?”

“Don't know. They both did. Bobby and Katherine — Dannie's mom. Police said they were killed in a car accident. But that was bullshit. There were bullet holes in them. They weren't even on their own reservation. Maybe they killed themselves, I don't know. But then why would the police say they were killed in a car accident? Reservation police — you know how it is.”

“Okay,” Danelle shouted through the wall.

Delvin snaked the hose back out and curled it neatly next to the tank. There would be water enough to last another few days.

I could hear Danelle's footsteps moving across the floor to the door. She would be out with us in a few seconds. I decided
to let the matter drop.

Apparently Delvin thought it best to change the subject as well. He leaned back against the cab of the pickup and pulled the brim of his hat down like a cowboy taking a siesta. He started whistling some tuneless melody and drumming something on the truck body with his hands. It was a gesture of calculated nonchalance, too studied to be believable, too blatant to be ignored. He looked like the bad kid in the back of the classroom pretending he had done nothing wrong.

Danelle came around the corner.

“Did we get it all?” she asked.

“Every drop,” Delvin said, thumping the empty tank as evidence.

“How long do you think it will last?”

“Oh, a week, maybe, unless these guys are staying.” He nodded toward me.

“I don't know,” I said. “Nobody tells me anything.”

Danelle looked at me with a shade of a scowl. I was an interloper, taking up precious resources. She looked into the growing sun. “It's going to get hot,” she said. There was concern in her voice. “Maybe we should take Grandma and Grandpa home with us until it cools down.”

Delvin shrugged and jumped to the ground. “You ask them.”

I stood silently by the side of the truck. There were bigger issues at stake here than my curiosity about Dan's background. But I couldn't keep my eyes off Danelle now that I knew she was Dan's granddaughter. It was as if by watching her I might gain some clues into the old man.

She noticed my attention and caught my eyes in a hard stare. It was not a challenge so much as a measuring. She was not someone to trifle with.

She swung herself onto the tailgate with a cowgirl's grace. “Well, mister. What's your story? How come you're out here
with Dan and Grover?”

Her schoolgirl directness caught me off guard. I didn't know how much familiarity I should assume, or how much about her relationship to Dan I was supposed to know. The fact that she called her grandpa “Dan” made me think she didn't want me to know about it. “Nothing, really. I write. I used to work on Red Lake reservation in northern Minnesota. Dan's granddaughter — Wenonah — called me.”

“Wenonah?” she said. She sounded surprised, but offered no more explanation.

“Yeah. Said Dan wanted me to come out and help him put together a book. I said I would.”

It was a short answer, but good enough, I thought. She chewed her bottom lip and looked at me hard. “A book?”

“Yeah.”