Neither Wolf nor Dog Read Free Page B

— in its tone.
    The dog continued barking. “Get away, Fatback,” the old man yelled. The dog fell silent and scrabbled her way under the car that was sitting on blocks. “Damn thing. Just showed up here one day. Now she thinks she owns the place.” The old man turned and walked back inside. He was slow and deliberate, hardly lifting his feet as he walked.
    I made my way up the steps and into the door. The matter-of-fact way he accepted my arrival had me confused.
    The house was full of man smell. Fried food. Stale cigarettes. Old coffee.
    Dishes stood in the sink. One wall was covered with photographs — a 1940s-vintage sepiatone of a young man and woman standing in front of an old car; a department-store posing of a little girl in a taffeta party dress; a graduation photoof a solemn young man in a mortarboard. An old
Life
magazine photograph of John F. Kennedy stood framed on an end table.
    â€œSit down,” the old man said. He beckoned to a yellow Formica table that stood in the middle of the kitchen. “Do you drink coffee?”
    I told him I did. “Good,” he answered, and poured me a cup of thin brown liquid from a white enamel pot he kept on the stove. Then he padded over and slid into a seat across from me.
    He must have been almost eighty. His face was seamed and rutted, and his long grey hair was pulled back into a ponytail. He had on a plaid flannel shirt over a white T-shirt. His pants were held up by suspenders and he wore sheepskin-lined slippers. One eye was clouded over, but there was a twinkle in his look that matched the twinkle in his voice.
    I reached into my pocket and handed him the Prince Albert. My days in Red Lake had taught me that the gift of tobacco was the gift of respect among Indian people.
    The old man looked at it.
    â€œHmm,” he said. He reached across the table with a hand twisted by arthritis. He took the packet and shoved it into the breast pocket of his shirt. “You wrote those ‘Red Road’ books.”
    â€œI helped the kids.”
    He folded up the newspaper on the table.
To Walk the Red Road
lay underneath, as if it, too, had been awaiting my arrival. Small notations were written all over its cover.
    â€œThey’re pretty good.”
    â€œWe tried our best.”
    He spit once into a coffee can he kept by his chair.
    â€œI don’t like white people much,” he said. He was looking straight at me.
    â€œThat’s understandable.”
    â€œDid they?”
    â€œWho?”
    â€œThe old folks at Red Lake.”
    â€œNot all of them.”
    He picked up a can of snuff from the table and slid some behind his lip.
    â€œWhat about you?”
    â€œYou mean, did they like me?”
    He didn’t answer.
    â€œI think so. Some didn’t. They thought I was a pushy white guy. But what could I do?”
    â€œYou did okay.” He tapped the cover of
To Walk the Red Road.
“Now, let me ask you something else. Do you know why they let you?”
    I smiled a bit and took a sip of my coffee. “I think so. I think it’s because I like people and they could tell that. That I wasn’t going to screw them. That the kids thought I was okay so they decided to trust me.”
    â€œNo, I don’t think so,” he said. “There’s something else. You don’t try to be an Indian.”
    I smiled at the compliment and let him continue. He was clearly a man who formed judgments quickly.
    â€œWhite people that come around to work with Indians, most of them want to be Indians. They’re always wearing Indian jewelry and talking about the Great Spirit and are all full of bullshit.”
    â€œYeah, I know the type,” I said.
    He peered around the side of my head. “You got no pony-tail. That’s good. You don’t have any turquoise rings on, do you?” I held up my hands. They had no rings, no watch. “Good,” he said wryly.
    He picked up his train of