Neither Wolf Nor Dog. Kent Nerburn

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. You call them prairie dogs.”

      “Okay,” I acknowledged.

      “That’s why the grass is green. Our brother prairie dogs dig under the ground to make their homes. They dig up the earth so the rain can go deeper and the roots of the grass can grow stronger.

      “Where the grass is richer, the bigger animals come to feed. If we sit here quietly, in the morning, when the antelope are hungry, we will see them and we could hunt them. It is all because of our brother prairie dog. Where he lives, we can live.

      “These are the kind of things I see when I look out here. They are things my grandfathers taught me. I hear them, too. My grandfathers. I hear their bones under the ground.”

      I looked at the clump of dusty earth he held in his hand.

      “You think I’m lying, don’t you? Or just a crazy old fool. I can’t explain it. But I know where the dead are buried. I hear them. They speak to me in some ancient tongue. It’s a gift I have.

      “You’ve read about those people who can find water by using a forked stick? They walk along with the stick above the ground, and when they get above water the stick just points down.

      “That’s the way it is with me. When I get over one of the graves I have a feeling inside me. It’s like a shiver. My grandmother had it, too. She said that our ancestors gave it to us, and that I should always listen.

      “That’s why I come up here, Nerburn. Out there is where my people are buried. This is where I come to listen.”

      “I believe you, Dan,” I said. And I did. Once, many years ago, I had taken a great deal of peyote. I had thought nothing of it at the time — it was just one of those acts that went along with life in the sixties. Within hours I was lying on my back under the midnight sky listening to the springs flow under the ground. It was a rushing sound, as if they were all speaking to each other. I felt like I was overhearing a conversation in the earth. Then, as I walked to a certain spot that sat like a plateau overlooking a valley, I felt a cold shiver come across me. “There are graves here,” I had said to myself. I knew I believed it, but I had never been sure whether it was the peyote talking or whether I had been opened to some deeper realm of meaning. I had never forgotten that moment, though I seldom shared it with anyone.

      Now, this old man was telling me the same thing, but for him it was not some drug-induced awareness, but a part of everyday reality. I wondered what it must be like to have that sensitivity every moment of your life.

      He saw my curiosity. “Here,” he said, “watch this.” He sat back on his haunches and cupped his hands over his knees. Nothing seemed to be different. I sat silently beside him, wondering what it was I was supposed to see. Suddenly, Fatback came rustling through the tall grasses wagging her tail.

      “Good dog,” he said, and ruffled the scruff of her neck. Fatback wagged her tail furiously, then pushed back off through the weeds.

      I raised my eyebrows and gave Dan a little half smile.

      “See,” he said.

      “You called her over here?”

      “Want me to do it again?”

      “No,” I answered, though I truly wanted to challenge him on this. But I knew that, on some level, everything was a test, and I did not want to appear the skeptic. My job was to record what I saw as he wanted it told, not to get involved in some ersatz anthropological research. All I could think of was what one tough old woman had said to me when I first arrived on the Red Lake reservation to begin the oral history project. I had gone over to her office to request her assistance in identifying elders who might be interested in participating. She stared at me with a hard glare, then stated, simply, “If you think you’re going to come up here and do one of those goddamn white anthropology projects, you can just get on your pony and ride.” Then she turned back to her beadwork and never said another word.

      As much as I wanted Dan to prove that he had called Fatback, it seemed too close to a “goddamn white anthropology project.” So, I just said, “That dog’s got good hearing,” and let things go at that.

      Dan chuckled knowingly. “You’re a good boy, Nerburn. Let’s go get some lunch.”

      CHAPTER SIX

      JUNK CARS AND BUFFALO CARCASSES

      On the way back down the hill, Dan suggested that we go visit Grover. “He makes a mean baloney sandwich,” he said.

      I was more than happy to agree. I had come to value Grover greatly. He was a tough and crusty character. But he spoke his mind. Ever since I had given him the tobacco, he had taken on the role of Dan’s protector. He did not trust me totally. He had seen enough wasichus come and go, bearing good intentions, sycophantic fantasies, and simple greed. He was not willing to give an easy assent to any white person who claimed to want to work or live among Indians. As he had put it to me one time, “Most of you white people don’t even know what it is you want. But you want something, and you’re using us to get it.”

      Until proven otherwise, I was just one more in this long tradition of exploiters who had come among the Indian people to fulfill some personal agenda, whether spiritual, material, or otherwise. But he knew the old man had asked me to come, so he was willing to work with me. He