Neither Wolf nor Dog (14 page)

“Car's fucked,” he said.

The diagnosis was not sophisticated, but it seemed accurate.

“Can you fix it?”

He bent over slowly and squinted at the grill.

“What kind is it?” he asked. His voice rumbled like thunder in a well.

“A Nissan,” I answered.

“Never heard of it.”

Then he turned like a great battleship and walked back toward the door.

I slumped against the steaming fender. This was more than defeat. It was total devastation. I knew I had felt slightly out of place with my tidy little Japanese truck. But now, as I thought back on it, I had not seen one other foreign car or truck on the entire reservation. The vehicles of choice seemed to be huge Fords or Chevys of the early seventies vintage, and beat-up pickups that all looked like they had been rolled over or beaten with sledgehammers.

I thought of the endless automotive carcasses baking in the prairie sun throughout the reservation. There was no way I was going to be able to communicate the desperation of my situation to a man who lived in a land where cars were as disposable as tin cans or a pair of cheap shoes.

I was about to climb back into the cab and begin rummaging around for the title when I heard a scraping sound behind me. I turned to see the white garage door going up to reveal a dark, oily cavern of space with a greasy pit in the middle of the floor. Jumbo was looming behind the pit and gesturing toward his feet.

At first I didn't realize what he meant. Then it dawned on me that he wanted me to get the truck into the garage. I climbed back in the cab and tried to start the engine. It whirred and chuffed, but would not fire. Several of the young boys who had been swirling around on bicycles ran behind the truck and threw their shoulders against the pickup gate. I stepped out and pushed from beside the driver's door. Slowly we coaxed the car into the stall while Jumbo directed it first a bit to the right, then to the left, to make sure that the tires didn't fall into the grease pit.

When we had it inside Jumbo walked around to where I was standing.

“Looked it up. Can fix it.”

I glanced at my shiny black truck. Then I looked around at the greasy benches piled with tools and oily hoses and old filthy air filters. I felt like the New York woman in her million-dollar clothes.

“You sure?” I asked.

“Yep.”

“How long will it take?”

“Don't know.”

“Any idea? A few days? A week?”

“Don't know.”

I was going to ask how much, but things were beyond hope.

“But you're sure you can do it?” I said one more time, more in an attempt to get him talking than to reassure myself.

I reached behind the seat and grabbed my aviator's bag. I was about to detach the truck key from the other keys on the ring, but I realized that was an absurdity. No one here knew where I lived, or cared. Besides, it might give Jumbo the impression I didn't trust him, and that was the last thing I wanted to do.

I shrugged and looked over at the great shadowy figure who held my fate in his hands. He had lumbered off into the blackened recesses at the rear of the shop and propped himself against a pile of tires, legs spread, belly hanging. He was eating a sandwich. The soft, white bread had greasy finger marks all over it. It looked like a soda cracker in his massive ham of a hand.

“I'll stop back later to see how it's going,” I said.

“Yep,” he answered.

I turned and started to walk out the open garage door. Standing behind my truck, silhouetted against the noonday sun, was a hunched figure with its head cocked to one side. It was Dan. I breathed a deep sigh of relief and almost ran over to him.

“Wenonah said you were off on a trip,” I said, forgetting my anger and frustration at his untimely disappearance.

“Grover had to make some sandwiches.” He nodded toward Grover's barge-like Buick that was idling in the street. Grover waved at me from the rumbling vehicle. He had on a large cowboy hat with a turquoise hatband. Fatback was sitting up like a vigilant grandmother in the back seat.

“Figured you needed me,” the old man said.

I gave him a quizzical look.

“Saw the smoke signals from your truck. Old Indian signal of distress,” he cackled.

He walked slowly around the side, shaking his head and surveying my hissing vehicle as if it were the steaming carcass of some freshly expired elk or buffalo.

He ran his finger delicately along its side.

“Real shiny,” he said. “Would make a nice dog house.”

“Come on, Dan,” I said. “This is no joke. I've got to get this thing going.”

Jumbo grunted something from the shadows.

“Jumbo here will fix it. He's good at fixing stuff,” Dan said. The giant form in the back of the garage moved the sandwich toward its mouth and another chunk of white disappeared.

“Yeah, but how long?” I said to the old man.

“Hard to say. That's up to Jumbo. He's pretty busy.”

I peered into the junk-filled darkness at the hulking figure propped up against the tires masticating the sandwich. There was no vehicle in the building other than my truck.

“Oh,” I said.

The old man shouted in at Jumbo. “How long this going to take, Jum?”

The voice from the back was slow, dark, and deep. “Don't know.”

I grabbed Dan by the sleeve of his shirt. “Ask him if it's a day or a week,” I whispered.

“What do you think? A day or a week?” Dan shouted.

Chewing sounds emanated from the darkness. “Could be,” came the voice. “Car's fucked. Shoulda got a Chevy.”

I
slumped morosely next to Fatback in the back seat of Grover's big green Buick as we made our way up over a ridge toward the main highway. I should have been happy at the good fortune of getting to go on “a little trip” with Grover and the old man. But all I could think of was my meticulously engineered little truck sitting in the darkness of Jumbo's garage. Images of those piles of greasy wrenches alternated with thoughts of hospital-clean Japanese factories full of intense, fastidious men in white coats, adjusting micrometers and making marks on clipboards.

Jumbo's laconic comment — “Can fix it” — kept echoing in my head. That's probably what those plier-wielding dentists at the boarding school had said before ripping into the kids' mouths and extracting the nearest available tooth.

