Neither Wolf nor Dog Read Online Free Page B

finger. “Have some coffee,” he said.
    I could barely suppress a smile. I knew I had passed some kind of test, but I didn’t know how or why.
    She poured me a cup from the big enamel pot.
    â€œThat’s what I wanted you to do,” he said. “Make it sound like that. Make it sound like I graduated from Haskell.”

CHAPTER
TWO

BURNT
OFFERINGS
    I t was several months before I was able to make the drive back out to the old man’s reservation. I had gone home with a pile of tattered notebook sheets and several shoe boxes of notes scribbled on everything from napkins to cash register slips. One of the boxes had contained a selection of clippings from newspapers that the old man had collected over the years. Some of them were obituaries of friends. Others were articles on subjects ranging from Indian affairs to politics. There were several Ann Landers columns and a few advertisements. I had been unable to discern any pattern to them, or to divine any reason why he had chosen to collect them in a shoe box, much less to send them home with me.
    But I had not asked questions.
    In the months that had passed I had spent many hours laying out pieces of paper and cobbling phrases and notations together into thematic unities. As I drove up the pathway to his house, I was excited but apprehensive. I had crafted a few good chapters, or so I thought. But still, it seemed artificial and vaguely unsatisfying, as if it were more my work than his. I was anxious to see how he would receive it.
    Fatback was lying in her usual place on the stoop. She barked once, then scuttled off into the dirt hollow she had dug beneath the junk car. I could hear laughing inside the house.
    Soon the old man appeared at the door. He gestured me in with a flap of his wrist. “Haven’t been around for a while,” was all he said. For all his surprise and sense of ceremony, I might have been gone only fifteen minutes.
    Three men were sitting around a table, playing cards. They were all old, but none so old as the old man himself. The house was filled with cigarette smoke. The TV was blaring in the corner.
    One of the men looked up and said, “Who’s that? Grizzly Adams?” It was said with good humor and directed at the old man, as if he, not I, were responsible for explaining my presence. The other men laughed a bit and nodded, then turned back to their cards. Other than that, no one paid any attention to me. The old man didn’t introduce me or offer me a place to sit.
    One of the men threw three cards on the table. “Son of a bitch,” said another, and they all burst into laughter. I had my packet of Prince Albert to offer the old man, but it seemed strange and inappropriate. I stood silently, holding my computer printouts and listening to the buzz of the fluorescent light over my head.
    â€œ
Wasichu
play cards?” one of the men said to the old man. I recognized the Lakota term for “white man.”
    â€œDon’t know,” he answered. He pointed toward me with the ash of his cigarette. “Hey, Nerburn. You play cards?”
    â€œNo,” I answered. “I never really learned.”
    One of the men grunted. I was no longer significant. He began dealing a new hand while I stood awkwardly in the doorway, disregarded and forgotten.
    Suddenly, as if he had been waiting, the old man said, “Well, read one.” The others kept talking among themselves and smoking cigarettes.
    â€œNow?” I said.
    â€œHell, yes. I might not make it until tomorrow.”
    There was a general round of laughter. I wanted to leave.
    I stepped further into the room and started paging through the neatly stapled packets, trying to find one in which I had confidence.
    â€œJust pick one. It don’t matter,” said the old man.
    I grabbed the one sitting on the top. It was one of the most beautiful, I thought, and it was the one that had come to me most fully crafted. Unlike the others,