Neither Wolf nor Dog Read Online Free Page A

hunks of napkins and the backs of envelopes.
    But beneath the fragmentary disorder lay a level of insight that was as deep and as clear as a mountain lake.
    â€œI’d be honored to help you with this,” I said.
    â€œGood. I want it all fixed. I want things to sound right.”
    â€œIt sounds good now,” I told him.
    â€œNo, not the way I want. I’ve been thinking about this for a long time. There are things you white people need to hear. I want them to sound good so people don’t say, ‘Oh, that’s just an old Indian talking.’”
    â€œWell,” I laughed, “You are an old Indian talking.”
    Instantly I could feel I had made a mistake. He turned and looked away from me. Without looking back at me he spoke very slowly. “White people have always tried to make us into animals. They want us to be like animals in a zoo. If I don’t sound good, like a white person thinks sounds good, you just make me into another animal in the zoo.” He got up and walked to the sink. He kept his back toward me. “I’m tired now. I’m going to bed.”
    My cheeks burned. I knew I had offended him.
    Once more I had been a white person who had talked before I had thought. But I had seen enough of his writing to believe that it was more important than my feelings, or even his.
    I tried one more time.
    â€œI’m sorry,” I said. “I hope I didn’t offend you.”
    â€œI’m going to bed,” he said without turning around. He padded into the bedroom and shut the door.
    I sat there in silence, listening to the erratic buzzing of the fluorescent light over my head. I didn’t know what to do. I thought of writing him a note, but that seemed stupid. I got up and turned off some of the lights. Then I put the tattered pages of the old man’s writing under my arm, and went out the door.

    I got almost no sleep that night. The motel bed was lumpy and the trucks roaring by on the highway outside shook the walls. But it was my own anguish that kept me awake.
    I had never before done anything like taking those pages. The old man hadn’t offered them to me. It was a gift for him to even show them to me. Then I had gone and stolen them. I felt like the worst white man who had ever lived, gaining the trust of an Indian then using it to my advantage.
    But I kept telling myself there was more to my action than that. I wanted to show the old man that I could be trusted, and the only way I could do it was to take a chance on his trust.
    All night I pored over the writing. I rearranged paragraphs and corrected grammar. I tried to link up themes and organize chapters around ideas. Then I tried to write it in a way that sounded like the old man’s voice. By 4:30 I had created one chapter that felt right. I wrote it out in longhand and fell asleep just as the sun was beginning to color the edges of the curtains.
    I awoke around 7:30. I was afraid the old man would be up and find the manuscript gone. I washed and got dressed and made my way out to the house without stopping to eat.
    There was another car parked next to the house.
    I waited by my car until someone came to the door. It wasa younger woman — the old man’s granddaughter. She gestured me in.
    I went up the steps and found the old man sitting at the table. He was eating oatmeal and bacon. I immediately put the tattered pages down beside him. He didn’t look at me.
    â€œI tried to make a chapter sound like he might want it to,” I said to the woman. With every fiber of my being I wanted to keep talking — to explain myself and justify myself. Most of all I wanted some kind of response from them. But I knew I had to keep quiet.
    â€œRead it, Wenonah,” the old man said.
    I sat there in silence while she read my words in her soft, lilting voice. They sounded stilted to me — not good at all.
    When she had finished the old man tapped the table with his crippled