I slumped even lower. There was no doubt in my mind that I had seen the last of my beloved truck. It was all too clear: I was staring at twenty-six hours on a Greyhound full of squalling babies and pathetic old women in head scarves. My truck was destined to become a forlorn monument in the dusty field behind Jumbo's garage, while happy Indians rode around on its new hundred-dollar tires and listened to powwow tapes on its recently purchased two-hundred-dollar tape deck. I was lost in a sea of private despair.

Dan and Grover were laughing in the front seat. My plight — if indeed they even saw it as a plight — had not dampened their enthusiasm. I knew I should just give myself over to the moment, but I needed a little more reassurance.

“Grover?” I asked. “Do you know Jumbo?”

“Known him since he was a kid.”

“Do you think he can fix my truck?”

“Fix it or kill it,” Grover answered. Dan laughed.

Grover turned his head and looked at me slumped morosely against the rear passenger door. “Nah. Jumbo's a good guy. He'll get it fixed or else he'll tell you,” he said.

“'Course, if he fixes it he won't have to tell you,” Dan chimed in. The two men broke out in laughter again.

I didn't have the faintest idea what they were talking about. If it was humor, it eluded me. If it was information, it was unimportant to me. I just wanted to go back to the motel and sleep until this whole thing was over.

“Come on, Nerburn.” It was Grover again. “Forget about it. Nothing you can do, anyway. This little trip will be good for you. You worry too much, anyway.”

I realized he was right, but I couldn't shake my sense of depression. An hour ago I was on my way home in my mind. Suddenly I was aiming in the opposite direction, toward an
unknown destination, while a great hulk of a man who ate grease-covered sandwiches tore apart my computer-designed car with a set of pipe wrenches.

Still, the constant use of the phrase “little trip” was beginning to pique my fancy. It was as if this were some kind of ritual exercise that had a significance for Grover and the old man. Perhaps there was more to be learned here than I expected. I did my best to put my truck out of my mind. Grover was right: there was nothing I could do, anyway.

Grover slowed to a stop, then wheeled the car onto a major highway. He was what one would charitably call a “leisurely” driver, seldom exceeding forty-five miles per hour. Eighteen-wheelers shot past us with horns blaring. Grover paid them no mind. Other Indians with out-of-state plates surged past us in conversion vans and station wagons. Some had God's-eyes in their back windows. Others had old bumper stickers that read, “Pow Wow Power” or “Custer had it coming.” One banged-up Econoline had a cow skull wired to its roof and a garish version of Frederick Remington's
The End of the Trail
air-brushed across its side.

Grover and Dan lapsed into Lakota. The old tires of the Buick thumped rhythmically against the seams in the pavement. I had nothing to do, nothing to contribute to the conversation, and nothing good to think about, so I soon fell into a deep sleep.

How long it lasted was uncertain, but by the time I awoke the shadows had lengthened and the hills were tinted with a deep, burnished gold. “About time you woke up, Nerburn,” Grover said. “Time for supper.”

He gestured to a sign advertising a truck stop at the next turnoff. “We'll stop there.”

He wheeled the lumbering Buick into the truck stop parking
area. Ten or fifteen semis were parked in a row at the back of the lot with their engines running. The seismic rumble from their throbbing motors echoed against the golden hills.

Grover pulled up next to an old green school bus with Idaho plates. The windows were covered with heavy red curtains, and a stovepipe stuck out of the roof a few feet in front of the rear door. A heavy platform, like a balcony on an old politician's train car, had been welded out from the rear of the bus. It was piled high with old bicycles and coolers and canvas tarps. A dream catcher hung from the center of the rear window.

“Trouble,” Dan said.

“Not for me,” Grover laughed. “Just you. It's that damn ponytail,” he said. He rubbed his hand once across his ashen crewcut. “You should shave her down, like me.”

Dan just grunted.

The restaurant did not look inspiring. It was a typical nondescript highway truck stop with a restaurant on one side and a gas station that catered to truckers on the other. We wandered in through the gas station door. Dan went to fill a coffee can with water for Fatback while Grover and I proceeded into the restaurant.

A row of booths with orange vinyl tuck-and-roll upholstery lined the window wall and looked out over the parking lot. The center area was filled with a row of square tables covered with red-and-white-checked tablecloths that hung like skirts around their shiny chrome pedestals. A counter faced the cooking area, which was visible through an open area where the cooks slid the plates of hot beef sandwiches and red plastic baskets of burgers and fries when they were ready.

A few truckers sat slumped at the counter drinking coffee and eating pie. Most of the booths were full of men in faded T-shirts and baseball caps. It was clearly a roadhouse that catered to the over-the-road driver; there was hardly a local to be seen.

“Where are we?” I asked. So much truck traffic indicated we must have been on a major cross-country route.

Grover just shrugged. “We've gone a few miles,” was all he volunteered.

In the booth nearest the door sat a family that was immediately apparent as the owner of the bus. The man had a gaunt, hollow face and a long braided ponytail held in place by a bead-work-and-porcupine-quill barrette. The woman was wearing a T-shirt and a floor-length tie-dyed skirt. She had three turquoise rings on her right hand. Across the table sat three blond-haired kids ranging in age from about three to twelve. They were patiently sucking on ketchup-covered french fries and drawing designs on placemats. As we passed them the sweet, pungent odor of patchouli oil rose from their booth and mingled with the heavy restaurant air of sweat and fried onions.

Grover and I took a seat in one of the empty booths. No one paid us any mind. Soon Dan came through the entryway and into the restaurant. He squinted a bit against the bright golden light that was filtering in through the windows, and finally spotted the two of us across the room. He cast a sideways glance at the couple and shuffled his way over to us.